Continuing to Flow

I definitely need to start video taping the rolling in class. I played it completely chill and easy last friday, just sweeping and hanging out on top, not really forcing any submissions or anything. It felt lazy, but I was in a lazy kind of mood.
I'm hoping to continue my work against our Purple belts tomorrow. I need to be able to sweep them, it's becoming pathological. To that end I'm looking for some sweep combinations I can put together to throw at them.

My wedding is rapidly approaching. We're getting everything put together reasonably well, but still have some loose ends to tie up. It's going to be awesome. Then a 10 day honeymoon in the mountains. After the wedding my quest for Purple belt officially begins. I'll be going up to Alliance HQ twice a month to train and looking to demonstrate my awesomeness to the degree required to get my purple belt next summer.

I put 183lbs up on bench again yesterday and the day before. It felt a little easier than it did the first time. I'm going to do it again today, then take two days off from bench to do squats. I tried a set of 3 squats with 183 as well, first one I did 3/4 squat, then just above parallel, then parallel to ease myself into it and see how my knee felt. No twinges, no trouble. I'm going to alternate with 3x3 on the squats and my GTG work on the bench every other day if I can. But i don't mind being a little random.

Feelin the Groove

Casey was under the weather last week so I had the chance to teach class last wednesday and worked on breaking people down in guard and freeing your hips to maneuver.

Step one: From closed guard pick a side. Get a sleeve grip on that side and a collar grip in the other side.
Step two: On the sleeve grip side put your foot on the hip and push your hips up and escape them to that same side while driving your collar gripping elbow straight down to the mat and stiffarming your sleeve grip across and to the mat.

Step three: Kick your leg up from their hip across their back.

You now have them pinned down pretty well and you have a hand free to work with.

From there we went over setting up a single collar choke + sweep, setting up the Kimura, and setting up an armbar.

I spent some time talking about how being flat on your back with double wrist control is not a good way to progress in guard, even if you feel "safe" there. Everyone seemed to enjoy it and catch on really well and now one of my friends who had been having a lot of trouble with his hip movement in guard is nailing armbars left and right.

Friday we briefly worked on an arm-in guillotine escape, then we rolled for over an hour in a huge gauntlet. I got to work against our two huge purple belts and achieved a moral victory in briefly unbalancing one of them.

Sunday was no-gi and one of our ammy fighters is getting ready for a fight, so no mercy. I got all kinds of sneaky on him and was able to sweep him a few times and finish a triangle and my trademark bicep slicer on him. I also warned him that he needed to free his arm when people spin to armbars on him from guard and he stacks them, but he didn't listen and my buddy with the improved hip movement armbarred him from guard EXACTLY in the way I warned him about.

I was also able to defend against our purple belts very well and start launching attacks. I feel like I'm making a lot of progress right now in just feeling peoples weight and feeling how techniques flow together. I'm starting to understand why a lot of the purple belts over at Bullshido don't post much in the way of technique how-tos or discussions. I'm hitting a point where I'm just flowing instead of planning my path. I've become increasingly willing to give up "control" in order to let my opponent move to create openings for me. I'm no longer looking to impose my game on my opponent, but letting the game reveal itself as we go along. I find it harder to analyze my technique post class now though because I can't really say, "I set out to work through this roadmap, I was able to do so X times out of Y attempts. That is Z more times than last class." My goals are so much more amorphous now. I need to start video taping the rolling portion of class more often so I can see WTF I'm doing.

Arm triangles and whatnot

Today by popular request we worked on the arm triangle that Brock used to finish Carwin at the last UFC. The grip is slightly different than the normal one since it's designed to be used on people with retardedly large shoulders. Basic arm triangle setup, but you grip palm to palm instead of on your bicep, and you have to keep your head tight to trap the arm. Then it's just squeeze and walk towards the head.
After that we worked on a couple of other arm triangle variations including my favorite setup where you scoop the arm from north south dig under your opponents head and lock it down there.
Specific sparring was from bottom of side control, I swept everyone while on bottom, then subbed everyone while on top. Rolling with the lightweights is getting a little too easy. Even my boy Fausto who was giving me absolute FITS a few weeks ago was no match for me today. Though in his defense he's got some tweaked ribs slowing him down. I hope we do some gauntlets with the entire class again next time I do No-Go so I get some more time to work with the big guys.
Rolling my group was 4 lightweights, we did 1 3.5 min round, then switched partners and repeated, then rested for 1 round, then switched partners again and repeated. Again, complete dominance.
After that I rolled with Will, who is about 220lbs, naturally athletic, and very strong. I spent about 20 seconds under side control with the rest of the round being me dominating him. Including sub via Kimura. That makes me happy with my ability to deal with the bigger guys and gives me some insight into how much my new strength is helping me. He was still able to rip out of quite a few things, but over all it was MUCH easier to make my shit work and much harder for him to escape. He's got about 4-5 months of training, so enough to know what to look out for. That combined with his natural balance and strength has made him very difficult to deal with in the past. I was very happy with how I handled him today.

