The only person in the fundamentals class was Steven, he doesn't have a gi, so we worked through armbars from guard for no-gi emphasizing using the legs to control the upper body and sweeping to finish from the top.
Then I walked him through what to do when your opponent manages to yank his arm out. Showed the switch to the triangle choke, again emphasizing keeping the hips high and not rushing to the finish before adjusting everything properly.
Finished up with some Jiujitsu chess, again emphasizing thinking when you're rolling.
Main class started out with some standup work, hipthrows back and forth. Techniques were a continuation of the side control work we've been doing. Transitioning to the top arm under the far shoulder, then transitioning to the mount by pulling the far knee down.
We followed that up with options when the mount isn't available. The first option was catching the hand and pushing it away from the body and switching to a Kimura. Second option was for when your opponent manages to grab their belt or pants. Transition to north south, then attack with the kimura from there.
We started rolling from side control and I joined the heavyweight group. Rolling with Coe, Casey, and Johnny so I spent most of my time defending against wicked chokes and kimuras. Managed to finagle my way back to guard a few times from the bottom and wait out a few submissions with Casey and Coe. Johnny just BLASTS through my guard though, smashes me, and grabs a limb and yanks it around. If I play 100% defense and nothing else I can hold him off for a while, but the second I give him ANY kind of opening he'll smash right through it.
On top I was able to hold Coe down despite most of his efforts. He can't rely on powering me off of him and has to get tricky to escape. Casey I can hold down for a bit, but FWOOSH eventually he magically teleports me onto the bottom.
Johnny grabs a big handful of gi and just powers me far enough off of him to switch to a double leg and smashes me. I'm still working on figuring out what I need to do to slow him down, he's one of my favorite guys to roll with.
I did get a couple of videos from this one, one of me rolling with Casey and one with Coe. I wanted one with Johnny but ended up not getting any. So I'm not getting as smashed in the videos as I wanted to be for analysis. I'll have the videos up monday some time with some analysis.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Thursday, February 17, 2011
BJJ 2/16/2011 - A Rib Snapping Good Time!
I showed up a little early since the Judo class I was going to visit got cancelled, did some agility drills and vacuumed the mats to get random crud from the TKD classes off of them. Kris showed up a little early and we did some warm up rolling. He's still got the bad habit of trying to replace technique with speed/strength which is hurting his progress. He has a lot of potential, but his mindset is holding him back right now.
Ian ran through the basic warmup, then we drilled some armbars and omoplatas from guard. Casey showed up right as we were finishing that up and we went to work on techniques from side control.
Technique today was to have your normal side control, with one arm under the head and the other under the far shoulder, grab some gi on that far arm and lift as you switch your arm that is under the head to be under the shoulder. You should be nice and deep so your opponents weight is actually coming down on your forearm. Next move your other arm to block the opponents hip and step over the head. At the same time you want to pressure into them to drive their shoulder up off of the ground. If they are light enough or you are strong enough you can lift up on them to pull them up onto their side. Next you get the figure four grip on their arm, and now you put your knee in their ribs, sit on them, squeeze your knees, and sit back for an armbar.
The next option was the same, but their armbar defense looks to be too solid, so instead of attempting the armbar you go to the Kimura by putting your knee on their bottom bicep and popping the arm free by pulling up sharply.
Last option was if they are hiding their bottom arm as well, you scoot forward until your knees are pinching them at the midback and chest and then you keep the arm, drop to the side, cross your ankles and use a scissor on their neck. This was stupidly effective and I vowed that if anyone tapped me with a head scissors I would switch to Aikido and Catch Wrestling.
Drilling was with Coe, Casey, and Ian starting in Side Control. I was able to reguard against Casey the first time via some insane agility that ended us in some weird mutual headstand position before I was able to pop back to guard. Coe crushified me for a while but I can't remember whether time ran out on the drilling or he caught me with something.
Rolling was with the same group. Casey let me get past his guard a couple of times with minimal resistance and I worked to maintain my position on top and set up attacks. Being able to stay on top of Casey for ANY length of time gives me a lot of confidence in my top game now.
Starting on top of Coe I can maintain top position as long as I don't get over zealous with submission hunting. I was able to counter his escape attempts most of the time without tiring myself out. On the bottom with Coe it's like having a truck parked on me though. If he gets past my legs/knees it's just horrible. I spend 90% of my effort just trying not to tap to the pressure while I defend his sub attempts. He usually gets me eventually.
Ian I can hold down and hunt subs on from the top, and I can still trick him from the bottom most of the time and catch a sub or two. I managed to finish with the alternate grip collar choke and an armbar this time, but he damn near got me with that headscissors move we learned in class. If his legs had been adjusted slightly I would have had to tap to it, as it was I was able to relieve the pressure and work to escape until time ran out.
Working with the heavier guys is a blast, but it's a TON of work. I've learned that I REALLY don't like being on the bottom in Gi against anyone more than 30lbs heavier than I am that is also the same skill level. In No-Gi I don't mind as much because there's so much less friction that I can still maneuver, but in Gi the friction lock that their weight causes more than counters the benefit of being able to slow them down with gi grips. I definitely prefer to work from the top in Gi where I can still be mobile.
Ian ran through the basic warmup, then we drilled some armbars and omoplatas from guard. Casey showed up right as we were finishing that up and we went to work on techniques from side control.
Technique today was to have your normal side control, with one arm under the head and the other under the far shoulder, grab some gi on that far arm and lift as you switch your arm that is under the head to be under the shoulder. You should be nice and deep so your opponents weight is actually coming down on your forearm. Next move your other arm to block the opponents hip and step over the head. At the same time you want to pressure into them to drive their shoulder up off of the ground. If they are light enough or you are strong enough you can lift up on them to pull them up onto their side. Next you get the figure four grip on their arm, and now you put your knee in their ribs, sit on them, squeeze your knees, and sit back for an armbar.
The next option was the same, but their armbar defense looks to be too solid, so instead of attempting the armbar you go to the Kimura by putting your knee on their bottom bicep and popping the arm free by pulling up sharply.
Last option was if they are hiding their bottom arm as well, you scoot forward until your knees are pinching them at the midback and chest and then you keep the arm, drop to the side, cross your ankles and use a scissor on their neck. This was stupidly effective and I vowed that if anyone tapped me with a head scissors I would switch to Aikido and Catch Wrestling.
Drilling was with Coe, Casey, and Ian starting in Side Control. I was able to reguard against Casey the first time via some insane agility that ended us in some weird mutual headstand position before I was able to pop back to guard. Coe crushified me for a while but I can't remember whether time ran out on the drilling or he caught me with something.
Rolling was with the same group. Casey let me get past his guard a couple of times with minimal resistance and I worked to maintain my position on top and set up attacks. Being able to stay on top of Casey for ANY length of time gives me a lot of confidence in my top game now.
Starting on top of Coe I can maintain top position as long as I don't get over zealous with submission hunting. I was able to counter his escape attempts most of the time without tiring myself out. On the bottom with Coe it's like having a truck parked on me though. If he gets past my legs/knees it's just horrible. I spend 90% of my effort just trying not to tap to the pressure while I defend his sub attempts. He usually gets me eventually.
Ian I can hold down and hunt subs on from the top, and I can still trick him from the bottom most of the time and catch a sub or two. I managed to finish with the alternate grip collar choke and an armbar this time, but he damn near got me with that headscissors move we learned in class. If his legs had been adjusted slightly I would have had to tap to it, as it was I was able to relieve the pressure and work to escape until time ran out.
Working with the heavier guys is a blast, but it's a TON of work. I've learned that I REALLY don't like being on the bottom in Gi against anyone more than 30lbs heavier than I am that is also the same skill level. In No-Gi I don't mind as much because there's so much less friction that I can still maneuver, but in Gi the friction lock that their weight causes more than counters the benefit of being able to slow them down with gi grips. I definitely prefer to work from the top in Gi where I can still be mobile.
Monday, February 14, 2011
BJJ 2/13/2011
Fundamentals class:
Good class, Ian the blue belt brought his kid and one of his kids friends along and my buddy Will was there.We reviewed preventing the guard pass by pushing the head down and executing a technical stand, the we talked about receiving well when someone passes your guard or attempts to take mount. I had them drill framing against each other while they passed and then pulling the knee up to create a frame when one of them tried to take mount.
After working on that for a bit I had them do some jiujitsu chess trying to reinforce the idea of THINKING while they are rolling. Had a brief QA session at the end and went back over some off the no-gi attacks with the overhook from a few weeks ago.
Main Class:
We were all pretty much warmed up, so we moved right to techniques. Casey decided to teach a "What Fedor Did Wrong" themed class so first up was catching the opponents leg in halfguard when they move to mount (One of the options I had just shown, YAY!) and then getting the underhook, hipping out, and sweeping. Then going to deep half and sweeping by grabbing the foot with the top hand, driving forward a bit, then rolling back the other way. And finally halfguard where your opponent is laying across you working to pass and you frame on his back, and shrimp to a technical stand, or if they chase you, suddenly crossface and roll them.
We drilled from halfguard and I spent the entire time trying to reinforce to the younger guys that they need to use the stuff we JUST LEARNED because it works. They tend to be a little spazzy and apparently have the impression that techniques work if you go FASTER and TRY HARDER. I had to stop them a couple of times and make them just slow down and do the technique properly instead of just trying to move faster.
Rolling was a 5 man gauntlet with Me, Will, Ian, Coe and Casey. Somehow I ended up not rolling with Casey at all, but I was able to enforce my top game on everyone else, including Coe the 220lb purple belt. He initiated a scramble early on and I took his back, flattened him and worked the RNC for a bit, he defended it and tried to peel me off, I transitioned to side control, and then to north south, and generally kept him from putting anything together while I constantly threatened chokes. We'll see how that works out for me next week when he steps up the pace a little.
Good class though, teaching the fundamentals class is really making me think about those little things that make my jiujitsu work and it seems to be helping the other people that are attending as well.
Good class, Ian the blue belt brought his kid and one of his kids friends along and my buddy Will was there.We reviewed preventing the guard pass by pushing the head down and executing a technical stand, the we talked about receiving well when someone passes your guard or attempts to take mount. I had them drill framing against each other while they passed and then pulling the knee up to create a frame when one of them tried to take mount.
After working on that for a bit I had them do some jiujitsu chess trying to reinforce the idea of THINKING while they are rolling. Had a brief QA session at the end and went back over some off the no-gi attacks with the overhook from a few weeks ago.
Main Class:
We were all pretty much warmed up, so we moved right to techniques. Casey decided to teach a "What Fedor Did Wrong" themed class so first up was catching the opponents leg in halfguard when they move to mount (One of the options I had just shown, YAY!) and then getting the underhook, hipping out, and sweeping. Then going to deep half and sweeping by grabbing the foot with the top hand, driving forward a bit, then rolling back the other way. And finally halfguard where your opponent is laying across you working to pass and you frame on his back, and shrimp to a technical stand, or if they chase you, suddenly crossface and roll them.
We drilled from halfguard and I spent the entire time trying to reinforce to the younger guys that they need to use the stuff we JUST LEARNED because it works. They tend to be a little spazzy and apparently have the impression that techniques work if you go FASTER and TRY HARDER. I had to stop them a couple of times and make them just slow down and do the technique properly instead of just trying to move faster.
Rolling was a 5 man gauntlet with Me, Will, Ian, Coe and Casey. Somehow I ended up not rolling with Casey at all, but I was able to enforce my top game on everyone else, including Coe the 220lb purple belt. He initiated a scramble early on and I took his back, flattened him and worked the RNC for a bit, he defended it and tried to peel me off, I transitioned to side control, and then to north south, and generally kept him from putting anything together while I constantly threatened chokes. We'll see how that works out for me next week when he steps up the pace a little.
Good class though, teaching the fundamentals class is really making me think about those little things that make my jiujitsu work and it seems to be helping the other people that are attending as well.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
BJJ 2/11/2011
No one showed up for the beginner class, so chilled until time for the main class. Casey's schedule got jacked up again so he can't make it to class until 8 now. Class ended up being all kinds of small, just six of us around 8pm. I spent the first half hour playing upside down guard with folks while we rolled randomly. When Casey got there we worked a baseball bat choke setup using the lapel to tie up the shoulder or arm depending on how they defend, then a modification where the opponent defends early by grabbing the lapel, so you switch to an ezekiel. Then another variation where the gi tie up is too tight, so you switch to an ezekiel from the back with the other hand in the sleeve.
We rolled a gauntlet and again I spent some more time playing upside down guard and eventually concluded that I'm going to leave it as a transitory position instead of one where I hang out. It puts a lot of stress on my lower back that I don't like to deal with.
Rolled with Casey a couple of times and I can tell that I've made progress. The level of resistance he gives me now would have wrecked me six months ago.
Got stuck under Coe in an attempted inverted triangle thingy for most of a round, couldn't break his grip while I was transitioning and got stuck.
Nothing else particularly notable, though I can fuckin taste that purple belt.
We rolled a gauntlet and again I spent some more time playing upside down guard and eventually concluded that I'm going to leave it as a transitory position instead of one where I hang out. It puts a lot of stress on my lower back that I don't like to deal with.
Rolled with Casey a couple of times and I can tell that I've made progress. The level of resistance he gives me now would have wrecked me six months ago.
Got stuck under Coe in an attempted inverted triangle thingy for most of a round, couldn't break his grip while I was transitioning and got stuck.
Nothing else particularly notable, though I can fuckin taste that purple belt.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Handling the size disadvantage
Because it's such a common theme I continually end up in discussions about how to handle bigger guys when rolling and I see a lot of people looking to guys like Cobrinha and Marcelo Garcia for techniques to try. The problem with that is that those guys are so experienced that they have a highly developed game filled with techniques they've used thousands of times. Of course they can make their stuff work against an 80 lb advantage. But how did they get there? What does the beginning of a game that can handle that kind of weight disparity look like?
And before anyone accuses me of getting a swelled head, I'm not comparing myself to Cobrinha or Marcelo, that's the point. I'm not them. I'm not anywhere close to that level, but I am still able to control people that weigh up to 100lbs more than I do. So I shot three videos last week demonstrating how I roll against those guys.
The first video is against a 230lb white belt who has been training for just under a year.
Important points to notice in this video are as follows: Notice how active my legs and feet are? I use my feet as a second pair of hands. I try to keep most of my opponents weight on my legs because they are so much stronger than my arms.
At 1:20 I start working to get under him because he has stood up. If I can get under a standing opponent I can get their hips loaded onto my feet and sweep them, as you see I do at 1:28.
After that I move into my "mudslide" phase and concentrate on keeping as much deadweight as possible on my opponent. At 2:20 when he is trying to lift me and toss me away I concentrate on keeping my weight driven down onto my knee that is on his stomach and use my extended arm and leg as balance points only, no weight is actually on them.
Once I get to side control I focus on keeping a dominant position. Whenever he tries to push me away I pop to knee on belly. At 3:19 he attempts to roll away and I start moving to his back, however to avoid the chance of being tossed off and ending up on the bottom I don't go all the way to his back. I move to back side control, which proves a wise decision as he rolls back in to me and I end up on top of side control again.
In mount I make a minor mistake and move to "Monkey Mount" while my hips are still too low, which allows him to toss me off at 3:45. I surf on him to maintain top position for a while, then drop back to force him to play top game because I wanted to show some more control from the bottom.
Again look at 4:30 and how active my feet are. I always have my feet on his hips, or on his biceps, or some combination of the two. He is never able to successfully bring is weight to bear on me.
The next video is with a 180lb Blue Belt. This guy is intentionally trying to avoid using too much strength as he's working on improving his technique. I use a lot of the same stuff to keep from getting smashed though.
Ok, things to watch in this one: Again I try to keep my legs between me and my opponent. Feet are on biceps and hips constantly and my knees are always up.
At the same time I'm trying to attack his balance whenever I can.
At :55 he starts to pass on one side and I immediately push his head down and execute a technical stand, then re-pull guard. From there he drops back to LRH and I start working to pass guard,again with a mudslide mentality. He keeps his legs between us and at 1:49 is able to get my hips over his leg far enough that he can lift me over and dump me quite hilariously. My reflex is to pull me knees up and immediately get them on his hips to prevent him from taking advantage of it though and I push him off and return to guard.
At 2:20 from feet on hips spider guard I begin working a collar choke using my knees to keep his defending hands away. He reverts to pure strength for a moment to pull my hand off and I throw up a couple of triangles at the end. Nothing too special in this one, just another good example of using my feet and legs as a second set of arms.
The final roll is with a 215lb white belt that has been training with us about 6 months. He's shorter than the 230lb guy from the first video and so carries his weight in a more compact package which results in a slightly different method of controlling him.
Once again I immediately get my feet on his hips to stop him from bringing his weight down on me. I stretch him out a little while I have the sleeve grip which extends his arm so I can spin under him to attempt an armbar. Notice at :17 that I am not attempting a normal armbar which would allow him to stack me, but using my knees to pinch his arm and attempt the armbar. I could have cranked it here and finished it, but instead I go with his resistance and let him drop onto my leg. At :21 he's loaded for the sweep already, he tries to run away from it, but his weight is centered on top of me, so there's no way he can escape once I have his leg underhooked. This is a perfect example of how to use a bigger guys weight against him.
