DV8 Bjj 21/2/13

Back to class on Thursday down at Sweat Fa Weston Super Mare and I was feeling very game for it. Numbers were down a bit from last weeks class but the usual enthusiastic bunch were there so that's what's most important.

Warm Up:

We started the week off with the shoulder, arm and neck stretching first, then went on to the circuit we did last week, which Glenn helpfully supplied the name for. Tabata circuits named after the Japanese scientist who created them.

This features;

(All these items are done in unison)
Everyone doing 20 seconds of high knee running on spot

then 10 seconds of pausing in squat

20 seconds of press ups

10 seconds paused in plank

20 seconds of crunches

10 seconds paused in a v sit up

20 seconds of jump high on spot

10 seconds of pause in squat

Then do the same circuit again.

We then finished off the warm up with a bit of leg stretching.

Techniques:
(As usual I will describe techniques from the side I initially learnt them).

We started off the session with a drill for seated hip thrusts. As that name doesn't really adequately describe what they are (it's just what I call them) I will attempt to explain. From a relaxed seated position you extend your left leg and position the foot of the right leg roughly near to knee of the left. Leaning forward and using the strength of the right leg and your forward momentum you come up onto the right knee with the left leg off at a forty(ish) degree angle from forward and bent to take support and balance you while you thrust your hips forward.
We did this as a drill using both sides to get used to the movement from both side.


The above drill was for the purpose of the next technique. Whilst you're on your back, your training partner is on his feet facing you. He steps forward toward you with his right leg. Reacting quickly using the technique above, your left leg is extended on the outside of his right leg while your right leg passes behind it so your foot is near to your left leg. Using the lean forward thrust up to knee to extend his leg, you grab behind his right leg with your arms and push forward in a single leg takedown ensuring your head is on the inside of his body to avoid a potential guillotine. He should hit the ground like a sack of shit :o)


Returning to last weeks stuff we incorporated the seated feet on hips guard to include the sit up single leg takedown. A good natural technique.

Ian then ran us through the seated guard trip takedown from last week. Still love that move.


Moving away from that stuff the next technique was a transition from Side control to Mount. In side control so your head is to his left side, you use your left arm to secure him in place along his left side, bring your right hand down and put it on the mat next to his right hip to keep him from hip escaping. Now turn your lower body so it's facing away from his head and then kick high up in the air with your right leg to pass it over his torso, coming down on the other side to get to mount.

We then did a drill to incorporate that transition. Using the above side control to mount transition first, your partner then upa escapes out to land in your guard, breaks open and passes guard (using whatever pass you want) to land in side control. From there he transitions to mount and you get to do the escape and the rest. Fun drill. It was also good to do as many different passes as I could remember in the string.



Sparring:


Sparred with a returning Tom Hill first and he didn't seem to have missed a step. We had a really good strong roll with both of us threatening a little but getting nothing.


Next up was Glenn Cutter. Good close roll. Nearly hit an arm bar, then a gogoplata (probably committed to long to the gogo cause really wanted to hit it). Glenn was able to take my back toward the end of the round giving me the opportunity to try defending and escaping against an opponent who can really press me. I defended well but my escaping was a struggle. I was just getting out as the round ended. I really need some situational drilling to practice explosive escaping from difficult positions.


Next up was Rob Morris. As usual Rob used his traditional start of trying to physically pull my hard off. I quickly swept him and got to mount. Tried gearing up for an arm bar which Rob shook to get to his side. From there I took his back and spent the rest of the round trying to attack his neck and arm. Rob did a fantastic job of defending his back.


Last roll was against Ash who I'm still going quite easy against due to his age and inexperience but he is definitely improving each week.

Good session. I'll be back with more next week. ¬m/

Hereford Open 17/2/13

Sunday 17th Feb. Comp day had come once again. I'd been quite ill in the form of a lung infection and then sinusitis for the preceding month and a half but regardless I  carried on training hard and sparring hard.

On the Sunday morning I was very grateful to have the company of Justin Thomas and Luke Brown for the journey and to cheer me on and offer advice. Neither were competing they just came along to support me so fair play to them. That is a couple of great team mates right there. Especially Luke Brown who had spent the night doing door work in Weston Super Mare, not finishing until 4, then being up and active for 8:30. Good lad.


