The BJJ Tree: Why you should stop being interested in Rubber Guard

Based on posts over on /r/bjj I had another discussion with a white belt about Rubber Guard and why he should or should not be playing it. As I normally do I recommended against it and suggested he concentrate on closed guard instead. Now, some people who are fans of the 10th Planet system might at this point start berating me as a closed minded hater, but that's not the case. I loves me some rubber guard and I enjoy playing it, but let's take a look at something real quick:

Take a look at that tree and think about it for a moment. Look at the what you are doing if you start out your journey concentrating on Rubber Guard. You've gone out on a single lone branch of the JiuJitsu tree with very few connecting branches. There is no transition from Rubber Guard to butterfly guard. There is no transition to X-Guard, there's not even an easy standup option from Rubber Guard. What you've done is locked yourself into a single, very small, branch of jiujitsu. The only way for you to transition to anywhere else is to move backwards along your tree back to Closed Guard and then move from there.

If you instead concentrate on the Trunk of the Jiujitsu guard game, Closed Guard, then you have multiple transitions to High Guard, to Open Guard and its variants, even to Half Guard, or the easy Technical Standup. If you choose to transition to Open Guard you have options that combo back and forth. Butterfly to Spider guard to Leg Lasso Guard and so on. You have more options available to react to your opponent.

In Rubber Guard you have a very small library of techniques available from each sub position. If your opponent is unfamiliar with those options then you can destroy them. You will have great success at white and blue belt, and maybe even some success at purple belt because your opponents will not have developed well enough to prevent you from reaching Rubber Guard yet. Then suddenly it will stop working. It will stop working because you have to successfully make two transitions to reach your preferred position. You have to establish high guard, and then convert to Rubber Guard.

If your Closed Guard isn't strong then you will never make the transition to high guard or rubber guard. You will be stuck trying to play in a less familiar setting every single time because you are far more likely to START in Closed Guard or Open Guard. If your opponent has spent their jiujitsu career working in and developing their Closed/Open guard game and passing, and you've spent yours developing your Rubber Guard game then you are going to be starting each match at an immediate disadvantage.

This does NOT mean that Rubber Guard is total crap and you should never use it. The same thing goes for Deep Half Guard, X-Guard, and any other guard position that is option limited. If you START your focus on that option limited position then you are handicapping yourself against people who have trained in a more option rich position which also happens to be a far more common position to be in.

So, begin your training in the most option rich positions and slowly specialize. Work the Closed Guard first, then Open Guard, then Half Guard, then High Guard. Develop your transitions and then once you have that fundamental framework of technique built up you can start working on your Rubber Guard or your X-Guard or your DLR guard.

To Exhaustion, And Beyond!

Seriously, exhaustion. I got about 4.5 hours of sleep Sunday night, woke up at 4:30 am to head into work, then got to the gym at about 6:45. Consequently by the time we were done drilling escapes from turtle I was already about to collapse.

So of course I rolled for an hour. It was the no-gi class too, so we had our wrestling guys in there. One of them just took 6th in some national tournament at 160 or 165. The other is my size, maybe even a hair smaller and also has some good tournament results though I can't recall the details. Even when I'm not tired both of those guys run me ragged, and the 160 guy also won the no-gi pan ams a year or two ago as a purple belt. So his jiujitsu is also amazing.

By the end of the night everything is just a blur. I actually only remember one or two fuzzy details. I remember getting choked once and getting kimuraed once, and maybe armbarring someone somewhere amidst that. But I couldn't tell you who was responsible for any of it. Definitely the most tired I've ever been.

So, training again on Wednesday!

In more good news, the two aforementioned wrestlers are starting an official wrestling class on Saturdays after open mats, so I'm going to try to start making it to a couple of those every month to improve my wrestling.

Also, my buddy Mark leaves to head out to the Pan Ams today, so best of luck to him! I'll probably be buying the Budovideos stream for his day so I can try to watch him compete. If you're interested it's only 10$ per day or I think 40$ for a 5 day pass to watch.

The Importance of Productive Gripping (With Bonus Homework!)

For the first time in over two years I got to train three nights in a row. I feel like I was run over by a bus and it's awesome.

Tonight was a very productive and grip heavy night and also saw me employ deep half guard sweeps with great success. During all of my rolls I was paying particular attention to my grips and my opponents grips and I started trying to determine which of my grips was just gripping for the sake of grabbing something, and which ones were actually productive. It was easy to tell which grips that my opponent had were useful and which were just keeping their arm occupied while I worked. It was less simple to figure that out about my own grips. For the most part it seemed that when I established a grip I had a plan, but many times I found myself gripping purely as a pre-emptive defense.