From there I maintain mount by extending my arms out. Once again I make the mistake of switching to monkey mount against a bigger guy and he's able to roll me. I move to closed guard, then return to me preferred guard with my knees between. Once I establish my feet on hips guard I start attempting to monkey flip him. He's able to keep his hips far enough back that I can't manage the full flip in this round, but I did land it on him in a later round.
The most important thing in this video is once he does manage to get good grips on my ankles and pin my legs to pass. I immediately turtle and roll through to regain guard. As he tries to move to side control I'm already getting on my side, getting my underhook, getting my knee between us and establishing a half butterfly hook. All before he even comes close to settling in to side. had the round not ended I would have been able to easily pop back to guard or even come out the side and attack again.
As always, comments are welcome. Tell me how much I suck and what a noob I am. It's all good.
And before anyone accuses me of getting a swelled head, I'm not comparing myself to Cobrinha or Marcelo, that's the point. I'm not them. I'm not anywhere close to that level, but I am still able to control people that weigh up to 100lbs more than I do. So I shot three videos last week demonstrating how I roll against those guys.
The first video is against a 230lb white belt who has been training for just under a year.
Important points to notice in this video are as follows: Notice how active my legs and feet are? I use my feet as a second pair of hands. I try to keep most of my opponents weight on my legs because they are so much stronger than my arms.
At 1:20 I start working to get under him because he has stood up. If I can get under a standing opponent I can get their hips loaded onto my feet and sweep them, as you see I do at 1:28.
After that I move into my "mudslide" phase and concentrate on keeping as much deadweight as possible on my opponent. At 2:20 when he is trying to lift me and toss me away I concentrate on keeping my weight driven down onto my knee that is on his stomach and use my extended arm and leg as balance points only, no weight is actually on them.
Once I get to side control I focus on keeping a dominant position. Whenever he tries to push me away I pop to knee on belly. At 3:19 he attempts to roll away and I start moving to his back, however to avoid the chance of being tossed off and ending up on the bottom I don't go all the way to his back. I move to back side control, which proves a wise decision as he rolls back in to me and I end up on top of side control again.
In mount I make a minor mistake and move to "Monkey Mount" while my hips are still too low, which allows him to toss me off at 3:45. I surf on him to maintain top position for a while, then drop back to force him to play top game because I wanted to show some more control from the bottom.
Again look at 4:30 and how active my feet are. I always have my feet on his hips, or on his biceps, or some combination of the two. He is never able to successfully bring is weight to bear on me.
The next video is with a 180lb Blue Belt. This guy is intentionally trying to avoid using too much strength as he's working on improving his technique. I use a lot of the same stuff to keep from getting smashed though.
Ok, things to watch in this one: Again I try to keep my legs between me and my opponent. Feet are on biceps and hips constantly and my knees are always up.
At the same time I'm trying to attack his balance whenever I can.
At :55 he starts to pass on one side and I immediately push his head down and execute a technical stand, then re-pull guard. From there he drops back to LRH and I start working to pass guard,again with a mudslide mentality. He keeps his legs between us and at 1:49 is able to get my hips over his leg far enough that he can lift me over and dump me quite hilariously. My reflex is to pull me knees up and immediately get them on his hips to prevent him from taking advantage of it though and I push him off and return to guard.
At 2:20 from feet on hips spider guard I begin working a collar choke using my knees to keep his defending hands away. He reverts to pure strength for a moment to pull my hand off and I throw up a couple of triangles at the end. Nothing too special in this one, just another good example of using my feet and legs as a second set of arms.
The final roll is with a 215lb white belt that has been training with us about 6 months. He's shorter than the 230lb guy from the first video and so carries his weight in a more compact package which results in a slightly different method of controlling him.
Once again I immediately get my feet on his hips to stop him from bringing his weight down on me. I stretch him out a little while I have the sleeve grip which extends his arm so I can spin under him to attempt an armbar. Notice at :17 that I am not attempting a normal armbar which would allow him to stack me, but using my knees to pinch his arm and attempt the armbar. I could have cranked it here and finished it, but instead I go with his resistance and let him drop onto my leg. At :21 he's loaded for the sweep already, he tries to run away from it, but his weight is centered on top of me, so there's no way he can escape once I have his leg underhooked. This is a perfect example of how to use a bigger guys weight against him.
From there I maintain mount by extending my arms out. Once again I make the mistake of switching to monkey mount against a bigger guy and he's able to roll me. I move to closed guard, then return to me preferred guard with my knees between. Once I establish my feet on hips guard I start attempting to monkey flip him. He's able to keep his hips far enough back that I can't manage the full flip in this round, but I did land it on him in a later round.
The most important thing in this video is once he does manage to get good grips on my ankles and pin my legs to pass. I immediately turtle and roll through to regain guard. As he tries to move to side control I'm already getting on my side, getting my underhook, getting my knee between us and establishing a half butterfly hook. All before he even comes close to settling in to side. had the round not ended I would have been able to easily pop back to guard or even come out the side and attack again.
As always, comments are welcome. Tell me how much I suck and what a noob I am. It's all good.
Sweep off of failed Guillotine
*EDIT* I've been informed that this is apparently the "100%" sweep referenced in Eddie Bravo's 10th Planet material. I've read about the 100% before but the descriptions of it never matched my visualization of this technique, so I never put it together. Apparently I've been using the 100% for years.
I discovered this sweep by accident a couple of years ago and have since then seen it in several different places, however I have no idea what the common name for it is so I haven't been able to find any videos of it when I want to recommend it to people. So, here is a sweep from a failed guillotine attempt:
I discovered this sweep by accident a couple of years ago and have since then seen it in several different places, however I have no idea what the common name for it is so I haven't been able to find any videos of it when I want to recommend it to people. So, here is a sweep from a failed guillotine attempt:
Friday, February 4, 2011
BJJ 2/4/2011
Fundamentals
Had two guys for the fundamentals class today, one of them is pretty much brand new to the Gi but has some no-gi experience. We warmed up with the Upa->Shrimp->Hipswitch->Turtle->Sitout->Repeat drill, then I went over different grips and how to break them and had them do some grip fighting back and forth to get used to the idea. Next I showed them the basic X-choke and one grip variation of it. After that I went over framing and escaping mount and side control again then I had them play BJJ Chess for about 20 minutes. Making one move at a time. It really shows you the difference between having trained for 4+ years and having trained for 1 year or less. They frequently had to completely stop and think for several seconds about what they should do next, whereas I generally already have 4-5 moves planned out and ready. Hopefully we'll see them improve their ability to think ahead as time goes by in the fundamentals class.
Main Class
Casey liked my warm up drill from the fundamental class, so the main class did it as well. After that it was more arm drag drills, different grip breaks to the armdrag setup and then various finishes from the back. Same stuff we've been working on the last few sessions, once again I really enjoy getting a ton of reps on stuff. Drilled and threw some people around, then rolled with some folks. I was filming some of the rolls, of course the roll where I hit an overhead sweep on 215lber wasn't filmed, but I got some good stuff out of it which I'll be posting monday.
What I've most noticed recently is that I'm getting more and more relaxed while rolling to the point where I just prevent my opponent from putting much together in the way of offense until they give me an opening and it doesn't seem to matter how hard my opponent is working, my intensity level never changes. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. I think I need to spend a few sessions working on cranking my intensity up.
Had two guys for the fundamentals class today, one of them is pretty much brand new to the Gi but has some no-gi experience. We warmed up with the Upa->Shrimp->Hipswitch->Turtle->Sitout->Repeat drill, then I went over different grips and how to break them and had them do some grip fighting back and forth to get used to the idea. Next I showed them the basic X-choke and one grip variation of it. After that I went over framing and escaping mount and side control again then I had them play BJJ Chess for about 20 minutes. Making one move at a time. It really shows you the difference between having trained for 4+ years and having trained for 1 year or less. They frequently had to completely stop and think for several seconds about what they should do next, whereas I generally already have 4-5 moves planned out and ready. Hopefully we'll see them improve their ability to think ahead as time goes by in the fundamentals class.
Main Class
Casey liked my warm up drill from the fundamental class, so the main class did it as well. After that it was more arm drag drills, different grip breaks to the armdrag setup and then various finishes from the back. Same stuff we've been working on the last few sessions, once again I really enjoy getting a ton of reps on stuff. Drilled and threw some people around, then rolled with some folks. I was filming some of the rolls, of course the roll where I hit an overhead sweep on 215lber wasn't filmed, but I got some good stuff out of it which I'll be posting monday.
What I've most noticed recently is that I'm getting more and more relaxed while rolling to the point where I just prevent my opponent from putting much together in the way of offense until they give me an opening and it doesn't seem to matter how hard my opponent is working, my intensity level never changes. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. I think I need to spend a few sessions working on cranking my intensity up.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
BJJ 1/30/2011
I trained last friday as well, taught the beginner class and took the main class, but I was too busy to post about them. Went over breaking the guard in Gi and did some passing and reguarding drills. Main class was continuing work on armdrags and different variants.
Tonight I had 3 people for the beginner class. I started out with a movement drill where you Upa, shrimp, hipswitch to turtle, then sitout and end up back on your back and repeat. For technique we worked no-gi guard passing using a tripod pass where you post your head on your opponents solar plexus, base up on your feet and keep one arm in their armpit and use the other to break the legs open and start your pass. After everyone had the basic idea we drilled doing the pass and the bottom person had to shrimp, hip switch to turtle, then sitout back to guard.
Next up we worked on the basic scissor sweep principles. Getting the underhook, loading the opponent up onto the shin, lifting the knee, and sweeping. Worked that back and forth and then did about 30 minutes of flow rolling with a clear emphasis on the techniques we had been working on as well as the escapes from the previous classes. So far folks have been staying relaxed and working well with the flowrolling. Not sure how much they are really working on thinking ahead, but it seems to be helpful so far.
Main class was more armdrags. Armdrag to the back for RNC as a warmup drill, then armdrag to a half crucifix RNC, then armdrag attempt, but they post a foot up, so you underhook the knee, keep the arm tight, and roll over backwards for the sweep. Then just for kicks Case showed armdrag to the back to a rolling calf crusher. Fun stuff.
Specific sparring was from butterfly guard. I hit a bunch of armdrags, and managed to hit X-guard and swing to the back and kick th legs out. Was pretty as could be. Generally worked on armdrags from the bottom and just passed guard on the top.
Rolling was a 4 man group with 3 of our more athletic guys, luckily two of them had just finished Muay Thai, so they weren't as crazily energetic as normal. I played relaxed and prevented a lot of passing, caught a couple of triangles and whatnot. One of the guys kept trying to footlock me, so I heel hooked him very gently a couple of times. Fun class and I'm having an easier and easier time of managing the stronger and more atheltic people.
Also, my new Megalodon Gi that Casey, Coe and Darnell chipped in on for my wedding present came in and it is absolutely sweet. I'm going to try to get a picture of the back up since it has the Megalodon and Alliance logos on it. Looks quite nice. It's a Judo style Gi with the shorter sleeves I prefer and it's in blue. Very sturdy and it came with matching pants.
Tonight I had 3 people for the beginner class. I started out with a movement drill where you Upa, shrimp, hipswitch to turtle, then sitout and end up back on your back and repeat. For technique we worked no-gi guard passing using a tripod pass where you post your head on your opponents solar plexus, base up on your feet and keep one arm in their armpit and use the other to break the legs open and start your pass. After everyone had the basic idea we drilled doing the pass and the bottom person had to shrimp, hip switch to turtle, then sitout back to guard.
Next up we worked on the basic scissor sweep principles. Getting the underhook, loading the opponent up onto the shin, lifting the knee, and sweeping. Worked that back and forth and then did about 30 minutes of flow rolling with a clear emphasis on the techniques we had been working on as well as the escapes from the previous classes. So far folks have been staying relaxed and working well with the flowrolling. Not sure how much they are really working on thinking ahead, but it seems to be helpful so far.
Main class was more armdrags. Armdrag to the back for RNC as a warmup drill, then armdrag to a half crucifix RNC, then armdrag attempt, but they post a foot up, so you underhook the knee, keep the arm tight, and roll over backwards for the sweep. Then just for kicks Case showed armdrag to the back to a rolling calf crusher. Fun stuff.
Specific sparring was from butterfly guard. I hit a bunch of armdrags, and managed to hit X-guard and swing to the back and kick th legs out. Was pretty as could be. Generally worked on armdrags from the bottom and just passed guard on the top.
Rolling was a 4 man group with 3 of our more athletic guys, luckily two of them had just finished Muay Thai, so they weren't as crazily energetic as normal. I played relaxed and prevented a lot of passing, caught a couple of triangles and whatnot. One of the guys kept trying to footlock me, so I heel hooked him very gently a couple of times. Fun class and I'm having an easier and easier time of managing the stronger and more atheltic people.
Also, my new Megalodon Gi that Casey, Coe and Darnell chipped in on for my wedding present came in and it is absolutely sweet. I'm going to try to get a picture of the back up since it has the Megalodon and Alliance logos on it. Looks quite nice. It's a Judo style Gi with the shorter sleeves I prefer and it's in blue. Very sturdy and it came with matching pants.
Friday, January 28, 2011
How to Be an Enforcer
At every school there is that Go-To person that always handles the noobs. Ideally it's someone not too big, who is always calm, but is tough enough to take some beats, and skilled enough to demonstrate to the super athletic, spazzy, "I R DOIN MMA!!" type noobs that whatever they are doing is ineffective and they need to chill the fuck out and pay attention to learning jiu-jitsu.
If the enforcer is a 250lb brown belt then the noob doesn't learn anything because, "The only reason I couldn't beat him is because he's bigger than I am!" is sitting in the back of their mind, so they just go twice as hard on the next guy their size. If the enforcer is the instructor then it can cause bad blood between the noobs and the guy who is supposed to be teaching them. The perfect enforcer is a senior blue or mid level purple belt between 135 and 155lbs. A little bigger is fine, but you definitely want your enforcer to be a demonstration of technique over strength.
If you find yourself being paired up with every 220lb spaz that comes into the gym, and you're a lightweight blue belt, you're probably on the list of Enforcers for your school. Since no one ever really sits down and tells you what you're supposed to do, let's explore that concept for a minute.
As an Enforcer your job is ONLY to demonstrate that pure strength and athleticism will not let the spazzy noob win. You don't have to completely dominate them, you don't have to sub them, you just have to make sure they know that what they are doing is ineffective. So here are a few ways to do that.
1. Invincible Guard: This is best used against people that try to elbow grind their way out of guard or apply submissions from inside the guard. To execute this technique lock your feet together and turn your knees OUT so that the backs of your knees are pressed against your opponent. This makes your guard much harder to break and lets you bump your opponent around a lot. Next put your hands behind your head and look around the room, hold a conversation with someone or give some advice to a white belt in a nearby roll. While doing this constant pull your opponent forward to break their balance. If they start to stop working make sure you encourage them to "Keep working!".
2. Mocking Maneuver: This one can be used in conjunction with any of the other techniques, but I prefer combining it with Invincible Guard. When your opponent is trying something that won't work, and refuses to abandon it, engage this Maneuver. "You know that won't ever work, right?", "If you keep doing that you're going to hurt yourself...", "I'm just wondering where you're going with this... keep on.", "I'm not sure that does what you think it does.". This is a way to subtly remind your opponent that they do not yet know WTF they are doing and should stick to working on things they've actually been shown in class, not things they half remember from UFC 57 or the latest Submissions 101 video.
3. Whirling Dervish: If your opponent is too big, or too strong, or you have a knee injury, or for any reason can't employ Invincible Guard this is an excellent backup option. Sit on your butt, get any kind of collar or sleeve grip to help spin you, and extend your legs so that you have a foot on the hip or between the legs or anywhere that you can use to help keep you lined up with your opponent. Now let them run themselves stupid trying to pass your guard on the outside of the circle while you use your grip and your hooks to make them carry you around the inside of the circle. No matter at what point they get frustrated and try to dive on you, you'll have them inside your guard still.
4. Levitation: This is a personal favorite. A lot of spazzy noobs will want to stand up to run around your guard or do other silly things, so get your feet on their hips and keep a deathgrip on the collar. Keep your legs socketted into the hip crease and nice and stiff and when your opponent stands up they will give you their hips, this leads to overhead sweeps and other comedy monkey flip style sweeps. As long as you keep your feet on their hips you can keep this option open.
5. Silver Bullet: This one takes some work to develop, so be prepared. The idea here is to get ONE technique, usually a sweep, up to black belt level. Practice it for 20 minutes before every class, drill it randomly at home, watch videos about it to learn variations, etc... Now use this sweep on your opponent 50 times in a row. I've hit a dozen scissor sweeps in a row on a spazzy noob and then they finally had the lightbulb go on that HULK SMASH!! was not going to win them any prizes. If you want to be a good enforcer you need at least one Silver Bullet, and frankly this is something you should be doing anyways.