Did 4 sets of 1 w/ 173 today. The last one was after jits, which was ill advised. I almost dropped it on my face. Gonna try to get 8 successful ones in tomorrow. Then I might be going out of town again for a week. If that happens I'll stick to 173 as my workout lift for at least 3 more days before trying to put 187 up. If I'm able to lift all the way through the week then I'll try 187 after resting saturday and sunday.

Continuing Progress

Monday I hit 177lbs for a new personal best on the bench press. I then went out of town until Saturday for work. Upon my return I decided I felt strong and rested, so I put 183 on the bench, and I managed to put THAT up too. I've now gone up almost 50lbs on my max bench press since this time last year.
Today for the first time in about 6 months I started doing squats again. I put 120lbs (Edit: Just looked at my bar and I actually had 120lbs on it, not the 100lbs I originally thought) on my small bar and went for 3 sets of 10 Ass to Grass Front Squats. I definitely felt the workout. I'm going to stick to that every other day as much as possible until the end of september I think to give myself a strength baseline and put on some more muscle tissue, then I'll start upping the weight and dropping the reps. Probably go up 10lbs and down 2 reps per set every week until doing single reps at 90% of my 1rm multiple times per day and increase the weight every week.

I need to add in more grappling related cardio as well. Maybe some variation of fight gone bad with burpees, and pushpresses...

STRONG LIKE BULL!!

Ok, so been stupidly busy at work and training and what not, so I haven't updated here for a while.
Been working spider guard, leg hook guard, and the bicep slicer sweep all together, kind of mixing everything back in still. It's all coming together really well which is making me happy. Because my sweeps have been working so much better I've been able to work my top game. Really working knee on belly and staying mobile. Still fishing for the single collar choke ans my primary sub with armbar right behind it and then the omoplata. Americanas and Kimuras are getting mixed back in pretty regularly now.

The biggest development has been in my weight lifting. I started concentrating on bench press and building up my upper body strength, since then my max bench has gone up from 137lbs to 173lbs. I'm on point to be at 200lbs by the end of the year. I need to add squats back in to the mix though, my lower body is getting neglected.

I'll be skipping NAGA in July and possibly in October as well unless money rains from the sky or something because I'm getting MARRIED and need the moneys to pay for the honeymoon.

If that's the case the next NAGA I hit will be sometime in 2011....

I'm awesome again.

So, despite feeling like a I sucked a big one at the alliance tournament I'm feelin good about life again.
Bench press is about to creep over 170lbs and jits is going good.

I've been continuing to work my leg hook stuff, going for the leg hook sweep and comboing it with the bicep slicer and the slicer sweep. I also have been working elevator sweeps from butterfly and half butterfly as a means to help strengthen my top game. I've been trying to pattern my game after Cobrinha's with the same kind of top pressure he uses and so far it's working well against guys my size.
I still have some trouble against hyper athletic people when I can't slow them down and make them play my game, but it's not as big of a problem as it used to be and I'm still getting better at dealing with it.
I hope to put some good technique stuff in here later tonight after class.

In House Tournament suckage

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

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

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


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

Makes me feel great about the upcoming Alliance tournament.

Butterfly Guard to Spider Guard

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

Butterfly Guard to Spider Guard

Good days, bad days

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

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

More Comments on the Values of Tenacity

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

Welcoming Noobs

I'm not sure what the normal way to welcome Noobs to class is, but I've always felt that "jumping them in" was a good policy. I mean, who wants to go to a martial arts class and flail around like a spazzy noob and come away feeling "Well, that wasn't too bad, those guys didn't really smash me...". I mean, if that's the case why bother taking a martial art? Just lift weights and be a strong spazzy noob. It's even more important of the noob IS Strong and spazzy. If they come and you let them just smash away at you and they leave feeling like they won then they might not come back.

If instead of feeling like they won, or even feeling like they held their own, they get completely dominated for five minutes by someone they outweigh by 50lbs then obviously what they are there to learn WORKS and is worth while. Towards the end of class, or on their second class you can let them work on stuff, give them pointers, etc... But that first class should be a clear demonstration that they are completely helpless against a trained opponent.

So the next time you get a first day noob in the class do him a favor, jump him in.

