We'll call it a draw...

The above is a picture of my car post confrontation with a 6 point buck in the middle of I20 at 1am. So I've missed a little bit of training time.

I came through it mostly ok, but the car is totaled.

I won't be back training Jiujitsu until after thanksgiving, but I was able to get in the gym tonight to do some prehab-rehab.

I did half an hour on an elliptical, then 3 sets of 10 with 65 lbs on the bench, and 1 set of 10 with 45 lbs along with 3 sets of 10 squats with 115 lbs. Just enough to assess all of my limbs and make sure everything still worked properly.

Followed that up with a 20 minute massage and now I feel like life is pretty good. I'm still going to be competing at the New Breed tournament Dec 6th no matter what.

Leglocks are fun!

Missed the rest of last week training due to work project and being kind of sick. Back on the mats this morning though.

Chris and some of the other guys were out in Cali for Worlds Masters, so they weren't back yet which left a small gaggle of us hanging out at the beginning of no-gi november. We were chatting about random stuff and somehow leglocks came up, so I ended up teaching an entry to the saddle (inside leg triangle) and knee bar and heel hook attacks from there, then basic heel hook defense, and then the specific defense against the saddle position.

We drilled that stuff for a while and then rolled gauntlets for like 45 minutes or an hour. I got to roll for like 20-25 minutes with a purple belt who is slightly bigger than I am, and slightly better, which was a lot of fun. We would go back and forth positionally a bunch and then eventually he would catch me with something that he was just slightly better at doing than I thought he would be, including a really smooth transition to an armbar from the back, and a really nice reversal from side control.

This is the first time in a while I've rolled without having done a bunch of conditioning beforehand, and it felt really good. I was able to put together a lot of stuff against some of the bigger guys and I really felt good about all of my jiujitsu. Most problematic rolling partner is still a very energetic and athletic multi-stripe blue belt. He's really really really good at 2-3 things, and pretty good at everything else, so he can frequently get 90% past my guard with a leg drag, and then I have to fight to reset to guard, then we do it all again. And he has great pressure, and great base, so he's very difficult to sweep. He's an awesome partner to train against because of the good mix of intensity and skill.

Putting in the hours

I'm doing well keeping my class time consistent, that's probably the biggest single factor I need to concentrate on.

Chris was running a bit late this morning, so I grabbed a white belt and we did some relaxed rolling to warm up. Once Chris arrived we jumped right to Knee on Belly flow drills.

Pass to side control, block the hip and pop to KoB, hook the far arm and walk it up, go to mount, partner shrimps, you go to tech mount, they push your leg over the head, you breakdance to side control, they turtle and roll through back to guard, repeat.

We did 5 minutes apiece on that drill, then went to KoB techniques.

Thumb in grip under the back of the head, pop up to KoB, palm up grip on the collar, knee slide down on the bicep and step around for the baseball bat choke.

Second one was KoB gets blocked, so you reach back to the hip, use your body to push the knee down, step unto the pocket, free your hand and walk their arm up while driving the knee over to take mount, then trap the arm and complete the straight armlock.

We worked each of those for 5 minutes, then started conditioning.

Final countdown of shoot under, leap frog, pushups, sitouts, squat jumps starting at 10. I was pretty much done by the end of that, but we immediately started rolling.

My first partner was a white belt who was also a beastly wrestler. He wasn't even tired, so I was in 100% defense mode and still got subbed like three times. I just had no energy for the guy.

Second roll was with another purple belt who is stylistically similar to me, so we had a lot more fun. He eventually D'arced me, but it was a much more flowing roll than the first one.

I'm having a VERY hard time maintaining an assertive roll while I'm that tired, hopefully adding in tues/thurs weight lifting will help further improve my conditioning and by the time Dec 6th rolls around I'll be in good shape.

A Stripe? That's pretty cool!

So, for the first two years of my BJJ career I did only No-Gi, so no stripes, and no belts. Then when I trained with Alliance I didn't get any stripes. I went from white to blue, and blue to purple. But now that I am training at a Roberto Traven affiliate stripes are a thing, and today I got my first stripe.

I'm actually pretty psyched by it. It's a good signal that I've managed to return to my pre-layoff skill level and I'm now actually getting better at jiujitsu. This is a nice boost for me going towards the New Breed tournament in December.