So we get there at about 9:45 and the place is already very active with Bjj match ups across 4 match squares. The Hereford Competition was, as seems to be the norm for this one, very well organised with the weigh in and match timings being virtually spot on. The guys running this thing have definitely got it down to a fine art.

With my illness and the fact that the festive season was only a month and a half before, the weight cut was particularly gruelling, with me only really getting on course by the last week. So I was very chuffed when my tester weigh in just before the fight came in at 86.6 kg. That's over a kilo under the 88.3 kg limit. Good start. That gave me the chance to blatt back an energy drink and a banana.

By the time we were gathered around our warm up mat I was joined by fellow Checkmat guys, Tom Dalley and Gordon Mills. Also present were a couple of other familiar faces, notably Lee Simpson of Sukata Bjj, a guy who basically wins or at least medals in every competition he enters. And Mark Thomas, the guy who beat me in the first round the last time I entered this comp.

There seemed to be a lot of guys missing from our bracket in the end as a few of the guys were given byes in the first round. I was among the ones lucky enough to get a bye. Tom and Gordon both had first round matches. Both of them unfortunately lost.

When the second round matches were off I had been bracketed with a guy who had already fought. As we were all (or most of us) standing around having a chat and getting to know one another I met my opponent, Wayne Pearey, who seemed like a nice guy. Quite a big guy for the bracket as well and he didn't seemed phased in the slightest by the fact that he'd already fought and won a match.

I'll link the video below for you to see how I did (not particularly well) then explain things as I saw them.

I didn't feel I did too badly from the stand up although he did eventually get the 2 points for taking me down into turtle. He managed to get a couple of good point scoring positions on me (back and side) which, although I was able to escape, I was not explosive enough to get out off within the 3 seconds point scoring threshold. I also escaped a decent arm bar attempt which was a plus point but Wayne was eventually able to trap me in a triangle position, which I had well scouted, but the armbar that followed I did not.
I have to admit that I didn't really feel like I had any significant input in this bout. Wayne basically had me on the back foot all the way through.


For my repechage fight I was put against Daniel Lewis, who'd had a tough first match up against Lee Simpson. I was a little bit more confident for this one as Daniel really did look knackered after his first and I'd had a lot of recovery time. This confidence was misplaced however as Daniel was a pretty damn awesome competitor.

First thing I noticed from the initial grip fight was holy shit was this guy strong. In the first contact he managed to grab my arm and force it where he wanted it and I had to struggle massively to get it moved. After that he pulled guard on me and it was about the only bit of top control I had in the fight. He quickly swept me and controlled me for the duration of the fight, the only meaningful thing I did was escape side control momentarily. Eventually he managed to take my back - a position I'm normally quite comfortable in - and slapped on a game winning Bow and Arrow choke.
My most productive moment in the entire thing was when I tried to steal his victory at the end by raising my own hand. I pretended this was a joke but to be honest I was so spaced out I didn't really know what I was doing for a few seconds.
I had a good chat with Daniel after the bout and he seemed like a really nice guy. If I was being critical of the comp in any way I'd say he was probably easily the second best guy in our bracket but as he'd lost to Simpson, the most he could get was the bronze, which he did. Ironically the repechage final for bronze was between Wayne and Daniel so both my opponents did well. Lee Simpson quite easily took the gold however after winning four straight fights. His opponent, Mark Thomas, who'd mysteriously managed to get to the final after only having one match? I suppose that's the advantage of being one of the home team fighters :o|


So that was my Hereford Open experience for this time round. The highlight of this comp for me was the fact that one of my oldest childhood friends, Lee Bonella, who happens to live about 25 miles from Hereford, came up to watch. It was great seeing Lee but I'm gutted I couldn't win one for him.

I've now got to go away and analyse what went wrong and what I can do to improve my game. I'll do this in another blog entry I think as I haven't done a proper analysis of my game's strong and weak points for a while.

