DV8 Bjj - 24/1/13

I have felt like absolute shite all week and haven't rolled at all since the last Thursday's session. I have had a pretty meaty cough (you know the type where you're coughing uncontrollably for up to a minute at a time and it doesn't seem to be clearing off your lungs) and managed to convince myself that it was on it's way out come Thursday. So I thought going training would be an amazing idea to blast through the last little bit of grogginess. Silly move. Felt worse after.

It was a good class though. Even though Ian had troubles getting there due to be horrendously late back from work because of some roadworks on his route back into Weston. Fortunately recently awarded purple belt, Glenn Cutter, was ready and willing to step up and take the class.

We started off with a circuit round featuring 30 seconds on each of these exercises:

Hop overs
Skipping
Kettlebell sit ups
Kettlebell round the worlds
Elevated push ups
Step ups
Tricep dips
Ab leg raises.
Squats
Sprints
Scissor jumps

Everyone's blood was suitably pumping after that so we finished it with some stretching and then Glenn started us with some techniques.


Techniques.
 (For simplicity, I always explain techniques from the side and using the grips that I initially learned them)


With the aim of demonstrating escapes from the triangle choke in mind, Glenn first wanted the Triangle Choke from closed guard demonstrated. As this move is definitely the forte of one Dan Foster we handed the instruction of this technique over to him. Dan is very dangerous with his triangle choke, only needing a whiff of it before he's nearly instantaneously got the whole thing locked in and you tapping furiously to stay conscious. Dan showed the conventional method for the triangle choke from closed guard, where you push (or punch) the opponent's left arm back towards him and fire your right leg up and behind him across his shoulders, securing the leg with your hand past the other side of his head. You then shift out to your right a bit and close your left leg over the top of your right so the right ankle is in the crook of your knee. Ensure the guys right arm is pulled across your body to close the angle on his neck. If all of this is done correctly a good squeeze with the legs should finish the deal. If the positioning is correct and you haven't let his arm get inside or left too much space in there, you shouldn't need to pull down on the head.
We mixed the class up for drilling this move so the newer guys all got paired off with someone with experience.



Once we'd got a good bit of Triangle drilling done, Glenn lead us on to his point for the lesson. Triangle escapes. For the first, you're in your opponent's triangle (left arm is forward in triangle) so you immediately want to take some of the strain off. Step out around to the opponent's left side to kneel in on his ribs, stacking him up at the same time. You then use the small space you should've made at his legs to push your left hand in. You can now switch your lower half by leaning into his right leg and then stepping your right leg through. This motion should drive his legs further apart, taking away the pressure of the triangle and allowing you to either force his legs to the side and attain side control or force your way into his guard depending on how the scramble works out for you.




The second was my preferred escape of the two. From in the triangle once again, you brace the hips away by pushing your right forearm (the forward arm) into his hips and form the brace by pushing that arm down with your left. From there you sit down and wrap your legs around the outsides to close around his midriff. You can now lean/push backward to drive yourself out of the hold. I really like that escape!!The only questions you're left with is how to gain a dominant position from there.




Situational Rolling

For sparring tonight we did situational rolling first from guard. It was submit or get passed being the basic premise.

I was against Glenn'son, Ash first and then the new Italian guy (whose name eludes me).


Rolling

For proper rolling I went against Ash first.


I then had a good roll against Glenn. I quickly got to Guard where I was for a while until Glenn got into my half guard. Whilst aiming up for a sweep from that position Glenn committed to an Americana so I got managed to overbalance and sweep him to come up into his guard.


Next roll was against Luke "Testosterone" Brown. I pulled guard initially but during a sweep attempt Luke managed to crack me a beauty in the nose with his knee. Because I wasn't sure if it was bleeding I quickly slapped an inverted triangle on Luke so I could come up and check my nose. To be fair, Luke showed great defence against the triangle. In the end I let it go as I was gassing my legs out. Nose was ok though.


Last roll of the night was against Sean - I managed to dispatch him quickly with a bow and arrow choke. After the reset I played around with my guard for a bit.


Great session considering how I felt. I should be feeling better soon though (please).

¬m/

DV8 Bjj

It's been a busy week for me, what with the awesome weather we've been having here in England. As a highways inspector, I am required to drive around the county of North Somerset during the snowy weather and find the worst hit areas and arrange for them to either be gritted or closed off for safety. Consequentially I've been pretty damn busy these last few days so I've only just got round to putting this entry in.

