Seminar - 25/5/13

Well, this'll go down in my Bjj history as "one of those days that didn't go to plan".

Firstly, it's a bank holiday weekend here in the UK and the weather was threatening to look quite nice (an uncommon occurrence here). This meant that traffic was absolutely choca-block. Concerns were first raised when my wife had left her friends house in Bristol at 10 o clock and was still not even halfway back by half 11. Fortunately my mother in law was kind enough to look after the kids while I went to the seminar.

When I got there the numbers were really low. Seems like loads of people either struggled to beat the traffic or just gave up. Chico himself (it was supposed to be his seminar) ended up arriving 2 hours late, taking 3 and a half hours to get from Cheltenham. A journey that usually only takes an hour.

Anyway, Ian stepped up and took the No Gi part of the class and we did some Leo Vieira style pummeling to takedowns and back takes. All stuff that Leo had previously referenced as the deciding factor in Demian Maia's recent UFC grappling domination of John Fitch (Leo is Demian's head bjj for mma instructor).

That all went well and everything was good. At the end of that hour and a half we did some No Gi rolling. Not a specialty of mine it has to be said. I've only grappled No Gi about maybe 10 times. First round went well against a guy from Dorset. Took his back and was a hairs width away from locking up a RNC as the round closed out.

Second round was against Marc Aplin who managed to duck around me to take a high back control (as I said in my last post, he's fast). I felt comfortable though and with the lesser friction of a rash guard in comparison to my gi, I was able to curl up reach under his right leg and pull it up to duck out and pop up in his guard. All well there. Unfortunately, and to absolutely no fault of Marc's, (I emphasize that because he was feeling guilty and it's in no way his fault) something moved painfully at the lower left frontal area of my rib cage. Very painfully. While curling up I obviously went too tight and managed to crush something together in there. Christ it hurt. We initially thought I'd either popped or cracked a rib. Marc was good enough to supply me with some painkillers and I quickly got off the mat.

Ironically, Chico turned up just after that so I had time to quickly say hello before disappearing home in a world of pain. Got home and me and my wife went down to A and E under her mother's advice (Pat's a nurse) to get an X Ray. The whole process was relatively quick and I was pleased to find out that nothing was broken OR out of position and the doctor also told me I had a nice, healthy set of lungs. That's a relief after the pain I was going through with them at the beginning of the year. She said the problem was that a muscle had popped through my rib cage. Causes a lot of pain and discomfort but generally heals after a week of rest.

Thank god it's not worse. Hopefully I'll still be able to compete at Hereford next month. We'll see how I go over the next 2 weeks and I'll make my decision then. Anyway, that certainly wasn't the ending to day I was hoping for but it definitely could've been much worse. I'll keep you updated on what happens.

¬m/

Dv8 Bjj 23/5/13

Good numbers again. Things seem to be picking up at our little club which is exciting stuff. The more the merrier in my opinion. Now if I can convince a few of them to start competing we could have the beginnings of a decent comp team.

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

(As usual I will describe each technique from the side I initially learnt it)

First move we hit this sesh was the Arm Drag to back control. You're sat down as if in Butterfly Guard but the opponent has secured a grip of your ankles (or gi pants near the ankles) and stepped back as if to start a pass. What you have to remember here is that your legs are (nearly) always going to be stronger than his arms. All you have to do is step your right leg out to the side, taking his left arm with it, whilst quickly gripping his left arm at the triceps with your left and taking a grip of his gi jacket on the left arm at the triceps or wrist with your right. With this newly acquired grip you then lean back hard using the strength of your back to yank the opponent's grip free and pull him off to your left hand side (all this is done really quickly as it's a move that really telegraphs itself if you do it slowly). Once the guy is dragged off to your left you can then go round to his back and secure his left leg with you legs wrapped around it. Leaning you hips into him helps maintain him in a turtle position.


From the above it's just a simple matter of passing your left arm over his left shoulder and your right arm under his right arm and gripping your hands together to form a seat belt style control of his upper body. You can now step your right leg over near to his right hip in preparation for the back take. From here you just need to lean out hard to your left, rolling over to your back and swinging your opponent over also. This movement also opens the gap wide between his right elbow and knee so you can neatly slot in your second hook and wrap up a very tidy back control. Marcelo Garcia himself would be proud of you.