6. Bait and Switch: This one is for particularly aggressive noobs and is the only technique on here that really involves subbing them. First engage invincible guard, second give them your arm to try to americana, third armbar them or take their back and choke them. You can offer them any other subs you think they will recognize if you have a solid counter to them as well, but the one I see most commonly is people trying to work the americana from inside the guard.
Notice that the one thing that all of these (Except for #5) have in common is that they will NEVER work on someone that has been training for a month. These are all tricks designed to get people to calm the hell down during their first 3 weeks and PAY ATTENTION.
Now for STORYTIME! As anyone that reads my blog here knows I weigh about 145lbs. I've been as heavy as 153 and as light as 130 during my time in jiujitsu. At the time of this story I was at 138 and had not started weightlifting seriously. A couple of 250~lb guys came to try the class out, both were backyard wrestlers and were decked out in tapout gear and clearly ready to go spazzy ape shit on people as was demonstrated when they went bonkers on their smaller white belt partners during the technique specific work. After that they got paired up with me and one of our 220lb blue belts. My guy clearly assumed he'd be able to manhandle me, and pounced on me with a quickness driving as much of his weight onto me as possible. I spent the next 5 minutes just not letting him do anything. Worked my way through most of the above list and by the end of it he was sweating buckets and gasping for air and I wasn't even breathing hard because I made him do all the work. His comment, "I had no idea it would be this much work."
And that's all it takes. All I had to do to show him that spaztard strength could not beat someone half his size was to make it a lot of work. I didn't sweep him a hundred times, I didn't take his back, I just kept him up and away from me and made him keep working the entire time to try to accomplish something. Being an Enforcer isn't always about riding KoB for 20 minutes until some ass hole pukes on himself, it's not about landing 20 subs in 60 seconds on a guy just to show him he's still a total noob, it's about emphasizing to noobs that they are in class to LEARN SOMETHING NEW not to show off how strong they are. All you have to do is make their strength ineffective.
If the enforcer is a 250lb brown belt then the noob doesn't learn anything because, "The only reason I couldn't beat him is because he's bigger than I am!" is sitting in the back of their mind, so they just go twice as hard on the next guy their size. If the enforcer is the instructor then it can cause bad blood between the noobs and the guy who is supposed to be teaching them. The perfect enforcer is a senior blue or mid level purple belt between 135 and 155lbs. A little bigger is fine, but you definitely want your enforcer to be a demonstration of technique over strength.
If you find yourself being paired up with every 220lb spaz that comes into the gym, and you're a lightweight blue belt, you're probably on the list of Enforcers for your school. Since no one ever really sits down and tells you what you're supposed to do, let's explore that concept for a minute.
As an Enforcer your job is ONLY to demonstrate that pure strength and athleticism will not let the spazzy noob win. You don't have to completely dominate them, you don't have to sub them, you just have to make sure they know that what they are doing is ineffective. So here are a few ways to do that.
1. Invincible Guard: This is best used against people that try to elbow grind their way out of guard or apply submissions from inside the guard. To execute this technique lock your feet together and turn your knees OUT so that the backs of your knees are pressed against your opponent. This makes your guard much harder to break and lets you bump your opponent around a lot. Next put your hands behind your head and look around the room, hold a conversation with someone or give some advice to a white belt in a nearby roll. While doing this constant pull your opponent forward to break their balance. If they start to stop working make sure you encourage them to "Keep working!".
2. Mocking Maneuver: This one can be used in conjunction with any of the other techniques, but I prefer combining it with Invincible Guard. When your opponent is trying something that won't work, and refuses to abandon it, engage this Maneuver. "You know that won't ever work, right?", "If you keep doing that you're going to hurt yourself...", "I'm just wondering where you're going with this... keep on.", "I'm not sure that does what you think it does.". This is a way to subtly remind your opponent that they do not yet know WTF they are doing and should stick to working on things they've actually been shown in class, not things they half remember from UFC 57 or the latest Submissions 101 video.
3. Whirling Dervish: If your opponent is too big, or too strong, or you have a knee injury, or for any reason can't employ Invincible Guard this is an excellent backup option. Sit on your butt, get any kind of collar or sleeve grip to help spin you, and extend your legs so that you have a foot on the hip or between the legs or anywhere that you can use to help keep you lined up with your opponent. Now let them run themselves stupid trying to pass your guard on the outside of the circle while you use your grip and your hooks to make them carry you around the inside of the circle. No matter at what point they get frustrated and try to dive on you, you'll have them inside your guard still.
4. Levitation: This is a personal favorite. A lot of spazzy noobs will want to stand up to run around your guard or do other silly things, so get your feet on their hips and keep a deathgrip on the collar. Keep your legs socketted into the hip crease and nice and stiff and when your opponent stands up they will give you their hips, this leads to overhead sweeps and other comedy monkey flip style sweeps. As long as you keep your feet on their hips you can keep this option open.
5. Silver Bullet: This one takes some work to develop, so be prepared. The idea here is to get ONE technique, usually a sweep, up to black belt level. Practice it for 20 minutes before every class, drill it randomly at home, watch videos about it to learn variations, etc... Now use this sweep on your opponent 50 times in a row. I've hit a dozen scissor sweeps in a row on a spazzy noob and then they finally had the lightbulb go on that HULK SMASH!! was not going to win them any prizes. If you want to be a good enforcer you need at least one Silver Bullet, and frankly this is something you should be doing anyways.
6. Bait and Switch: This one is for particularly aggressive noobs and is the only technique on here that really involves subbing them. First engage invincible guard, second give them your arm to try to americana, third armbar them or take their back and choke them. You can offer them any other subs you think they will recognize if you have a solid counter to them as well, but the one I see most commonly is people trying to work the americana from inside the guard.
Notice that the one thing that all of these (Except for #5) have in common is that they will NEVER work on someone that has been training for a month. These are all tricks designed to get people to calm the hell down during their first 3 weeks and PAY ATTENTION.
Now for STORYTIME! As anyone that reads my blog here knows I weigh about 145lbs. I've been as heavy as 153 and as light as 130 during my time in jiujitsu. At the time of this story I was at 138 and had not started weightlifting seriously. A couple of 250~lb guys came to try the class out, both were backyard wrestlers and were decked out in tapout gear and clearly ready to go spazzy ape shit on people as was demonstrated when they went bonkers on their smaller white belt partners during the technique specific work. After that they got paired up with me and one of our 220lb blue belts. My guy clearly assumed he'd be able to manhandle me, and pounced on me with a quickness driving as much of his weight onto me as possible. I spent the next 5 minutes just not letting him do anything. Worked my way through most of the above list and by the end of it he was sweating buckets and gasping for air and I wasn't even breathing hard because I made him do all the work. His comment, "I had no idea it would be this much work."
And that's all it takes. All I had to do to show him that spaztard strength could not beat someone half his size was to make it a lot of work. I didn't sweep him a hundred times, I didn't take his back, I just kept him up and away from me and made him keep working the entire time to try to accomplish something. Being an Enforcer isn't always about riding KoB for 20 minutes until some ass hole pukes on himself, it's not about landing 20 subs in 60 seconds on a guy just to show him he's still a total noob, it's about emphasizing to noobs that they are in class to LEARN SOMETHING NEW not to show off how strong they are. All you have to do is make their strength ineffective.
Monday, January 24, 2011
BJJ 1/23/2011 Main Class
Casey has decided to concentrate on arm drags for the next 6 weeks or so, which is awesome. I love when we get into a good groove on a technique and I really get to put in a bunch of reps.
We worked on a couple of different ways to break grips and control the opponents wrist, the Kung Fu grip release (AKA Wax On)is one I've always used, but the one where you kind of clap your hands together and grab your opponents wrist is one that I've seen, but seriously under utilize. After the grips it was all about getting a good deep drag, moving yourself as much as you move your opponent, and keeping control of the arm.
We practiced locking in the RNC, as well as transferring to an Armbar, and to an arm triangle. Very good stuff. I was working with one of our Ammy fighters, Brian, who has an extensive Muay Thai background but only starting working on his JiuJitsu in the last 12 months or so. He has a tendency to fall back on his supreme athleticism in BJJ and it has slowed his development some, but he's getting a handle on it now and is really looking to improve his technique. I spent some time helping him tune things up and showing him small adjustments that made things work a lot better for him than trying to hulk smash muscle everything. If he sticks to working his technique as relentlessly as he works on everything else then he should be ready to go pro MMA next year.
Rolling/Drilling was all combined today. Two lines, one big gauntlet, one side of the room starting with butterfly hooks and working to hit the armdrag. I worked it as best I could, but ended up using my opponents reaction to the armdrag attempt to sweep or sub in other ways most of the time. I did get quite a few successful armdrags out of it though. Definitely good trainin'.
We worked on a couple of different ways to break grips and control the opponents wrist, the Kung Fu grip release (AKA Wax On)is one I've always used, but the one where you kind of clap your hands together and grab your opponents wrist is one that I've seen, but seriously under utilize. After the grips it was all about getting a good deep drag, moving yourself as much as you move your opponent, and keeping control of the arm.
We practiced locking in the RNC, as well as transferring to an Armbar, and to an arm triangle. Very good stuff. I was working with one of our Ammy fighters, Brian, who has an extensive Muay Thai background but only starting working on his JiuJitsu in the last 12 months or so. He has a tendency to fall back on his supreme athleticism in BJJ and it has slowed his development some, but he's getting a handle on it now and is really looking to improve his technique. I spent some time helping him tune things up and showing him small adjustments that made things work a lot better for him than trying to hulk smash muscle everything. If he sticks to working his technique as relentlessly as he works on everything else then he should be ready to go pro MMA next year.
Rolling/Drilling was all combined today. Two lines, one big gauntlet, one side of the room starting with butterfly hooks and working to hit the armdrag. I worked it as best I could, but ended up using my opponents reaction to the armdrag attempt to sweep or sub in other ways most of the time. I did get quite a few successful armdrags out of it though. Definitely good trainin'.
Fundamentals Class 1/23/2011
I had to go take care of my horses today which made me a little late getting to class, we only had two people there for fundamentals though. My friend Will and Casey's daughter Katie were there. Continuing with the idea of Frames and Escapes we worked on escaping from side control by building a frame on your opponents neck and shrimping. Once again I talked about combining movements including the Upa in order to make space with the Frame, and to look for shortcuts to the escape. We also talked about what happens if you do get squished and can't shrimp away and reguard.
The second you feel that you aren't going to be able to get your hips away you swim for the far side underhook and reach across your opponents shoulders at the same time you kick over and trap their leg, then try to take the back.
We also talked about what happens if you get wizzered and squished after you have the underhook and the leg and I showed them how to ratchet themselves downwards using the arm and the legs together. Spent a little time talking about using your whole body to accomplish your goals.
I had them drill building a frame while the opponent was passing to get them to start thinking ahead. The goal was to build the frame and shrimp to reguard, then the opponent passes on the other side and repeat, then try to get some pressure on to stop the reguard. If you felt like you weren't going to get the reguard you had to swim and switch to the underhook.
That was all we did for the last 20 minutes or so of class was to practice framing and then swimming for the underhook. Both of them made good progress and I swear I'll have Katie stomping the lightweight guys by the end of the summer if she sticks with it.
The second you feel that you aren't going to be able to get your hips away you swim for the far side underhook and reach across your opponents shoulders at the same time you kick over and trap their leg, then try to take the back.
We also talked about what happens if you get wizzered and squished after you have the underhook and the leg and I showed them how to ratchet themselves downwards using the arm and the legs together. Spent a little time talking about using your whole body to accomplish your goals.
I had them drill building a frame while the opponent was passing to get them to start thinking ahead. The goal was to build the frame and shrimp to reguard, then the opponent passes on the other side and repeat, then try to get some pressure on to stop the reguard. If you felt like you weren't going to get the reguard you had to swim and switch to the underhook.
That was all we did for the last 20 minutes or so of class was to practice framing and then swimming for the underhook. Both of them made good progress and I swear I'll have Katie stomping the lightweight guys by the end of the summer if she sticks with it.
BJJ 1/21/2011
Casey was out of town with a couple of our Ammy fighters who were fighting up in North Carolina, so one of our Purple Belt's Coe taught the main class. We worked from the turtle starting with the fatboy roll, then a couple of different reverals including a different kimura grip than the one I normally use.
We did some specific sparring from the Turtle and I spent most of the time escaping to guard and choking people. I did take a brutal forearm to the nose which resulted in a fountain of blood for a few minutes. Got that under control and then we did a gauntlet with everyone. I worked on being patient and letting my opponent set themselves up for the sweep which worked nicely. I managed to sweep everyone except Coe and maintain top position. Fun times.
We did some specific sparring from the Turtle and I spent most of the time escaping to guard and choking people. I did take a brutal forearm to the nose which resulted in a fountain of blood for a few minutes. Got that under control and then we did a gauntlet with everyone. I worked on being patient and letting my opponent set themselves up for the sweep which worked nicely. I managed to sweep everyone except Coe and maintain top position. Fun times.
Fundamentals Class 1/21/2011
Only my buddy Antony showed up for the early class today, so while I went ahead and went over the posture breaking and hip movement stuff I was planning on for the fundamentals class we spent most of the time helping him work on holes in his game. We talked about using pressure to pass and not leaving space at the last minute for people to escape. Looked at some random DLR stuff, did some work on escapes, then flow rolled for about 30 minutes stopping occasionally to talk about stuff that came up. It was a really fun class for both of us.
Friday, January 21, 2011
BJJ 1/19/2011
We had two completely new people and a couple of guys who have only had a few classes tonight which is awesome because I love seeing the school grow. I'm hoping they all stick with it. I'm also hoping they will show up to the beginner class on Friday.
We started out the class drilling armbars from guard, and triangles, then moved to some more fun De La Riva guard stuff. I'm trying to use DLR a little more when rolling because it transitions pretty well with X-Guard and Spider guard, so I'm liking the current DLR kick.
First technique was swinging to the back, establishing essentially butterfly guard from the back and then kicking the legs out.
Second technique was a technical stand to single leg.
I also spent some time practicing the basic DLR sweep.
Drilled with the lighter guys and swept them all a bunch, passed guard, etc... Tried to let them work the stuff from the class but most of them just froze up when I didn't immediately smash them. I let one guy start one of the sweeps, but when he stopped like 3/4 of the way through I rolled to a kneebar on him, another guy I let get to the single leg, but then he just stood there too long, so I rolled him.
Both of those guys need to be in the beginner class more where they can learn to think while they are rolling, they'll have an easier time of executing stuff in the main class that way.
Rolling was a 4 man group with 3 of the new guys. Spent most of the time letting them work a bit, then sweeping and choking them. One of them is a former wrestler, so he tended to give up his back and do other wrestlery things, once he adjusts to the differences he should be a pretty solid training partner though.
We started out the class drilling armbars from guard, and triangles, then moved to some more fun De La Riva guard stuff. I'm trying to use DLR a little more when rolling because it transitions pretty well with X-Guard and Spider guard, so I'm liking the current DLR kick.
First technique was swinging to the back, establishing essentially butterfly guard from the back and then kicking the legs out.
Second technique was a technical stand to single leg.
I also spent some time practicing the basic DLR sweep.
Drilled with the lighter guys and swept them all a bunch, passed guard, etc... Tried to let them work the stuff from the class but most of them just froze up when I didn't immediately smash them. I let one guy start one of the sweeps, but when he stopped like 3/4 of the way through I rolled to a kneebar on him, another guy I let get to the single leg, but then he just stood there too long, so I rolled him.
Both of those guys need to be in the beginner class more where they can learn to think while they are rolling, they'll have an easier time of executing stuff in the main class that way.
Rolling was a 4 man group with 3 of the new guys. Spent most of the time letting them work a bit, then sweeping and choking them. One of them is a former wrestler, so he tended to give up his back and do other wrestlery things, once he adjusts to the differences he should be a pretty solid training partner though.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Fundamentals Class 1/16/2011
The first No-Gi fundamentals class had Casey's daughter Katie as well as my buddy Will and Ian back again. I wanted to talk about the difference between gi and no-gi grips and how you use the different grips for control. I started out with the Overhook grip and showed how to get to the Overhook by swimming when someone is posting on your hips and how to hook the back of the head. Also showed the tricep and collar tie grips to replace the sleeve and collar control in Gi. The bulk of the lesson was in how to use the Overhook and the back of the head grip to break your opponent down and hold them, then how to attack from that position. Again this is something that I'll be revisiting frequently because it's something that never gets explicitly addressed in the main class even though the grips are mentioned. I also went over mount escapes and holding mount with the feet on hips "Monkey Mount" position and talked about what to do when someone is strong enough to just lift you off of them from there. After that we practicing spinning when someone lifts you so that their arms cross and you come back down in side control. Then did some work with each other practicing the escapes.