I'd like to thank my Instructor, Ian, for training me, my good team mates Dan Foster, Chris Cook and Luke Brown for the hard sparring sessions on the run up to the comp and Chico Mendes for cornering me at the comp.

I'll finish with this as I think it's awesome.

¬m/

DV8 Bjj 14/2/13

This was my last training session before the Hereford Open 16. I've been fortunate enough to get some mid-week lunch time training in with the always improving and helpful Luke Brown (cheers buddy).

Our fearless leader, Ian Rossiter, and his trusty sidekick, Glenn Cutter, were back for this lesson, fresh from a Bjj related trip to Greece under the awe-inspiring tutelage of Checkmat head, Leo Vieira (lucky bastards). And they were both bursting with great stories and cool Bjj drills, techniques and ideas.

Warm up:
We started off with basic stretching of the neck, shoulders, arms and legs to prepare us for what was to come.

Then Ian put us through a Cardio circuit done in unison. This featured;

Everyone doing 20 seconds of high knee running on spot

then 10 seconds of pausing in squat

20 seconds of press ups

10 seconds paused in plank

20 seconds of crunches

10 seconds paused in a v sit up

20 seconds of jump high on spot

10 seconds of pause in squat

Then do the same circuit again.



We then did a Bjj technique specific circuit featuring:

Mount escaping/maintaining.

Side control escaping/maintaining.

Turtle transition to rear mount/turtle defense.

Takedown positioning/defending.

Guard passing/maintaining.

All of this was drilled at 100% or close to in 20 second rounds over two sets and was really enjoyable, although I'd prefer a little longer on each round. Good stuff though.



Technqiues:
(As usual I will describe techniques from the side I initially learnt them).

To start off Ian repeated the Arm bar from guard stuff that has been covered over the last couple of weeks.
I was practising techniques this week with a guy who recently returned to Bjj after a long hiatus. Gary Batten used to train with Ian in the old days (hehe) when they were training under Carlos Lemos jr. He seems a very nice friendly guy and is a pretty damn good blue belt if he "rusty" state was anything to go by. I hope Gary sticks around to help our team grow in the future. He'd be a great addition to the team.


The next move Ian ran us through was the Kimura from guard. Starting with the opponent in your closed guard using his hands gripping on your legs or side (you rarely get an opponent putting there hand to the floor these days so there's not really any point in drilling it as if it's going to happen that way) so there's a small gap between his arm and his body. Grabbing his left wrist with your right hand using a no thumb grip, you open your guard and shift your hips out to the left slightly so you can lean up and forward passing your left hand over the top of his right arm and reach through the gap between his body and arm to grab your own wrist, using the same no thumb grip. Once this is secure you can pull the guys elbow in tight to your chest and fall back with your entire body weight and closing the guard back up as you go. When flat to the floor you can either; push the guys left arm to a ninety degree upward angle using your arm strength, or, turn your entire upper body to your left, taking the guys arm with it and piling on massive pressure.


Ian ran us through the Triangle from guard after that which has been covered frequently recently so no need to rewrite.


Next up we did a little drill for seated feet on hips guard. You lay on your back with your feet on the hips of a standing training partner and they quite aggressively walk from left to right, increasing and decreasing pressure and you have to keep the feet on hips guard maintained. It is best if you try and keep a minimal surface contact with your body on the mat.


The above lead us on to the last technique which I really enjoyed. From the feet on hips guard you hook your left foot under the guys right inside leg and use this to pull yourself toward his lower right leg to grab that leg with both hands.You then (keeping your right foot against his hip) swing your left leg down and across to chop his left leg out toward you giving him absolutely no base left to stand on. The guy should fall backward like a sack of shit leaving you to come up into top position. Interestingly, if you try to jump straight on top you'll most likely end up in half guard top which is not ideal if your opponent is an awesome half guard player. A preferable idea is to come up to a combat stance with a grip on both of the opponent's legs and push them down to one side to try for a full pass from a strong position.



Sparring:

For sparring this week I had a good roll with Gary Batten who was a very good technical opponent. Neither of us really got anything on the other. I look forward to some good hard sparring sessions with Gary in the future.