I often established a grip solely for the purpose of denying my opponent an action without any connection to where I wanted to direct the roll. This was most common when I was rolling with bigger guys. I then got to thinking about who provides good examples of consistently productive gripping and both Cobrinha and Rafe Mendes came to mind. Luckily they have run into each other on a dozen or so occasions and one of their best matches is from the 2012 mundials.

This video in just the first MINUTE has some incredible offensive and defensive grip work that is 100% productive. You never see either of these guys just grab something and hang on because they can't think of anything else to do. Each grip they take has a specific purpose.
I think my grip work is still too inconsistent to be overly worried about efficiency yet, but as I continue improving it my goal is to approach this kind of grip efficiency over time.


BONUS HOMEWORK:
It's been a while since I posted a homework (or posted in general), but this is a good one. Your homework is to spend at least one roll this week counting the times that you take a grip and then don't use it to attempt a sweep or a submission. It will be difficult to concentrate on counting grips while rolling, but that's why it's only one roll. Think about how much effort and strength you are burning clinging to your opponents Gi without any clear plan in mind and work on reducing your non-productive gripping to the bare minimum.

Remember, Get your grips then move your hips! The first part doesn't work without the second!

Pan Am Prep!

No, I'm not going to the Pan Ams. But a friend of mine who trains out of Hardcore Gym IS going, and wanted to get in some extra Gi work so I offered myself up to be his training dummy for an evening. Definitely some of the most fun rolling I've had in a while. We're exactly the same size and he's actually MORE flexible than I am which is a rarity.

We spent over an hour rolling and troubleshooting little Gi specific things that he doesn't get as much exposure to because he trains about 90% no-gi. I was happily able to show him at least a handful of little things that should keep him from falling prey to most pajama grabbing tomfoolery. I was also able to use this time to look for things that I was doing that I needed to tighten up including working on my inside control, grip breaking, grip control, and guard passing.

I'll be watching the Pans on Budovideos trying to catch his match and hoping he medals.

Grip Work and Pain

Coming back to the mats after a few weeks off is always painful, add to that the fact that I get up at 4:30am every morning for work and I am definitely feeling it this morning despite taking it kind of easy last night. But, it was still a great night at class.

Started out with takedowns from the over/under. Warmed up with pummeling, then a nice combo from a single leg attempt into a greco roman style upper body throw. I felt pretty good with this takedown and its probably one I would actually use.

Second one was a different single leg setup involving dropping to one knee that just didn't flow right for me.

Third was a power shrug+duck under to the back.

And finally was an outside trip to hip throw combo that I also really liked and would probably use. I need to put a couple of these together into a 3-4 move sequence and drill it a bunch though.

After that we hit the ground and I continued working on my framing and winning the grip battle. I recently re-read some advice that Jack from JiuJitsuForums.com gave me about controlling the inside and worked to implement that along with my focus on keeping my frames built and winning the grip fighting battle.

I was very successful in implementing my grips against everyone except Johnny, and even there I am seeing significant improvements with breaking his grips and slowing down his guard passing. Once he DOES manage to get a secure grip though he's still mostly blasting past my guard. I had some small success in slowing him down, but not much. So that's still something to work on.

Today I'm doing some Gi training with a buddy to help him get ready for the Pan Ams, and then I'm training again Friday. This will be the most training I've done in one week in forever.

Tournament Footage Review

Greetings my jiujitsu brethren! I've been out of the picture and out of training for a while now due to changing jobs and general personal chaos and I've taken the time to review a lot of my video footage from last year. In addition to my weakness against deep halfguard sweeps I noticed a couple of key weaknesses.

I am guilty of one of the key white belt errors that I talked about two years ago. In competitions I will frequently reach for head control when I should instead be attacking much closer to the hips and legs in order to begin passing guard.

A second thing I've noticed is that my movements around my opponent aren't as fluid as I want them to be. I feel jerky during my movements and I need to flow better from position to position.

And finally, underhooks. I'm REALLY REALLY BAD about giving up underhooks and not fighting to regain them.

So, now that my new job has settled I should be training again starting this wednesday and I plan to address all of these things. I probably won't be back in competition until late this year, or maybe even next year, but I plan to work hard and close al ot of holes in my game before then.

