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- May 29, 2013
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So I'm a bluebelt who's probably going to get my purple belt soon and I'm starting to think I did blue belt all wrong.
I followed Saulo's advice and concentrated mainly on keeping myself safe and escaping, which he says in his book should be the goal of white belt and blue belt respectively. He says not to start worrying about guard until purple belt.
So I've got a functional closed guard, but the moment it's broken I get passed pretty easily. My open guard gets passed easily, too. I've never really bothered to get good at closed guard attacks like armbar, triangle, etc. I know them, I can drill them perfectly, but couldn't really get them to work in sparring and when I got Saulo's book I made a conscious effort to prioritize other things.
My closed guard is pretty effective against people up to and including some purples. I've even surprised myself against a brown once or twice. Basically my entire closed guard game is to pass their arm across me a la Trumpet Dan and take their back. If that fails I'll go for Saulo's scissor sweep or a flower sweep. If they sit back into posture I'll hip bump or kimura. I do okay against a fair number of people around my skill level in class with my current closed guard game.
However, now I'm kind of freaking out that I'm about to become a purple belt and I can't hit the basic closed guard techniques (armbar, triangle, kimura, omoplata, guillotine) on blue and even some white belts. I don't know how I'm ever going to develop them rolling against purples.
In comparison, some other blues have some killer attacks from their guard and you're constantly in danger of armbar, triangle, omoplata, etc.
Thoughts?
I followed Saulo's advice and concentrated mainly on keeping myself safe and escaping, which he says in his book should be the goal of white belt and blue belt respectively. He says not to start worrying about guard until purple belt.
So I've got a functional closed guard, but the moment it's broken I get passed pretty easily. My open guard gets passed easily, too. I've never really bothered to get good at closed guard attacks like armbar, triangle, etc. I know them, I can drill them perfectly, but couldn't really get them to work in sparring and when I got Saulo's book I made a conscious effort to prioritize other things.
My closed guard is pretty effective against people up to and including some purples. I've even surprised myself against a brown once or twice. Basically my entire closed guard game is to pass their arm across me a la Trumpet Dan and take their back. If that fails I'll go for Saulo's scissor sweep or a flower sweep. If they sit back into posture I'll hip bump or kimura. I do okay against a fair number of people around my skill level in class with my current closed guard game.
However, now I'm kind of freaking out that I'm about to become a purple belt and I can't hit the basic closed guard techniques (armbar, triangle, kimura, omoplata, guillotine) on blue and even some white belts. I don't know how I'm ever going to develop them rolling against purples.
In comparison, some other blues have some killer attacks from their guard and you're constantly in danger of armbar, triangle, omoplata, etc.
Thoughts?