Combos and Persistence

I was watching Cobrinha's DVDs again a couple of nights ago and noticed something that I had previously missed. He is VERY persistant. He has a specific technique in mind and he KEEPS WORKING it until he gets it. The specific thing that made me notice this was one match where he continually tries to pass his opponents sleeve off to the opposite hand to trap it, his opponent fights it, breaks the grip, fights it, etc... Cobrinha moves briefly to a different attack as if he's given up that idea, then as soon as the guy starts defending that attack its BAM right back to passing the sleeve off, which he gets this time, and right to the sweep that he's been working on for like 4 minutes. It was like everything that Cobrinha did was designed to further his application of that single technique until he hit it.
So taking that in mind I decided to try to maintain that same kind of mindset to go with my new increased commitment to individual techniques. Now I've dedicated myself to the single collar choke. So last night I was spending time trying to set that choke up. Sometimes one of my feints would work and I would get a sweep or another sub along the way, but the plan really came together rolling with super athletic dude Brian. I kept throwing triangles, armbars, and sweep attempts at him while I continually attacked his collar and worked for the grip, just before time ran out I finally got it and started to sink the choke on, unfortunately time ran out on us before I could finish it, but I definitely consider that a successful night.

So to elaborate on the whole idea, commit yourself to a single technique every once in a while at least. Pick one sub or one sweep and make that your entire focus for a night. See how you can use your other techniques to set that one up, see what places you can hit it from. Commit yourself entirely to that technique for just one night. Make it happen.

Don't Pull Guard You Noobs!

If you've seen any of my videos from competition you'll likely be wondering WTF I'm on about with the title of this post. I clearly pull guard about 90% of the time. Except that I don't.
When people say "Pull Guard" they generally imagine flopping onto their back with their legs spread like a five dollar hooker. That's not going to help you win anything. I recommend instead that people think of it as Establishing Guard.

Pulling Guard makes you think of a desperation, defensive technique. Something to avoid the takedown and hope you can do better eventually. That's a defeatest mindset and leads to people flopping to guard and then playing defensively. When you Establish Guard you are creating a position from which you can attack your opponent. You are getting your desire grips and foot placement and preparing to launch an assault that will lead to victory.

So don't Pull Guard, Establish Guard.

No Movement Without Purpose

In the midst of this whole mental shift that I've been undergoing in jits lately I stumbled upon a concept that that I'm sure I've been introduced to before, but just didn't internalize at the time. The idea of making sure that everything I do has a purpose. I had gotten to the point where I was throwing up sub attempts and sweep attempts incoherently just to be doing them. There was no real connected purpose to the techniques I was using.
With my recent slowing down and increased commitment to my attacks I've found that I just move less. I attempt a sub, latch onto it, and stick with it while I look for a second attack from that same position. I don't throw for a sub, fail, then abandon it and return to my guard. That would be movement without purpose.
To that end I'm continuing to shrink my library of techniques and refine them, choosing the ones with the strongest connections to each other and attempting to achieve excellence with those techniques. I want to win the blue belt and intermediate divisions at NAGA this time around and move up to Advanced/Purple belt with the goal of winning there and getting my purple belt by the end of next summer if not sooner. The only way to do that is to continue to refine my set of techniques and work on my fundamental posture and base.
To that end I'm still trying to get more mat time, but haven't had much luck extending it beyond an extra 30 minutes before a couple of classes each week.

Lifting update 4-12-2010

Did Bench and Squats tonight. Hit personal bests on both.
Did 157.5 for 2 reps on the bench and 197.5 ass to grass for 2 reps on the squats.
Warmup on the bench was 10 reps at 87.5, then a set of 4 at 137.5, then I did another set of 6 with 127.5 after I put up 157.5.
Squats I did a set of 10 ass to grass front squats with 87.5. Then went straight to 197.5. Then did a set of 6 with 147.5 afterwards.
I feel like I'm finally lifting some real weight. The goal now is to be putting up 157.5 for 3x3 on the bench and 197.5 for 3x3 on the squats. Whoot.

From Craptacular to Spectacular

So after that one crappy class I took a look at the way I was approaching rolling and decided to make some changes. My previous strategy took a big page from the school of "The best defense is a good offense" and I spent my time throwing constant submission and sweep attempts at my opponents to keep them from mounting a defense. That has worked fine for me as long as the level of competition I was working against couldn't capitalize on my failed attacks to pass my guard and punish me for them. That's no longer the case for most of the guys at the gym. We now have a solid crop of Blue Belts and a big handful of White Belts who will probably be promoted this year. So my sub attempts have been leaving me open to getting passed and they are now taking advantage of those openings. With this in mind I resolved to slow my game down a little and commit more to each attack.
That has worked great. I now spend a little more time setting up each attack, and about twice as much time working it before giving up and moving to something else. I've been able to re-establish dominance over a couple of whitebelts that were starting to catch me and I even managed to sweep and armbar my buddy Johnny (Who is a monster) for the first time in over a year. In addition everything has felt better and more secure. I don't feel rushed when I'm on top, I just relax and work, as long as I'm on top there's no hurry.
I still like to play an aggressive style, I've just relaxed it back a step to increase the success percentage of my attacks.