Today was the same halfguard stuff from monday plus cardio via running back and forth, shooting under one partner, then jumping over them, then getting taken down and the partner doing the running and whatnot. Fun stuff for 5 minutes, then grueling for the next 5.

After that was work from halfguard, 5 minutes on the bottom, then 5 minutes on the top. I hit a couple of Caio sweeps, but I need to work more on forcing the arm to the inside in order to get the reverse scissor sweep and the back take to work, and generally mess with my opponents posture more. I'm too lenient about letting my opponent flatten me out and going for the Caio or setting up waiter sweeps and things.

On top my passing is light years better than it was even before my layoff. Having an instructor who is my size means all of the guard passing tips and techniques are better tailored to smaller people so I've been really able to tune my passing game.

After that I had time for one roll with a 3 or 4 stripe purple who's a bit bigger than I am and is also one of the MMA fighters. He has a solidly intense rolling style with a great mix of clever techniques and crushing pressure. A couple of months ago with I rolled with him I was able to accomplish exactly nothing, this time I was able to generate a sweep, a near sweep, a couple of close guard passes, and defend almost everything. I went down to an armbar that was setup with insanely good pressure, but I didn't feel as completely outclassed as I did last time.

So, getting the stripe felt great, and I'm going to be working even harder now since I still want to have a shot at my brown belt in the next 18 months.

This Weekend... Next Weekend... Whenever...

Once again updating here has fallen by the wayside a bit. Business with work, training, and owning 26 acres and a 150 year old farmhouse are eating up all of my time, but I'll try to do better since I need to keep some notes on my training.

Last week Chris tried to kill us all. We warmed up with armbars, triangles, and omoplatas, then spent 30 minutes doing some kind of Crossfit style masochism consisting of (for me) a 35lb bar and a pair of 10lb bumper plates, then 40 reps of back squats, front squats, strict overhead press, overhead push press, clean and press, and jerks.

By the end of this I wasn't sure what was going on and was pretty much as exhausted as I had ever been in my entire life. Then we rolled for a good 45 minutes. I spent the entire weekend barely able to move because of how sore and stiff I was, but it was awesome.

Went back today and we were decidedly lighter. Worked on some halfguard stuff.

First technique was a slick sweep against the wizzer that I love and want to work on more. You get your underhook from half guard. The opponent wizzers you and you circle your own hand back inside and trap their wrist, then you roll back and pendulum sweep. It's nice and flashy.

Second one was the standard reverse scissor-sweep, current gym calls it a Wing sweep. Also played around with the immediate backtake off of this one.

Third one was for when they block your knee from coming in for the wing sweep, you bring it up on top and pinch the shoulder and rotate to face the feet for the armbar.

Then our cardio for today was an exercise in guard based on some stuff that happened at the tournament over the weekend. Your opponent is in guard and stands up with you, you open your guard and immediately change levels for the double leg, then you stand up and pick your partner up and they do the same thing, back and forth for 5 minutes. Then you start in mount, your partner reguards, you stand up, they monkey flip you into mount, you reguard, they stand, you monkey flip them. Back and forth for 5 minutes.

Then we did some positional sparring from halfguard. I was able to get some decent technical halfguard going with a successful waiter sweep, a technical stand to single leg, a butterfly sweep, a couple of caio sweeps, finally got got tricked by the blue belt in our group and he caught me with the top half guard bow and arrow. When I came back in on top I immediately passed guard using the tricks I picked up a few weeks ago that have really altered my passing game against halfguard.

The focus on driving the elbow down to block the knee really changed how my passing works and upped my success rate. Ended up with a couple more passes in similar fashion, then had to shower and head out to work.

My conditioning is steadily improving and I feel like I'm rapidly returning to my previous technical level, which leads me to.... Competition Time!

I was going to head up to Virginia for the US Grappling Submission Only competition Dec 13th, BUT I couldn't find anyone who would give me a ride from the airport to the venue and back, SO there's a Newbreed tournament Dec 6th right in town that a bunch of guys from the current gym are going to, AND there's a Roberto Traven seminar on the 13th. So instead of paying for a plane ticket, I'm going to see if I can do the Newbreed comp and the seminar instead. It will be my first time competing under my new teams umbrella, so I'll be training pretty hard leading up to it.

