DV8 Bjj 17/10/13

Once again this week I've been getting some good lunch time training in with my good buddy Marcus Hedley. We were also glad to have the company of the ever improving Chris Cook  for one of those sessions too which was an added bonus.

We mainly rehashed on the flow attacks we did last week (because they were awesome) and added another to the repertoire.

This one starts off with your opponent in your guard but flatting you out to the mat and stalling by hugging you tight. You initiate the flow attack by first using two hands to pry one of his elbows away from his body (for this example I'll use his right arm). You quickly then slot your left arm through the opened gap as an under hook and reach to his near shoulder, so as to bring that arm up uncomfortably. You then reach over with your right arm and grab his raised right wrist using a monkey style grip (no thumb) and you use your left underhooked arm to grab around the forearm of your right. This gives you a Reverse Kimura from Guard which comes on very tight.

If however he punches out of the reverse kimura you can pull the outstretched arm into the crook of your shoulder and apply pressure to it for an extremely painful straight arm bar.

If he pulls and bends his arm out of that one you can then switch grips for a ridiculously tight and very easy to land Americana.

And if against all odds, he manages to escape all that, you can pull the arm in tight and roll on it, putting your left leg on the back of his head (with the right still under his belly) then turning for either the tight arm bar on top of his arm or flipping him over for the arm bar at the side of him.

A lovely string of techniques there. Brilliant.

Another move we did was a nifty Americana from turtle bottom when the opponent is attacking you head on. Starting as if you've gone for a takedown and he's sprawled and is in front of you. You're turtled up and reach around behind his left arm with your right while grabbing the left wrist with your left. You then pop your head out  to the left (opposite side to where all the action is) and drive your head up while pulling the arm trap down under you. Your opponent should go over on to his back with you landing on him with an Americana right there. A thing of beauty.

We've also smashed out some damn good sparring this week, with the addition of Chris really driving up the pace as there is always a fresh guy jumping in. Brutal.

In Ian's nice packed class this week we studied Omoplata set ups. First up repeating the one we did with Glenn Cutter the other week which starts as a Scissor Sweep, which your opponent blocks by basing out, then you transition neatly to an Omoplata.

Another was a pretty cool effort from Lasso Guard, where you use the old pull arm and kick through method to switch to Omoplata.

We also did a transition from when you've gone for the Arm Bar from Guard but he's managed to stack you and pull the arm free (but left the bracing arm in there). You then just swivel on your ass and kick out hard to switch it to the Omoplata.

All this was polished off with some Omoplata finishing tips and then we did a load of situational guard work rolling. Great active session.

7/10/13 Training.

Back to another hard week of training for me and Marcus this week. During our lunch time sessions we've mostly been focusing on stuff from the Joe Moreira - Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Details and Techniques - The Guard manual, which is the second in a series of 3 amazing Bjj manuals on the guard by Ed Beneville. For the second and third books Ed teams up with Joe, for the first he was with Tim Cartmell. I only have the first two -something I will be hoping to rectify come Dec 25th -  but I find both manuals to be damn good.

The second of Ed's great books concentrates on guard work and it is this that we have been focusing on. In particular we have been doing some flowing attacks. A good example of the flowing attack from guard - or attacking with options - is the one that probably most students learn first which is the good Closed Guard Armbar to Triangle to Omoplata option. This is a great basic option string for throwing up a few subs in a row and depending on how good your control is and how good your opponent's ability to block said subs is, you could essentially go round in circles with this one.

This string of attacks however wasn't the one that we were studying. Joe Moreira demonstrates some pretty damn cool flowing attacks in this book, all with thorough descriptions and loads of photos from a couple of different angles.

I'm not going to type out full descriptions of these moves as I don't need to. I have the book I'm just typing this up as a reference for what I've been studying. If anyone's interested in seeing these techniques then they can either buy the book or , if they know and live near me, borrow it off of me.

First up was a string starting from guard (closed or open, doesn't matter). Your first attack is:

Triangle from Guard. From there, if the guy blocks it using a bracing a you can either;

a/ Get a wrist lock on him, or
b/ Go for the Arm Bar.

If he manages to turn to the other side of you legs to escape this you can then hip escape out and push him over for the Omoplata.

From here if he blocks the you have the option to lean over and pull back his other arm to your shoulder for a really tight Straight Arm Bar. If not and he rolls out you then have the one leg over, one leg at his side Arm Bar.