Review: 93 Brand Made in America Ranked Rashguard

The guys over at BJJHQ.com were kind enough to toss me one of these pimpin' 93 Brand rashguards to take a look at and I took it for a spin over the weekend.

The first thing I noticed was that the purple color was paler than I expected. It was almost a pastel purple instead of the brighter purple I was expecting. That's going to come down to a personal preference thing, I don't mind the paler colors and the overall effect is good, but if you are looking for a vibrant purple rank rashguard then you'll probably want to skip over this one for something with a little more pop.

If color isn't your primary concern though there's a lot to love about this thing. The construction is REALLY sturdy. There are super heavy duty seams on it, which at first I thought would be irritating, but became un-noticeable the second I put it on, and the fabric is much sturdier than my regular under armor rashguards without being as hot as my heavy duty rashguard. It breathed well, kept the sweat off of me, and was nice and cool.
There is one small item about the workmanship, there was a bundle of loose threads still on one seam where the seam had been completed but not trimmed. I snipped them off with some scissors before I put it on and didn't have any trouble with it, but it is something that they should probably do in manufacturing.

You can see the threads there, but you can also see how heavy the stitching is. Very very sturdy.

The fit was excellent. I got a small, of course, and it was nice and snug as I expected, but it also was long enough everywhere, which I sometimes have problems with because of my slightly odd torso dimensions. The best thing about it was that it's the first rashguard I've had that didn't ride up, at all. I pulled it down and tucked it under my shorts like I always do and expected to have to stop and retuck it after every couple of rolls, but it never budged. It stayed below my waist the entire session.

Now, there are some additional claims that I can't really verify yet, but this thing is supposedly made of a fabric that is anti-bacterial, AND anti-odor. I'll have to revisit this review in a few months and update on the status of the rashguards odor after several months of normal wear.

This is honestly the only rashguard I've ever put on that I feel like is worth the 60$ they are asking for it. My next most expensive rashguard that I own is my heavy duty winter rashguard that I paid 35$ for and the fabric on the 93 is definitely far higher quality.

I definitely give this a 9 out of 10. I would give it a full 10 if the purple were a little more vibrant and a little less easter candy, but the workmanship and fit are outstanding.

USG Grapplemania 2012 Writeup

This writeup is a little bit late because of my hectic schedule since the return, but here it is at last.

We left out friday morning and cruised up to Henderson, NC. The drive wasn't bad and we arrived at the venue in plenty of time to weigh-in. I hit 149 fully dressed, though I did have to empty my pockets and take off my sweater. There was a middle school basketball game going on in the gym so we went out to dinner with the USG crew before returning to roll out the mats and setup tables and stuff.

The next morning we arrived at around 10:15 and I got changed, then we had a 10:45 rules meeting and I was once again on the mats by 11. I was the first match of the day with Richard and that kicked things off.

Once again his deep halfguard game proved to be too much for me and he was able to consistently prevent me from scoring by maintaining the quarter guard and keeping my foot trapped until he was able to sweep.

My second no-gi match was against his team-mate German who ALSO has a wicked halfguard game, even MORE wicked. He was able to take my back and lock on a choke with my arm trapped, but I had to tap to the straight armlock from having my arm trapped so tightly before the choke was even finished. The kid is just wicked. He went on to win a bunch of medals, including the purple belt absolute division. Richard didn't hit the button on my camera, so I didn't get the match with German on film, but he whooped me good.

After that I had no more no-gi matches so I went to work a table for a couple of hours, then it was on to the Gi matches.

These are in no particular order. I THINK that they are in the order that they happened, but I'm not entirely sure.

This is Richard AGAIN with his halfguard and AGAIN I am unable to free my foot on several occasions when I could have taken over the match and won. We are fairly evenly matched in every position except halfguard where he enjoys a distinct advantage and is able to keep the matches there consistently. He outpoints me again in this one.

Watch him do it again. He's incredibly good at getting that underhook and immediately getting up onto his side, something that I struggle with from the same positions. Again he outpoints me.

This match is me up against Bagels who is hilarious and a blast to hang out with, but is also a complete monster to roll against. Stylistically I match up better against him than Richard or German just because he's a lot more dynamic which gives me more openings and chances to generate options. We ended up in 50/50 guard and I was actually up on advantages when he got that second ankle lock and was able to crank it down. His footlocks are extremely nasty. You'll notice that we seem to be having random discussions during the match, not sure if you can hear them but he tried to armbar me out of the 50/50 and I made fun of him for watching Keenen Cornelius youtube videos, then we were both trying to go for the same 50/50 counter which we found out later is illegal because it counts as a 'cloverleaf' attack and not a straight ankle lock.
All in all this was the most fun roll I had of the day and I look forward to going up against Bagels again in the future.