For the second roll I was against Jay Curtis and managed to hit him with a Gogoplata which I was particularly chuffed with as it's only the second time I remember pulling one off.


My last two rounds we against Luke Brown who is improving every session. I managed to get him with something in the first round (can't remember what) but the second round he stayed a lot more alert and gave me a good tussle. 


After that good last session I felt pretty prepared for the comp on Sunday. I'll give you a write up on how I did next time. ¬m/

DV8 Bjj 7/2/13

This week down at the DV8 Bjj class at Sweat FA Weston, usual instructor Ian Rossiter was away in Greece on a 4 day Leo Vieira seminar (the lucky bastard) leaving the lesson up to Dan Foster and me. Now I love teaching Bjj even though I'm very new to it but Dan is a good solid Blue Belt for the club too and he seemed keen on doing a bit of teaching too so I let him take the lions share of the class as I'd done the week previous.

Warm Up:

As is the norm these days we did a circuit of stuff with 30 seconds being spent on each station. This week most of the stations were once again pretty Bjj specific:


Roller Wheel (Like a push up but using a roller wheel, sending your arms forward then back toward you)

Alligator crawl (Jacare)

Mounted Arm bar drills

Back manoeuvres (lying flat on back with feet around a cone, shifting your position on the floor to practice position shifting in guard)

Skipping

Weighted sit ups

Back manoeuvres (Same again)

Step ups

Press ups

Back manoeuvres (And again. Dan wanted these a lot as it was specific for his class)


Techniques:

Rather awesomely, I decided to break out the video camera that my wife lovingly gave me Christmas 2011 for the purpose of videoing Bjj techniques.  This worked well for me and I had loads of fun editing some of the vids, particularly as I'd never done it before. There was one with Dan explaining a technique that I slowed down to 50 % speed and it sounds like Dan got stoned just before class :oD

Anyway......

The first thing Dan demo'd was just a couple of details on how he prefers to do Arm bars and Triangles from guard. We'd covered these techniques a bit in recent weeks but Dan just wanted to start the class off with a little recap and add his clamping detail.

To move the lesson on, Dan wanted to show the ease with which you can transition between the Arm bar to the triangle to the omoplata and back. We then drilled these for while. It was a good effective drill and got people very used to hitting three different subs. Good skill.

For his third technique demonstration, Dan was torn between showing the Triangle from Spider Guard and a Triangle escape that he favours. So we convinced him to show both :o)
This first one is the Triangle from Spider.

And this is the Triangle Escape.

For my small part in the lesson I continued on from my last weeks theme by showing an escape from North South. Unfortunately I didn't think to get anyone to video it so I'm back to the good old description method. You've got an opponent with North South top control on you. You must ensure your elbows are pulled in tight to your sides to start with, so the opponent isn't gifted with a kimura or arm bar. Now this escape will only work if the opponent is controlling you with his legs tight to your head not sprawled out. As long as this is the case you can reach up with both hands and grab the guys pant leg on each side. You then straighten your legs out and swing them first as far right as they'll go, then swing them back left. As you swing the legs back pendulum like, you need to pull the guys left leg toward your left shoulder whilst pushing up with the right arm. This should (and does if executed correctly) tip the guy over away from you with you coming up on top into side control.


I was pretty chuffed with the video stuff. I think I shall be carrying this on.



Sparring:

For this weeks sparring I went with Rich Presley (who was sporting his new Blue Belt), Chris Cook, Rob Morris, Sean Errock and Dan Foster.


I got a few taps and generally had a pretty good work out. Can't remember any details at all so I won't bore you.

I'm now only a week away from the Hereford Open 16 where I am competing again at -88.3kg. I can't wait. I hope this time I can come in a bit better prepared and maybe make a better try of it than last time.

¬m/

Mr Tickle Bjj

Through a video of my match at Hereford last year, that I had posted on YouTube, I have been contacted by Ryan Bassett, the guy who beat me in that match.