Venue: Sweat FA, Weston Super Mare, Uk
Instructor: Ian Rossiter ( Black belt Checkmat)

Last Thursday down at Sweat Fa, Weston, we once again started the session with stretches then an awesome circuit.

The circuit featured 20 seconds of;

Sprints
Burpees
Vaults
Crunches
Skipping Rope
Kettlebell raises
Sky divers
Tricep dips
Kettle bell around the world
Elevated Push ups
Step ups
Squats
V sits

I'm really loving these circuits.


Techniques:
(For simplicity, I always explain techniques from the side and using the grips that I initially learned them)

Ian started us off with an arm drag from butterfly guard. In your seated butterfly position the opponent has his hands gripping your legs at the ankles. You reach down and grab the cuff of his left sleeve with your right hand and grab at the elbow/triceps of that left arm with your left arm. You then step your right leg outside of his left and lay back and to the left whilst pulling on his left arm. His upper body should shoot to your left side with you now able to come up to your knees behind him and pressure your weight against him to keep him in a turtled position.




Moving it on we went to Rear Mount. You've got the guy to turtle, still with your left hook in between his legs. You reach over his back with your right hand and then under him to grab a grip of his left lapel (this can be quite low). Grabbing a hold of his left arm to stop him basing out you can now drop yourself to the floor on his left side while using the right hand grip to pull him over you to a seated rear mount position. As he's coming over he will (usually) open up the space between his right arm and leg for you to handily slip your right hook in. This should land you in a fantastic seated rear mount with both hooks in and you already have 1 lapel grip. Good going.



The first finish we did from this position was the Half Nelson choke we did last week. Check back if you don't know how it's done.




Next up was another choking finish but one I hadn't seen before and am not entirely sure I am remembering correctly. from the seated rear mount you reach over his right shoulder with your right hand and take a grip of his left collar. You then pass your left arm under his left arm and under your right forearm, then press your fist into his throat. Increase pressure by leaning back and pulling against the collar so your right forearm crushes the fist into his windpipe for the Collar and Fist choke finish.That's how I remember it anyway. If Ian corrects me on that then I'll do an edit.



Another attack was the old faithful rear mounted Arm bar finish. Once again, I've written this move up a few times so no real need to do so again. Just look back through my blog if you want.



We finished off with a rear mount escape. Starting with your opponent having your back in seated rear mount with both hooks in. You defend your neck with both your hands and plant both feet flat on the ground to push yourself back into your opponent, flattening his back to the floor. You then shift your hips out to the right, moving your back out also, to get it to the floor. During this movement, the weight of your lower body should press against the opponent's right inside leg, knocking the hook out and leaving you the opportunity to reach under his left leg with your right arm. If you then reach that right hand to grab something high on him like his left arm or his gi jacket, you will be supported enough to drive the leg up high and pass through to side control. A great move if you can pull it off. Any time I've used that escape though in sparring, I've generally ended up in half guard top or bottom as it's pretty easy for anyone but a rookie to see the pass coming and close up shop. Still, either half guard top or bottom is preferable to having your back attacked.



Rolling.

For rolling this week I've pretty much forgotten everything that happened. I know I rolled with Dan first and had a pretty good time of it. Can't remember specifics though.


I also rolled against Ash, Ian and Sean E. Don't remember any details about them either. Ah well. Great sesh.


I've been pretty ill since Thursday and had to miss out on the Tuesday session as I didn't want to infect anyone with my lurgy. Hopefully I'll make Thursday's class and get in a double next week with some weekday lunch time training too to make up for it.

DV8 Bjj 10/3/13

After last weeks cardio blip most of our class seemed to have suffered, Ian decided to take a different tack at the most recent DV8 class on Thursday night.

Venue: Sweat FA, Weston Super Mare, Uk
Instructor: Ian Rossiter (Black Belt, Checkmat).


Warm Up:

He started us off with a trimmed down version of the usual basic warm up. Lap of the mat with arm wind mills, butt kicks and knee ups. Then stopped and ran us through some upper body stretching, then straight on to the leg stretching. I was beginning to get a bit suspicious at this point. Ian NEVER cuts the warm up short. Unless he has something horrible planned!!

We then did a couple of circuits of the below exercises:

step ups
elevated push ups
crunches
skipping
vaulting
burpees
sprints
turn overs


20 seconds of each x 2 sets.

