Friday, May 27, 2011

Some Jiujitsu Happened!

I hit up class on Wednesday for the first time in a while and we worked leg locks and such then rolled a bunch. Everything was clicking pretty well and I felt the flow.

Today was even better. Had a lot of folks show up for the beginner class and worked on all of the blue belt curriculum with Kris and the younger kids while Ian worked on the purple belt stuff.
Main class was breaking grips to finish the armbar. Basic left and right lean and the bicep crusher.

Specific sparring started with one person halfway armbarred. Fun stuff.
After that I rolled in a group with Rugby and Kris. The flow was present even stronger than on Wednesday and I was able to make Rugby feel weak. He's the kind of guy that can pick me up and just fling me off of him if I get loose or fail to adjust properly, but I did everything right and was able to smother him and move around and look for submissions. Largely that was thanks to a post by bullshido user JNP regarding spinal/body alignment. It turns out that it really IS hard as hell to bench press someone off of you when they are bending your head towards your opposite shoulder.
My guard passes were so smooth that it was more like transitioning from inside guard to side control. There was barely any actual "pass" there. I just teleported through the guard.

I also have started to take advantage of my improved agility now that my back is healed and I was flying all over the place on the top. I feel comfortable with the idea of being a purple belt now and I'm really looking forward to my test.

Monday, May 23, 2011

BJJ No-Gi 5/22/2011

Kris showed up at about 6:30 for the beginner class so we went over a mini Blue Belt test since he got confirmation that he'll be testing for his Blue when I test for my purple. Ran through the whole list and I feel pretty good about his chances for success.

Casey was at the beach with his family or something, so Ian and I ran the class. Which really meant I ran through three techniques real quick then we rolled for about an hour.
Techniques were basic butterfly guard sweep with overhook and an underhook. Then a sweep with two overhooks. The keypoint to that one is to make sure you lock your hands together really well and clamp down on your opponents arms so that they don't get to use the underhooks against you. Third tech was for when your opponent pulls away from you when you have the overhooks, you kick your hips away and drive their shoulders down with your overhooks, then pop one arm free and go for the guillotine.

After that we rolled a bunch. One of our Ammy fighters stuck around to roll with us, he's a guy that in the past has beat me up every time, but this time I was able to consistently out position him and take his back. Even finished with an RNC which represents a significant increase in my ability to handle extremely athletic people.
Also almost finished Johnny with a guillotine. I'm more and more often able to fight Johnny off for longer periods of time and even launch attacks at him. The same with Ian.

We had a new guy in the class that was somewhere in the 200lb range and VERY active. Was a blast, he didn't seem to get tired which meant I had someone to roll with for pretty much the entire hour.

I got Kris with the Rigan Machado 50/50 counter again. Also, used my new side control escape several times and managed to avoid the D'Arce all night.

A really solid class for me.

Saturday, May 21, 2011

If you've got the poison, I've got the remedy.

So, no sooner do I recognize a hole in my game than I find a perfect piece to fill it. I was looking around for different side control escapes to find one that didn't feed right into the D'Arce. Lo and behold I find The Ghost:



I worked through the movement a bunch before class and then had the chance to try it against none other than Casey, AND IT WORKED. Of course he almost immediately dumped me back on my back and went to work, but I escaped from side control without setting my opponent up with an instant D'Arce. I plan on repping the shit out of this one through june so I can add it to my regular arsenal.

Trying to get my weight lifting routine back on a solid schedule as well, and my current daily driver car decided that transmissions are over-rated, so I'm doing a rebuild on my OTHER car (1988 Honda CRX HF) this weekend. Fun Times!

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Health and Training Update

Got over my illness and returned to class last friday. Injuries are all healed up even though I still have a little pain in my left hand it's nothing serious.

I got confirmation that I'll be testing for my Purple belt when Jacare gets back from the Mundials, so Mundials are June 2-4 which puts me testing most likely on Saturday June 11th. I'm feeling ready for it.

In amongst my training towards my purple belt I've run into a serious hole in my game that is now my main focus. It's related to my previous post about side control escapes and has definitely become an issue. I'm going to lay the situation out and see if any of the folks that keep tabs on my training here can offer a suggestion or two.

So, situation is thus, I am on the bottom of side control and working to escape. I have several options that include turning into my opponent, shrimping and attempting to regain guard, turning away from my opponent and turtling, trying to catch a leg and pull to halfguard, trying to jailbreak and slip my far foot in for halfbutterfly, or attempting a reversal.
My problem comes when my opponents outweigh me by 50-60lbs, and are far stronger than I am. From side control no matter which way I attempt my escape I'm feeding himself right into a D'arce or Anaconda choke. I can defend for a while, but I can't generate enough leverage to escape. I'm actually incapable of moving my upper body against the weight being applied to it and trying to do anything with my lower body usually results in me getting folded in half or ragdolled.

So a LOT of my rolls are playing out with me playing defensively for the first minute or so, then getting bored and starting to attempt sweeps and submissions, thus opening myself up to getting passed, where I then work to escape while my opponent crushes me until they can grab an arm or I manage to get half guard or turtle at which point I get D'arced.
If I just sit and play 100% defense then I can keep it from ever getting to that point, but that's silly to be doing while training. So what I need is some input on how to handle people going for the d'arce as I try to escape from bottom of side control. Particularly interested in the view point of other small and weak people that know what it's like to be physically unable to overcome the strength in your opponents arms no matter how much of your body you wedge into it.

This particular hole in my game is really driving me nuts.

Monday, May 9, 2011

Being Sick Sucks

I've been sick since Wednesday afternoon, missed wednesday, friday, and sunday BJJ because of it, STILL stick now, but hoping to be better by this wednesday. Ugh.
I hate missing class.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Injury Update and Random BJJ

I've been a little lazy on the updates because I've been building a fence around my property with most of my free time the last couple of weeks, but as of yesterday the fence is DONE and my horses now have free access to most of the property.

The work on the fence actually IMPROVED my shoulder and it's almost pain free now. My left elbow got aggravated a little bit, but it's just sore, not interfering with me. The finger on my left hand is still gimpy enough that I'm waring my MMA gloves for jiujitsu to keep it from getting bent back randomly.

BJJ has been interesting. I'm rolling around some different side control stuff and working on pinpointing the issue I keep having with giving up my head when I'm trying to escape from side control. Should be more on that after wednesday's class.

Sunday night was No-Gi and Kris showed up for the beginner class, he had some questions about spider guard in no-gi and since no else was there we worked on that for a bit, then rolled for a while. It turned into a leglock clinic and I hit a half a dozen things from Rigan Machado's "Leglock Encyclopedia". Kris has a really nice straight ankle lock that he caught me with a couple of times too.

Did some work from under side control and kept giving up my head or head and arm for chokes, so definitely have to troubleshoot that.

The main class was self defense against shirt grabbing. I busted out some aikido and the old TKD self defense stuff to play with as well as some other random stuff. Also a really nice throw against a rear bearhug that I might get some video of this week.

Rolled with Kris, Ankhor and JC and had a good time. Ankhor needs to get back to the BJJ class, he's definitely lost a step from spending all of his time in Muay Thai.

Looking at this video for ideas on side control escapes for now.