If he then twists out of this you have his arm over your hip and bring your other (near) leg over his extended arm then wedge it into his side and sit up for a feckin tight Arm Lock! (A personal favourite).

From there if he looks to be escaping you can either:

a/ Sweep him over to side control using the hook, or ;
b/ Use his belt to help usher him into rolling over for another side-on standard Arm Bar. If he then attempts to defend that by pushing your head side leg away you can bring your chest side leg under his head and the other crosses over his face for Yet Another Arm Bar!!

And then if he manages to push your face leg away and attempts to sit up you can get right back to the Triangle. Absolute genius. We totally loved this flowing attack string and spent a lot of time drilling it.



The next set started from a spider guard attempt at a Triangle, where the opponent postures right up trying get out of it. You then push his extended to the outside of your body so it's trapped under your arm pit and use your hands to pull you knee in for a Straight Arm Bar (a fucking tight one too).

If he then uses the logical escape route of turning his arm and reach back around your leg you can hit a great Kimura. This is a total beaut of a Kimura too as there is an amazing range of motion available to finish it without you needing to struggle at all.

If however he manages to block this by quickly grabbing his inside pant leg you can twist your upper body over, using the strength of your legs to force him to forward roll, bringing you up in a lovely position for a Shoulder Lock (very monoplata-esque).

If he twists his arm sideways to stop the lock you can bring your other leg over his head for a side-on Arm Bar but you will be raising your legs a bit higher than usual as the guy's thumb will be pointing toward his legs so you will need to finish the sub by pushing his arm up toward his head. Another particularly tight one.

And if he twists his arm out of that then the cross over leg Arm Bar from the above string is right there.

These two stringed attacks are frickin awesome and with enough drilling you can find yourself jumping into the string from any point along the chain. Nice stuff. That's why I felt compelled to put this down in a log. I've still got Ian's class from last week to type up yet so I think I'm gonna be lagging behind a bit this week.

¬m/

DV8 Bjj 3/10/13

Had a bit of a lighter week of training this week after the comp. Marcus was suffering with a bit of an injured neck so he was out anyway and I wanted to hit the weights and cross trainer a bit to get in a bit of a better shape.

So Thursday was my first session of the week and I was happy to see my good mate Rich Presley returned from holiday. In all though it was a bit of a small class as there were major road resurfacing works going on in front of the gym and we think a lot of guys got put off by this. Even Ian turned up a bit late so we'd smashed through the warm up and were doing some technique Glenn Cutter was running us through by the time he got there.

First Technique was a Closed Guard Scissor Sweep - Blocked - To Omoplata. The opponent starts of in your closed guard. You grab his right sleeve with your left hand and his right collar with your right hand. You then open your guard, hip escape away from the hand grips (ass escapes out to your right) bringing your right leg so your knee is pushing against his torso. Your left leg drops to the floor. You then scissor your legs, kicking out with your right while pulling in with your left so the guy should flip over on to his back with you coming up into mount. However, for this particular technique, you didn't have a strong enough grip on his right arm when trying to scissor kick the guy over so he manages to base out with that arm, stopping the sweep. As a counter to his defense you pull him toward you with your grip on his collar, while your left hand keeps his right arm in place. You then kick up with your left leg under his arm and turn 90 degrees, pushing his upper body over so you are now on his other side (out to his left). You carry on the leg movement bringing it right over his shoulder if you can, if not over his back then adjust, to the omoplata position, pulling your right leg out through as you go. Finish the omoplata in the usual way.




The second technique was the same as the above but emphasized the fact that the leg needed to go over the shoulder as you turned. This time though, you drive your left leg (the one over the shoulder) under the guys chin. You can now finish the move by bringing your right leg over the top of his head and try and scissor the legs together for a kind of modified Gogoplata. This should get a good choke tap if applied right.



This was the point where Ian took over. Ian started us off with and Ezekiel from Rear Mount. You have the opponent's back taken completely with hooks in and a harness style (seat belt) grip around him. This means you have your left arm under his left and your right arm over his right, with your hands gripped together in front of him. You start by driving the underhook (left arm) through as far as it'll go until your left hand is at the right side of his face. You use the hand to grab your right sleeve cuff with a fingers in grip. You are allowed to fingers in grip the cuffs your own gi in Bjj, just not your opponents. You then pass your right arm behind his head and lean out to the left slightly, wrapping the arm down around the left side of his neck. You finish the sub by pushing out with both arms and leaning back. This technique crushes the wind pipe for the quick choke but if that fails, it also puts a lot of pressure across the carotid artery for the slow choke. A good finish all round.



