DV8 Bjj 18/4/13

So the boss wasn't there for Thursday's lesson as he was attending a wedding. Which was pretty good for me as it meant that I had the opportunity to do a bit of teaching again. Excellent. Of course I shared the honours with Glenn Cutter (what with him being a higher grade than me and all that) and we kicked out a fairly decent lesson if I do say so myself.

Venue: Sweat FA, Weston Super Mare, Uk
Instructors: Glenn Cutter (Purple Belt, Checkmat DV8), Martin Eyre (that's me, Blue Belt Checkmat DV8)

Warm up:
Glenn took them through the warm up. I say them as I spent most of the warm up time sweeping shit off of the mats from the kick boxer class before. Not ACTUAL shit just so you know. That would be pretty gross. Just regular fluff and grime and hair etc. There just seemed to be a lot of it on this occasion and I did not fancy rolling about in all that.

So Glenn took them through some stretching and then did our standard Tabata drill. I didn't join in until half way through the tabata.



Situational Rolling
Glenn then had us doing a load of situational rolling.
We did;
Closed Guard Top for pass.
Closed Guard Bottom for sweep or submit.

Open Guard against standing opponent for maintaining guard..
Standing in opponent's open guard for passing.

Mounting opponent for submission.
On Back, Mounted for escaping the mount.

Attacking opponent's Turtle for submitting or taking his back.
Turtled up for resisting opponent's attacks.


This was a good start to the lesson and definitely got the blood suitably pumping.

Techniques
Next up was the technique side of things which I took the lesson for.
(As usual I will describe techniques from the side I initially learnt them).


First up was an Ezekiel Choke from Side Control. I showed this one as if you just passed the opponent's guard to get to side control to the guy's right side. As you land in side control you need to pull underhook his right (nearside) arm with your left. You pass your right arm around the guys neck, pushing the arm through as far as you can so your hand comes around to the right of his head. With that hand you use a "fingers in" grip of your left sleeve and then pass your left arm across the side/front of his throat. Pushing out with both of your hands should finish the painful Ezekiel Choke but if you're finding trouble you just need to switch your legs to lay flat out on your front, increasing the pressure on the guy's neck. A lovely finish and it seemed popular with the lads.


The second move I showed was an Arm Bar from Side Control. You have the strong side control on the opponent with your legs out to his right. You have managed to get the opponent to commit one of the cardinal side control bottom sins as he's attempting to hold you down by wrapping his left arm over your right shoulder whilst his right arm is underhooking your left and he's locking hands behind your back. Although a lot of guys use this technique to try and recover breath at side control bottom all they're actually doing is holding you to them. To punish them for this you need to get a firm grip of the opponent's left arm with your right, hugging it hard to your right shoulder, leaning towards his legs a bit too. Applying a liberal bit of pressure to the guy's neck/face with your left forearm certainly wouldn't harm your efforts at this point either. Then you bring your left leg up to step over or near to the guy's head (still keeping heavy downward pressure on his upper torso). From there, in one move, you pivot around (turning right) on your feet, keeping your grip of the arm. Ensure you keep your left foot and bum tight to the guy when you come down on the other side of him. Keep your knees locked together tight and extend the guy's arm out for the arm bar.
I really love this move and have hit it loads of times in hard sparring. Most of the guys seemed to like it too but some struggled with the pivot movement.




Rolling:
We had and extra long rolling session this week. I have rounds against Rich Presley, Justin Thomas, Ash Cutter, Chris Cook, Dan Foster and Glenn Cutter.

I got a few subs in but nothing to write home about. My most memorable moment though was hitting a Standing Berimbolo Pass on Chirs Cook. I was massively chuffed about this, especially as I'd only learned the theory behind the move earlier that week and only had the chance to "try" it once on Rich Presley, half and hour before. So putting it into my sparring against Chris was a real straw grabber but it feckin' worked a treat!!!