This guy was kind of big. I tried to pull a sweep and it didn't work, after which I got smooshed until he could lock on the Kimura for the finish.

This is me up against German in the Gi. Dude is SLICK. He got on top off of an opportunity generated by a berimbolo attempt and then setup a really smoothly executed collar choke. He went on to defeat Bagels in the Purple Belt absolute division.

Another match with Richard, at this point I was doing slightly stupid things trying to get past his deep half and he capitalized and finished me via kimura. No fun.

I think this match was actually before the match with Bagels. I'm really disappointed in myself when I watch this one. It's probably the only match that I look at and think 'WTF was I doing?!'. I seriously look like a whitebelt with my headhugging from halfguard bottom. I was sure I was going to be able to come out the back against the choke he had on me, then I adjusted slightly and started to tunnel so I had to tap.

So that's 9 matches, 9 losses. Not my finest tournament, but I acquired about 30 minutes of solid footage of my halfguard top and bottom game for me to analyze and work on which is what I'm currently doing. I really need to establish a stronger game plan from halfguard because I don't really have one now. I don't like deep half because I get kimuraed to hell and back almost every time I try to play it in the gym, but I'm going to revisit it with some tips I picked up watching Richard play it and see how it works out for me. Hopefully by March I'll have a halfguard game worthy of my belt rank to bust out at Wake Forest.

The tournament was completed and the places was cleaned up and the the truck loaded by about 6 pm. Once again everything ran incredibly smoothly. There were a handful of injuries (One nasty looking knee injury that turned out to be ok in the end) but nothing major. The rings ran smoothly, the officiating was great, and everyone was friendly as usual.

There was one strange incident where a guy got double-legged, cried out in pain and curled up on the mat like he had broken a rib or something, then when the medic went over to the ring he suddenly popped up like nothing happened and continued the match. No idea what that was about. Next up is Wake Forest on March 2nd.

Rigan Machado Counter to the 50/50 Guard

I shot a video for this solely because I find it impossible to continue to refer to this technique as 'that fifty fifty counter from Rigan's book, I think it's move 16, anyways, that one' when trying to tell people about it. You can actually see it as move #16 and move #20 in his book Encyclopedia of Leglocks. The technique he shows isn't PRECISELY against the 50/50, because no one used it when he made the book. But it works exactly the same with your leg threaded through and triangled as it does in his demonstration. However, here is a brief video showing how it works. As usual feedback is welcome. This is NOT a detailed how-to guide for the technique. Remember this is just a reference video to give you the basic idea.

As usual commentary is welcome.

The Training Roller Coaster

Normally a title like that would suggest that I'm going to talk about the ups and downs of training and how some days you are doing great and other days you feel like a noob again, but I'm not. This is about the rush of being on top of your game. I had another great class last night, we had the No-Gi Pan Am gold medalist and his brother who is also an incredibly skilled purple belt training with us again. It was no-gi which is what they both specialize in so they mauled me an unholy amount, but I'm already improving thanks to working against them.

In every roll that was not with them I was flowing well, chaining my techniques together, and executing submissions with a much higher frequency that I have been the last year or so. My game has definitely bumped up a couple of steps and I'm hoping to carry that into Grapplemania on the 8th of December and come out with a good performance. In the mean time, I'm going to be back to training 3-4 days a week instead of the 1-2 I've been doing. I expect that to help a lot, and I'm going to see if I can get back to lifting weights after the 8th to try and build up my strength again.

Psychological Submission Defense

I had another great 'I am a purple belt!' class today. I was hitting combos and flowing well and sweeping and really felt like I had broken through to the next step. The difference between this class and the last one where I felt that was that this time I got a much clearer mental picture of how to reproduce those results. I expect to have more ups and downs, but I think I'm solidly on the UP path, and watching some brown belt tournament competition is starting to help me see the places I can bridge from where I am to where they are. But enough about that, on to the good stuff!