Ryan's a damn nice guy and exceptionally enthusiastic about this delightful art form, so he's started up his own blog. Mr Tickle Bjj can be found here and contains a lot of the main stream postings and techniques that you'd expect from a Bjj current affairs style blog. Where as mine generally has me reviewing my most recent Bjj experiences, Ryan blogs about all things Brazilian Jiu Jitsu related that cross his path and have peaked his interest. I really recommend his blog quite highly as he's already alerted me to a great deal on a rash guard through following it. Good stuff.

Keep up the great work Ryan!!

¬m/

DV8 Bjj 31/1/13

Following on from last weeks spate of illness I have been to see the quack and he said I've got a lung infection and put me on some Penicillin based anti-biotics along with some Steroids (not the kind that'll make me buff). Ian's been flagging with an illness too so consequentially we called off the Tuesday sparring session this week. My Molotov of chemicals has brought me back to some sort of semblance of health (so people elected to comment on this week) and come Wednesday I asked Ian how he was feeling and if he wanted me to take the class (a bit of pleading in there too). Ian still being in a pretty rank state was happy to jump on that and I was more than happy to do up a lesson.

Venue: DV8 Bjj, Sweat FA, Weston Super Mare, Uk.
Instructor: Me :oD (Blue belt - Checkmat).

Warm up:
As has been the norm for the last few weeks I started us off with some Neck, Arm and shoulder stretching.

We then went on to a circuit. This time though, as an experiment, I included loads of new exercises that were more Bjj related rather than intensely cardiovascular. The exercises I used were:

Gator Crawls.

Mounted Arm bar drill on heavy bag.

Sprawls.

The turtle hurdle.

Upa Bridges.

Seated thrusts.

Hip escapes (shrimping).

Seated alternate toe touching (with only your butt on the floor).

Back manoeuvrability. (lying on the floor with your feet either side of a cone and moving from left to right).

Leg swings. (Only you ass or pelvis should be touching the floor as you swing your legs out and around starting from seated around to on your front then back to seated).

We then finished it off with some leg stretching.



This format received mixed reactions. Some liked the exercises, some felt there wasn't enough cardio. Looks like we're going to have to work toward switching it up a little to strike a happy medium between cardio and technical related exercises.



Techniques:

I based my lesson on a conclusion I came to after a facebook discussion we had the other day. Basically, if you're more comfortable in your ability to escape from certain danger situations you'll be more comfortable trying out new stuff as you're not worried about where you'll end up.

At the end of the day, if you're only rolling your A game because you're afraid of being caught in side control or mount, you're not really trying out or learning anything new unless it comes by accident. This is where my rolling with Marcus (Hedley) used to come in so handy because we'd seldom be relying on the same stuff from one session to the next. Instead trying out new things and seeing how they work out and consequentially getting ourselves into all sorts of tough situations to try and escape from.

Anyway, I digress, what I'm actually trying to say in a preachy kind of way is that a guy needs to be comfortable in his ability to escape stuff before he'll really let himself go with the experimentation side of Bjj. So with this in mind I thought I'd run through some basic escapes and also a couple of not so basic escapes.

Starting in your opponent's side control I first showed the basic hip escape that should be a part of everyone's arsenal. This is generally most guys go-to escape from side control and rightly so as it is well proven as a winning technique of escape. Basically, you got the guy lying across you in side control with his head to your left side. You should have your right leg raised in some way so as to stop the guy easily transitioning to mount while you work up for your escape. What I like to do is get my right forearm jammed into his hips and grab his left shoulder with my left hand so my left forearm can be used to put pressure into his neck or "bug the neck" as I've heard it called. I've seen the left arm part of this technique done in lots of different ways by lots of different people but this is just my personal favourite. The reason being that occasionally, if you dig it in there nice and deep, the forearm can distract the controller enough to aid you in your escape. From here you bring both of your feet to the mat quite close to your butt and then bridge up and turn toward the guy, pushing away with your forearms. This should be done in one motion so a/. you can use the momentum of the whole move for maximum acquisition of space and b/. the guy has minimal amount of time to attempt a quick jump to mount. While the guy is pushed away as far as he'll go you shrimp your hips out to your left side and bring your right knee up to your right arm so you can tuck that leg in at his inside leg to form a butterfly hook. Using that hook you can adjust yourself  back to straight on pushing the guy away enough to pop the left butterfly in. If you are one of the many guys who feels more comfortable going all the way back to full guard you can just kick out with both legs then close the guard around him.
This has been a stalwart part of my side control escape game since the early days of my training.