Finally I introduced the concept of flow-rolling. We'll be revisiting that frequently as well since I want people to be able to roll by thinking and looking instead of just seeing who can throw their techniques the hardest and fastest. Flow rolling is all about just doing the correct next move. It's not about making it work by speed and strength, but by thinking it and implementing it. So when you are flow rolling you let your opponent succeed if they attempt the correct move and you flow to something else. It's about honing your ability to think while rolling just like the more intense rolling is about honing your ability to apply the technique against someone who is physically resisting you.
I skipped out after that because my wife had to study for an upcoming nursing test and needed some help.
Finally I introduced the concept of flow-rolling. We'll be revisiting that frequently as well since I want people to be able to roll by thinking and looking instead of just seeing who can throw their techniques the hardest and fastest. Flow rolling is all about just doing the correct next move. It's not about making it work by speed and strength, but by thinking it and implementing it. So when you are flow rolling you let your opponent succeed if they attempt the correct move and you flow to something else. It's about honing your ability to think while rolling just like the more intense rolling is about honing your ability to apply the technique against someone who is physically resisting you.
I skipped out after that because my wife had to study for an upcoming nursing test and needed some help.
Fundamentals Class 1/14/2011
So this was my very first "Fundamentals" class at Megalodon. My goal is to help our guys shore up the gaps between knowing a technique and being able to implement it as well as give new people a better foundation from which to learn the techniques in the main class. It's just so much easier to learn a new armbar variation when you don't have to stop every rep to figure which way your hips are supposed to move and that kind of thing. With that in mind I'm starting with escapes and moving from there.
I only had 4 people show up for this first one, my friend Will, one of our blue belts Ian, and Ian's two kids that train with us sometimes. I started out by showing them a mount escape that we don't go over very often in class called the Hydraulic. It works by bracing your hands on your opponents hips, then upa and stiffarm your opponent above you. You can then dump them to the side, go out the back, or pull your knees up and go to butterfly guard. It rarely works that way in actual rolling though, which was my point about escapes today. I wanted everyone to get used to their escape attempt failing, or not working 100% the way it does in practice.
I then introduced the idea of framing as a discrete concept. The idea has always been there in a lot of techniques that Casey shows, but most of our guys have never had a class where framing is specifically addressed. I explained how to setup your frame from the bottom of mount and how to use a combination of framing, the hydraulic, the upa, and the knee and elbow escape to generate a mount escape against a resisting opponent. I talked about not giving up progress and staying off of your back and we practiced a lot of escaping mount. This is something that I'll be revisiting multiple times over the next month.
After that Ian asked about guard retention and since we only had a few people there I showed the Damien Maia guard retention tips about keeping parallel and pushing the head down on the same side as your opponents body as they pass. We played with that a little and then the regular class started.
We worked on De La Riva guard sweeps. The first involved blocking the leg and isolating the far arm to trip them over your leg. The second was for when the strip the grip off of the far arm so you situp, pass the arm under the leg, and stand up to dump them over. The third was, again, the farm arm grip gets stripped, so you put your foot in their side, stretch them out, and then transfer their leg all the way over their arm until you are in a kind of butterfly guard from the back, then grab their belt or gi and kick their legs out while you pull. Very slick way to take the back when it works.
Positional sparring from feet on hips spider guard. I swept a bunch of people mostly. It's all kind of a blur.
Rolling was with super tall guy and Will. I had my intensity dialed up a little for some reason and kept tossing Will around and then taking his back in scrambles. I think it's just my focus on my upcoming Gong Sau causing me to go a little harder than normal. Fun times, fun class.
I only had 4 people show up for this first one, my friend Will, one of our blue belts Ian, and Ian's two kids that train with us sometimes. I started out by showing them a mount escape that we don't go over very often in class called the Hydraulic. It works by bracing your hands on your opponents hips, then upa and stiffarm your opponent above you. You can then dump them to the side, go out the back, or pull your knees up and go to butterfly guard. It rarely works that way in actual rolling though, which was my point about escapes today. I wanted everyone to get used to their escape attempt failing, or not working 100% the way it does in practice.
I then introduced the idea of framing as a discrete concept. The idea has always been there in a lot of techniques that Casey shows, but most of our guys have never had a class where framing is specifically addressed. I explained how to setup your frame from the bottom of mount and how to use a combination of framing, the hydraulic, the upa, and the knee and elbow escape to generate a mount escape against a resisting opponent. I talked about not giving up progress and staying off of your back and we practiced a lot of escaping mount. This is something that I'll be revisiting multiple times over the next month.
After that Ian asked about guard retention and since we only had a few people there I showed the Damien Maia guard retention tips about keeping parallel and pushing the head down on the same side as your opponents body as they pass. We played with that a little and then the regular class started.
We worked on De La Riva guard sweeps. The first involved blocking the leg and isolating the far arm to trip them over your leg. The second was for when the strip the grip off of the far arm so you situp, pass the arm under the leg, and stand up to dump them over. The third was, again, the farm arm grip gets stripped, so you put your foot in their side, stretch them out, and then transfer their leg all the way over their arm until you are in a kind of butterfly guard from the back, then grab their belt or gi and kick their legs out while you pull. Very slick way to take the back when it works.
Positional sparring from feet on hips spider guard. I swept a bunch of people mostly. It's all kind of a blur.
Rolling was with super tall guy and Will. I had my intensity dialed up a little for some reason and kept tossing Will around and then taking his back in scrambles. I think it's just my focus on my upcoming Gong Sau causing me to go a little harder than normal. Fun times, fun class.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
BJJ 1/12/2011
Fun times, left work a little early to pick my wife up from our house and it ended up taking almost 3 hours to get out there and back due to detours and stupid drivers. Still, I made it to class on time.
Warmed up with some armbars, triangles, and situp sweeps from guard. Good technique heavy warmup just the way I like them. Technique today was a really really slick sweep/X-guard transition that I immediately liked.
The setup is your opponent in combat base, you are sitting back with the same side knee up. Put your foot on the inside of your opponents foot and then overhook their knee so that it crosses in front of your shin and locks their leg in place. Next you roll to the side and lift your leg, dumping your opponent sideways and forcing them to post on their hand. If you can reach their leg you can then come up to your knees and just push them over to side control. If not you can grab their posting hand using the marcello grip, feed your bottom leg through and scissor sweep. If neither of those seems to be working you can easily move under them and switch to X-guard to work from there.
We worked a variation where they get their weight down before you can lift the leg, so you wrap the lapel around their knee, feed it deep, and stand up. You lift the leg, ankle pick, and drive to side control.
Drilling we started in the combat base position with one person already starting with the overhook on the knee. I found that the best way to defend was to overhook their arm and grip the far lapel, then drive my weight down and to the back and sprawl. Me and Antony had some seriously acrobatic rolls using this sweep and several different counter attempts. I'm a fan of it for sure considering how hard it is to get people into my guard now. Most of them are willing to sit in combat base and work though, so playing angry koala on the leg should give me more options now and it fits in nicely with my X-guard push.
Sparring I rolled w/ JC, Katie, Antony, and a few easy rolls w/ Johnny since he's getting ready for a smoker. JC and Katie I try to let work most of the time. Antony is always a blast to roll with and this was no exception save for when I took an unintentional headbutt to the bridge of the nose. It bruised up a little, but no blood. Should be all healed up within a few days. Johnny is just like grappling a dumptruck. Takes everything I've got just to play static defense. Fun times though!
My first Beginners Class is tomorrow at 6pm. The current plan is to warm up with shrimping, situp sweeps and knee to elbow escapes, and some hip movement drills. Then work on how to move when escaping from mount and side control. A very movement heavy class trying to get people to coordinate their whole bodies together when they are working on things.
Warmed up with some armbars, triangles, and situp sweeps from guard. Good technique heavy warmup just the way I like them. Technique today was a really really slick sweep/X-guard transition that I immediately liked.
The setup is your opponent in combat base, you are sitting back with the same side knee up. Put your foot on the inside of your opponents foot and then overhook their knee so that it crosses in front of your shin and locks their leg in place. Next you roll to the side and lift your leg, dumping your opponent sideways and forcing them to post on their hand. If you can reach their leg you can then come up to your knees and just push them over to side control. If not you can grab their posting hand using the marcello grip, feed your bottom leg through and scissor sweep. If neither of those seems to be working you can easily move under them and switch to X-guard to work from there.
We worked a variation where they get their weight down before you can lift the leg, so you wrap the lapel around their knee, feed it deep, and stand up. You lift the leg, ankle pick, and drive to side control.
Drilling we started in the combat base position with one person already starting with the overhook on the knee. I found that the best way to defend was to overhook their arm and grip the far lapel, then drive my weight down and to the back and sprawl. Me and Antony had some seriously acrobatic rolls using this sweep and several different counter attempts. I'm a fan of it for sure considering how hard it is to get people into my guard now. Most of them are willing to sit in combat base and work though, so playing angry koala on the leg should give me more options now and it fits in nicely with my X-guard push.
Sparring I rolled w/ JC, Katie, Antony, and a few easy rolls w/ Johnny since he's getting ready for a smoker. JC and Katie I try to let work most of the time. Antony is always a blast to roll with and this was no exception save for when I took an unintentional headbutt to the bridge of the nose. It bruised up a little, but no blood. Should be all healed up within a few days. Johnny is just like grappling a dumptruck. Takes everything I've got just to play static defense. Fun times though!
My first Beginners Class is tomorrow at 6pm. The current plan is to warm up with shrimping, situp sweeps and knee to elbow escapes, and some hip movement drills. Then work on how to move when escaping from mount and side control. A very movement heavy class trying to get people to coordinate their whole bodies together when they are working on things.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
BJJ and Self Defense
I participate in a couple of web forums, Bullshido.net, Jiujitsuforums.com, and some random smaller ones. About once every two weeks someone comes on posting about how impractical BJJ is for self defense. The discussion invariably devolves into accusations that anyone who trains BJJ will automatically jump guard no matter what the circumstances. Since I'm feeling philosophical today I thought I would address that issue here so that I have it as a handy reference for later.
First argument: Jumping Guard On The Street
For some reason people watch BJJ matches between equally skilled opponents and think that because BJJ players are willing to jump guard in a tournament setting that they have no other options. The strict truth of the matter is that as a BJJ Blue belt 99.99% of people I meet have exactly ZERO defense against me taking them down. I have absolutely no reason to voluntarily pull guard against anyone in a confrontation. My takedowns aren't as good as a four year wrestler, or a four year judoka, but they are infinitely better than the takedown defense of almost everyone. So no, I will not be pulling guard on the street. I will be getting a bodylock and throwing you on your head, as will most BJJ people. And frankly, if a BJJ black belt wanted to he could pull guard in a street fight and crush pretty much anyone who is NOT a BJJ black belt or extremely high level wrestler without worrying about. It would still be a bad plan, but it's certainly doable at a very high level. Of course at that level your takedowns are even better, so once again you are likely to get spiked on your head instead.
Second Argument: Multiple Attackers
It has been stated many times that being on the ground against multiple attackers is a horrible idea and that BJJ has no way to deal with multiple attackers. The flawed thought process behind this argument is actually kind of mind bending. First of all, no Martial Art is going to allow you to effectively fend off half a dozen guys attacking you at once. If you are sufficiently skilled and have a good athleticism advantage you could probably take on two guys and win. If you're Cain Velasquez taking on untrained featherweights you can probably handle 4 or 5. But the mob is gonna bring you down one way or another no matter what. Krav Maga, Wing Chun, Muay thai, Judo, Boxing, BJJ, Wrestling, none of them will stop 6 guys from kicking your teeth in reliably. However, BJJ WILL help you avoid being held down, grabbed, tackled, etc... The ability to sweep and stand up if you get tackled is invaluable and the only way to truly learn it is to practice it against skilled, resisting people the way you do in a BJJ, Wrestling, or Judo class. So BJJ is AS good against multiple attackers as anything else. Of course, this entire argument is based on you being a MORON and going places by yourself where you are likely to end up in fights. I dunno about most people, but when I go downtown to party I usually have five or six friends with me, and most of my friends are trained.
Third Argument: Weapons
Going to the ground against a guy with a knife/gun/nunchuks/nuclear arsenal/etc is a terrible idea. That's absolutely true. That's why it's good to know how not to get tackled and pinned down by a guy with a knife. Knowing how to control someones limbs translates pretty well into defending against weapon assaults, but it's ALWAYS a terrible idea to get involved in a fight against someone with a weapon. Again, no martial art is going to help you against a guy with a gun if you don't have one. Nothing is going to reliably allow you to defend against a knife attack unarmed. BJJ is AS GOOD as anything else for weapon defense, which is to say, terrible. Of course, if you're a BJJ guy armed with a knife it's just that much easier to hold someone still while you stab them...
Really the entire argument is fallacious. The people making the argument are always proponents of some other martial arts system which they claim does the job better than BJJ, however those systems are things like Wing Chun and Systema which are unable to reliably handle a single unarmed opponent, much less two guys with knives. Which brings me to the most important counter argument against the "Deadly" systems. Because some practitioner of one of the arts mentioned here will tell me that their art is too dangerous to use in the ring I'm going to discuss the Force Continuum.
The Force Continuum
BJJ is an EXCELLENT art for self defense. It teaches you to control your opponent, maintain a dominant position, and apply an appropriate level of force ranging from passive restraint all the way up to a fatal choke.
If your drunken cousin starts a scene with his girlfriend at your sisters wedding is it REALLY appropriate to kick him in the nuts and gouge out his eyes? If your 6 year old is throwing a tantrum is the best solution an elbow to the spine? If you said YES! Then you're a psychopath. The answer is NO. Those are not appropriate reactions. But many arts would have you believe that they have no tools beyond those deadly strikes. They have no ability to restrain an opponent that doesn't result in crippling or fatal injury.
With BJJ you can choose to act anywhere along the force continuum. If I need to hold down a hysterical 6 year old I can do so without injuring or even hurting him. If I need to escort my ranting cousin out of the wedding I can do it without putting him in the hospital. But if some guy starts trying to cave my face in I can break his arm or choke him unconcious. Bottom line, BJJ and Judo are both ideal for self defense. The best solution for self defense though is BJJ, Judo or Wrestling and Boxing, Muay Thai, or another solid COMPETITION striking art like Kyokushin, combined with conflict de-escalation and avoidance training and a little common sense.
But most importantly, follow the cardinal rules of not getting your ass kicked:
1. Don't go places where you might get your ass kicked.
2. If you violate rule 1, don't go alone.
3. If you violate rule 1 and 2, don't get drunk.
4. If you violate rules 1-3 then there's a good chance you'll get your ass kicked.
The hard fact is that most people will never ever be in a life or death encounter where eye gouging or trachea crushing is the correct response. Your cousin larry gets drunk and starts hitting on the brides mom at your brothers wedding? EYEGOUGEGROINKICK! Is not the appropriate solution.
There, now I can just link this post in the next retarded BJJ Self defense argument.
First argument: Jumping Guard On The Street
For some reason people watch BJJ matches between equally skilled opponents and think that because BJJ players are willing to jump guard in a tournament setting that they have no other options. The strict truth of the matter is that as a BJJ Blue belt 99.99% of people I meet have exactly ZERO defense against me taking them down. I have absolutely no reason to voluntarily pull guard against anyone in a confrontation. My takedowns aren't as good as a four year wrestler, or a four year judoka, but they are infinitely better than the takedown defense of almost everyone. So no, I will not be pulling guard on the street. I will be getting a bodylock and throwing you on your head, as will most BJJ people. And frankly, if a BJJ black belt wanted to he could pull guard in a street fight and crush pretty much anyone who is NOT a BJJ black belt or extremely high level wrestler without worrying about. It would still be a bad plan, but it's certainly doable at a very high level. Of course at that level your takedowns are even better, so once again you are likely to get spiked on your head instead.
Second Argument: Multiple Attackers
It has been stated many times that being on the ground against multiple attackers is a horrible idea and that BJJ has no way to deal with multiple attackers. The flawed thought process behind this argument is actually kind of mind bending. First of all, no Martial Art is going to allow you to effectively fend off half a dozen guys attacking you at once. If you are sufficiently skilled and have a good athleticism advantage you could probably take on two guys and win. If you're Cain Velasquez taking on untrained featherweights you can probably handle 4 or 5. But the mob is gonna bring you down one way or another no matter what. Krav Maga, Wing Chun, Muay thai, Judo, Boxing, BJJ, Wrestling, none of them will stop 6 guys from kicking your teeth in reliably. However, BJJ WILL help you avoid being held down, grabbed, tackled, etc... The ability to sweep and stand up if you get tackled is invaluable and the only way to truly learn it is to practice it against skilled, resisting people the way you do in a BJJ, Wrestling, or Judo class. So BJJ is AS good against multiple attackers as anything else. Of course, this entire argument is based on you being a MORON and going places by yourself where you are likely to end up in fights. I dunno about most people, but when I go downtown to party I usually have five or six friends with me, and most of my friends are trained.