During the technique portion of class we were working on a nice fundamental Kimura from halfguard top and using it to set up the guard pass, or finish it there. I was drilling it with one of our whitebelts and towards the end of drilling as I was increasing resistance some I started stiffening my arm and moving it through the kimura/straight armlock/americana combo positions.  I then explained the combo and told him not to give up once he had my arm isolated because no matter what I did, until I get my elbow back inside I would never really be better off. I talked about how some people will defend up and down through those three submission positions hoping to frustrate their opponent enough to move to something else where there might be a better chance of escape. I emphasized NOT to give up that position or let them get their arm back just because they broke out of the first submission.

Fast forward to one of the last rolls of the day. I'm rolling with that same whitebelt and, as is my custom, I let him work his way to halfguard top where I fight for the underhook, giving him the setup from the technique portion of class. He takes it, and starts working the kimura on me. I defend, stiff arming and floating my arm around until suddenly I pop his hand off of my wrist and I hear that sweet sweet, 'Dangit' that tells me I'm not going to get subbed. He gave up. I had defeated him. At that point he sort of half heartedly went for the kimura again but he had no commitment behind it because in his mind I had already escape. Sure enough a few seconds later he shifts around and moves to a different position and I pop my hips and escape back to guard, hip out, grab a collar and choke him.

I then pointed out that he had just done exactly what we talked about earlier. He HAD me. He had the kimura solidly established. Just because I popped that one hand off didn't mean anything. My position wasn't improved AT ALL. All he had to do was grab my wrist and lock it up again and he could have continued to work it without any interruption, but he allowed me to beat him mentally and so he gave up a dominant position with a submission 3/4 of the way completed.

When you are in a position where you can work to finish your opponent, and they manage to block the submission, but not improve their position you can not let yourself get frustrated. They haven't done anything except delay the inevitable. Continue to attack and attack and attack without giving them any leeway to escape. Don't give up just because you're having a hard time finishing.

Oh, one more excellent thing from class. I normally don't finish a lot of armbars. I'm lazy about them and tend to just transition to somewhere else after I use them to sweep or something. Tonight I hit two from places I've been thinking about, but haven't really taken advantage of. One was off of a pendulum sweep. I swept, and immediately transitioned into the armbar in one nice smooth motion. And the other was a nearside armbar from side control/knee on belly where I gathered the arm up with my leg and trapped it across the chest and just extended it there. I'm very happy with both of the transitions I used on those.

Preventing the Bullfighter Pass

This is actually going to be about dealing with any pass that involves your opponent getting grips on your pants. These are super basic things and won't work in all situations, but will give you an overview of the ideas involved and it's a good place to start looking at defending against standing passes. It's absolutely white belt or new blue material, and it's not exactly an in depth look at each thing. But it should make a nice reference video. I grabbed my favorite rolling partner, Kris, because he uses this shit on me ALL THE TIME. If I stop paying attention for half a second he's got a double fistfull of my pants and is running around my to knee on belly. He's great at the pass and using it to setup other passes. Anyways, watch the video, then flame me for being a noob, whatev.

Ok, so now from that underhook you can take the option of scooping the leg for a single leg, from the grip break you can keep the cross grip on the sleeve and drop down for a sickle sweep, and if you establish your sleeve grips first you can hit an overhead sweep for bonus style points. Plenty of options, but the most important thing is thing is to be sitting up and paying attention.

Moving on, we had a new Purple Belt in class today, a fellow named Hector who just moved here from Texas. He's a Royce Gracie lineage guy and you can tell from the very deliberate progressive pressure game he plays on top. We had some fun rolls since he's just a little heavier than me and a little better. Makes for a good time because I CAN catch him if I do things right, and there are things in my game he's not used to, but  there are also things in HIS game I'm not used to and he capitalizes on every mistake I make very smoothly. This is exactly the kind of rolling partner I've been hoping for because he's enough better than I am to punish me mistakes and beat up on me good, but not enough better that I can't see the bridge between where I am and where he is. I'm looking forward to working more with him, he's signing up with us tomorrow for good.

We worked reverse scissor sweep combos for a while in class, then rolled a bunch. I was rolling pretty relaxed because I'm still in post tournament chill mode. Next week I'll probably start ratcheting up the intensity a little bit.

I also started running again, 2.33 miles in 24 minutes. The goal is 3 miles in 24 minutes, then we'll see where it goes from there.

US Grappling - VA Beach - Full Writeup

The drive up to VA Beach was about nine and a half hours, most of which the Jennosaurus drove for me because she's awesome. We arrived around 7:45 at the venue and I weighed in real quick just to make it official, fully dressed, with my phone and wallet in my pockets I tipped the scales at a whopping 147. My actual weight the morning of the competition was 142. 

