Monday, April 25, 2011

Friday 4/22 and Sunday 4/24

Friday I had Kris and Steven show up for the beginners class. Worked on more guard breaking and guard passing with a counter sweep. Tried to get them to do some flow rolling, but with Steven involved it always escalates pretty quickly because he still can't calm down.
Kris has made some HUGE strides in relaxing while rolling now. He no longer goes crazy hunting for subs and is really a much more controlled and relaxed grappler from where he was even a month ago. I feel like he's ready to test for his blue belt now for sure. His demeanor has caught up to his ability.

We worked some feet-on-hips spider guard, with I think we are now calling monkey guard just for the sake of being concise, in the main class. Went over the shin block version of the leghook sweep with a couple of different details on it. Then an inverted triangle if the sweep fails. One of my favorite positions to work on.
Rolled with Kris and Steven, but had to do it one handed since I'm still protecting my elbow. Was able to shut Steven down completely because he still wants to substitute speed/strength for technique, but Kris was able to work past my guard and catch me trying to roll out and snag a bow and arrow choke very nicely. With two hands I could have escaped, but there was no way I was going to get out without putting nasty pressure on my elbow. So definitely a legit catch for him.

Sunday
Had 3 of the kids show up for the main class, but no one else. They are 14-16 and all about my size or a little smaller, which is fun. I got them warmed up with some fundamental movement drills and then worked on some of the Self Defense techniques. Escape vs Headlock standing and on the ground, and Escape vs Guillotine standing and on the ground. Had them drill a bunch, then we did some positional sparring starting in full guard. Then rolled for about half an hour. It was nice to get to practice against people my size, even if they aren't super skilled. They are all in good shape and reasonably strong, so I wasn't just flinging them around. I did find a few major differences in how techniques work against people who are my height. My leg positioning has to change for a lot of my spider guard stuff and for my butterfly guard. My whole hook game and my open guard has to change subtly to deal with their lower center of gravity and greater agility. It was very productive for everyone. They learned some good stuff, I got to work my game on people my size. It was an excellent class.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Failbow is Extra Fail

So my left elbow was more injured than previously believed. I've managed to tear up most of the connective tissue around the elbow and have had to keep it immobilized for the last week. This meant I missed class Sunday, and yesterday. I'm going back tomorrow with an elbow brace on it to roll light and work on one handed spider guard, DLR, and RDLR stuff.

Bullshido poster David Koresh Jr. has a thread over there dedicated to Spiral Guard (aka Reverse De La Riva) which has a lot of good troubleshooting videos and techniques in it that I'm going to be exploring. Won't be able to do any weightlifting for at least a month now, so you know what, screw weightlifting. I'll just be stupidly technical and deal with it.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Friday Noon Open Mat and Fundamentals Class

So one of the guys sent me a text thursday night about meeting up for an open mat on friday at noon and of course I jumped on it. We had five guys there and I had a great time. Tossed some big white belts around and did a round with Ian. We were rolling 4 or 5 minute rounds and we're thinking about moving those to 6 or 7 minute rounds and making it a regular thing. I'd love that.

After finishing out my day at work I went back to teach the beginner class. Kris showed up, so we worked the basic Gi guard break and drilled it for a bit, then working a basic guard pass where you move to combat base with your right leg up, trap your opponents right leg under your left arm, grab their left pants leg and the knee and lever your elbow out and drive their knee towards their face, then release the knee once you have it pressured down and wrap around the leg and grab the far collar, then walk towards the head and pop the leg off to pass to side control. Easy as it can be.

Then we worked on the counter scissor sweep to that pass. When the person pops their knee up to combat base you drive your opposite leg across their chest and use your same side leg to hook around the foot of the leg they are basing with to trap it. Then tricep and collar grip in the trapped leg side sweep.

Then for kicks did the counter to the counter sweep. When the persons knee drives across, you slide your down knee in towards their bottom leg and drop onto your hip, pinning their leg, and grab their belt at the back. Then free your basing leg, back step, hip switch, and climb them to side control.

After that we rolled for a while. I went positional only while Kris was allowed subs. I spent a lot of time sweeping him and running around on top, at one point he locked up an inverted triangle and I took a page out of my lutador experience and just based and stood up, then peeled him off. Fun times and he's getting better for sure.

About that time Coe showed up and we talked about side control escapes and I worked a few ideas with him, then we did some medium speed flow rolling which was great. Flow rolling with him is a little hard because he's so heavy with his pressure all of the time, but once we got into the groove there was tons of back and forth. Including one excellent inverted overhead sweep. He was standing up out of north south and a grabbed his sleeves, put my feet in his armpits, and flipped him straight forward over me. Fun stuff.