We then went on to do some situational rear mount sparring with one collar grip. That means the opponent who has you rear mounted also has a good, strong, deep collar grip. Fuck me this was hard. We basically got Bow and Arrow choked a lot. I found a good method to stop it but it relied on you managing to quickly get a good grip on his choking arm with both of your hands. The offside hand grips at the wrist to relieve the immediate pressure. The nearside arm gets the grip above the elbow to take a bit more off and work on pushing the arm out over your head. Even then I only managed to block it a few times. I got B and A'd a lot more. Lesson learned. Don't get yourself in that position. Or as the great man once said.......

We did a bit of rolling after that which was cool. A nice mellow week but definitely back to the heavier training next week.

¬m/

Checkmat Interclub 29/9/13 - London.

So I've missed out last Thursday's blog as I didn't really have time to type it up. In fact time seems to be a big issue for me lately between training, getting quality time in with my family and studying, I don't seem to have enough. I am however, glad that I took the time to go up to the Checkmat Uk Interclub in London last Sunday. The atmosphere was great. Seeing a load of the Checkmat extended family was cool and getting the opportunity to compete was pretty good too.

The venue was the Brittania Leisure Centre in Islington. It was a relatively small venue and made even smaller by the fact that we only had half the hall. Most of our half was separated off for the matted area leaving a very small section for people who weren't competing at that exact moment. So it was very much standing room only with no seating even being offered unless you wanted to go out in the lobby. Space was probably the major down point of the day as everyone was huddled up and struggling to see anything and there wasn't really even a dedicated warm up area. In the end we jumped the barrier to the climbing wall area and used the mats there to stretch.

The competition itself started a little bit late as the weigh ins and the team photo took place before hand and this all took a bit of clever man management to initiate. Fair play to Luiz and Chico, they did a good job of keeping the thing going and catching up with the match timings. By midday they'd managed to catch up with all the match times.

I was instantly impressed with the level of talent on display. I managed to grab myself a spot right front and centre and watched avidly as a very skilled array of white belts competed. Very impressive. The first category I had a real vested interest in was the Adult White Belt Light Weight (<76kg) as Marc Aplin from our club was competing and previous outings had left me filled with high hopes for him. Marc is a phenomenal athlete with with a bucket load of stamina and strong as hell for a 76kg-er. Which was why I was surprised when Marc spent a lot of his time from his first two matches in guard and down on points. His composure was spot on as he didn't panic or flake out once but he wasn't up to his usual standard. He managed to win both his first two matches with well executed triangles from his guard though so I can't complain and, as I said before, the level was very high so who am I to judge?

The big downside to the comp came in Marc's third bout. He was working from guard again, the opponent was 2 points up and Marc had an advantage. Then the power went on the timer/points display and the ref called timeout while some techie guys fixed it. When the screen was put back on the guy Marc was fighting had inexplicably been given 3 extra points taken his total to 5. Something I hadn't noticed until toward the end of the match. At this point Marc was quite happily sitting in guard and then quickly swept his opponent right at the end for two, thinking this had won him the match. However, no one else wanted to listen to the protests and the opponent was given the match thanks to these mysterious extra 3 points. Marc was understandably miffed, as were the rest of us. This put a bit of a black mark on an otherwise good day.

The next match I held an interest in was Chris Cook's outing in the White Medium Heavy bracket. Chris has been training very hard recently and I had some hopes for him too. Unfortunately his opponent (the eventual bracket winner) was very savvy and a bit of a machine and quickly got to mount on Chris. From there I couldn't see what was going on cause the view was obstructed so I though I'd seen Chris buck his opponent off but it turned out he'd rolled over into an arm bar. Bad luck to Chris but it's all experience. He'll be back and better, I guarantee it.

As the afternoon was moving on I could feel the approach of my bracket. I was in the Masters Blue Belt Medium Heavy and I knew there was only 3 entrants. I was to be in the first round against a guy named Chris Gregory from Margate Bjj, then the loser would fight the other guy, Ben Bryant. If Ben won that he'd get the opportunity to contest for Gold.