We arrived at the venue Saturday morning at about 9:45 am. I had plenty of time to warmup and stretch before the rules meeting, and by 11:30 I was on the mats and grappling.

I only had one no-gi match. He pulled guard on me and had a very tight halfguard, I was able to secure a guillotine with the marcello grip, but couldn't finish it. I let it go to try to work something else and he popped to my back and secured the choke. Afterwards I found out the guillotine was closer than I thought. I should have kept the guillotine, changed to a power guillotine grip and used it to force the guard pass or play for a more patient finish. Once again my impatience betrayed me.

I jumped over to work a table for a couple of hours until the Gi divisions started, as usual the tables were running smooth as silk with matches constantly running on at least 5 rings out of the 6.

This match again my opponent pulled guard on me, which is starting to become a common thing since I rarely pull guard anymore, but still surprises me. I was able to to cut to halfguard and this time he took the bait and stood up, allowing me to land a serviceable tomoe nage for the points. Unfortunately I screwed up and he managed to get my arm isolated and finish me with a nice straight armlock.

This was against the same guy as my No-Gi match and this time I was able to enforce my top game a little better by using the Gi to control him. I was able to get to his back and secure the collar for a Bow and Arrow choke.

Yup, same guy again, this one was our absolute division I think and it ended up being just us for some reason. He was pretty tired by this time. I pulled guard on him this time, just for kicks, and then we messed around a bit. I hit a sloppy berimbolo and got to mount. I beat him on points here. He went on to do like 5 more matches or something like that in other divisions.

I ended up with a Gold, a Silver, and a Bronze for my efforts, which I'm happy with. Mostly I'm happy that I'm solidly competitive as a purple belt. I could have easily ended up winning both of the matches I lost had I been a little bit smarter about them, so I wasn't outclassed completely or anything, I just wasn't the better man that time, in that match.

As usual the tournament itself was run incredibly smoothly and the last match finished up right around 6 pm. We had the entire venue broken down and packed up in time to head back to the hotel, shower, change, and meet for dinner at 8.

Now I have a few new things to work on, specifically my halfguard top game, and guillotines. Both of my opponents were able to just keep me in halfguard even once I had a position where I normally am able to complete the pass. So plenty to work on from this competition. I did meet my goal of not pulling guard except for my last match where I could have stayed up and let him pull guard, but I wanted to work from the bottom, so I pulled guard first. I hit my tomoe nage, which was a goal, and I felt really good in general. I still don't feel like I'm smooth enough though, so there's that to work on. But a good tournament and a good time.

Oh yeah, and we had to outrun a hurricane heading home. The wind and rain were INSANE.

BJJ Shopping List

My small handful of regular readers might notice that over to the right there is now a JiuJitsu Shopping list box. You might be wondering what the heck that stuff is and why you should buy it, so I will explain.
Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps Pure-Castile Soap, 18-in-1 Hemp Tea Tree, 32-Ounce
This is a tea tree oil soap which naturally fights fungal infections like ringworm and athletes foot. I find it to be very easy on my skin, pleasant smelling, and effective. A 16oz bottle is about a months supply.
Olympia Kinesiology Tape
There is nothing better for wrapping an injured finger or toe or ankle or knee than this stuff. It adheres to itself, but it isn't sticky. It breathes well, and it stays in place well. A roll or two a month is usually plenty.
Tinactin Super Absorbent Antifungal Powde
Another antifungal, this one is a powder that I shake into my gym bag before I pack my gear into it. It keeps my bag from becoming a possible infection source. The powder also sticks to my rashguard and my Gi to help fight the proliferation of ringworm on the mats. I go through a small bottle per month, more or less.
Village Naturals Therapy Foaming Bath Oil, Aches & Pains, 16 oz.
This stuff is just heavenly. I mix a couple of capfuls in with a handful of Epson salts and take a hot soak after a particularly heavy class and it will flat out melt the ache out of your muscles. A 16oz bottle is only good for about 2 weeks for me, but that's because I'm a hedonist.
Epsom Salt 2Lb (907g)
To be mixed with the above Foaming Bath Oil for maximum muscle soothing. Cheap and effective. 2lbs is about a month worth.

Watching The Class: Who, How, and What?