Third Argument: Weapons
Going to the ground against a guy with a knife/gun/nunchuks/nuclear arsenal/etc is a terrible idea. That's absolutely true. That's why it's good to know how not to get tackled and pinned down by a guy with a knife. Knowing how to control someones limbs translates pretty well into defending against weapon assaults, but it's ALWAYS a terrible idea to get involved in a fight against someone with a weapon. Again, no martial art is going to help you against a guy with a gun if you don't have one. Nothing is going to reliably allow you to defend against a knife attack unarmed. BJJ is AS GOOD as anything else for weapon defense, which is to say, terrible. Of course, if you're a BJJ guy armed with a knife it's just that much easier to hold someone still while you stab them...
Really the entire argument is fallacious. The people making the argument are always proponents of some other martial arts system which they claim does the job better than BJJ, however those systems are things like Wing Chun and Systema which are unable to reliably handle a single unarmed opponent, much less two guys with knives. Which brings me to the most important counter argument against the "Deadly" systems. Because some practitioner of one of the arts mentioned here will tell me that their art is too dangerous to use in the ring I'm going to discuss the Force Continuum.
The Force Continuum
BJJ is an EXCELLENT art for self defense. It teaches you to control your opponent, maintain a dominant position, and apply an appropriate level of force ranging from passive restraint all the way up to a fatal choke.
If your drunken cousin starts a scene with his girlfriend at your sisters wedding is it REALLY appropriate to kick him in the nuts and gouge out his eyes? If your 6 year old is throwing a tantrum is the best solution an elbow to the spine? If you said YES! Then you're a psychopath. The answer is NO. Those are not appropriate reactions. But many arts would have you believe that they have no tools beyond those deadly strikes. They have no ability to restrain an opponent that doesn't result in crippling or fatal injury.
With BJJ you can choose to act anywhere along the force continuum. If I need to hold down a hysterical 6 year old I can do so without injuring or even hurting him. If I need to escort my ranting cousin out of the wedding I can do it without putting him in the hospital. But if some guy starts trying to cave my face in I can break his arm or choke him unconcious. Bottom line, BJJ and Judo are both ideal for self defense. The best solution for self defense though is BJJ, Judo or Wrestling and Boxing, Muay Thai, or another solid COMPETITION striking art like Kyokushin, combined with conflict de-escalation and avoidance training and a little common sense.
But most importantly, follow the cardinal rules of not getting your ass kicked:
1. Don't go places where you might get your ass kicked.
2. If you violate rule 1, don't go alone.
3. If you violate rule 1 and 2, don't get drunk.
4. If you violate rules 1-3 then there's a good chance you'll get your ass kicked.
The hard fact is that most people will never ever be in a life or death encounter where eye gouging or trachea crushing is the correct response. Your cousin larry gets drunk and starts hitting on the brides mom at your brothers wedding? EYEGOUGEGROINKICK! Is not the appropriate solution.
There, now I can just link this post in the next retarded BJJ Self defense argument.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
No-Gi BJJ 1/9/2011
Was back at my first no-gi class since early december and it felt a little strange, but the break must have reset something in my brain because my normal no-gi game was back. Overhook to triangle to armbar to various other stuff.
Technique was halfguard passing while defending against a kimura attempt from the bottom, then countering the kimura attempt with a spinning armbar. So that effectively kills my ambush kimura game that I've been using. Not that I'll stop until people start regularly hitting the armbar on me, but I'm definitely going to have to be more wary now that everyone has been shown the counter.
Worked with the light guys for positional drilling, mostly swept folks, but Antony was back and once again surprised me by standing up to escape in a spot where I just DID NOT expect it. I love working with him.
We had one of the guys from the UGA club come sign up to train with us, super tall guy that has Muay Thai experience, had a hilarious moment where I thought I was sweeping him and suddenly one of his arms came out of no-where to brace him and he slapped on a guillotine. I'll really have to watch out for those with him. He tried it twice more but I was prepared for them and blocked it handily.
We have another new guy in the class that is close to his height, but with less experience. It's good to have some more new blood.
Technique was halfguard passing while defending against a kimura attempt from the bottom, then countering the kimura attempt with a spinning armbar. So that effectively kills my ambush kimura game that I've been using. Not that I'll stop until people start regularly hitting the armbar on me, but I'm definitely going to have to be more wary now that everyone has been shown the counter.
Worked with the light guys for positional drilling, mostly swept folks, but Antony was back and once again surprised me by standing up to escape in a spot where I just DID NOT expect it. I love working with him.
We had one of the guys from the UGA club come sign up to train with us, super tall guy that has Muay Thai experience, had a hilarious moment where I thought I was sweeping him and suddenly one of his arms came out of no-where to brace him and he slapped on a guillotine. I'll really have to watch out for those with him. He tried it twice more but I was prepared for them and blocked it handily.
We have another new guy in the class that is close to his height, but with less experience. It's good to have some more new blood.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Ugh, playin defense
Showed up a few minutes late today and missed most of the warmup. Technique was halfguard stuff.
Halfguard to a kimura setup that worked by pushing out to long range half, getting the kimura grip, then sitting out to full guard to finish.
Next up was the same shrimp to LRH, go for the kimura, but your opponent pulls the arm out, so you scoop under their leg and go for X-guard, but end up in failed x-guard. With both knees in front and your top foot behind your opponents thigh, lift with that top foot and scissor the legs as you pull the far arm towards you to execute the sweep, then either backstep pass to side control or transition to the kneebar.
Pairing up for drilling I was with the lightweight side of the room, starting from halfguard to sweep or submit from the bottom. I played fairly relaxed and let folks work and then eventually swept them or passed for the most part. There was a new guy there so I let him work out and escape the first time, then squished him and passed the second time. He seemed to be having fun. I showed him my go-to halfguard sweep.
After that rolling with Ian and Brian. Ugh, rolling with them is WORK. Brian is only 170, maybe 180 on a fat day, but he has really long limbs and really good base and is extremely athletic. He's been doing Muay Thai for years and has several ammy fights already. He's ready for his blue belt skill wise, but his technique library is a little light since he mostly just does a handful of things extremely well. Ian is a 200lb blue belt that is also extremely strong and athletic. So I spent most of my time playing super defense and looking for any small opening. I managed to trick Ian into a sort of overhead sweep variation, but couldn't lock down mount and he managed to toss me back and end up back in my guard. Ended up close to an rather unorthodox armlock from bottom of north south turtle. Almost got it, but Brian is just too strong for any shenanigans like that to work. He's also picked up the single collar choke that I keep using and is now going for it all over the place. I'll probably grab him next week some time and show him some tips for finishing it. He also can openered me twice, once from my guard so I just dropped guard and switched to feet on hips, but the second was from inside my triangle choke. I usually base my forehead on my knee to prevent this, but I slipped to the side and actually slapped him in the eye tapping because of the pressure on my neck.
I spent a LOT of time just using feet on hips and sleeve grips to keep them both at bay. Definitely not as much pure fun as rolling with the guys my size, but valuable for sure.
Halfguard to a kimura setup that worked by pushing out to long range half, getting the kimura grip, then sitting out to full guard to finish.
Next up was the same shrimp to LRH, go for the kimura, but your opponent pulls the arm out, so you scoop under their leg and go for X-guard, but end up in failed x-guard. With both knees in front and your top foot behind your opponents thigh, lift with that top foot and scissor the legs as you pull the far arm towards you to execute the sweep, then either backstep pass to side control or transition to the kneebar.
Pairing up for drilling I was with the lightweight side of the room, starting from halfguard to sweep or submit from the bottom. I played fairly relaxed and let folks work and then eventually swept them or passed for the most part. There was a new guy there so I let him work out and escape the first time, then squished him and passed the second time. He seemed to be having fun. I showed him my go-to halfguard sweep.
After that rolling with Ian and Brian. Ugh, rolling with them is WORK. Brian is only 170, maybe 180 on a fat day, but he has really long limbs and really good base and is extremely athletic. He's been doing Muay Thai for years and has several ammy fights already. He's ready for his blue belt skill wise, but his technique library is a little light since he mostly just does a handful of things extremely well. Ian is a 200lb blue belt that is also extremely strong and athletic. So I spent most of my time playing super defense and looking for any small opening. I managed to trick Ian into a sort of overhead sweep variation, but couldn't lock down mount and he managed to toss me back and end up back in my guard. Ended up close to an rather unorthodox armlock from bottom of north south turtle. Almost got it, but Brian is just too strong for any shenanigans like that to work. He's also picked up the single collar choke that I keep using and is now going for it all over the place. I'll probably grab him next week some time and show him some tips for finishing it. He also can openered me twice, once from my guard so I just dropped guard and switched to feet on hips, but the second was from inside my triangle choke. I usually base my forehead on my knee to prevent this, but I slipped to the side and actually slapped him in the eye tapping because of the pressure on my neck.
I spent a LOT of time just using feet on hips and sleeve grips to keep them both at bay. Definitely not as much pure fun as rolling with the guys my size, but valuable for sure.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
BJJ 1/5/11 First class of the new year!
Back to Jits for the first time since... Dec 17th I think. I was sure I was going to be completely exhausted after five minutes of rolling, so I grabbed Justin and did a quick warmup roll. Yes. I was completely exhausted after 5 minutes. Then class started and we worked on guillotines with modified grips. Worked on the Marcelo grip which is palm to palm with the choking palm facing your body and the supporting palm facing your opponent and your elbow resting on their shoulder. This means when they posture into it, or drive forward to defend it actually chokes them more. Not a fan of that grip from standing, but from halfguard I loved it.
Worked from closed guard after that for a while and I ended up singing Paranaue while rolling and tossing everyone around with ease. Paired up with Kris and Justin to roll live. You may remember Kris as the white belt that caught me in a Triangle choke right before I took my break. He made the mistake of posting about it on facebook, leading me to promote him out of the "Let the noobs work on stuff" category and into the "NO FREEBIES FOR YOU" category. With that in mind I spent most of the time breakdancing on him. In the interest of fairness I played mostly the same way with Justin. Justin has about an 80lb weight advantage on me though, so it's a good deal harder to toss him around. Still, felt good flow the entire time and didn't get tired at all. I felt MORE energetic by the end of class than I had when I started.
A great first class back! Now I gotta get with Casey about teaching beginners classes and stuff.
Worked from closed guard after that for a while and I ended up singing Paranaue while rolling and tossing everyone around with ease. Paired up with Kris and Justin to roll live. You may remember Kris as the white belt that caught me in a Triangle choke right before I took my break. He made the mistake of posting about it on facebook, leading me to promote him out of the "Let the noobs work on stuff" category and into the "NO FREEBIES FOR YOU" category. With that in mind I spent most of the time breakdancing on him. In the interest of fairness I played mostly the same way with Justin. Justin has about an 80lb weight advantage on me though, so it's a good deal harder to toss him around. Still, felt good flow the entire time and didn't get tired at all. I felt MORE energetic by the end of class than I had when I started.
A great first class back! Now I gotta get with Casey about teaching beginners classes and stuff.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Purple Belt Roadmap
I believe I've mentioned before that Alliance has fairly specific testing criteria for belt ranks, which you can check out here, so I'm looking to distill the general requirements down into specifics for my game so that I have a nice detailed list of stuff to practice. My goal is to have a short video of me performing each technique uploaded and linked from this post so that I have a nice specific idea of WTF I'm doing.
Throws and Takedowns
One leg throw:
1.Ashi Guruma
Four hip throws:
1.Hip Throw w/ Underhook
2.Hip Throw w/ Head control
3.Ippon Seio Nage
4.Whizzer throw
Two double legs:
1.Double w/ turn the corner
2.Double w/ sweep the leg
Two single leg:
1.Single w/ turn the corner
2.Single w/ sweep the leg
Self-Defense
Two ways to defend the guillotine standing up:
1.Side step to suplex
2.Turnout to duckunder
Two ways to defend the headlock standing:
1.Sitback takedown
2.T-bone suplex (May not be legit)
3.Body Lock takedown
One way to defend the headlock on the ground:
1.Running man sweep
One way to defend the guillotine on the ground:
1.Stack defense
Passing the Guard
Five different ways to pass the guard and get side control
1. Toreador Pass
2. Double Underhook Pass
3. Basic Knee Through Pass
4. Hug and Climb Pass
5. Log Splitter Knee Through Pass
Half-Guard
Two sweeps from the half-guard:
1.Overhook Upa
2.Oldschool
Two half-guard passes:
1.Backstep Pass
2.Foot on Thigh Pass
Sweeps from the Guard
Five different ways to sweep your opponent:
1. Butterfly Sweep
2. Half Butterfly Elevator Sweep
3. Giftwrap sweep
4. Single collar sweep
5. Situp Sweep
6. Scissor Sweep (Just in case one of the others doesn't count)
Escapes
Two ways to escape the mount:
1.Bridge and Roll (Upa escape)
2.Knee-to-Elbow escape
One way to escape the side-mount:
1.Far side underhook escape
One way to escape the rear-mount:
1.Isolate the arm, turn into guard.
One way to escape the knee-on-belly:
1.Nearside arm grips the foot, bridge, push to halfguard.
Submissions
Five from the mount:
1. Armbar
2. Americana
3. Mounted Triangle
4. Ezekiel
5. Single Collar Choke
Two double attacks:
1. Triangle/Armbar
2. Kimura/Armbar
Three from the side-mount
1. Americana
2. Kimura
3. Single Collar choke
Two from the back
1. RNC
2. Armbar
Two from knee in the belly
1. Farside Armbar
2. Nearside Armbar
Five from the guard
1. Triangle
2. Armbar
3. Omoplata
4. X-Choke
5. Kimura
Throws and Takedowns
One leg throw:
1.Ashi Guruma
Four hip throws:
1.Hip Throw w/ Underhook
2.Hip Throw w/ Head control
3.Ippon Seio Nage
4.Whizzer throw
Two double legs:
1.Double w/ turn the corner
2.Double w/ sweep the leg
Two single leg:
1.Single w/ turn the corner
2.Single w/ sweep the leg
Self-Defense
Two ways to defend the guillotine standing up:
1.Side step to suplex
2.Turnout to duckunder
Two ways to defend the headlock standing:
1.Sitback takedown
2.T-bone suplex (May not be legit)
3.Body Lock takedown
One way to defend the headlock on the ground:
1.Running man sweep
One way to defend the guillotine on the ground:
1.Stack defense
Passing the Guard
Five different ways to pass the guard and get side control
1. Toreador Pass
2. Double Underhook Pass
3. Basic Knee Through Pass
4. Hug and Climb Pass
5. Log Splitter Knee Through Pass
Half-Guard
Two sweeps from the half-guard:
1.Overhook Upa
2.Oldschool
Two half-guard passes:
1.Backstep Pass
2.Foot on Thigh Pass
Sweeps from the Guard
Five different ways to sweep your opponent:
1. Butterfly Sweep
2. Half Butterfly Elevator Sweep
3. Giftwrap sweep
4. Single collar sweep
5. Situp Sweep
6. Scissor Sweep (Just in case one of the others doesn't count)
Escapes
Two ways to escape the mount:
1.Bridge and Roll (Upa escape)
2.Knee-to-Elbow escape
One way to escape the side-mount:
1.Far side underhook escape
One way to escape the rear-mount:
1.Isolate the arm, turn into guard.
One way to escape the knee-on-belly:
1.Nearside arm grips the foot, bridge, push to halfguard.
Submissions
Five from the mount:
1. Armbar
2. Americana
3. Mounted Triangle
4. Ezekiel
5. Single Collar Choke
Two double attacks:
1. Triangle/Armbar
2. Kimura/Armbar
Three from the side-mount
1. Americana
2. Kimura
3. Single Collar choke
Two from the back
1. RNC
2. Armbar
Two from knee in the belly
1. Farside Armbar
2. Nearside Armbar
Five from the guard
1. Triangle
2. Armbar
3. Omoplata
4. X-Choke
5. Kimura
Friday, December 31, 2010
2011 BJJ Resolutions
So after successfully managing to get married and spending an awesome 10 days in Gatlinburg I'm ready to get back to work and jits. This being New Years Eve it's time to lay out my resolutions for the new year. My BJJ related resolutions are as follows:
1. Purple Belt: I want it. I think I'm close enough that a really dedicated 6-8 months will put me in position to get it by October/November.
2. X-Guard: I want to make this a more central part of my game.
3. Get my weightlifting back on track and push my PL total up to 900lbs.
Along the way I'd like to pick up some gold medals at NAGA or Lutador, and possibly some of the US Grappling comps.
1. Purple Belt: I want it. I think I'm close enough that a really dedicated 6-8 months will put me in position to get it by October/November.
2. X-Guard: I want to make this a more central part of my game.
3. Get my weightlifting back on track and push my PL total up to 900lbs.
Along the way I'd like to pick up some gold medals at NAGA or Lutador, and possibly some of the US Grappling comps.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
BJJ Private w/ Zapruder
So the guy doing the ceremony for my wedding is Bullshido member Zapruder who also happens to be a Brown Belt. He's in town for the wedding and staying at my place, so last night we pulled out my mats and he gave me a short private with some really handy stuff in it. I'm going to try to get it down here before I forget it.
