JKD & BJJ Last of '05

Due to circumstances beyond my control I was very late this evening. As such I got to do a few rounds passing the guard, I was playing with my arm drag / flower sweep combination. It has previously been shown to me that people do not like being swept or arm barred and will battle valiantly to retract the arm exposed by the arm bar / flower sweep combination. When they do that it lends itself nicely to attacking with the triangle, from which many submissions appear.
After class I did a few gi rounds and then switched over to MMA-style grappling (light punches from the knees). The switch for me is difficult, all the handles are different and every now and then you get popped. I revert to a closed guard which is fine to hug and control but does not lend itself as well to attacking as pure grappling. There is however a push-pull action with the closed guard, either keeping opponent as close as possible or pushing away and out of range -- the middle range favors the top fighter much more than the bottom fighter.
Because MMA has an added component on the ground, namely striking, I think that escaping position is easier, people are either to eager to strike or worried about getting struck such that their positioning loosens. At least this is true at the nominal level that I perform at. You can almost always shrimp out. Another interesting aside is that there are very few combinations thrown on the ground, even though its essentially inside ("dirty") boxing rotated 90^o, it would seem that combinations and trick plays would be as important here as they are standing up, if not more so given that you can get caught in a submission on the ground. Technical ground striking is especially important given how rapidly technique disintegrates in a fight, even the highly trained, simple stuff gets less polished. I'll have to do some experimenting.
This is the last class of the year and Jack wanted us to set some new goals for next year. I'll have to think about that.