It's worth mentioning at this point that due to my rather ill timed holiday at the end of the month previous, a fantastic week all inclusive in Ibiza, I was well out of my fighting shape going in and had to put myself up in weight category. Couple that with the fact that I technically qualify as a senior (old bastard at 36) fighting in a division of masters, (30 to 35) I had a bit of a disadvantage going in. Regardless of this I went in fairly confident as I'd trained like shit for this and actually had a game plan to work off. Unfortunately this didn't come off as Chris Gregory was one feckin strong dude!

My game plan was to work on a takedown - of which I had prepared and drilled about four good ones that I was confident to use - gain top control and work from there. Bummer then that Chris instantly pulled guard and had the grip strength and closed guard of a titan! I spent most of the first two minutes of the round blocking his collar chokes and trying to pry his legs apart. Every time I started to threaten a guard break he'd tighten a collar choke on so I'd have to concentrate on blocking that. He then got a good sweep on me to mount, which I managed to reverse back to be in his strong guard again. At one point he tried for a triangle which I managed to block and break out of. When I'd broken it I was semi excited as I had the opportunity to spin round and pass however, "Wonder Ref" (yes it was the same guy Marc had), decided at that point to stand us up. My opponent then pulled guard again and I was left struggling against his superior strength. By the end of the match he'd swept me three times to mount and I'd reversed them back all three times. As I'd managed to mount no effective offense whatsoever I lost the match 18 x 0.

Pretty poor performance really and I was completely shagged. I had the length of the next match to recover which was nowhere near enough for me. In a very short space of time I was called back to the mat to face off against Ben Bryant from Essex. We jockeyed a bit as if looking for takedowns but he then quickly pulled guard. I had minimal strength in me against a totally fresh guy. He threatened a choke and then quickly switched to a triangle attack. I managed to hold it off for a decent amount of time but he was really good at adjusting his hips to stop my particular method of triangle block to keep me in it. When he eventually worked out what I was doing he started trying to pull my arm in for an arm bar, which totally destroys the triangle block. I adjusted my grip and pulled my arm away but this gave him the space to tighten the triangle even more and pull on my head. I was very near to passing out at the end and survival instinct made me tap.

Both Ben and Chris were really nice humble guys and I gave them both big congratulations but at the end of the day I was a bit gutted by my own performance. Didn't have the strength in the first match and my stamina completely left me for the second. For future comps I will most definitely be dropping down to the next category and doing a shit load of strength and stamina training.

Chris went on to beat Ben in the final by another triangle but I think Ben was happy with his silver. Chris was just a machine and would be a strong competitor for anyone at that weight.


The only other match I held an interest in after that was with Checkmat South Shields Blue Belt, Jamie Berry. Jamie is a really nice guy I met at a previous Checkmat seminar in Cheltenham about a year ago. Jamie, for me, represents everything good about Bjj. The cameraderie. The wider team mentality. I have only met Jamie on one occasion previous and yet we greeted each other like old buddies and chatted for large portions of the day. It's always good meeting people through your chosen method of time consumption as you know they have one common interest and generally, what I have found with Bjj, is that there aren't that many people who train it that you end up disliking. By and large all my Jiu Jitsu compatriots are nice guys who you wouldn't mind going for a beer with after.  Jamie is exactly this and I hope I see him at many more of these events in the future.

As for Jamie's match. The ref on mat 3 was on form once again. James had a very tight, very composed guard game and hadn't given up any points. I think he was actually ahead due to an advantage or a penalty (I think, I can't be sure on this). Right at the end though his opponent made a pretty impressive switch down at his legs and came up in a banana split (I wasn't sure that was legal at Blue and after trawling the internet for hours, still am not convinced) which seemed to turn into a knee bar as he tightened it on. Jamie, feeling the knee being extended, looked bemused and tapped with that pointing at the knee and questioning the ref type look that people do when an illegal technique has been used to get the tap. The ref didn't have any of it (once again) and consequentially, half the people watching were staring on in bewilderment as the knee barrer had his hand raised for the victory.

Jamie was understandably gutted. So was I. Unfortunately, as it's an interclub and everyone's a team mate you can't really go and make a song and dance about it. Winds me up a bit though.

All it all it was a great day out. Didn't go the way I'd hope but these things never seem to. Back to the drawing board again then. I'm on a big time diet now to bring my weight suitably down below 13 stone on a permanent basis so I don't need to do a dramatic cut to fight at middle weight. Hopefully I'll be down around there in the new year when I'll be pumped to do more comps.

Checkmat Rules!!! ¬m/