1. Gable Grip chokes: There are 3-4 really solid variations of the Darce/Anaconda and RNC that using a gable grip instead of the more traditional grip. The principal behind them all is generally the same, to change the pinch point of the choke from the crook of your elbow to the crook where your hands meet. It's important to squeeze your elbows towards each other to finish the choke and it seems to require a little more strength on the squeeze, but more than makes up for that by being stupidly hard to defend.
2. Halfguard pass counter: The most common halfguard pass I run into is the one where your opponent bases out and turns his back on you. Apparently to counter that all you need is good timing and a backwards roll. This will require more of a shift in my focus when on the bottom of halfguard than anything else since I'm usually trying to ball up and go for old school or deep halfguard.
3. Spinning upside down triangle choke setup... thingy: So when my opponent is passing my Z-guard with their arm through my legs to block them, if I spin upside down under them it catapults me around straight into a triangle choke. It's totally pimp and I definitely need to work it since it combos well with my z-guard stuff.
4. The Saddle: My directionality was wrong. I kept getting off to the side and using my free leg to disrupt balance. What I need to do is get directly squared up so that my knee is pointed straight up the center of my opponents body and use my hips to disrupt balance.
5. Kimura/Footlock gripping: By torquing my wrists down sort of like doing wrist curls it adds an entire other dimension of pressure on the submission and allows for better/stronger finishes. In order to improve my ability to do this I need to start doing some wrist curls or something just to help strengthen my wrists further.
6. Guard retention: This was one of those things that when I saw it I just went "DOH! Why haven't I been doing that?" I normally block guard passes with my bottom foot by putting it on my opponents hip. He steps the top foot over between and then feeds the bottom foot back through. Definitely something I like and need to work on.
While we were rolling I did manage to catch him with the overhead sweep that's been working on everyone, that was awesome. He let me pass his guard a bunch and work on trying to sub him. Of course, arms like steel cable and a grip like a vise so I couldn't free anything up to actually come close to a sub, but it was fun to work against someone else who is my height with that degree of skill. He only outweighs me by about 20lbs, so I really got to see the higher level technical side from someone very much my size and build.
Tonight he's coming along to Megalodon to do a leglock class for everyone so I'll get to see him work against our bigger purple belts and blues to see how he handles them as well.
1. Gable Grip chokes: There are 3-4 really solid variations of the Darce/Anaconda and RNC that using a gable grip instead of the more traditional grip. The principal behind them all is generally the same, to change the pinch point of the choke from the crook of your elbow to the crook where your hands meet. It's important to squeeze your elbows towards each other to finish the choke and it seems to require a little more strength on the squeeze, but more than makes up for that by being stupidly hard to defend.
2. Halfguard pass counter: The most common halfguard pass I run into is the one where your opponent bases out and turns his back on you. Apparently to counter that all you need is good timing and a backwards roll. This will require more of a shift in my focus when on the bottom of halfguard than anything else since I'm usually trying to ball up and go for old school or deep halfguard.
3. Spinning upside down triangle choke setup... thingy: So when my opponent is passing my Z-guard with their arm through my legs to block them, if I spin upside down under them it catapults me around straight into a triangle choke. It's totally pimp and I definitely need to work it since it combos well with my z-guard stuff.
4. The Saddle: My directionality was wrong. I kept getting off to the side and using my free leg to disrupt balance. What I need to do is get directly squared up so that my knee is pointed straight up the center of my opponents body and use my hips to disrupt balance.
5. Kimura/Footlock gripping: By torquing my wrists down sort of like doing wrist curls it adds an entire other dimension of pressure on the submission and allows for better/stronger finishes. In order to improve my ability to do this I need to start doing some wrist curls or something just to help strengthen my wrists further.
6. Guard retention: This was one of those things that when I saw it I just went "DOH! Why haven't I been doing that?" I normally block guard passes with my bottom foot by putting it on my opponents hip. He steps the top foot over between and then feeds the bottom foot back through. Definitely something I like and need to work on.
While we were rolling I did manage to catch him with the overhead sweep that's been working on everyone, that was awesome. He let me pass his guard a bunch and work on trying to sub him. Of course, arms like steel cable and a grip like a vise so I couldn't free anything up to actually come close to a sub, but it was fun to work against someone else who is my height with that degree of skill. He only outweighs me by about 20lbs, so I really got to see the higher level technical side from someone very much my size and build.
Tonight he's coming along to Megalodon to do a leglock class for everyone so I'll get to see him work against our bigger purple belts and blues to see how he handles them as well.
Friday, December 10, 2010
UGA Grappling Club 12/9
The final session of the Grappling club for the semester. Ankhor wanted to work on finishing triangles, so we went over how to turn the corner, the various things you can grab onto to help turn the corner and keep your opponent down, and how to complete the sweep to mount if your opponent is defending well.
After that we just had a good time rolling. I played with a bunch of people and generally tried to work positionally and maintain my flow. I really feel like I need to go back and work on sweeps more. My attempt to concentrate on situp sweeps is helping some, but because people flat RUN from my closed guard it doesn't help as much as I'd like. I've been comboing it with the gift-wrap sweep, some half butterfly/elevator sweeps, and the kimura/kimura sweep, as well as the scissor sweep, but I feel like I need to sit down and just work through that group of sweeps a few dozen times and feel each one out a little more. I don't think I'm using them as efficiently as I should be.
Had a great flow roll with Antony at the end, just relaxed and flowing through positions. At one point I ended up with a triangle on him and he chose to try to defend by sitting down and trying to put his feet in my armpits, so I ended up finishing the most relaxed triangle ever, with my hands behind my head, just chillin, because that escape doesn't work all that well.
Sometime during the roll he snagged a Kimura on me and I ended up in halfguard trying to roll out and he ended up finishing me with one of the weirder kimura positions I've ended up in where I was half upside down with one leg trapped. Very fun roll and the kind I think I'm going to ask him to do more of with me since normally he doesn't like rolling with me that much because we roll together a TON and know each others tricks too well.
No more grappling club until... January some time I think. I'm looking forward to it.
After that we just had a good time rolling. I played with a bunch of people and generally tried to work positionally and maintain my flow. I really feel like I need to go back and work on sweeps more. My attempt to concentrate on situp sweeps is helping some, but because people flat RUN from my closed guard it doesn't help as much as I'd like. I've been comboing it with the gift-wrap sweep, some half butterfly/elevator sweeps, and the kimura/kimura sweep, as well as the scissor sweep, but I feel like I need to sit down and just work through that group of sweeps a few dozen times and feel each one out a little more. I don't think I'm using them as efficiently as I should be.
Had a great flow roll with Antony at the end, just relaxed and flowing through positions. At one point I ended up with a triangle on him and he chose to try to defend by sitting down and trying to put his feet in my armpits, so I ended up finishing the most relaxed triangle ever, with my hands behind my head, just chillin, because that escape doesn't work all that well.
Sometime during the roll he snagged a Kimura on me and I ended up in halfguard trying to roll out and he ended up finishing me with one of the weirder kimura positions I've ended up in where I was half upside down with one leg trapped. Very fun roll and the kind I think I'm going to ask him to do more of with me since normally he doesn't like rolling with me that much because we roll together a TON and know each others tricks too well.
No more grappling club until... January some time I think. I'm looking forward to it.
JiuJitsu 12/8
We worked on some more omoplata stuff, unfortunately I barely remember the details at the moment. I remember it was a Triangle choke to Omoplata combo, but not much else. AH! Suddenly remembered. We were doing Z-Guard to Triangle Choke to Omoplata.
We rolled from Z-Guard and I did... stuff... the whole thing is a hair fuzzy. Once we started rolling from neutral I was in a group with Ian, the big ex-wrestler guy, and Will. Ian was ready for most of my shenanigans this time and I think I only managed to get on top once. He wasn't standing up in my guard this time, so no monkey flips. I can feel how much he works to avoid using all of his strength against me, but sometimes I think he goes a little overboard on it and could combine technique and strength a little more. His technique has been getting cleaner since he started working on using less strength though, so as long as it's helping him I don't mind if he's holding back a little more than absolutely necessary.
Big wrestler guy has stupidly good base, I finally swept him and choked him with my single collar choke.
Will also has excellent base and it took me a while to get that single collar grip on him as well and get the sweep. He held out until the bitter end though and since I only had my finger tips in the grip he was able to resist it until time ran out.
We did a couple of back and forth rounds within that group and nothing particularly notable happened.
Afterwards I grabbed Kris to roll since he's one of the lighter guys and learned that I can no longer bait the triangle against him in order to work on crazy passes. Tried to pull off a sort of spinning "hurricane" guard pass and wasn't able to get my hips around before he locked in the triangle. He didn't have it exactly perfect, but he's got some insane squeeze strength and was able to finish it eventually. That moves him from the category of "experiment with whatever stupid shit you want" into "Work your A game".
An excellent class though. I'm slowly starting to form some kind of concept in the back of my brain that I can't quite describe yet relating to my opponents pressure and how I would like to feel when I'm on the bottom. I think there's something useful brewing back there, but I don't know what it is yet. For the moment I've plateaued and am just putting in reps until the next breakthrough.
We rolled from Z-Guard and I did... stuff... the whole thing is a hair fuzzy. Once we started rolling from neutral I was in a group with Ian, the big ex-wrestler guy, and Will. Ian was ready for most of my shenanigans this time and I think I only managed to get on top once. He wasn't standing up in my guard this time, so no monkey flips. I can feel how much he works to avoid using all of his strength against me, but sometimes I think he goes a little overboard on it and could combine technique and strength a little more. His technique has been getting cleaner since he started working on using less strength though, so as long as it's helping him I don't mind if he's holding back a little more than absolutely necessary.
Big wrestler guy has stupidly good base, I finally swept him and choked him with my single collar choke.
Will also has excellent base and it took me a while to get that single collar grip on him as well and get the sweep. He held out until the bitter end though and since I only had my finger tips in the grip he was able to resist it until time ran out.
We did a couple of back and forth rounds within that group and nothing particularly notable happened.
Afterwards I grabbed Kris to roll since he's one of the lighter guys and learned that I can no longer bait the triangle against him in order to work on crazy passes. Tried to pull off a sort of spinning "hurricane" guard pass and wasn't able to get my hips around before he locked in the triangle. He didn't have it exactly perfect, but he's got some insane squeeze strength and was able to finish it eventually. That moves him from the category of "experiment with whatever stupid shit you want" into "Work your A game".
An excellent class though. I'm slowly starting to form some kind of concept in the back of my brain that I can't quite describe yet relating to my opponents pressure and how I would like to feel when I'm on the bottom. I think there's something useful brewing back there, but I don't know what it is yet. For the moment I've plateaued and am just putting in reps until the next breakthrough.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Gameplan Update for Dec 2010
As the end of the year draws nigh I find myself looking back at how my game has developed over the last 12 months. My first year as a blue belt drew to a close last month and feel that I've developed very well over that time. I've gone from what was, in reality, a game based on around hail-mary triangle chokes and lucky sweeps to one that has a myriad of paths to top control and a wide variety of submissions from each position to attack with. I feel like my Gi control is still lacking though. I'm not much for tying people up with the gi and I probably should be doing more of that. Anyways, aside from that I feel like it's time to lay out my Game as it stands right now.
Destinations: Kimura (Gi and No-Gi), Single Collar Choke (Gi), Triangle Choke (No-Gi)
Kimura - This is really my catchall now. I go work on settings this grip up from wherever I can get it and I've used it sweep, finish, and combo with other attacks like the Omoplata. I prefer to go for it from the top in either Technical Mount or headmount.
Single Collar choke - This choke is still about the only Gi specific submission that I use. However I use a half dozen or so variations of it. If at any point I can get this grip I can at the very least sweep and usually finish from whatever position I'm in. I also use it against the super large guys in order to get top position since hooking it and rolling under them always lands me on top.
Triangle Choke - This is still my bread and butter in No-Gi. I hit it from pretty much wherever I want and finish it most of the time, even when my knee is stacked all the way to my forehead. I'm still working on tuning it in Gi though. The additional grips and friction give me a lot more trouble locking it in and finishing it there than in No-Gi. I'm far more likely to combo off to the armbar in Gi. One of my next goals is to combo it with the single collar choke from above since I'm pretty sure I can make that work.
Roadmap:
Takedowns - I'm all about pulling guard. I have a couple of decent throws, but it's so difficult to get people to engage that I generally end up just pulling guard to get things moving. I suppose I should be more aggressive looking for a takedown to a dominant position, but I'm going to have to get someone to drill with me more next year if I want to REALLY improve my takedowns. My primary guard pulling method is to get a collar and a sleeve grip and then attempt a suicide throw, if it works I end up in mount. If it fails I have guard with a decent set of grips.
Sweeps - I like to get the sleeve grip, try a scissor sweep, then if they manage to block it or post to quickly roll to the other side and push the arm across while pulling down on the collar and hipping out to the side. That gets me halfway to their back and usually gives me the single collar grip, the giftwrap grip, or their back depending on how they react. If that fails I generally move to an elevator sweep with a single butterfly hook. If that fails as well I fall back to spider guard -> leg hook -> bicep slicer sweep. I've become less enamored of that sweep recently since all of the guys in the gym know it and immediately posture up really hard against it, however I'm continuing to work it to look for things to chain together with it when they posture up like that. If that one fails is generally time to regain guard and start over again and throw a flower sweep and some triangle attempts into the mix.
Top Game - I've gone from feeling completely bewildered with KoB to using it as my primary attack vector. I like to get to Knee on Belly, then fish for an arm and transition to headmount and work the Kimura, or slide over to mount and then switch to technical mount and work for that same grip. At the same time I'm always looking for my single collar choke grip and the armbar as well as an opportunity to setup a triangle choke on guys my weight. Against anyone bigger than I am I don't give up top position voluntarily and will continue to transition on top until something opens up.
I've spent the last couple of months working on sharpening up my situp sweeps and found that in No-Gi I can fire them off without a problem, but in Gi I tend to be pinned to the ground more often and more effectively and have to rely on my legs to break the stalemate. I'm not able to situp as often in a manner that lets me attempt the sweep. My armbar transitions and combos have improved greatly though and my combinations in general are far above what they were a year ago. My top control, base, and pressure have developed well also.
I think my focus is going to be more and more on combining techniques with the goal of the third technique in the chain succeeding. Hopefully by the time I have a series
of solid, working combinations I'll be up for my Purple Belt and ready to move on to figuring out what to do with the rest of my game. I definitely know enough techniques to have something effective from pretty much any position. I need to sharpen up my footlocks a bit, and work on developing more combinations and better flow. If I can really pour myself into that starting in January then I should have no trouble earning my purple by the end of next year.
Destinations: Kimura (Gi and No-Gi), Single Collar Choke (Gi), Triangle Choke (No-Gi)
Kimura - This is really my catchall now. I go work on settings this grip up from wherever I can get it and I've used it sweep, finish, and combo with other attacks like the Omoplata. I prefer to go for it from the top in either Technical Mount or headmount.
Single Collar choke - This choke is still about the only Gi specific submission that I use. However I use a half dozen or so variations of it. If at any point I can get this grip I can at the very least sweep and usually finish from whatever position I'm in. I also use it against the super large guys in order to get top position since hooking it and rolling under them always lands me on top.
Triangle Choke - This is still my bread and butter in No-Gi. I hit it from pretty much wherever I want and finish it most of the time, even when my knee is stacked all the way to my forehead. I'm still working on tuning it in Gi though. The additional grips and friction give me a lot more trouble locking it in and finishing it there than in No-Gi. I'm far more likely to combo off to the armbar in Gi. One of my next goals is to combo it with the single collar choke from above since I'm pretty sure I can make that work.
Roadmap:
Takedowns - I'm all about pulling guard. I have a couple of decent throws, but it's so difficult to get people to engage that I generally end up just pulling guard to get things moving. I suppose I should be more aggressive looking for a takedown to a dominant position, but I'm going to have to get someone to drill with me more next year if I want to REALLY improve my takedowns. My primary guard pulling method is to get a collar and a sleeve grip and then attempt a suicide throw, if it works I end up in mount. If it fails I have guard with a decent set of grips.
Sweeps - I like to get the sleeve grip, try a scissor sweep, then if they manage to block it or post to quickly roll to the other side and push the arm across while pulling down on the collar and hipping out to the side. That gets me halfway to their back and usually gives me the single collar grip, the giftwrap grip, or their back depending on how they react. If that fails I generally move to an elevator sweep with a single butterfly hook. If that fails as well I fall back to spider guard -> leg hook -> bicep slicer sweep. I've become less enamored of that sweep recently since all of the guys in the gym know it and immediately posture up really hard against it, however I'm continuing to work it to look for things to chain together with it when they posture up like that. If that one fails is generally time to regain guard and start over again and throw a flower sweep and some triangle attempts into the mix.
Top Game - I've gone from feeling completely bewildered with KoB to using it as my primary attack vector. I like to get to Knee on Belly, then fish for an arm and transition to headmount and work the Kimura, or slide over to mount and then switch to technical mount and work for that same grip. At the same time I'm always looking for my single collar choke grip and the armbar as well as an opportunity to setup a triangle choke on guys my weight. Against anyone bigger than I am I don't give up top position voluntarily and will continue to transition on top until something opens up.