Completely Forgot....

I didn't realize I hadn't been updating this...

I took a couple of weeks off to prepare our house for the winter, went back to the gym this week and I'm feeling good. Improvement is steady. I will update with more details this weekend.

I had something for this...

I had a relevant title for this post, but I forgot it, because.... reasons.

Anyways, good class this morning, more mount escape work. Rodeo drills, then cardio and rolling.

Getting to the point where I can reliably beat up on the blue belts again even when exhausted, but my sweep and pass completion needs a lot of work still. I'm not assertive enough when I'm completing them still. It's definitely better than it has been in the past, but not as good as it should be.

I'll be at the Atlanta Open at the end of this month as a spectator filming for people. Looking forward to that.

Oh. Almost forgot, my elbow that I tweaked a bit monday is fine. Barely any pain or stiffness.

Americanas are Serious Bizness!

Got in and did some drilling with one of the blue belts for 20 minutes, 5 on top and 5 on bottom each. Worked mostly grip controls and sweeps, just rebuilding some of my chains and reflexes. He's got a competition coming up so he worked a lot of passing stuff.

Technique was Mount escapes, standard knee and elbow to halfguard, and standard upa.

Drilled those for 20 minutes, then did rodeo drills for... a while. Felt like eternity.  Was probably 7 minute rounds.

Cardio was sprawls while partner sprinted the mats, partner does pushups and sprints back, then you sprint down, do pushups, and sprint back. Pushups were done countdown style, 10 on the first lap, 9, 8 ,7. and so on. It was brutal.

After that we rolled, and at this point it's mostly a blur. I do remember defending an americana a little too long because it was super sloppy and it felt like I was about to escape the entire time, and then he suddenly started doing it right and I felt my elbow pop once. So that's not good, but probably won't be too bad. In retrospect I should have tapped about 20 seconds earlier, but the dude doing the americana was a purple belt, and it was white belt sloppy, so I felt like I could defend and escape it. But the guys top pressure and control is 100% purple belt, so he was able to keep me there while he cranked on my arm, and then suddenly he shifted and finally brought my elbow down properly and the americana went from 'meh, whatever' to OMFG TAP. So that sucked.

I remember getting MAULED by the instructor in hilarious fashion. At one point I swear he was posting on just one hand and I still couldn't generate a sweep.

I rolled with a blue belt that I had talked to a while back about focusing his weight better when he was on top and he apparently took it to heart because this time whenever I had a frame or anything his weight was immediately 100% focused and just splattered me back flat. I finally eventually managed to hit x-guard, sweep, and pass and stay on top for about 15 seconds.

Might have been some other stuff that happened

Indian run? What's that?

So, today I learned a new method of torture called the Indian Run. But first, I worked with one of the other purple belts who is just getting back from a long layoff trying to rebuild his technique library. We worked on some spider guard sweeps and stuff for about 20 minutes, then technique for the day was Knee On Belly. Two armbars and an escape.

The two armbars were the standard nearside when they roll away, and the farside where they push on the knee but flair the elbow out.

The escape was one I have actually never seen before. Inside arm cups the opponents knee, outside arm supports the inside, hand over hand. Elbows in tight, you turn away from the opponent  while pushing hard with your frame, then shoulder roll to guard. Felt a bit awkward the first few times, but then I got the hang of it and it's pretty slick.

Now, back to those Indian Runs. I had never done these before, but as it turns out you form a line with everyone and start jogging, and the person at the back of the line SPRINTS to the front of the line, then you repeat. We did that for... A mile I guess? Something like that. Then we split into groups of 3 and one person carried the second person, while the third person motivated, when person one couldn't continue they became the motivator, the motivator became the carried guy, and the previous carried guy did the carrying. Trust me, it was super hard. We did this in full gi in the middle of the day.

Once we got back to the gym we did 4 rounds of rolling. I had a roll with the purple belt from earlier, a roll with a largeish white belt and a roll with a blue, then a break and a roll with the instructor. My Gi game is steadily rebuilding itself. I was able to sweep and work to the top a lot, even managed a legitimate guard pass on the instructor which I felt good about. Still a lot of work to do, but steady training should mean that I actually end the year better at jiujitsu than when I started, so that will be nice.

