DV8 20th June 2013

So once again, I'm writing this out a week behind. Anything you read here actually applies to last week.

Still injured. Shit ribs. :0(  Although it's slowly getting better. I can do some really light sit ups now and I've been doing some technique training mid week at lunch time to help one of the lads whose just started up at our club, Marc Aplin, get ready for competition. That's been going pretty well and it is great to be doing something on the mat but I don't half miss sparring. I've been told by everyone that I talk to though that I absolutely must let the intercostal muscle heal properly before hard sparring or it'll just result in further injury time. Fucking thing.

Anyway, on to this week at Ian's class.

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



Ian started us off this lesson with the excellent Brabo Choke from closed guard. Starting with the opponent in your closed guard you break his posture down and bring him in close to you, reaching over his back with your left arm and grabbing his gi at his left shoulder blade. This will help you keep him down while your right hand pulls his left gi lapel out of his belt. With this gi lapel in the right hand, you pass the end of it over his back to near his right shoulder. Once it's there you can release your left hand grip on his gi and grab the end of the lapel, using that to keep him down in position. You now pass your right hand under his face/neck and grab the proffered gi lapel over his right shoulder with that hand. This should now be quite tight around his neck with your wrist pressuring his throat somewhat. To finish you now bring your left hand over the top to reach for the tightened gi material at his left shoulder and drawn the opponent in tight to you, closing the choke on his throat and earning a pained tap. Nice move to start the lesson.




Moving it on from there, you've got the guy to the above position but for some reason - be it a hand in or the gi being slack in the wrong place - you can't finish the Brabo. You can vary the move by opening your guard up and swinging your left leg out and over the top of the opponent's head (your body will now be out right perpendicular to the position it was in previously) and then drive the foot down whilst maintaining the pulling pressure on the gi. Another awesome choking move and one that I have liked for a long time.



Alternatively, instead of going for the leg over choke, you can keep the Brabo grip on the over shoulder lapel and rotate out right (as above) but this time keeping your left leg in tight to ensure he can't remove his right arm from the set up . Once you've done this the right arm will be neatly in position for you to hold to your chest with your left hand, giving you time to remove your right hand grip from his lapel and pull it out of the way, so you can pass your left leg up over his head and extend the hips for a brilliant and painfully tight arm bar.



Now if you get to the above arm bar position but the guy has managed to pull his arm out enough to stop the threat you can change to concentrating on his right arm. From that angle (given the slightly twisted angle the opponent would be in at that point) It's an easy matter to pull his left arm onto you so his wrist is resting at about your right shoulder. Now ensuring that his thumb is pointing downward, you can press your right forearm on the back of his arm at just a fraction above elbow and use your left hand to gable grip the right, piling on the pressure for the extremely painful Straight Arm Bar finish. Jesus H Christ does that one hurt when put on right. You certainly want to be careful with that move and be sure you release AS SOON as the opponent taps. This is a move that can cause some pretty decent injuries if not carefully applied.



We finished of with a fairly standard switch from that last move to an Omoplata. Easy, obvious and not really worth explaining.


After that I got the opportunity to watch the guys roll again while I had to sit out. I took this chance to practice my cornering by verbally trying to assist someone to better their positions etc by shouting advice. A tactic that would help me out well for Sunday when I go up to Hereford to support Marc.

Injuries gotta be over soon. Pleeeeeeease!!!

¬m/

DV8 Bjj 13/6/13

I'm a week behind with these write ups at the mo so I'm gonna quickly churn this bad boy out to catch up. Apologies for the haste with which it's written.

As it stands I'm still suffering with this bastard rib muscle injury. Can barely do anything that involves core strength. Sparring is totally out of the window. I'm insisting on carry on with technique drilling though as I don't want my Bjj muscle to totally rust over.

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


Techniques:


Ian started us off with a simple guard break. It was his old favourite, the knee up butt guard break. The opponent has you in a tight closed guard. Using both your hands you hold onto his gi pants, or his belt, or even clench your fists up and push them into his pelvic bone. The aim being to ensure the guy's hips are forced to the floor. From there you bring one of your legs back and then ram it forward into the opponent's ass. With your other leg you step back and off to the side slightly so you are able to totaly sit back with perfect balance. When you sit back the pressure of the knee being up the ass coupled with your whole lower body strength driving backward will break the opponent's guard right open. Textbook guard break. Everyone should know it like an old best friend.



Moving on from there, Ian showed us a guard pass. Once you've broken the guard open you select one of the opponent's legs and bring your opposite side forearm down into the hip joint. Your then reach around outside with your other hand and grab the wrist of the first arm so you can tighten that arm up around the top of his leg. Driving your upper body into the back of his leg and pulling this in tight now, as if stacking but with extra pressure, makes the opponent immediately want to relieve himself of the pain this causes. I doubt you'd get a tap with this unless it was against a really new white belt but they will want to get out of it and to do so, they'd probably push their leg forward toward you. This being the case you just roll with the leg pushing it by you so your body comes around into side control.



We finished up with a Forearm choke from Side control. With a strong side control you pass your head side arm under his head and take a grip of his offside collar. Maintaining the lions share of your body weight on his upper body to keep him in position you pass your other arm under your body and grab the guys gi jacket at the arm pit area. You can then open your head side arm out so as to pass that arm over his head (ensuring you maintain the collar grip) and enabling you to drive your forearm down across his throat. Rest all your weight hard down on the forearm across his throat for maximum pressure.



Like I said, it was short but sweet for this one as I have another write up to do too. I didn't get any sparring done as I'm still not ready for that with my ribs so I just used that time to gain some experience cornering. It was good to be back to class and I'm going to carry on doing the technical parts of the class as I just can't stay away. Bjj = Life. ¬m/

Still Injured.

Super bummed out. I'm still injured with the rib problem I got at the last seminar. Apparently intercostal muscles don't heal that quickly. So I've haven't been able to train since which is soul crushing. And I've had to pull out of the Hereford Open which is equally as shite.

So all in all a very unproductive Bjj-ing week.

UFC Nogueira vs Werdum on the other hand, was the most awesome display of Bjj in MMA that I have seen in a long time. Nearly all of the fights shown on the main card on ESPN were finished via submission. In fact, ALL fights shown on the main card transmission were finished. One was via KO, by the much improved Thiago Silva, while one other was a TKO. Besides that the rest of the fights shown on the card were subs. That's 8, yes 8!! submission victories on one card. Wouldn't like to be Dana picking a winner for sub of the night on that one.

Of particular note was a slick knee bar finish by Antonio Braga Neto in a 1 round roll over. Rony Jason's triangle from guard and Daniel Sarafian's head and arm triangle were also pretty amazing and had me jumping up and down in front of the TV.

But most surprising and most exciting was Fabricio Werdum himself, getting an arm bar over the legendary Minitoro! I've been a big fan of Werdum's for a while now and seeing him blast past a major opponent in Nogueira and possibly challenge for the title is amazing.

Suppose that leaves nothing left but for me to shamelessly post up a picture of me and Fabricio Werdum (and Marcus and Gary) from the ADCC 2011 in Nottingham. Yes, he's fucking enormous!

I'm gonna get some light technical training in this week as I help my Hereford replacement, Marc Aplin, train for his first gi competition. Can't wait to get a gi back on. ¬m/