After that with did a simple flow drill of Arm Bar from guard, countered, to Omoplata, to triangle. This was the same as was covered a few months ago so I won't rehash.


I was quite on fire this week rolling. I got all my opponents but most noticeably, I managed to get Tom Hill with and omoplata and a kimura. It's been ages since I got anything on Tom so either I was on a rich vein of form or Tom was on an off day.

Today (the day I type this) is the Chico Mendes Seminar down at Sweat FA. I'm really pumped for this. I cannot feckin wait.!!! I'll give you a full write up on it this week. ¬m/

DV8 Bjj 16/5/13

In the rush to get through my last post I totally forgot to mention the fact that I just got a new gi. I entered a Like and Share style comp on Facebook a couple of months ago with Vulkanstore.com and don't you know, I was one of the 12 winners. I won a $100 voucher to be spent at their webstore. Now I wanted all sorts of things from their pretty amazing and well stocked site but more than anything, I wanted another Vulkan Gi. My Vulkan Ultra Light - White - is easily my favourite gi and also my go-to comp gi as it only weighs 1.2kg. I really wanted another Ultra Light so I went for the navy blue (my mate Rich Presley talked me out of getting the Bruce Lee-esque Yellow Pro-Light) which is a really nice coloured gi. The jacket size is pretty large for an A2 though. I can't decide if it was a mis-labeled A3 or if it just needs shrinking. I've opted for the latter option though as I've had some import troubles and don't want to go through it all again.

On that subject, FedEx are a bunch of rip off bastards!! Last time I got a gi through from the states I don't recall an additional charge on arrival. And it wasn't delivered by FedEx. This time however, AFTER I've been down to their depot and collected the gi, I get a bill for VAT and an additional admin charge from FedEx. Now I've been getting steadily ripped off by the government for years so I'm used to getting the stiff one from them. What I don't appreciate is the fact that FedEx stick this totally unreasonable 10 quid admin charge in on top! It wouldn't be so bad but the fuckin VAT charge was only a fiver so for FedEx to add twice that for themselves is the kind of bastardry usually associated with thieves and murderers. Lesson learned. Don't tick the FedEx box when getting things delivered from abroad in future.

As for this weeks lesson, we had some pretty good numbers this sesh with two new guys from one of the local MMA clubs attending also. It was great to have these new additions and I can only hope they keep on coming.

Venue: Sweat FA, Weston Super Mare, UK.
Instructor: Ian Rossiter, Checkmat Black Belt.



This week Ian went with a technique theme. The Guillotine.

First up we just did a standard guillotine from knee to knee. One guy gets the arm around his opponent's head and then pulls him down, cinching the move up beneath his chin. Standard guillotine. Nothing special.

We then did the block to a standing guillotine. The opponent has managed to manoeuvre his way into having a guillotine on you from standing. The first and quickest thing you need to do is to grab and pull down on his applying arm with your offside hand. This will relieve the pressure and give you time (not loads though so a bit of haste is necessary). The next thing you do is reach over his offside shoulder with your nearside arm as if you're trying to reach for his belt. If you can reach the belt then all the better but if not, just take a grab of his jacket. Now you are in a lot better position. If the guy tries to crank the sub on now just can just hang there relieved of most of the pressure while he gases himself out (normally). But you don't want to just hang there, you want to get on the offensive. To do this you need to position your offside elbow (whilst that hand is still relieving the pressure around your neck) into his upper thigh to hold him off. This allows you to step around to his offside, putting your foot behind him. You can now knock him off balance by tripping him to his back with you coming down in side control. Even though he still has a hold around your neck there is no pressure at all. A savvy bjj player would at this point just give up on the hold and try for a side control escape or guard recovery. Usually the guy's instincts will tell him to hold on though.

That leads up to the next two bits. A way to break the hold. The first one involves you keeping the arm that was reach down his back in place and driving your head up into his armpit. This should put a lot of pressure on him in the style of a head and arm choke and if done correctly, can earn you a neat little tap.
The second for if you can't get the first, pull your arm that was behind his back out and drive the forearm of that arm up and into his neck in a sort of scooping style to exert immense pressure on the neck, causing the guy to either release the hold or tap/pass out. If he does the sane and sensible option of releasing the hold you now have a strong side control position to work from.