No-Gi Work

Made it to the gym for some no-gi today and rolled with the same gigantic guy I rolled with last week. This time I had a bit more success and was able to use my hips better, keep better frames, and generally keep my structure aligned more productively which led to me being able to get to top position and his back a few times and control him.

I also was able to finish a chin strap choke off of the attempted back take and accidentally jaw crushed him while trying for a Von Flue choke.

He has grips like a vise and great top pressure, but he was making some mistakes that let me bypass his attributes some. He was also getting tunnel vision on his north/south chokes and passing up opportunities to attack my arms. I pointed a few of those out to him and he started mixing it up a little better which led to several solid armlock submissions for him, so that should help his overall game.

Good class, good work.

You Know It Was Good Training When You Almost Black Out In The Shower

Hit the Gi class today and it was killer. Worked the Y-grip break that Xande put out:

And got a feel for it. Then we worked Z-guard/Quarter Guard passing and I was able to pick up some details that I think will help me. A lot of it is just getting more experience with the passing system that this gym uses, which I really like. It plays well into parts of my old passing game while being superior in every way because it's tailored a little better to people under 200lbs.

First pass you get the a collar grip on the same side that your opponent has the knee up on, and grip the bottom leg with the other hand under their knee. Next you step up with your leg on the pinned side, and then you step up with the other leg and square their hips up. Keep them pushed down with the collar grip and backkick your leg to clear and pass to KoB.

Second pass they block the collar grip, so you go to the belt or pants on the back, then with your other hand you bump the kneeshield towards the outside and drop your head down into your opponents ribs. This should slide your shoulder down to their ankle to pin the leg. If you don't get deep enough then you will be open to the shin-in pendulum sweep. Your other hand pins their bottom leg flat down and then you tripod up and walk around them to complete the pass.

Third pass they block the collar again, so you weave under the top leg, grip the bottom leg, grab some gi towards their bottom collar with the other hand, but not too deep, and then sprawl hard on the same side hip as their blocking knee to force it down towards the bottom leg. You want your weight posted entirely on that knee, your shoulder connected to opponents knee. Now walk it around to take side control.

You can also walk it towards the back if you want to from there and try to take the back.


After that it was cardio time and we did partner drags up the mats and back. Luckily I was partnered with a 150lber and a 115lber. I had to drag the 150er, the 115er had to drag me, and the 150er got to drag the 115er. My legs were on fire by the end of it. Oh, and while the other team was doing drags, you had to do pushups. Pretty sure I'm going to feel crippled tomorrow, but it's the only way to get my cardio back.

After that We rolled 7 minute rounds, I started out with another purple belt and flubbed a tomoe nage due to limp noodle legs. I spent the entire time defending and framing with high success. Ended up getting armbarred once, but it was from a position that a fresher me could have escaped. I just didn't have the ability left to make the adjustments without giving up the armbar. I felt like that was a successful use of defense.

Rolled with the instructor after that and it was mostly the same. I did manage to hit a sloppy sickle sweep since he likes to come at me standing. Also managed to get a shot at a loop choke, which I had deep, but not deep enough and not with enough control to sweep him or finish it. After that it was just me framing and shrimping for three more minutes or so.


Hit the showers and stood under icy cold water for a bit and tunneled and almost dropped. Definitely a tough class for me because I'm so out of shape, but I'm working on fixing that.

Ow... My face hurts.

So this happened today:

Caught a stray elbow while in halfguard that put a pretty wicked cut on the inside of my lip. No further damage done, but it stings like a mofo right now.

Mostly spent my time working on prioritizing head control and maintaining and regaining hooks on the bottom. I REALLY need to do something about my passing game in no-gi. My sweeps are ok until everyone gets so sweaty that I can't maintain control, but my guard passing is terrible. I can't keep control of the legs long enough to complete my normal passes, so I need to drill some more no-gi specific passing stuff to clean that whole process up.

Still, slowly improving. Going to hit up the Gi class tomorrow, and try to make 3 Gi classes next week. We'll see how that works out for me.

7/22/2014 No-Gi Training

Did about 30 minutes of cardio then rolled for an hour with a massive guy who has been training BJJ about 2 years and wrestled a bit in high school before that.