I've spent the last couple of months working on sharpening up my situp sweeps and found that in No-Gi I can fire them off without a problem, but in Gi I tend to be pinned to the ground more often and more effectively and have to rely on my legs to break the stalemate. I'm not able to situp as often in a manner that lets me attempt the sweep. My armbar transitions and combos have improved greatly though and my combinations in general are far above what they were a year ago. My top control, base, and pressure have developed well also.
I think my focus is going to be more and more on combining techniques with the goal of the third technique in the chain succeeding. Hopefully by the time I have a series
of solid, working combinations I'll be up for my Purple Belt and ready to move on to figuring out what to do with the rest of my game. I definitely know enough techniques to have something effective from pretty much any position. I need to sharpen up my footlocks a bit, and work on developing more combinations and better flow. If I can really pour myself into that starting in January then I should have no trouble earning my purple by the end of next year.
JiuJitsu 12/3
Friday night class at Megalodon we worked on Omoplata variations which included a couple of different methods of finishing the Omo which I have every intention of working in to my normal omoplata game.
Two of them involved being perpendicular to your opponent instead of parallel. To finish you extend your legs and hook their arm at the tricep, or even just extend across the neck, and slide your hips back to put pressure on the shoulder. Worked quite well.
The third was a counter for when they try to roll, it's a relatively LATE roll that you are countering though, so I don't get a chance to use it very often since most people try to roll on me WAY early in the omo. To counter you roll forward with them while maintaining your grips and end up in a sort of crucifix position, then scoot your hips out away from them to finish.
We drilled from closed guard and I opted for the "Large" side of the room with a couple of 200lb blue belts and a ~250lb ex-wrestler, and one of our 220lb 1 year white belts.
Within that group my buddy Johnny is the most insane to roll with. He's huge, strong, fast, and skilled. If I do anything except just try to hold him in my closed guard he blasts right through it and subs me. So of course I threw everything but the kitchen sink at him. Every time I do that I get a little closer to finding something that will slow him down. The other big blue belt doesn't have the same kind of wrestling base, so despite being super strong and athletic I have a much easier time of controlling him and can fairly reliably sweep him and occasionally secure the submission. I found today that when he stands up in my guard his hips fairly reliably end up in position for the overhead sweeps that we worked on a couple of weeks ago. I hit him with it twice and it was a thing of beauty.
The 1 year white belt caught me napping when I tried to just waltz through his guard and I had to defend a triangle choke for about 45 seconds. He actually would have had me if he had kept the lock he had at the beginning which was in front of my shoulder and really tight, but he adjusted his legs and gave me space to defend, so I rode it out.
Gigantic wrestler guy took me a while to figure out, he has good top pressure, but doesn't protect his neck enough, so once I determined that it wouldn't get me crushed underneath him I grabbed the single collar and spun under for the sweep. He seemed surprised that he couldn't fling me off of him since he had just hurled the 220lb white belt around like a small child. Picked up a Kimura on him, and one of my kickover armbars. Fun times and it was nice to work against the big guys again.
I may have a more philosophical post a little later today about gameplan construction.
Two of them involved being perpendicular to your opponent instead of parallel. To finish you extend your legs and hook their arm at the tricep, or even just extend across the neck, and slide your hips back to put pressure on the shoulder. Worked quite well.
The third was a counter for when they try to roll, it's a relatively LATE roll that you are countering though, so I don't get a chance to use it very often since most people try to roll on me WAY early in the omo. To counter you roll forward with them while maintaining your grips and end up in a sort of crucifix position, then scoot your hips out away from them to finish.
We drilled from closed guard and I opted for the "Large" side of the room with a couple of 200lb blue belts and a ~250lb ex-wrestler, and one of our 220lb 1 year white belts.
Within that group my buddy Johnny is the most insane to roll with. He's huge, strong, fast, and skilled. If I do anything except just try to hold him in my closed guard he blasts right through it and subs me. So of course I threw everything but the kitchen sink at him. Every time I do that I get a little closer to finding something that will slow him down. The other big blue belt doesn't have the same kind of wrestling base, so despite being super strong and athletic I have a much easier time of controlling him and can fairly reliably sweep him and occasionally secure the submission. I found today that when he stands up in my guard his hips fairly reliably end up in position for the overhead sweeps that we worked on a couple of weeks ago. I hit him with it twice and it was a thing of beauty.
The 1 year white belt caught me napping when I tried to just waltz through his guard and I had to defend a triangle choke for about 45 seconds. He actually would have had me if he had kept the lock he had at the beginning which was in front of my shoulder and really tight, but he adjusted his legs and gave me space to defend, so I rode it out.
Gigantic wrestler guy took me a while to figure out, he has good top pressure, but doesn't protect his neck enough, so once I determined that it wouldn't get me crushed underneath him I grabbed the single collar and spun under for the sweep. He seemed surprised that he couldn't fling me off of him since he had just hurled the 220lb white belt around like a small child. Picked up a Kimura on him, and one of my kickover armbars. Fun times and it was nice to work against the big guys again.
I may have a more philosophical post a little later today about gameplan construction.
Friday, December 3, 2010
UGA Grappling Club 12/2
As my wedding approaches the days are starting to blur together. It's hard for me to remember what days I have class and what days I don't.
We had about 17 people show up for the club this time around, including three new ones. I started out with a quick review of the two basic mount escapes, the Upa escape and the knee-to-elbow escape. Then I paired them off and had them work the escapes back and forth starting with very little resistance and working up to full resistance, with an emphasis on combining the two escapes. After about thirty minutes of that I set up 5 "rings" and started king of the hill with mount escapes. One partner starting in mount and having to submit, the other person just having to escape or regain guard. I made sure to emphasize that the TOP person actually has the harder victory condition in this one, it being much more difficult to submit someone that it is to just regain guard most of the time.
I rotated in a few times for fun, then we did half an hour of rolling. One of the new guys has a couple of years of Judo/BJJ from Middle Georgia Judo and wanted to roll with leglocks in play. He went for an early heel hook but didn't even come close to having a grip on it. I threw on the saddle and heel hooked him, then heel hooked him again when he tried to pass my guard standing, then knee slicered him when he put on the body triangle while I was in his guard.
After that I played with some of the other guys, one big athletic guy just absolutely blew my grip while I was trying to control him. The most trauma I've felt in my hands in a while, even worse than when I'm playing spider guard all night.
Continuing my situp sweep work I started just diving for the kimura from guard, then when my opponent tucks his arm, I finish the situp sweep. Worked extremely well and I intend to employ it further in the future.
It was a good class and almost everyone is making decent progress. I'm still encouraging them to come join Megalodon if they are serious about jits though.
We had about 17 people show up for the club this time around, including three new ones. I started out with a quick review of the two basic mount escapes, the Upa escape and the knee-to-elbow escape. Then I paired them off and had them work the escapes back and forth starting with very little resistance and working up to full resistance, with an emphasis on combining the two escapes. After about thirty minutes of that I set up 5 "rings" and started king of the hill with mount escapes. One partner starting in mount and having to submit, the other person just having to escape or regain guard. I made sure to emphasize that the TOP person actually has the harder victory condition in this one, it being much more difficult to submit someone that it is to just regain guard most of the time.
I rotated in a few times for fun, then we did half an hour of rolling. One of the new guys has a couple of years of Judo/BJJ from Middle Georgia Judo and wanted to roll with leglocks in play. He went for an early heel hook but didn't even come close to having a grip on it. I threw on the saddle and heel hooked him, then heel hooked him again when he tried to pass my guard standing, then knee slicered him when he put on the body triangle while I was in his guard.
After that I played with some of the other guys, one big athletic guy just absolutely blew my grip while I was trying to control him. The most trauma I've felt in my hands in a while, even worse than when I'm playing spider guard all night.
Continuing my situp sweep work I started just diving for the kimura from guard, then when my opponent tucks his arm, I finish the situp sweep. Worked extremely well and I intend to employ it further in the future.
It was a good class and almost everyone is making decent progress. I'm still encouraging them to come join Megalodon if they are serious about jits though.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Jiujitsu 11/28
No-Gi tonight. A lot of lightweights in the class tonight, Antony was back which is great. We worked more side control escapes, all pretty much related to the ones we worked for Gi on Friday.
We also did a lot of escape drilling, which I always enjoy. Then we worked on some Knee on Belly attacks. Spinning Armbar on the farside arm, a modified Kimura, and a straight armlock.
I spent the night working on my triangle chokes since I've been neglecting them in no-gi. Got them from all kinds of places. Comboed them well with other things including armbars and sweeps. I'm really feeling like my jiujitsu is smoothing out. I transition between defense and offense better and move among my various attacks with less hesitation.
Favorite combo of the night: Arm Drag -> Whose your daddy sweep -> Mounted triangle with the arm trapped for extra pressure.
General thoughts on the way my game is changing some. I now go for the single leg takedown even from knees or butterfly guard or whatever. If I get a chance to snag that leg and stand up to execute the takedown I will take it every time. It's starting to become a highly effective sweep for me when people post their knee up in combat base for me to just latch onto it and stand up. I switched to this after reading about Ryan Hall changing his game away from some of the crazier techniques and how the top level game was all about getting that single leg. I watched a bunch of videos and saw how Marcelo and other guys at the top would indeed grab that single leg and score over and over again from wherever they could get it. So I've been working to add that into my game and it's been helpful so far.
We also did a lot of escape drilling, which I always enjoy. Then we worked on some Knee on Belly attacks. Spinning Armbar on the farside arm, a modified Kimura, and a straight armlock.
I spent the night working on my triangle chokes since I've been neglecting them in no-gi. Got them from all kinds of places. Comboed them well with other things including armbars and sweeps. I'm really feeling like my jiujitsu is smoothing out. I transition between defense and offense better and move among my various attacks with less hesitation.
Favorite combo of the night: Arm Drag -> Whose your daddy sweep -> Mounted triangle with the arm trapped for extra pressure.
General thoughts on the way my game is changing some. I now go for the single leg takedown even from knees or butterfly guard or whatever. If I get a chance to snag that leg and stand up to execute the takedown I will take it every time. It's starting to become a highly effective sweep for me when people post their knee up in combat base for me to just latch onto it and stand up. I switched to this after reading about Ryan Hall changing his game away from some of the crazier techniques and how the top level game was all about getting that single leg. I watched a bunch of videos and saw how Marcelo and other guys at the top would indeed grab that single leg and score over and over again from wherever they could get it. So I've been working to add that into my game and it's been helpful so far.
JiuJitsu 11/26
My car decided to crap itself on the 23rd which was just a huge pain all around, but I still made the friday class. Just Four of us, Casey, Coe, me and that same newer wrestler guy. We worked side control escapes including a couple of slick ones that I hadn't seen before.
I learned that Coe and Casey haven't gotten any lighter, but I'm not making as many mistakes against them now. I did manage to reverse Coe from side control which made me happy, and I put up a good fight against Casey, which is about all I can ask for.
My neck and right shoulder are both tweaked though after Coe kicked his leg up and managed to catch my face and peel me backwards off of side control, I felt it coming up and tried to duck forward and didn't quit make it, so super painful.
The new wrestler guy is still ignoring hip control in favor of trying to pin the shoulders, once he gets over that he'll improve a lot almost over night. His top control is already good and tight.
I'm making good progress with armbars from the top, and grabbing both armbars and triangles from more places now, but my situp sweep progression just isn't there. I just can't get most people into my closed guard long enough to try it in rolling. I'll keep working it though.
I learned that Coe and Casey haven't gotten any lighter, but I'm not making as many mistakes against them now. I did manage to reverse Coe from side control which made me happy, and I put up a good fight against Casey, which is about all I can ask for.
My neck and right shoulder are both tweaked though after Coe kicked his leg up and managed to catch my face and peel me backwards off of side control, I felt it coming up and tried to duck forward and didn't quit make it, so super painful.
The new wrestler guy is still ignoring hip control in favor of trying to pin the shoulders, once he gets over that he'll improve a lot almost over night. His top control is already good and tight.
I'm making good progress with armbars from the top, and grabbing both armbars and triangles from more places now, but my situp sweep progression just isn't there. I just can't get most people into my closed guard long enough to try it in rolling. I'll keep working it though.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Jiujitsu 11/19
Relatively small class, Darnell, Me, a visitor from the Alliance school in ATL and a just a few other guys showed up. Darnell decided to show some helicopter techniques for fun, so we started with the monkey flip sweep from feet-on-hips spider guard, then a variation from closed guard, then helicopter armbars. Fun stuff.
So many of our guys are already so gun-shy about moving towards me in guard that I don't get a lot of opportunity to play with this kind of thing, I spend most of the time chasing them down to get some kind of grips.
Mostly I just had fun. Practiced the breakdance pass a few times, worked from the bottom a bunch, worked on my combos, and generally just chillaxed and enjoyed the game. It was a fun class. I might do a quick video on the breakdance pass tonight if I go to No-Gi.
So many of our guys are already so gun-shy about moving towards me in guard that I don't get a lot of opportunity to play with this kind of thing, I spend most of the time chasing them down to get some kind of grips.
Mostly I just had fun. Practiced the breakdance pass a few times, worked from the bottom a bunch, worked on my combos, and generally just chillaxed and enjoyed the game. It was a fun class. I might do a quick video on the breakdance pass tonight if I go to No-Gi.
Friday, November 19, 2010
UGA Grappling Club 11/18
Broke away from boring jiujitsu, but still got a lot of drilling in. I taught Scissor Sweep and the basic guard break and pass and had everyone get in 25 reps of each. Then I put everyone in groups of 3 for specific sparring from guard with the top guy just having to pass and the bottom guy just having to sweep to win. So that got everyone some live experience with the stuff we had just gone over.
We had a couple of new folks in the class, one who was a wrestler which was fun. Once he adjusts to the small differences between wrestling and Jits he'll be awesome.
I wasn't really rolling since my left arm is still a little gimpy, so I wanted to preserve it so I could make class today, so I just worked on some combos as per the Roy Dean purple belt DVD. I ran through Omoplata -> Gogplata -> Armbar, and Triangle -> Armbar -> Giftwrap/flower sweep, as well as Scissor sweep -> Triangle -> armbar -> flower sweep, and Scissor sweep -> kimura/kimura sweep. I'm getting smoother with my combos which makes me feel good, but I still have issues making the flow happen against guys with good top pressure sometimes. I tend to go into glacier mode and latch onto one limb and slowly work my way to a sweep or sub, which I guess is fine, but isn't as smooth and flowy as I'd like it to be.
We had a couple of new folks in the class, one who was a wrestler which was fun. Once he adjusts to the small differences between wrestling and Jits he'll be awesome.
I wasn't really rolling since my left arm is still a little gimpy, so I wanted to preserve it so I could make class today, so I just worked on some combos as per the Roy Dean purple belt DVD. I ran through Omoplata -> Gogplata -> Armbar, and Triangle -> Armbar -> Giftwrap/flower sweep, as well as Scissor sweep -> Triangle -> armbar -> flower sweep, and Scissor sweep -> kimura/kimura sweep. I'm getting smoother with my combos which makes me feel good, but I still have issues making the flow happen against guys with good top pressure sometimes. I tend to go into glacier mode and latch onto one limb and slowly work my way to a sweep or sub, which I guess is fine, but isn't as smooth and flowy as I'd like it to be.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
JiuJitsu 11/14 No-Gi
I made the No-Gi class for the first time in a while. Anthony is back from doing his play and was worried that he would be rusty, but he was only out a couple of weeks and hasn't lost a step.
Casey asked if anyone wanted to work on anything particular and I called out for the Situp Sweep. He made the point that you really have to distract your opponent with something before you can go for it since they have to be sitting back on their heels for it to succeed. Of course this meant that everyone in class was looking for the situp sweep to happen so they were all defending it. I don't think I got anywhere close to hitting it on anyone.
We drilled starting in closed guard and I was able to break the guard of everyone except Brian, guy just as insane legs and core strength. Even if he just hangs out and does nothing it's a bitch to get his guard open. I find myself baiting him and then passing when he goes for a sub. Eventually he's going to get good enough to catch me, especially if I keep doing it. I was able to sweep, submit, or pass on the under 180lb guys, but the bigger guys were generally shutting me down. No worries there since that's a black belt, a blue belt, a blue belt with 4 years of wrestling, and hyper athletic Brian. I'm still able to sweep Brian if I get tricky enough, and I can occasionally catch Ian in a sub if I get tricky with him, but Johnny is just too strong with too much pressure and too solid of a base for me to pull off anything other than a stalling game with him.
I'm honestly completely baffled as to why he doesn't dominate his division in competitions right now.
Overall I felt a little directionless rolling tonight. It was fun, and I was making stuff work, but I mostly was just falling back to my normal overhook game with a few new things bolted on. Which I guess is just fine in retrospect. I just want to sharpen that game up anyways, and having a solid butterfly game for when I just can't get closed guard makes it that much more dangerous.
I filmed most of the class today and will probably post some clips up after I've had a chance to watch it and chop it up. The files are enormous.