For the last move of the night, Ian ran us through the arm in guillotine. A guy has shot in for a takedown the stupid way and come up with his head on the outside of you by your right hip with his right arm around your waist. You reach down around and under his head with your right arm and push your arm through so you can secure a standard style guillotine in. But unfortunately he's managed to get his right arm in there and this stops you from finishing it with the usual way. Instead, use your left arm to pull your right arm under and through as far as it will go so it now becomes your guillotine arm. Gripping your hands together and using your right forearm pressed down to keep his head in there, you can now lean back and pull up on the guillotine to finish the move.


Rolling:

I said I wasn't going to write anything up about my rolling unless anything special occurred. Well it did. And I need to remind myself of this. I rolled with one of the new guys to the class this week. A guy named Marc Aplin, who I later find out is an experienced MMA fighter. He'd come into the class, I'd never seen him there before and he wasn't wearing a gi so I made the stupid assumption that he was fairly new to it all. Stupid. Straight from the off Marc demonstrated a speed and skill level a lot higher than I was expecting and quickly arm dragged me to take my back. That was basically the position the round took from then on in with me blocking his RNC attempts and trying to escape from first his hooks, then his body triangle. It really was quite impressive cause I threw a lot at him to escape, feinting with straight arm bars while I tried to escape my hips but he was tenacious. Not having a gi on was also helping his cause somewhat as the usual pant leg grips and friction on his legs were not there. In the end I was left with a "must try harder" taste in my mouth. Marc went on to win a local No Gi grappling competition on the Saturday though so he clearly has a lot of grappling talent. I just hope he sticks on in our class so I can have another crack at him.

That's it for another week. Like I said, I'm trying to keep these things brief now. Catcha next week. ¬m/

DV8 Bjj - 9/5/13

Ok, so I'm quite far behind on writing this up. As I sit here and type this it's the week AFTER the session that I'm writing about and I've just got back from another awesome sesh. 

You see, what I've been doing lately that's taken my time away from blogging and generally obsessing about Bjj is that I am currently learning two new subjects. Firstly, I have developed a taste for Web Design and programming and wish to learn much more about it so I can maybe earn some extra cash doing up some inexpensive web solutions for people (it's a long way off but you gotta have a dream right?) and secondly, I've been learning Spanish, as I am planning a family holiday to Spain in August and I feel like I'm a particularly uncultured fuckwit. Let's face it, us English rarely learn another language so I'd like to be one of the minority rather than the average on this.

Anyway, to help stay on track on this I'm gonna have to dedicate a bit more time to that and a little less time to blogging so basically I'm gonna reformat the style with which I write up a week/lesson/article. I'm going to dispense with the amount of detail I go into on things like warm up and sparring and maybe see where I can shrink down my technical explanations as well. Sorry if you read this and previously enjoy all the extra shit I usually put in (although I can't imagine there's anyone out there who suddenly thought that) but I really need to trim the amount of time I spend blogging down for a while.

Ok so for this entry I'm going straight into the technical bump. Oh wait,

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

Techniques.
 (I'm still going to be explaining these techniques from the position I initially learnt them).


For the first technique, Ian let Rich Presley demo a Kimura from guard while he talked through it. I was Rich's demo partner for this.
From a good closed guard, the opponent's hands are braced against your abdomen, you reach down so your arms are under his arms and you put your hands together (as if praying). You then (keeping both hands together) push your arms up and outwards, breaking the guy's grips and driving his arms to either side of you. Quickly reaching down with your right hand you take a grip across his left wrist and force his hand to the floor. You then open your guard and lunge your left arm forward over his left shoulder (sitting up with your whole body) and reach over behind his left arm to take a grip of your own right wrist. Using your left bicep to bring the opponent's upper arm/shoulder into your chest so it's nice and secure, you fall to you back  out at a perpendicular angle to the guy, bringing him right down close to you and push his arm up straight at a 90° angle, closing up the guard as you go. If executed right this move doesn't fail to earn a tap.


The second technique I demo'd, against Rich. I was a Kimura from side control to North South grip break. 
You have a nice strong side control on the opponent (lying so you head is to his left) and have managed to isolate his left arm to the floor, pointing toward his feet. You grip his left wrist with your right hand and pass your left arm underneath his arm to grab your right wrist (forming the figure four). The opponent at this point, if he's any good, will grab something down at his waist with his left hand. It might be his gi pants, his jacket or most commonly his belt. From here you step up over his head with your left leg and then transition up to to North South. From there you use the grip you have on the guy's arm to pull him up on his side and squeeze your legs together around his head to keep him in this position. Now, leaning forward so your chest is tight against his the upper part of his left arm, you can use the strength of your back to drive yourself up straight, ripping his grip open and then finish the sub by turning the arm backwards through 90°.

