Checkmat Bristol 22/11/11
Venue: LA Gym, Bristol
Instructor: Chico Mendes
Warm up: Start with neck stretches, then arms, then legs, then did some press ups. We then paired up and went through the motions of pummelling, from collar and elbow tie to underhooks. After we practiced shooting for doubles and singles, then drilled escaping the single.
For techniques tonight it was all about maintaining side control. Chico had some fighters in MMA competition over the weekend and apparently a couple of them made what he considered to be school boy errors from top control. Chico believes (in MMA and No GI) that you shouldn't be giving up a commanding position like side control in an attempt to gain mount unless you're absolutely comfortable with your side control position and have had a chance to move safely into mount. He also says that in an MMA match the arm bar is low percentage and most of the time not worth the risk, using an example of Dan Henderson at UFC 139 being mounted by Shogun Rua and offering up his arm as bait in the hope that Rua would go for an arm bar and lose the position.
So Chico started from a tight side control with his knee up to the opponents hip and his same side arm secure the other side of the opponents body. He then passed his other arm under his opponents head gripping the gi collar or the shoulder. The next be he emphasized quite a bit. If you use your shoulder to push the opponents face on it's side to the mat you (preferably so it's facing you) you cut off your opponents range of movement for hip escaping helping to secure the position.
Chico then went on a long technique drive showing us about five or six moves involving going to Kesa Gatame or Knee on belly and then transitioning to either head and arm triangles or a nice mounted triangle.
He then showed us two cool techniques from Kesa Gatame if your opponent uses his arms to push you away. The first was if the opponent used his far side arm to push you face/neck away, just push his arm diagonally up across his body, securing it there with your head and body laying across with your opposite arm encircling his neck.Then and easy knee on belly slide over the body to mount. Bring your other leg over also to find yourself on the opposite side of him with your shoulder pushing his arm up, your arm still encircling his neck and use your other arm to secure the choke using the crock of that elbow to pull on the arm that's underneath.
Second move. Kesa Gatame again. He tries to use both arms to push you away at the face. Push on the elbow of his near side arm so it passes across his face/chest, then switch your base so your legs are sprawled on the mat and your body weight is pressed against the shoulder of the opponent keeping his arm in place. Pass your top arm (arm nearest his head) under the guys neck while the other arm guides his trapped arm to that hand. You can then pull on the arm so the guys neck and head are trapped in place by his own arm. If you pull hard on this you can turn the guy on his side so his back is facing you. Then you can heavily rest your knee on his side to make the hold a little more secure, and slide the leg over to gain S mount (which is incidentally worth 4 points in competition even though the guys is not flat on his back). Then, putting your other knee on the mat behind his back you can use the hold you have on the opponents arm/neck to pull backward getting him into rear mount with hooks in. A nice move to a cool little back take. We had loads of fun drilling that one.
Rolling: We did lots of rolling to night with 6 minute rounds. I rolled against Jason first, whose a blue belt and one of the nicest guys you can meet. We have a really good high intensity roll with lots of transitions and great defence. We were both pretty tanked after.
I then rolled with Tom, a white belt who often attends the Weston class. It's good rolling against Tom because he's goes quite hard and you find yourself being pushed to go hard too to keep up. I nearly managed to get him with a triangle transition from an armbar attempt but he got his elbow down well and kept space so I had to settle for tapping him with a transition back to the armbar.
Next roll was against Black Belt Raphael Heck and I felt that I had a really good go here. He was probably only rolling at a low percentage but I managed to pass his guard twice and maintain top control for a decent amount of time. He did mount me once and I managed an escape using my legs to pull him down to his back. I also swept him from half guard which is one of my biggest achievements to date as my half guard game isn't that impressive. Not getting tapped by a black belt was the highlight of my night, especially as I felt him pile on the pressure in the last minute to try and tap me. I had to go on a mega defensive just toward the end and was very satisfied surviving.
I then rolled against a wiley white belt named Mike who I've rolled with previously and tapped a couple of times a few months back. He has definitely improved though and even though I spent most of the roll in control, I slipped up during a guard pass attempt and he caught me with a tasty arm bar making him the first lower belt to tap me out. I then proceeded to try my best to gain my re-weng-ee but it turns out I'd left it desperately late and only had about 30 seconds. I'll look forward to rolling with Mike next time.
Next up was Tom "Egg" (on account of his bald head) a blue belt with some experience on me, which was why I was fairly chuffed when I tapped him to a real rookie mistake. From the start he managed to gain a nice underhook on me and passed to my back. He didn't really show any signs of threatening my neck or anything at this point and I feel quite comfortable with my ability to shake back mount usually but I couldn't seem to shake a hook off. Risking a quick glance down I noticed he had his feet crossed, I mean this is school boy stuff, so I passed my leg over the top and rested it on one of his feet a pressed down. He resisted for a couple of seconds then tapped. I confessed to him that I didn't feel any joy in the tap as it would be an illegal move in a competition but he accepted that he was using poor technique and deserved to be called up on it. The rest of the roll was very high octane with Tom using his high quality guard game to try and sweep me (he nearly managed twice) or to armbar me (nearly succeeded once). I managed to pass his guard a couple of times to which he quickly recovered, and passed him to turtle one time to which he also quickly recovered back to butterfly. Tom's butterfly guard is good.
Last roll was against Josh, a white belt who has been training hard under Chico for some time now. Josh has also improved a lot since I last rolled with him, showing a very good half guard game. He even took my back at one point but I shook him off quite easily. Josh does have a weakness for trying omoplatas though to which I was using to pass his guard quite often. This was the last roll of the night and I have to admit to feeling pretty knackered so I didn't really push the pace to much. Neither of us really took the upper hand and time fizzled out.
All in all it was a great session and I really enjoyed the intense rolling at the end.
One big good luck to Raphael Heck and Jason Brookbank who're both going in for the English Open this weekend and Raphael is also doing a superfight at the Hereford Open the weekend after. Hope it all goes well guys. \m/
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