Class has been a lot of X-Guard stuff. I like X-Guard, but my biggest problem is establishing the X-Guard. I *know* a lot of ways to get to the X-Guard, but I haven't really been able to put them into practice yet. I plan on continuing to work on it though and hopefully be able to use it with confidence by June.

And next up, the move that I got Johnny with Friday I also hit Sunday, since I hit it Friday pretty much as a fluke I thought that since I got it again on Sunday there might be something to it, so I made a quick reference video of what I'm doing:


It's pretty easy, your opponent is passing your halfguard so to block him you reach out and grab his wrist, then swim your arm under his head and reach over the shoulder for a Kimura grip. Now you give up half guard and let them pass. Continue to put pressure on the Kimura trying the normal Kimura sweep from the bottom of side to force them to North/South. When they do that move your hips out and come up to your knees on the other side, again continuing to maintain pressure on the Kimura. Then just sit back and force them down into the armbar. I'm pretty sure there are some other options from here as well, I just haven't had a chance to explore the space yet.

Triangle Chokes and whatnot

So Last friday was a craptacular class for me. Nothing was working right, I was getting my ass kicked and didn't feel like I learned anything except that I'm weak. Sunday's class was a completely different story. It was No-Gi and we worked on armdrags to the bag and some butterfly sweeps. I need to be more authoritative with my armdrag grip and not worry so much about moving my opponent or even myself, just establish the grip and work for one of the many many many sweeps or attacks that you can do with it.
Rolling was fun, locked in a bunch of triangle chokes, including finishing one when I was stacked so far over that my knee was braced on my forehead. Also hit armbars, an RNC, a gogoplata, an anaconda choke, and several other triangles. It was a solid night for me.

I'm sore as HELL today as well, started a new training regime over the weekend and it is a killer. Hopefully I'll see my strength go up before the next NAGA.

Weightliftin, whoot.

Personal best on the bench.
117.5 x5
137.5 x1
137.5 x1
153.5 x1 (PB)
137.5 x3

I felt really good about that. Verra happy.
Deadlifts not so great, but I did pull 250.

Jits tomorrow, not sure what I'm gonna work on right now.

Cardio is BAAAAACK!

No-Gi last night was fantastic. My cardio was back 1000%. I never even felt winded the entire class.
We started up with our normal warmup, then drilled knee to elbow escapes from mount to half guard to guard, then scissor sweep, then the other person escapes, and so on. The technique portion of the class was on sweep counters and guard breaking. Started out with countering the scissor sweep by sitting back and down hard, then scooping under the top leg and grabbing the bottom, then pulling up on the opponents arm sprawling out, digging your head into their bottom rib and walking around their legs. Important detail is to keep shoulder pressure down really tight on their top leg to keep their hips immobile and stop them from spinning under you to regain guard.
Next we did can-opener and can-opener counters. People who can-opener me are annoying and deserve to be armbarred. So I practiced double armbar and regular armbar counters to the canopener as well as the comedy monkey flip option.
Finally was a counter to the gift wrap sweep. When your opponent scoops under your leg to load you up, you sit back hard and trap the arm. Next you feed your arm around the back of their head like you are going to try a guillotine, then you clasp your hands together and sort of roll sideways to put pressure on the neck. As neck cranks go I found it mildly unpleasant, but difficult for my opponent or me to finish since we were both flexible enough to brace our heads against our knees to help block some of the torque. Took a while to get the angle just right to make it work.

After that we rolled from full guard for a few rounds. I threw out a few heel hooks, but mostly tried to work on breaking guard and passing.

During live rolling I was grouped with Sean and Ankhor, Sean is huge, Ankhor is freakishly strong and flexible. I armbarred and triangled Sean a few times, Ankhor managed to fight off a super tight triangle. But for the most part I made both of them play defense the entire time with my continuous array of attacks. I'm still finding that the best defense is a good offense. I spent a lot of time coaching Sean and by the end of the night he was getting past our guards, though he wasn't really able to secure the position yet. He's making good progress though and I have high hopes for his performance at NAGA in July.

Definitely a great class, I felt great during and after. Tonight I'll be lifting weights, trying 270 for reps on the deadlift and gonna give 153.5 a shot on the bench press.