Next Ian demo'd a move that was totally new to me. A Kimura variation from side control. You have arrived at the position where you've threatened the Kimura and he's grabbed his belt. As an alternative, you can now release the grip on his wrist ((and your grip on your wrist) and reach around his arm with your right to grip his elbow. With your left arm you switch your grip to grab your bicep (your arm is still under his). Now, making sure your left forearm is close to his elbow, you tilt your left arm elbow up to apply immense pressure to the guy's shoulder. It really is a total beauty.



We also rocked a Kimura from half guard bottom which is pretty much the same as the one from guard, except from half guard.



Last technique was the Kimura from half guard top. You have your right leg secured between his legs and you've managed to flatten him out and lay across him. You've flattened his arm into the Kimura position and reach under and then roll over forward, taking the opponent with you (so you've basically given up position to half bottom) and drive the arm upward in a Kimura. Sleek and sexy move. 

See, that wasn't so bad was it? Only took me an hour and a half to write and I didn't haze on too much. Now I've got to write the next one up.

¬m/

DV8 Bjj 25/4/13

Another week, another step towards being the lightest I've been since my teens. This week I've been blasting the shit out of myself with some intense cross training sessions with a smattering of hard bjj sparring chucked in for good measure. Big thanks to Luke Brown for training with me mid-week lunch times. We've been doing a lot of stand up and sparring from standing so I can get used to competition style starting.

As for Ian's this weeks class down Sweat FA, we've had some pretty good numbers turn in for the last couple of weeks now and this week was no exception. Lot's of regular guys down there with some returning faces too.

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


Warm Up:

Laps of the mat with arm wind milling and side stepping.

Upper body stretching.

Tabata circuit featuring:

(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 with some leg stretching.



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

In preperation for a No Gi comp some of the guys were entering this weekend the boss decided to do some related stuff.

We started off with a quick pummelling drill.
As this has been shown about a billion times on YouTube I figured I'd pick a vid and let the legend that is Randy Couture show you how it's done.

Randy Couture demonstrates Pummeling.



Incorporated into the Pummeling Drill we went on to do Single Leg takedowns and then double leg takedowns.


My personal favourite however was the lift and slam. Once you've drilled the pummeling a bit you can move to a double underhook clinch up and reach down with your head side arm and grab underneath the opponent's nearside leg. Thrusting up with your legs and back strength you lift the guy up so he is crossways perpendicular to you, and then fall forward onto the mat with him coming down on his back with you on top in side control. Love that slam. Obviously with a friendly training partner you do not put the extra juice on it that you might in competition but you get the jist.


The last set of moves were how to Defend against a standing guillotine and a Pulled Guard Guillotine.
For the standing guillotine, when the guy has clinched around your neck you need to immediately grip at his arm to make space where your chin is. You do this with your outside arm while, with your inside arm, you reach over the guy's offside shoulder and as far down his back as you can. This nearly totally relieves the pressure of the guillotine choke and allows you to resist the hold while you think of an escape. Or you can just let the guy gas his arms out trying to choke you. This move is usually successful in completely relieving you of the choke but every so often you might get a guy who is a complete ape or has unnaturally strong arms through years of warehouse work or whatever. Every so often a guy will come along who has the strength to get the choke to work slightly, even with your defenses in place. It won't get you straight away but if you try and rely on the guy gassing to escape you may end up having to tap before he does. Better to have a way out more immediate.

The Defense against the pulled guard guillotine is very similar but you need to get the opponent's back off the ground momentarily to get your arm behind him. To do this you must briefly try to pull away from his so you can get your arm behind then you go right up on your tiptoes.

I'd seen all of that before but I was pleasantly chuffed when Ian showed us an awesome counter to the guard pull guillotine. You get to the position above where you're on tiptoes and then push your shoulder in towards his neck and you should manage to land yourself a nifty head and arm style triangle choke. Beauty.


Rolling.

This week I rolled with Sean Errock, Chris Whiting, Ash Cutter and Chris Cook. Nothing of note occurred.


I've got a week off training next week but will be back to it hardcore stylie the week after!!!!

¬m/