Sweeping him was beastly hard but I was able to pull it off a few times and transition to the back a few times. Came close to finishing a N/S choke, but nothing else was what I would consider close. His top pressure was stifling most of them time, but he was still making a few random mistakes that I helped him clean up, which immediately resulted in him being more effective at crushing me, which is good.

I was able to effectively apply some of the framing concepts I've been reminding myself of to relieve a lot of pressure, and was able to fight off quite a few things. It was a lot of good work, forcing me to work hard while rolling and keeping me from being lazy.

I was also able to control and pin him pretty effectively once I was on top and I found myself using some of the concepts from Cobrinha's top control that I was looking at last night in his match against Jeff Glover here:

I feel like my guard passing has suffered the most from my layoff though, and I really need to just get in and do some positional drilling on a few passes and rebuild my passing game both for Gi and No-Gi. I'll probably spend some time this weekend watching Lucas Lepri videos since I feel like his passing style is the one I want to emulate.

Gi class is tomorrow, so I'm looking forward to that. My elbow and my ankle are both running about 90%, but my elbow yelled at me when I tried to do pullups, so whatever weird muscle injury I have there is taking a while to recover.

When am I going to be good at this again?

Second day in the Gi and I feel like a train hit me about 25 minutes into the class.

This time I made it on time to drill top and bottom, worked mostly omoplata setups and grip fighting on the bottom, and trying to work passes when my opponent has both sleeves controlled on top. Results were mixed but I'm start to recover some of my working knowledge of gi.

After that we worked the same three guard passes from wednesday, then another 20 minutes or something insane of cardio work. Jogging, then partner drags around the mat for a lap, then 5x20 pullups and pushups, then things start to kind of blur, I think we went from there to the people competing tomorrow doing a Q&A on rules and stuff, while the few of us who aren't competing went to roll.

I do remember that I rolled for about 20 minutes with one of the blue belts and just got mauled. I was chasing with my feet, feeding into armbars and triangles, and generally just fumbling around like I'd never done jiujitsu before. It was bad. Probably going to be a month or two before I can perform in the Gi while completely exhausted with any competence. Right now I just don't have the unconscious reflexes I did before the break.

The beatings are good for my soul though.

100% Wrecked

Best class EVER! Back in the Gi and beginning the training camp for the Atlanta Open. Just like getting back to no-gi I feel like a scrub.

Got there a few minutes late, but still got in some drilling. It's essentially game-plan drilling, 5 minutes each of drill what you want from the bottom, then from the top.

From there we went right into technique which was passing guard.

First pass, you break guard, acquire combat base, opponent goes to feet on hips, you take the outside pants grip on your down leg side, bring the down leg up, then backstep that leg and shove the opponents knee down and through, then backstep the inside leg around for knee on belly. I'm pretty sure this is one of the passes Emily Kwok does, and I am terrible at it. Definitely need to work on my standing passing.

Second pass, same stuff but opponent switches to DLR when you bring the leg up. You do the knee flare remove the DLR hook, then drive in and legdrag. Post legdrag if your opponent maintains the ankle grip from DLR you windmill your knees down onto their wrist side, pop the ankle free, then windmill back to the otherside.

Third pass, same stuff, but when you knee flare they return to feet on hips, you pressure in with the hips, feet back, and execute the standard X-pass.

At every point you have to address any offensive grips your opponent has before you execute. If they have a collar grip, strip it.


After that we did like 10-15 minutes of cardio during which I almost died. I am hideously out of shape. Might have been 20 minutes. It felt like 3 days. I barely made it through that and then it was time to roll.

Got to roll against a purple belt my size who is also better than I am in at least a few ways, which was awesome. I'll be able to train with a similarly sized and slightly more skilled person for the first time ever! We baseball bat choked each other, and then mostly stalemated I think.

Rolled against... other people too? A blue belt I think, and maybe a white belt, then closed it out with the same purple belt. OH! Also rolled with the instructor Chris, who I barely barely barely managed to sweep off of a straight ankle lock. Then I got immediately reswept. By the end of it I was dead, barely managed to make it into the shower and an ice cold shower has never felt so good in my entire life.