I felt pretty knackered after the first set but strangely, by the time the second set was done I felt really buzzing. Fully warmed up and raring to go. I kinda hope we do more stuff like that to warm up in future. It'll certainly help shift some of this gut I need to move by the 17th of Feb.


Techniques.
(For simplicity, I always explain techniques from the side and using the grips that I initially learned them)


Attacking the back was Ian's theme of the day and we started off with a sweet Rear mounted Collar slide choke. You are seated and have your opponent between your legs with his back to you in "Rear Mount". You have both your hooks in and an over under (seat belt) grip on hi upper body. It's your left arm that is tucked under his left arm that starts this technique. You open his left lapel with your left hand so you right hand that is over his right shoulder can pass across his face and get a good deep collar grip on his left collar. You now cross your left hand over to a low grip on his right lapel, tightening the slack around his neck. To finish the technique you lay back, letting your entire upper body finish the move by tautening the collar, cutting of the flow of blood.



Next up was a Rear Mounted Half Nelson Choke. Same start again all the way up to the right hand across face grip of the left collar. From there you bring your left arm up underneath his left and pass it behind his head. This move is once again finished by leaning back using your upper body to tighten the choke.

Ian let me demo the next technique as it is my all time favourite back attack, the Bow and Arrow Choke. From the hooks in rear mount position you reach across face with the right hand and take a grip of the opponents left collar. Doesn't have to be too deep a grip. You now lean your upper body out to the left side and grab the guys pant leg at the knee, pull yourself further out and to the side of the opponent. Your left leg at this point should be across the guys sternum area and the right leg now gets passed over his right shoulder. Once again leaning back, the upper body does all the work finishing this move.
Love that technique, it's an all time fave!!

The last technique was the Rear mount transition to armbar. I have covered this move many times on this blog so have no need to do so again.



Rolling:

First up I was against Dan. Remembering how Dan poured on the power last week I went on the instant offensive and took Dan down to his guard. He recovered briefly to which I managed to get him back there again. I then went on a mission to pass his guard, starting with Smash pass attempts, a knee slide attempt and managed, eventually to get a Toreando pass. I held side control for some time before Dan was able to recover guard. We then performed a double sweep (he got me then I got him quickly back) and that was about when the round ended. Massively enjoyable round of sparring that was.



Next up was young Ash. We played at grip fighting for a bit before I pulled guard, mainly because I was bored of the grip fighting. Ash is getting a lot better with not extending his arms in my guard but he still did it eventually as he got more frustrated so I punished it with an arm bar.  I take no joy in hitting cheap arm bars on white belts but I feel they need to learn not to extend the arm in the opponents guard. The best way to learn something is to get caught by it. Ash came back too strong though and was trying to batter past my guard with out defending himself whilst doing it. I caught him with another harsh lesson by hitting a triangle on him. Something that I still struggle to learn sometimes (especially against Dan). I then briefed him on making sure that he doesn't try and attack a guard with one arm forward one arm back, unless he has the guys off leg defended from going over the shoulder.



I had a quick tussle with a New kid called Mike - I mostly showed him some escapes and stuff but at one point he was coming in to my guard very hard, trying to use main strength to throw my legs out of the way so I got him with a Gogoplata. I was damn chuffed with that.


I finished with a round against the Professor. We started off and i was able to threaten a takedown enough for Ian to pull guard. I managed, after a lot of struggling, to pass his guard to side control, then transitioned to mount where he held me with a kimura style lock that I spent the rest of the round struggling to get out of. It was a pretty wily trick as he wouldn't of been able to finish me like that but at the same time I wasn't getting anything on him either. I was just formulating a response to it when the buzzer went.


Great class. Great warm up. Good sparring at the end. It's what we do it for ;o)

DV8 3/1/13

Holy shit! Thought I'd posted this last week but just looked on my log board to see it was still in draft format. Bugger! Ah well, here it is.


I have had a shit hot Christmas Time and, as is the norm for me, an over indulgent holiday period. I have probably eaten my body weight in Chocolate, biscuits and cakes and imbibed an incredible amount of alcohol. Consequentially, I have put on quite a bit of weight since my beginning of December weigh in of 13st 2lb. As of Thursday morning I was a scale busting 14st 4lb. Ouch.

So for a new year I need to hit the diet and work out hard if I'm to make the 13st 7lb I need to be to weigh in for the next Hereford Open in Feb. That meant straight back to the gym for lunch time work outs this week. A bit of interval cross training and some weights. And of course back to Thursday nights at DV8 Bjj.

