Still, Raf is a brilliant teacher and his command of the English language is improving every time I see him. He rarely stumbles on a word now when showing us a technique which is a vast improvement on his first lesson.
Venue - LA Gym, Bristol, UK
Instructor - Rafael Heck (Checkmat Black Belt)
To start Raf took us through an absolute beast of a warm up. Lots of running, sit ups, push ups, hip escapes and all sorts of other stuff. I was fairly knackered after the warm up alone to be honest.
When the instruction part of the session started, Raf explained that we were going to do Closed Guard Passing. This was due to the fact that there was a competition two days before at Hereford and a number of Checkmat guys went to compete. Raf felt that there seemed to be some people having no success breaking and passing closed guard so he wanted to go back to basics. It's worth mentioning however, that of the three guys I know of that competed from the Bristol class, all three acquitted themselves well by all accounts. Josh Kersey won a couple of fights in the always heavily contested under 82 kg bracket, Shabba Vaithianathan managed to get three wins (all by sub) and finished fourth in his bracket and Ronan Fleming impressively managed to come away with a silver medal at blue belt under 100 kg. Well done guys. All good results.
On to the techniques then. First pass Raf showed us was a standing one for No gi. Start in your opponents closed guard, laying down on his torso with hands pressing his armpits. You then stand and pressure his body using your hips as if to stack him. If you bend your legs in slightly and balance on the instep of your foot the opponent will not be able to take your leg for a sweep. From here, push one of his legs down with both hands to break his closed guard, then land your knee past the leg with your foot the other side so you have his leg pinned to the floor. Lean across his torso using your body weight to keep the guy down then pull your other leg through and secure the side control before bringing the bracing leg fully over.
Raf also showed nearly the same for Gi, but you start postured up with one hand on his belt, the other taking his same side wrist and pressing it into his body. Stand as for the first technique, then break closed guard with one hand using a grip on the gi pants (almost as if you're pulling the leg open) and then pass same as before.
I was drilling the techniques with Marcus Hedley. I managed to slip in a demo of the Half Guard Sweep that Leo taught us on the Saturday as Marcus was unable to attend. He agreed with me on the awesome-osity of the move.
For the next Guard break and pass Raf taught, you start in closed guard again, this time pressing on hips using your hands. You then push a knee into the opponents rear so you can break the guard and end with the knee in between his legs. From there, secure one leg with your same side hand (this would be on the other side to the knee you have raised) and push the leg to the floor, then reach back under same side knee with your other hand and pull that leg up to your shoulder and drive it upward (as if toward his other side shoulder) using constant body weight pressure. Then you just need to buck the leg by turning your body sideways slightly and you come over into side control. Make sure you stay tight at all times or the guy might get space to bring a leg back up for guard recovery.
We drilled this and also drilled the move for if the opponent flips over to turtle. Quite fun.
For the last pass the start was basically the same up to the knee in-between the legs point. You then reach under the other side knee and pull down hard using both arms gable gripped together. You can drive your body weight into this as well as if to sort of half stack the guy which causes some discomfort for him. You can then smash pass in the same way driving forward with shoulder and passing to side contol.
After drilling this last pass we were stopped for a bit of situational rolling. The purpose of this was mainly to practice passing. The objective for the top guy was passing while the bottom guy tries to sweeps. I rolled with 3 different guys through this - Marcus, Jase Brookbank and some other guy whose name escapes me. I managed to pass all three at least once and managed to hit a few sweeps which was good and I successfully defended my guard through the lot. Result.
After that came the real rolling. Me and Marcus went first and after a good bit of back and forth sparring I managed to hit him with a triangle which I was happy with (remember, it was one of those moves I really wanted to be hitting more often at the end of last year). After the reset Marcus landed a really impressive arm drag on me and very nearly took me back. I was fortunate to manage to turn in at the last second to recover guard from which I managed to pull off an armbar. We reset again with him jumping into Butterfly Guard. He nearly threw me over the top with an impressive fall back sweep but I kept my balance and pushed into an S mount. From there I wrapped my arm around the back of his neck and secure his arm in a position so it was crossfacing him (almost like he was RNCing himself), tucked my nearside leg down in between his legs and used the leverage that the gift wrap (as the Americans call it) allowed me to pull him up so I'd taken his back with both hooks in. Then I was attacking his back for the rest of the roll with Marcus defending liking a demon. Very impressed with Marcus' ability to defend his back, I was trying Bow and Arrows, RNC's, armbars, nothing worked and time expired.
Then I rolled with Jase. We had another excellent high tempo roll but it was one of those attack-parry- riposte type rolls where you barely get to advance or gain a significant upper hand. I was in his guard. I attempted a pass but only made it to half guard. He nearly got the sweep on me to which I based out then passed one knee over to attempt to get to mount. He then pushed me back down to get back to half then attacked with some fairly well measured gi chokes. I piled on top and started to attack the guillotine, he broke this and threatened with the over shoulder lapel gi choke, I tried to control his hand with his belt and from there it just deteriorated into a grip battle. By the end we were both pretty knackered and happy with the well earned stalemate. As Jase said, it was very much a chess match type roll where you're thinking about what the opponent is doing next and trying to block that before it happens.
Me and Jase.
To close out the session the class separated into two group, under 80 kg and over 80 kg. Obviously I was in the over group (tubs). In these groups with did a bit of standing start throwing practice where two guys start with the aim being to throw the opponent. Winner stays on up to three goes. I got beat in the first go against the guy whose name I don't know from earlier. He got a pretty cool judo throw on me (Ian told me the name of it but I forgot. I'm shit at remembering Judo names) and then proceeded to last for his full three turns. Then Ian went on and blasted everyone he fought using the same move. Some sort of fall back and flip the opponent over so he landed in mount. Pretty impressive.
At the end of the session we all gave Raf a big clap for the lesson as he quickly made us forget all about Leo and the class was actually really enjoyable. Some of the guys seemed a little disappointed as they though they were to be graded that night (oh did I forget to mention that was supposed to be on the cards too) but it'll probably happen next week now so I'll be going up again to see who gets a shiny new belt. And to punish then for it like they did me >:o)
Good luck to Chico for his fight Saturday. I hope he gets it to the ground and gets a flash sub real quick! \m/
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