Monday, May 31, 2010

In House Tournament suckage

So a couple of weeks ago we had an in-house Alliance BJJ tournament. I had been training the bicep slicer setup I mentioned in my previous post and really making it work. I found out 20 seconds before my match started that the bicep slicer was illegal in this tournament. I then got taken down by a low single and out wrestled for a while. I got frustrated and by reflex setup the slicer and put it on, then realized I wasn't allowed to finish it. After that I froze. I lost 10 to 0. Second match was Anthony from my gym, he pulled off the slowest situp sweep in the history of jiujitsu and beat me 2-0. A crappy tournament experience for me and it resulted in my knee being jacked up from the single legs and me ending up with ringworm a couple of days later. The ringworm is pretty much gone now and my knee is almost better, so I'll be heading back to Jits on wednesday.
I need to work on some side control escapes again for a while, at least getting back to halfguard and working my halfguard sweeps.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

How To Do The Same Move 100 Times, And Win.

So, since Slideyfoot started talking about Spider Guard and I made that video in the last post I decided to play with it some. We had previously looked at a leg hook sweep from De la Riva guard that was essentially the same one I've been playing with as a combo with the bicep slicer from side control. It looks like this:


There are about a dozen different sweep variations that it works with and went through most of them in various incarnations. I essentially did the same move 100 times, even when everyone knew that's what I was trying to get to they couldn't stop me. I just kept fighting for it until I got it, over and over and over and over and over.

Makes me feel great about the upcoming Alliance tournament.

Friday, May 14, 2010

Butterfly Guard to Spider Guard

Ok, so my buddy Slideyfoot was having some trouble establishing a working guard while rolling, and apparently he likes Spider Guard and wants to work on it so I told him I would film my personal set up for spider guard from butterfly for him to look at. I rarely use it because I don't have a lot of options I like from spider guard, but here it is:

Butterfly Guard to Spider Guard

Good days, bad days

Wednesday night was a mixed bag for me. We worked De La riva guard, and I'm terrible at preventing the pass with it since it's a position almost exactly counter to my normal open guard. So I spent a lot of time getting my guard passed and defending subs.
In addition I spent some time working spider guard since Slideyfoot had mentioned it. I can establish Spider, but the only sweep I can hit from that is the comedy monkeyflip option, which I hit twice.
Other than that I just shove people around while trying to catch them in a triangle until they pass. So not a very productive day for my normal game, but some fun with new stuff.
Video of the way I establish spider guard will be up for Slideyfoot later tonight most likely.

We have an in-house Alliance BJJ tournament coming up at the end of the month which I'll be competing in.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

More Comments on the Values of Tenacity

As usual I've been watching Cobrinha's DVDs regularly, not so much for the technique instruction right now but for the match footage where I can see how he puts it all together. I'm constantly struck by his tenacity in following a technique through to completion. I'll probably be harping on it for at least another couple of weeks as it's proven itself yet again for me.
My current pet technique is the single collar choke. I've been setting it up from everywhere, using combos to get it, and being really persistent about keeping the grip and returning to the choke attempt over and over and over until it works. Last night it paid off for me again as I was able to use that approach to completely control one of my more athletic rolling partners. I usually find it very difficult to deal with his combination of strength and technique, but last night I was able to nullify almost all of that simple by constantly working for that collar grip and then once I got it keeping it and battling for the choke. It took a while but I finished it once and was very close to finishing it a second time.