It was truly brilliant being back to training after a couple of weeks lay off, even though we didn't really have a massive turn out. Seemed like there were still quite a few guys celebrating new year or something as it was a pretty flimsy turn out of regulars along with two new guys.

Venue: Sweat FA, Weston Super Mare, Uk
Instructor: Ian Rossiter (Black Belt, Checkmat).


Techniques:
(For simplicity, I always explain techniques from the side and using the grips that I initially learned them)

After the usual brief warm up we got down to business. We started off pretty basic as we had the two new guys so Ian kicked us off with a Scissor sweep from guard. This was the very first sweep I ever learned back in the old days down at Burnham. With your opponent in your closed guard you grab his right arm sleeve at the elbow with your left hand and grab his left collar with your right. Opening your guard you shift your butt out to the right side so that you are lying partially on your side, bringing you right leg up so the shin is pushed into his chest/left ribcage and dropping your left leg down flat to the mat next to his right leg. Using your grips to "steer" him over to his right you scissor your legs, kicking out with your right leg while drawing your left leg back. Your opponent will flip over onto their back with you coming up into mount.
This technique has taken me quite a lot of training over my first year of bjj to get good at. I think it was because I used to be a bit heavier but I was never really good at the shifting hips to the side bit. Now it's second nature, dropping out into position to hit the move quickly against a weary opponent. This is a move that you definitely get better at with years of drilling and practice.



The next technique lead on from from the first. You've just swept the opponent over into mount and you still have hold of his right sleeve at the elbow. You push the opponent's right arm across his face and then lean on it to keep it in position with your right shoulder. You then pass your right arm behind his head so your hand comes out from behind his head in front of your face. You then grab your right hand with your left hand and close the arm tight to increase pressure. To finish the move you then bring your right leg over the guy (giving up mount) so your legs are both stretched out to his right side and you are lying flat on the mat.
That in itself is not a fool proof version of the head and arm triangle but it helps to get the positioning right. Taking the technique back to the point where you've passed the arm under the head and grabbed the hand. To improve the technique you use that grip to pull the arm further under the guy's head, closing off the space. This time you tuck your right hand into the crook of your left arm and then cup the back of your head with your left hand. Finish the move in the same way, stepping over and laying out flat. That version of the head and arm triangle will deliver a tap a hell of a lot quicker.

The next technique Ian let me show as it's an old one of my favourites. I still hit this one from time to time but it used to be my go to move from top control. As I've previously explained this one as a favourite technique I figured I'd just link the old blog post here.





Rolling.


I sparred first with Sean Errock, an athletic young lad whose been training a lot of no-gi with Steve Keen's MMA class and does the Gi class occasionally. He's got some very good wrestling ability because of this and I think if he really applied himself he'd become a very polished Bjj practitioner. In our roll with started off with a lot of grip fighting and jockeying for position. I managed to over balance him toward me first then take him down into mount. I quickly dispatched him from there with an Ezekiel choke which is fairly ironic.After the restart however, he came back very strong and got a damn good arm drag on me, forcing me to turtle. The round ended there with him trying to get my back properly. As I said, he's got a lot of potential.


Next up was a round against Rich Presley which was one of our usual back and forth affairs with both of us having some guard time and some top game. Neither of us threatened any kind of sub though but it was a good technical roll.


My next opponent was Chris Cook who is getting better every week and skinnier every time I see him. Training for the marines he's become a bit of a cardio machine and, as I was pretty much hanging out of my proverbial by the time we rolled, it was a lot tougher than it should of been. I controlled most of the play but at one point Chris pulled off a good guard pass and attacked from side control for a bit so there's definitely some improvement there.


My last roll of the night was with Dan Foster who was on a bit of a mission to say the least. He was trying to blast past my guard with a vengeance and by this point in the night it was all I could do to hold on to him. Dan managed to pass guard and got mount at one point before I was able to upa him on and attack his guard. I got close to a pass of my own before he pushed away and got back to his knees so we were reset. After that he bowled me over with another takedown with me just able to get a weak half guard in there. He nearly passed this twice before I was able to drop my shoulder under his raised off side leg and take deep half (I was chuffed with that as I rarely get to use deep half). From there I was in the process of popping out the back and trying to take his back when the round ended. I was well and truly done in by this time.

It was a great first session back. I just hope more guys turn up next week as the new guys stick around.  ¬m/