Going to do some No-Gi tomorrow and try to do some conditioning too, then more Gi work on Friday!

Holiday Work on the Home Gym

Trained today, rolled with one of the aspiring MMA guys again, different one than usual, who has a fight coming up in September as well. He had good heavy pressure, but was making a few small fundamental errors that I helped him clean up with his passing which immediately made him much more effective. I broke out my omoplata/triangle game again which worked well but he was definitely better in the scrambles than I was, so I failed to capitalize on several sweeps.

In bigger news I started work on my home gym. I have a 10'x18' outbuilding on the property that I'm going to convert into mat space and lifting space.

This is a picture of the current outside, after I cut down a bunch of huge bushes that were trying to take over the building, this is also post bug bombing since it was infested with spiders and stuff:

I took it at night, but you can get an idea of what it looks like.

Then here is a close up of the area that will be mat space:

This space is 10'x'10, give or take a few inches, and there is a wall currently dividing the two parts. I'll be taking that wall down and then putting in a nice sturdy wood floor across the entire space, redoing the walls, putting in a little AC unit, and then building in pullup space, and possibly a power cage. I'll be posting updates as I work on it, but I don't intend to be finished with it until possibly early next year, or even mid summer next year. It's going to be a leisurely project.

Training tomorrow is supposedly back in the Gi, so I'll be showing up rocking my grappling pajamas, and if we do no-gi then I'll ditch the jacket and roll in pants.

Light Week, Improved Ankle

Skipped class today to take my dogs to the vet to have their sutures removed from being neutered, but I went in yesterday to roll no-gi with the MMA guy who has a fight coming up. His heel hooks are steadily improving, good pressure to immobilize the knee now and he's much more cognizant of when he's vulnerable to heel hooks, so we're making a lot of progress with that.

I worked on tuning up my Omoplata setups and finishes after being unable to finish two last week and was able to sweep with one and finish one. Overall a good roll and a good pace and I still feel like I'm getting better each time. Another month or two and I will feel like I'm better at BJJ that I was at the beginning of the year.

Next week Chris comes back from training with Traven on tues/thurs, so we'll have official no-gi classes on those days and be back in the Gi on Mon/Wed/Fri. I'm going to try to hit 6am Mon, and then 10:30am tues-fri classes starting next week now that I feel like I'm back up to speed.

My ankle improved rapidly from barely being able to walk on it friday afternoon, to barely having any stiffness or pain this morning. I'll wrap it for training tomorrow and probably keep it wrapped next week just to be sure, but I think I can consider it healed.

I'm still not going to be ready to compete at the ATL Open this year, but I do want to try to hit a couple of tournaments before the end of the year. I might try for USG Va Beach... Still trying to figure out budget and schedule for all of that.

Takedowns, Halfguard, and Ankle Injury

Missed an update for the Wednesday class, which was one of the most physically demanding I've done yet, well, up until that point. More half-guard work, some rolling which included a round with a 190ish lb guy who just won gold at the Mundials as a blue belt, so that was fun. A lot of work, which is good for me.

Today we started out with some takedown sparring which went reasonably well for me for once. I kept baiting the single and converting it to no-gi tomoe nages, then on the second to last takedown the guy shot in for a double, I got underhooks, he tried to convert to a bearhug trip. I turned with it and got the throw for the reversal, but rolled my ankle at the same time. So that hurts like mad now.

After that we drilled more halfguard. Halfguard passing this time.

First, basic pass to mount. Farside underhook, nearside arm under the head, knee in the armpit, then hip switch to the free hip, walk the trapped leg up, pop the leg off with the elbow, and drive through. Spider walk the underhooked arm up to control it, and windshield wiper your free foot over to the thigh to help complete the pass to mount.

Second pass was the same up until you clear the trapped leg, then opponent blocks the knee drive, so you pop up and drive to the inside for the baseball slide pass.

Third pass, they grab the underhook before you can flatten them, so you backstep, your outside hand goes to their knee to block them from following you, you scoot your hips up a bit and then free your leg.

Fourth pass is just like the third one, but you decide to get greedy and go for the kimura, they defend by hiding their arms behind your back. You grab the toes of their inside leg, and then roll over your shoulder and via crazy rolling sorcery take the back.