Casey asked if anyone wanted to work on anything particular and I called out for the Situp Sweep. He made the point that you really have to distract your opponent with something before you can go for it since they have to be sitting back on their heels for it to succeed. Of course this meant that everyone in class was looking for the situp sweep to happen so they were all defending it. I don't think I got anywhere close to hitting it on anyone.
We drilled starting in closed guard and I was able to break the guard of everyone except Brian, guy just as insane legs and core strength. Even if he just hangs out and does nothing it's a bitch to get his guard open. I find myself baiting him and then passing when he goes for a sub. Eventually he's going to get good enough to catch me, especially if I keep doing it. I was able to sweep, submit, or pass on the under 180lb guys, but the bigger guys were generally shutting me down. No worries there since that's a black belt, a blue belt, a blue belt with 4 years of wrestling, and hyper athletic Brian. I'm still able to sweep Brian if I get tricky enough, and I can occasionally catch Ian in a sub if I get tricky with him, but Johnny is just too strong with too much pressure and too solid of a base for me to pull off anything other than a stalling game with him.
I'm honestly completely baffled as to why he doesn't dominate his division in competitions right now.
Overall I felt a little directionless rolling tonight. It was fun, and I was making stuff work, but I mostly was just falling back to my normal overhook game with a few new things bolted on. Which I guess is just fine in retrospect. I just want to sharpen that game up anyways, and having a solid butterfly game for when I just can't get closed guard makes it that much more dangerous.
I filmed most of the class today and will probably post some clips up after I've had a chance to watch it and chop it up. The files are enormous.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
JiuJitsu 9/10
I got to class a little earlier and put in about 20 reps of the situp sweep, just trying to get a feel for it. Something about the extra bulk of wearing the gi makes it feel really awkward. I need more reps.
Techniques today were butterfly guard -> Armdrag -> Take the back. Several different ways to set it up. All pretty much the same. It was good to get in reps with the armdrag.
Did some positional rolling starting from butterfly guard and spent my time sweeping folks and passing guard. Taught Katie how to pin the knees on one side or another and pass with the shoulder to the gut. She needs all the tricks she can get since she weighs like 100lbs.
After that I rolled with Brian and a visiting blue belt named Phil from Daniel Moraes academy in Jacksonville. He had a very solid style on top, very good at taking away any space that opened up. The first roll we were fairly even with me working several sweep attempts which he blocked and me eventually turtling and moving to halfguard where we stayed for a while. Second roll with him I used my fav tech for breaking people down and was able to launch a nice series of attacks which failed, and eventually ended us up in halfguard again until he had a sudden cramp and had to bail.
Rolling with Brian was normal. I'll sweep him if he gets too aggressive, then if I give him the slightest chance he'll explode and resweep me. He tapped me with a nice north south choke the first time. Then I tapped to Kesa because I got bored under it and couldn't get anywhere. Then we sat around for a while and talked techniques. My guard was compared favorably with Moraes' guard, not that mine is anywhere near as good, but that it is a similar style. A very fun class and nice that I was competitive against a 5 year blue belt from another school that outweighed me by 30lbs who came to play. Always feels nice to validate your training a little like that.
Also, Mad props to my Jennosaurus who made sure I went to class tonight. I've skipped a few recently to help her with nursing school stuff and because I've been SUPER busy at work, but she made sure I got on the mats tonight and that's just one of the many reasons that she's awesome and I'm marrying her in ~30 days.
Techniques today were butterfly guard -> Armdrag -> Take the back. Several different ways to set it up. All pretty much the same. It was good to get in reps with the armdrag.
Did some positional rolling starting from butterfly guard and spent my time sweeping folks and passing guard. Taught Katie how to pin the knees on one side or another and pass with the shoulder to the gut. She needs all the tricks she can get since she weighs like 100lbs.
After that I rolled with Brian and a visiting blue belt named Phil from Daniel Moraes academy in Jacksonville. He had a very solid style on top, very good at taking away any space that opened up. The first roll we were fairly even with me working several sweep attempts which he blocked and me eventually turtling and moving to halfguard where we stayed for a while. Second roll with him I used my fav tech for breaking people down and was able to launch a nice series of attacks which failed, and eventually ended us up in halfguard again until he had a sudden cramp and had to bail.
Rolling with Brian was normal. I'll sweep him if he gets too aggressive, then if I give him the slightest chance he'll explode and resweep me. He tapped me with a nice north south choke the first time. Then I tapped to Kesa because I got bored under it and couldn't get anywhere. Then we sat around for a while and talked techniques. My guard was compared favorably with Moraes' guard, not that mine is anywhere near as good, but that it is a similar style. A very fun class and nice that I was competitive against a 5 year blue belt from another school that outweighed me by 30lbs who came to play. Always feels nice to validate your training a little like that.
Also, Mad props to my Jennosaurus who made sure I went to class tonight. I've skipped a few recently to help her with nursing school stuff and because I've been SUPER busy at work, but she made sure I got on the mats tonight and that's just one of the many reasons that she's awesome and I'm marrying her in ~30 days.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
UGA Grappling Club 11/8
Tonight we started "Boring" Jiujitsu. The first few weeks I taught I would show 2-3 techniques, everyone would practice each technique ~10 times, then we would roll either starting from a specific position or just free rolling. This way everyone got introduced to the kinds of techniques they will eventually be able to use as well as getting to see how hard it is to apply those techniques against other people. This period also lets them get some of the SPAZZ out on each other and usually manages to convince them that if they want techniques to work that they will have to practice them.
Once I've got them hooked on the BJJ though, it's time to get serious. So tonight we went over the very first side control escape I showed them 6 weeks ago and I broke it down step by step, then we repped it 100 times each. We started with minimal resistance, just enough not to be a dead fish. Then every 10 reps we increased the resistance until the last 10 reps you were doing everything to prevent your opponent from escaping, including transitioning to other positions. Some folks were skeptical initially, but by the end of it everyone was very happy with how much they learned. I don't think most of them realized there could be that many details to something as simple as a side control escape. Honestly I could do like 30 hours worth of class time on nothing but side control escapes and still have only gotten started on what I know about them, much less what a black belt knows. I would love to have a month of side control escapes at Megalodon...
No rolling at all tonight. All drilling that escape. Boring JiuJitsu makes you good.
Once I've got them hooked on the BJJ though, it's time to get serious. So tonight we went over the very first side control escape I showed them 6 weeks ago and I broke it down step by step, then we repped it 100 times each. We started with minimal resistance, just enough not to be a dead fish. Then every 10 reps we increased the resistance until the last 10 reps you were doing everything to prevent your opponent from escaping, including transitioning to other positions. Some folks were skeptical initially, but by the end of it everyone was very happy with how much they learned. I don't think most of them realized there could be that many details to something as simple as a side control escape. Honestly I could do like 30 hours worth of class time on nothing but side control escapes and still have only gotten started on what I know about them, much less what a black belt knows. I would love to have a month of side control escapes at Megalodon...
No rolling at all tonight. All drilling that escape. Boring JiuJitsu makes you good.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Jiujitsu 11/5: Good to be back!
So despite all the screw ups with the software upgrade I was working on tonight I made it to an hour of jiujitsu. I was rolling pretty hard today, a lot harder than I usually do, but I also noticed some things about my style which I need to fix pronto. I will list those first:
1. I have gotten into the habit of giving people grips on my gi pants as a way to lure them in since everyone runs away from my guard all of the time. This leads me too often to having to defend the pass before I can start attacking. BAD JIUJITSU! So I need to go back to starting in a good butterfly position and sticking to it. If my opponent wants to run away from me then I'll just have to chase them and get REALLY aggressive about it.
2. In no-gi I have gotten SLOPPY. I'm not breaking my opponents down and really fighting for my overhook control the way I should. I'm not going for the situp sweep as a combo to help me break people down. Definitely need to start putting in a little more no-gi time soon to keep me sharp.
3. My halfguard needs a tuneup. I used to be super dangerous from the bottom of half, now I seem to just stall out looking for the oldschool sweep and end up with people hanging on my neck. Gotta get aggro from the bottom of half again.
Now, on to what was awesome:
I hit a ton of armbars. Way more than I usually hit. I was willing to just throw my hips and legs up and see what happened a lot more tonight. As a result I hit something like 6 armbars, including a couple of triangle to armbar transitions.
My situp sweep attempts kept turning into Kimura sweeps though. I need to tune that up a little, gotta get someone to drill with me one day.
I hit a choke I've been looking at for a while but never really found the right place to try. It's a Cobra choke, which works thusly:
I have my grip on the opposite collar and I'm looking to set up my collar choke, my opponent manages to back away and goes for the double underhook pass. I defend the pass by spreading my knees open and digging my feet in under his thighs. I then put my free arm across the back of his neck and snack my hand under my arm that has the collar grip. Then I point the fingers of my non gripping hand at the ceiling and just.... make it tight. I hit that 2-3 times and it was awesome since I've been blocking that guard pass and not having any options. Now I have a great option.
I also hit a kimuraplata. This is a SLICK move for you little folks who find that people get a death grip on their clothes when you go for a kimura from guard, and those same people roll forward when you go for an omoplata.
Step 1: Get your kimura grip from guard and spin 90 degrees to put the kimura pressure on. Your opponent doesn't grab onto something, finish them. If they grab something then go to step 2.
Step 2: Keep your Kimura grip and continue rotating until you are in the omoplata position with the kimura grip. Begin to sit up like you are going to finish the omoplata, but keep the kimura grip. What this does is hook your leg around your opponents elbow and bend their elbow towards the front of their body while you have their wrist locked in place. So instead of moving the wrist to create the pressure on the shoulder you are moving the elbow to create pressure on the shoulder. It works a treat and is super sneaky.
I think this was one of my most productive classes in a while. I actually was able to pinpoint some specific weaknesses to work on, which is nice.
1. I have gotten into the habit of giving people grips on my gi pants as a way to lure them in since everyone runs away from my guard all of the time. This leads me too often to having to defend the pass before I can start attacking. BAD JIUJITSU! So I need to go back to starting in a good butterfly position and sticking to it. If my opponent wants to run away from me then I'll just have to chase them and get REALLY aggressive about it.
2. In no-gi I have gotten SLOPPY. I'm not breaking my opponents down and really fighting for my overhook control the way I should. I'm not going for the situp sweep as a combo to help me break people down. Definitely need to start putting in a little more no-gi time soon to keep me sharp.
3. My halfguard needs a tuneup. I used to be super dangerous from the bottom of half, now I seem to just stall out looking for the oldschool sweep and end up with people hanging on my neck. Gotta get aggro from the bottom of half again.
Now, on to what was awesome:
I hit a ton of armbars. Way more than I usually hit. I was willing to just throw my hips and legs up and see what happened a lot more tonight. As a result I hit something like 6 armbars, including a couple of triangle to armbar transitions.
My situp sweep attempts kept turning into Kimura sweeps though. I need to tune that up a little, gotta get someone to drill with me one day.
I hit a choke I've been looking at for a while but never really found the right place to try. It's a Cobra choke, which works thusly:
I have my grip on the opposite collar and I'm looking to set up my collar choke, my opponent manages to back away and goes for the double underhook pass. I defend the pass by spreading my knees open and digging my feet in under his thighs. I then put my free arm across the back of his neck and snack my hand under my arm that has the collar grip. Then I point the fingers of my non gripping hand at the ceiling and just.... make it tight. I hit that 2-3 times and it was awesome since I've been blocking that guard pass and not having any options. Now I have a great option.
I also hit a kimuraplata. This is a SLICK move for you little folks who find that people get a death grip on their clothes when you go for a kimura from guard, and those same people roll forward when you go for an omoplata.
Step 1: Get your kimura grip from guard and spin 90 degrees to put the kimura pressure on. Your opponent doesn't grab onto something, finish them. If they grab something then go to step 2.
Step 2: Keep your Kimura grip and continue rotating until you are in the omoplata position with the kimura grip. Begin to sit up like you are going to finish the omoplata, but keep the kimura grip. What this does is hook your leg around your opponents elbow and bend their elbow towards the front of their body while you have their wrist locked in place. So instead of moving the wrist to create the pressure on the shoulder you are moving the elbow to create pressure on the shoulder. It works a treat and is super sneaky.
I think this was one of my most productive classes in a while. I actually was able to pinpoint some specific weaknesses to work on, which is nice.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
UGA Grappling Club 11/2
I did the last lesson in my "Beginners BJJ Curriculum" today. Normally I would have spent an entire month on each of the things I taught instead of a single class, but the idea is to keep the class fast paced and give people a taste of everything BJJ has to offer to keep them interested first. NOW I'll go back to the beginning and make them drill it over and over and over again.
We had a couple of new people, a couple of gigantic guys, one reasonable sized guy and a girl. Gave them a quick introduction to shrimping, up, and sitouts.
Techniques were attacks from guard. I leave submissions from guard until the end because I want to keep the emphasis on position and obtaining superior position instead of having everyone throwing up wild triangles at each other from the bottom. First I showed the two safe positions in guard, head in the solar plexus, hands in the armpits, weight down on your opponent. Then how to posture up using your opponents ribs and hips to post on. After that I showed triangle chokes concentrating on getting the hips high and getting a good kick over with the leg to make the choke successful. The refresher was really good for me as well since I've been letting my triangle chokes get super lazy and it's been hurting me.
Next up was armbar from the guard. I showed how to isolate the arm and bring it across the chest, then use your legs to trap and hold your opponent and finish. Briefly went over how to sweep from the armbar to finish if your opponent tries to stack you.
Rolling was King of the Mountain style with 5 groups on the mat and the other 6 or so people on the wall. I had them start in guard with the top guy trying to pass, the bottom guy trying to sweep or submit. Things rotated through pretty quickly and everyone got plenty of chances with different partners. I stepped in after everyone had been through once and got some time rolling with different folks. Hit a few situp sweeps, but found myself hesitating to fire the armbar on top a lot. I did hit a couple, but I definitely need to keep refining it. This is an excellent project for me for sure.
After that I let everyone roll open-mat style for a while and I grabbed people to roll with. One guy jumped on my neck from halfguard and tried to tear my head off, which annoyed me enough to pass, bust out the no-gi ezekiel, and then armbar him.
We've got a good solid core group in the club it seems like, so next week we can start in with the "boring" part of jiujitsu that really makes you good at it. Drilling.
We had a couple of new people, a couple of gigantic guys, one reasonable sized guy and a girl. Gave them a quick introduction to shrimping, up, and sitouts.
Techniques were attacks from guard. I leave submissions from guard until the end because I want to keep the emphasis on position and obtaining superior position instead of having everyone throwing up wild triangles at each other from the bottom. First I showed the two safe positions in guard, head in the solar plexus, hands in the armpits, weight down on your opponent. Then how to posture up using your opponents ribs and hips to post on. After that I showed triangle chokes concentrating on getting the hips high and getting a good kick over with the leg to make the choke successful. The refresher was really good for me as well since I've been letting my triangle chokes get super lazy and it's been hurting me.
Next up was armbar from the guard. I showed how to isolate the arm and bring it across the chest, then use your legs to trap and hold your opponent and finish. Briefly went over how to sweep from the armbar to finish if your opponent tries to stack you.
Rolling was King of the Mountain style with 5 groups on the mat and the other 6 or so people on the wall. I had them start in guard with the top guy trying to pass, the bottom guy trying to sweep or submit. Things rotated through pretty quickly and everyone got plenty of chances with different partners. I stepped in after everyone had been through once and got some time rolling with different folks. Hit a few situp sweeps, but found myself hesitating to fire the armbar on top a lot. I did hit a couple, but I definitely need to keep refining it. This is an excellent project for me for sure.
After that I let everyone roll open-mat style for a while and I grabbed people to roll with. One guy jumped on my neck from halfguard and tried to tear my head off, which annoyed me enough to pass, bust out the no-gi ezekiel, and then armbar him.
We've got a good solid core group in the club it seems like, so next week we can start in with the "boring" part of jiujitsu that really makes you good at it. Drilling.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Running, it sucks.
So I resolved to start running again to help improve my overall cardio as opposed to only my grappling specific cardio and boy do I need it. My course is 1.5 miles long, .75 up and .75 back. After the first .75 I was sucking wind and coughing like a pack-a-day smoker. I dunno why my lungs are being such bitches about it, but they HATE to run in the cold apparently. Well screw them! I'll be up for another 5am run tomorrow and try to push a little further since this time I ran .75 and walked .75. Once I can run the entire 1.5 I'm going to start edging it up until I'm doing 3 miles. My eventual goal is to run the 3 miles in under 20 minutes. If I actually keep at it with the running this time around I might be get there sometime in 2012....
I skipped JiuJitsu last week to let some minor injuries heal up before they became actual problems, back at it tonight teaching the grappling club. I'm going to teach triangles and armbars from the guard and go over the importance of posture and hand positioning.
I skipped JiuJitsu last week to let some minor injuries heal up before they became actual problems, back at it tonight teaching the grappling club. I'm going to teach triangles and armbars from the guard and go over the importance of posture and hand positioning.
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