As with most of my best content this was inspired by a conversation and a question from Julia over at JiuJiuBJJ regarding who I felt was the best combination of rolling partners to observe out of these options:

Watching sparring question:Here were the sets of people sparring:
-purple and black (my instructor)
-new white + 2 stripe blue
-4 stripe blue + 1 stripe white
-blue and purple

And because of the way my brain works, that spawned a massive wall of text well beyond the scope of the original question, so here is that wall of text and for the more concise article with perspectives from Black and Brown belts as well head over to JiuJiuBJJ and take a look at her article as well.

When I was a white belt I watched other people roll with a sense of wonder and confusion. Mostly my thoughts were dedicated to wondering what the heck was going on midst the sea of tangled limbs on the mat. People would tap for apparently no reason, and other people wouldn't tap to things I was certain were going to disconnect limbs from torsos. I had no idea what I was watching.
As I gained experience the tangle sorted itself out slowly until I could distinguish discrete sequences and individual techniques from the chaos. By the time I was an experienced white belt I was watching the blue belts to try to figure out what they were doing so that I could emulate it. That theme continued when I got my own blue belt and I started watching the purple belts to absorb tips from them. Now as a purple belt I watch brown and black belts and try to figure out what they are doing that is different from what I' m doing. But, I realized no one ever told me HOW to watch other people rolling, or even who to pay attention to.
As a white belt should I be watching white belts rolling against blue belts and examining how the white belts and the blue belts interacted or would I benefit more from watching two black belts rolling? Or a purple belt and a white belt? I had no idea. I just watched the blue belts because that was the next belt. The one I wanted to get to. What was I even watching for? Again I had no idea. I kept track of what techniques the blues used, but they were all the same techniques I already knew performed at a higher level. I wasn't really getting the most out of my observations because I had never really talked to anyone with experience about what I should be looking at.
Now as a purple belt with almost six years of training under my belt (Check that out, 100% appropriate use of that phrase.) I have a much better idea of who to watch, how to watch them, and what to look for.

Who: My preferred observation subjects are brown belts and purple belts my size rolling with each other. Just as I did when I was a white belt (I had the right idea!) I can watch the more experienced person work against someone of my own rank and see how they counter techniques, how they attack, how they defend, and so on. To generalize this I believe you are always best off watching someone of the rank just above yours roll with someone of your rank. You can extract the most knowledge from those rolls because the level of execution behind the techniques will be closer to your own and so more accessible and understandable. Watching a black belt perform a basic scissor sweep as a white belt just doesn't let you extract that much information because the technique is so smooth that you actually can't see many of the steps involved.

How: How do you watch two people rolling in a way that lets you extract information? You can't watch them the way you would watch a competitive match for entertainment. You want to choose a specific area and concentrate on that area. Watch how a blue belt plays guard against another white belt, or how a purple belt uses grips against another blue belt. Stay focused on one area.

What: And of course, WHAT do you watch for? Well, when you're watching a single area you want to look for subtle differences between the higher ranking persons technique and your own. If you see a purple belt scissor sweep a blue belt effortlessly, and it's a blue belt you can never manage to sweep then you watch for the small details. Look for foot placement, hand placement, hip location in relation to the opponent. You don't care about the macro level, what technique was used, you care about the micro level, what minuscule detail separates that higher ranking persons technique from your own.

Whenever possible try to get some video footage of those higher ranking people rolling with you as well. That can really give you insight into the technique in a way that other observations can't. And it lets you direct the roll in ways that you are most interested in. REALLY want to get detail on that scissor sweep? Put yourself in a position to be swept and fight it to see what happens, then you can review it on video later. When you review your own video you have a much better sense of where your weight was, or how you were balanced when something happens. You know what grips you had or didn't have in a much deeper way than when you are watching someone else.
Observation can be a powerful tool in accelerating your jiujitsu progress and you should make use of it whenever possible. Especially when injured or doing times when you can't train, but can review video. You will also come to class more focused and with a better idea of how to guide your training which just makes everything easier mentally.

Finally Feeling Like a Purple Belt

So it's been just over a year since I got my purple belt and last night I finally FELT like a purple belt. My control of my opponents was solid, I was transitioning smoothly between pass attempts, and I was applying so much top pressure that I actually forced one of our blue belts to tap from forearm pressure across his face while I was working to free his arm for a kimura. I wasn't trying to crush his face, I was just well positioned.

I was also able to completely shut down one of my favorite blue belt training partners who usually gives me a serious run for me money. Everything just clicked in my head and a detail that I've known intellectually for a long time finally manifested physically for me. Specifically while I was watching some of the Metamoris matches I noticed how much focus there was on controlling peoples legs in various positions, it's something I've of course known for years and have thought about before, but something about watching it in that format made it click. I was constantly controlling the legs all night and making it impossible for my opponents to stop me from imposing my will.