After that did work in half-guard, guy on top passes or submits, guy on bottom sweeps, submits, or reguards. Got some stuff to work, felt fairly good in general. Did the second round with a new guy who seemed a little frustrated that I was sweeping and passing on him very easily, so I tried to encourage him and help him out a bit and he seemed to be ok at the end.

Got in a couple of rounds of rolling after that, one of which was against a guy with silly triangles. Twice I thought could beat him to the escape and couldn't, and one of those involved me getting leg-in triangled in hilarious fashion. I was able to get halfway to the omoplata on him pretty reliably, but wasn't able to finish it.

Again a very physical class, my ankle hurts like hell now, so I'll have to wrap it and ice it when I get home, but I'l be back at it Monday!

No-gi work and MMA coaching

Back on the mats today, once again with just the one MMA guy there to roll. I'm starting to feel like a purple belt again in No-Gi, getting the proper grips, developing the right defensive movements, framing my hips properly to get the sweeps. I'm definitely 100x better today than I was when I first got back on the mats 3 weeks ago.

I've been pretty dedicated to using the 'saddle' (inside 50/50) and heel hooks as my primary no-gi submission against bigger guys, but I need to develop my pressure and control well enough to be able to apply a larger variety of submissions.

I got a little bit of deep-half work, and a couple of deep-half to x-guard transitions, in but mostly worked butterfly and knee shield variants.

After about 45 minutes of rolling I sat around keeping time and helping coach the 3 guys working MMA rounds in the cage. Just basic advice, but generally helpful. I'm enjoying doing some coaching and I'm trying to plan a trip out to Wild Bills to watch the guy fight in August, but I may not have the cash for it, or the time, depends on when it happens.

Overall I'm feeling good about my jiujitsu and I'm feeling more and more confident that 6-8 months of 4+ day a week training might actually get me ready for a run at brown belt.

Deep Half Sweeps

Three times in one week! For the second week in the month! I've now trained 7 days this month, which is about equal to the number of times I trained all year up to this point.

Basic warmup, the right into deep-half sweeps. This is a position I've been working on for a while with limited success, so I was happy to get the chance to work it here.

First the basic entry to the deep-half, which I CONTINUALLY mess up. I frequently lead with my underhook on the leg, and leave my head behind, which results in me getting d'arced. You can't do that, you have to dive head and arm together, ear on their thigh, to avoid the d'arce.

Once you get there you gather up your opponents foot/leg with your halfguard and then pendulum to bring their weight forward and get control of the leg.

First sweep was a basic waiter sweep. You have rocked them forward, they post to avoid you simply ducking out to the back, so you underhook their ankle and pendulum again. A detail I need to pay attention to is making sure that I sweep my penduluming leg under me as I come up so that it doesn't get tangled up when I take top.
Now you control their ankle until you get your knee on the mat and pinch their leg, then you can complete your pass.


Second sweep was the same entry, but this time when you attempt to underhook the leg for the sweep you can't reach it. You pinch their leg (I usually scoop it with my inside leg instead) and insert your outside legs shin into the crook of their knee. Now execute exactly the same pendulum and come up on top. If you get bogged down trying to complete the pass on the inside for some reason you can switch and pass to the clear side.


Third sweep, same setup, but this time when you try to sweep them over they move and post with their arms. You loosen the underhook on the leg, swim over their posting arm and around the head, then plant your inside foot and backwards roll to top.

I need drill all of these more, but just getting to drill the entry with Head + Arm instead of leading with the arm helped a LOT once we started rolling.


Rolled with the idea of working towards the deep half and was able to execute some version of the waiter sweep multiple times against varying partners. Not as often as I would have liked, but enough for me to feel like I made some progress cleaning the technique up. I also dealt with way fewer D'arce attempts since my head was in tight the whole time.

The rounds were super long, I have no idea how long, but pretty sure it was longer than 6 minutes, and I stuck around an extra 20 mins or so to roll since I didn't have to be at work as early today. That meant I rolled for somewhere around an hour with very small breaks. I feel good about my cardio recovery so far based on my improving performance rolling.

My philosophical ramblings are still cementing themselves, so that post will probably come together some time in the next few days since I want to make sure that I'm saying exactly what I mean when I write it.