For the second escape from side control I showed I used a spin out escape I found on the Roy Dean Blue Belt Requirements DVD a while back. It's a lovely little number that starts from a very similar position as before. You got the right forearm at his waist, the left bugging his neck. This time though you haven't been able to make the amount of space required for the above escape. Maybe you're knackered or the guy you're against is stronger or heavier that you. As long as you can get enough room to switch the position of your right arm to an underhook all is well. Do this by making the meagre space you can manage and turning the arm inward under the guys gut to come out on the right side of him holding at his hip. You can now extend your legs and swing then over to the right , then swing them like a pendulum over to your left, whilst at the same time pushing up with your right arm and down with your left, almost like you're making a steering motion. You should be able to use this motion to duck under the opponent's chest and pop out the other side using the continuing motion to spin fully around to come back into guard. It is best to have a little an amount of your body touching the mat at the point you are spinning as you possibly can to maximum how far you can spin. I find when I'm doing it, I'm on just my left butt cheek and a bit of my lower back. I can recover to full guard quite easily from there.





Moving on to mount escapes we quickly drilled the Upa escape from mount. We've all done it often in our class. It's a bit of a favourite, but as we're on escapes I thought I'd make sure everyone know the stuff they're supposed to know really well. I won't write this one up as everyone knows it and I think I wrote it up recently anyway.




I moved us on quickly from there to the Double hip escape from mount. Now this is a move that has always been quite a common favourite in our club, back since the days of us being SJJA, as it was quite a favourite of Gary Davies. The opponent has you in full mount, what you need to do is make a bit of space so you can turn ever so slightly to your left (so he's not got you flat to the mat) and then drop your left leg flat and hip escape to the right so you can use both hands to push his right knee out away from you, down past your knee. You can then bring the left knee up inside so you have a half butterfly guard. Hip escaping out to the left now and pushing the guys left knee using the same motion will allow you to bring yourself to full butterfly. Once again a quick kick out from there will allow you to recover full guard.
This move is definitely easier for us with shorter legs. A little flexibility is a help as well.





Rolling:

First roll of the night was against the ever game Ash, who I guarantee one day will be very good. After the usual game of patty cake while we look for position to takedown I decided to dispense with it and pulled guard. I then used a technique I've been seeing in a lot of books lately where you turn toward an arm that he is using to grip your collar with quite high, as if you're not threatening an arm bar in anyway. Consequentially he kept his collar grip while I pretended to try a hip sweep of some sort.  As predicted he blocked it easily but had his balance apportioned perfectly for me to spin back around an kick my leg up over an catch him with the arm bar. Thanks Dave Camarillo (whose book Submit Everyone is where I saw it most recently). After that i thought I'd help him out with a bit of his game talking him through how to move all the way from guard through to mount then choke me out. I was pleased to note that I didn't need to talk very much as he had most of the transitions done well.



My next roll was against Luke Brown. Can't remember much at this point except for that I got him definitely once with an arm bar, maybe twice. Can't remember it perfectly.


Next up was a good roll with Rich. Very technical. Good back an forth play with no obvious advantage being held for long. Good flowing rolling.


After that was a good roll with a much improving Chris Whiting. Chris has always had a damn good strength level to his rolling but he seems to be trying stuff more now and relaxing a bit more which is for the better. We ended in a straight leg lock war. With Chris having me trapped up quite well but I tried first his right leg, which didn't work well, then his left which I eventually got the tap from. That is still one of my favourite techniques. I'm pretty chuffed that I had the presence of mind to ensure I didn't reap on either side too.


Last roll was with Sean Errock. It was a good hard round. Most of it concentrating on trying for the takedown. I didn't get him with anything either which is good.

So that was it. My first proper, full lesson taught. I've taught a few techniques before and a run the warm ups on occasion but to be allowed to teach the lesson was a real honour. I love this martial art and hope one day that I'll be in a position to pass my knowledge on to an eager learning class. ¬m/