Injury Report: Left arm is STILL jacked. It will feel fine, then I go to class and don't do anything particular to it, and the next day I can barely move it. Knees are both good, ribs are good, back is good, neck is good. Finger on my left hand is 90%. Either way I'm starting back to full classes Sunday, I'll just roll one handed for a few weeks again. No big deal.

Also! BJJFights has the Aba Dhabi Pro No-Gi championship matches posted up, including Cobrinha, Langhi, Mendes, and a bunch of other absolutely awesome guys. Insanely technical no-gi matches.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Lutador April, 2011 Videos

Here are the videos from Lutador:



Masters Blue Belt


Advanced No-Go


Absolute Blue Belt Match 1


Absolute Blue Belt Match 2

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Lutador 4/9/2011 Post Mortem

We woke up at 6:45 AM, grabbed our stuff and headed into the ATL. We stopped off at the Dover Saddlery at about 9:30 after sitting in an intersection for 20 minutes watching road construction. After looking at some horse accessories we then headed over to the Cobb Civic Center (Which turned out to be a middle school gym) and arrived promptly at 11:20 where I was informed that they were "Running a little ahead of schedule so far". Well, since my division was slated to start at 11:50 I hurried off to weigh in. I tipped the scales fully clothed at a whopping 144.2lbs. For the 141-154 division.
I then hit the bathroom and changed. Dropped off all of my stuff near our crew and went to figure out when my division was going. Turns out the teens were still rolling, so I ran down to coach a couple of our kids. They were jittery, but they went out and did their best. Drake's first match in each division didn't work out so well, but his second match in both was picture perfect. As his opponent tried to pull guard he got his knee in, surfed to side control and then crushified his opponent. Good enough for 3rd place in both divisions. Katie was up against guys in her division and was generally just outmuscled despite her efforts. We're just gonna have to keep working with her on that.
At that point the Masters division was supposed to start, and didn't. And still didn't...
And so on until about 5pm. I finally stepped on the Mats after a ton of confusion for my first match of the Advanced No-Gi division. My opponent was turned out to be an Alliance Purple belt. I almost snagged a guillotine during his takedown, and had a near triangle choke but I was only able to fend him off for a couple of minutes, but he eventually just pressured to side control. Then I made a mistake while trying to escape and he caught my arm for the kimura, I fought it and tried to work my way out, but he had it in tight and I had to tap. He took 1st or 2nd in the division, I don't remember which, but I'm not disappointed with the performance.
A while later I got my first Gi match against a guy that just took 2nd in the Pan Ams. Again the grinding pressure just shut my game down and I ended up sitting under side control and losing by I think 3 points. I had a near collar choke on him, but couldn't finish it.

Sat around and ate a cliff bar and drank some powerade while waiting for the enormous absolute division to start. We had over 20 people in the division. I was up against a guy who weighed about 220 and I played my normal game, pulled guard, played spider guard, snagged the collar and tricked him into passing, then rolled under, worked my way to north south and choked him completely out. It was a bit disturbing, but he was ok.
Second match was against a guy that armbarred his opponent in about 10 seconds in his first fight. I worked to play the same game, got a decent sacrifice throw, and almost caught him with the same choke, but he was able to slip out of it and pick up a darce on me. As the room started to tunnel I had to tap.

So I went 1-3 again at this one, against a pretty high quality of competition. The Kimura I fought off ended up doing more damage than I thought, my arm is pretty sore today. Other than that I feel good. Videos will be up tomorrow some time and might differ somewhat from my descriptions since I haven't watched them.



Thursday, April 7, 2011

BJJ 4/6/2011

Had a fun tournament prep class. Me and Ian and Coe rolled medium light 5 minute rounds and had a lot of fun. My top pressure is good, I was able to make my sweeps work and play a strong top game. That will be my goal going into Saturday. Work for the takedown early, if it looks like my opponents standup game is too strong then I'll get it to the ground however I can and work my excellent sweep game, get on top, and ride it to victory. Feelin good!

Sunday, April 3, 2011

BJJ 4/3 - Lutador Prep

So I've been getting ready for lutador and friday I continued trying to heal up and work on my flow and my mental game and intensity. Wasn't really feeling the mojo though, was spending too much effort trying to avoid hurting my finger, and then ended up hurting it anyways.

Today I was feeling the flow a LOT better. I wore my Primetime MMA gloves and it really protected my hand well. Kept me from getting bonked or bent at all. So I was moving a lot better. I feel like my flow is good enough to win at lutador. I'm a GOOD blue belt, I'm in good shape this time around, and I'm going for some gold medals.