I think I've finally settled in to being a purple belt now, give me another year and I'll be all antsy for my brown!

Interesting Takedowns

Last was Takedown practice, we worked on breaking grips and moving to the Russian grip and then attacks from there. Some of it felt natural and kind of fit for me, some of it just was awkward. I had the most successful round of takedown practice ever, I managed to score takedowns against every opponent for over half an hour without getting taken down at all myself. The unfortunate part is that they were all counter takedowns, or guard pull/tomoe nage style takedowns. At one point I actually pulled guard to a sickle sweep as a takedown. Most of the rest were just countering other peoples grips or takedowns and ending up on top.I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not, I need to be more proactive about seeking takedowns that aren't predicated on pulling guard or some derivation thereof.


I keep meaning to do some more video, but everything is so busy that I just haven't had time. I also have some other ideas kicking around in my head that I probably won't get down on paper until after US Grappling on the 27th. Which I just remembered I need to pre-register for...

Recovering my Flow

Last night felt great.

I was flowing well, executing my passes, defending well, executing submissions, and generally feeling very much back in my groove. I even finished a guillotine after setting it up during a halfguard pass in the exact fashion that Sergio kept doing to me on monday in No-Gi. Had my combinations flowing and just had a great night.

It was takedown night too, Johnny is getting a lot more focused with his teaching style, he doesn't wander off on tangents any more which means instead of showing us like 50 variations of one move we're working like 3-5 variations which is a LOT easier for me to work with. I like a focused, deep approach to a small number of techniques. We worked on takedowns off of the overhook and I found out that my firemans carry from that position is pretty tight. I just have trouble getting to that position.

We did some work from standing and I hit a couple of takedowns, and failed a couple too, but I'm definitely improving steadily from standing.

Berimbolo is improving. I hit it on one of our more experienced white belts.

And that's about that. I'm definitely getting back into things.

Rollin' with a Pan Am Champ

So one of the guys that trains with us on no-gi days is a purple belt from the ATT gym in Atlanta, he went up to compete in the No-Gi Pan Ams last week and took gold in his division.

That's him in the middle with the gold medal.

I haven't been to the no-gi class in a couple of months, so it's been a while since the last time I rolled with him. I made it back up to the No-Gi last night and got to roll for probably 30 minutes with him broken up into a few different rounds. The amount of mauling involved was just preposterous. I did manage to force him to use a couple of different guard passes beyond his normal knee-cut, which I consider a victory, but for the most part he was just sliding through my guard and straight into a guillotine from pretty much any angle. I'm looking forward to getting to more of the No-Gi classes in the future and using him to really help sharpen my own game up, but it's great to have guys of this caliber in the gym with us now. It brings the whole gym up.


I had forgotten how slipper no-gi was, and with some rain and humidity the gym was a swimming pool after about the first 20 minutes. I did catch a rather spectacular armbar on one of the newer wrestlers who sometimes is too explosive for his own good. He tried to cartwheel through my guard and I rolled through and snagged his arm as he did it. Definitely one of the smoother catches I've had recently. Unfortunately this guy learns so quickly that I'll probably never hit it on him again.

All in all it was an excellent night of training, and I'm happy to be all set to train three days this week and three days next week leading up to US Grappling on the 27th. I might even be in shape by then... a little...

US Grappling - Virginia Beach - Oct 27

I'll be competing again coming up on the 27th of October at US Grappling in Virginia beach. I may also be refereeing (To be confirmed with the USG folks) and that means I'll be ramping my training up a little bit in an attempt to not be a lazy git when I arrive at competition.

To that end I've been working on 50/50 and Berimbolo offense and defense as well as my normal loop choke offense and my sweep game. I'm also sharpening up my omoplatas again. I'm pretty relaxed with my goals right now, it's all about sharpening my combinations and just pushing my game up to the next level so I'm not particularly concerned with placing in competition right now I just want to test the stuff I've been working on. I'm hoping I'll actually have a weightclass this time around. If I'm lucky I'll be able to do my weightclass in adult and masters gi and no-gi and skip out on being smashed by people in absolute this time. I get plenty of work against people 80lbs heavier than I am in training.

I've got a couple of more interesting and informative posts in the works for this week, as well as possibly a video or two. We'll see how it works out.