Here's the move in the video I found it on courtesy of William Burkhardt on Youtube (although I orignally found it on LapelChoke.com ¬m/

DV8 Bjj - 11/4/13

So I ended my last entry telling you how I was gonna bust a gut getting back on the training mats at full force. This changed however, when I decided to enter the next Hereford Open in June. I've decided this time to go for the under 82.3 Kg bracket. I nearly made that weight last time I was cutting, even though I wasn't trying for it, and this time my I'm planning it better. Unfortunately I have my post-easter break weight to get rid off. I managed to drive myself back up to an impressive 14st + (stopped weighing myself after the 4 came back) so now I'm blasting away in the gym doing interval training and weights while eating well and ensuring I get a signifcant bit of weight training in there to keep my strength up. After one week of this I've dropped back to 13st 6 1/2. A couple more weeks of this and I'll be sitting pretty at the low 13 - maybe sub 13 - mark. Once I've attained that weight I'll maintain the healthy diet, kick up the training sessions per week and maybe fit 2 or 3 cardio/weight sessions in a week also. If I follow this plan I think I will be much more prepared than I ever have been before.

With all this in mind the only Bjj session I've done this week coming off of Easter was Ian's Thursday class. And what a belter it was to come back to. Good numbers there with a few old faces returning to the mats (JT and Ed Travis) and we even had a cameo appearance from the streamlined "Big" Steve Rudd and the Turtle King Neil Owen (although neither of the latter two were training). It felt good to have the old club mates back and there was a good bit of banter and a jovial feel to the class.

Venue: DV8 Academia de Jiu Jitsu, Sweat Fa, Weston Super Mare, Uk.
Instructor: Ian Rossiter (Black Belt - Checkmat)




Warm Up:

The usual full body stretching to begin.

Then on to Ian's favoured Tabata curcuit.

(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.

And then proceed to blow out of your ass. :o)

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

To start the lesson Ian gave us a simple Arm Bar from guard. A quick demo of it cause everyone is pretty comfortable with their AB from G movements. The idea behind this was that we just practised the technique a couple of time from each side and then drilled it fast. Getting the movements into your memory, coupled with the ability to do them fast, so you can hit it at speed to punish an opponent whose got a bit slack. The basic technique starts with the guy in your guard with both hands gripping your lapels. With your right arm you reach under his left arm to grip his right arm across the forearm and pull it toward your centre line. Keep the grip nice and strong so he can't pull it away. Now with your left hand take a deep grip of his left lapel and pull him in toward you. Open your guard and put your left foot on his hip whilst putting your right leg across his back to keep the guys posture broken down. Using the foot on hip you shift your angle out to the right and then pass that left leg over the guy's head, clench you knee tight and extend your hips to get the arm bar sub.



Next up was a Gi Choke to counter the arm bar block. You've done all of the above up until you're about to slap the arm bar on (remember that you still have your left hand deep on his collar). Unfortuantely the opponent has managed to wrap his free arm under the arm you're trying to extend so he can bring it tight to his chest to block the arm bar. To counter this you just need to slide your right hand into the guy's right collar so you have a cross collar grip. Finish the gi choke by pulling your elbows in tight and then drawing them down across your sides.


The last technique of the night was a Triangle from guard. Different to the usual method though, for this one Ian used the sweeping arms out wide method. Basically the guy is in your and has a grip on each of your lapels. You bring your hands under his arms and put them together, then push the up between his hands to break open the guys grip and force the hands to the mat to either side of you. Quickly wrap your right arm over the top of his left to trap it in place while grabbing his right arm with your left hand and straight arming it away. Shift you hips out to the right slightly so you can bring your left leg up and pass it through the gap between your arm and his and then kick that leg up high and wrap around the back of his head. Pass your right leg over the top of the left to close off the triangle, then bring the guy's trapped left arm across the front of his face. Shift your angle so you're out to his left side (so you've shifted to your right) to close the amount of space in the triangle and get the choke submission.

Situational:
After the technical part we then did some situational sparring starting from closed guard. The guy in the guard has to break guard and pass. The guy with the guard has to sweep or submit. 2 minutes then you change.

This was a great addition to our usual weekly drilling and rolling regime.

I went again Rich first, then Tom and then the returning Ed Travis. I was only swept once (by Rich) and managed to sweep and pass everyone. Most multiple times (except Tom whose guard I only managed to pass once).


Three Way Rolling:
We then did the good old three way rolling where you group off in a trio, two of the guys roll for a minute while the third waits for the minute to be up. When the minute is up he attacks the guys with the weaker position. This decides the order. From there the next waiting guys then attacks you (regardless of what position you're in) and on it goes from there.
I was with Dan and Rich. It went ok. I got a tap on Rich (can't remember what) but other than that I was pretty knackered and didn't get anything good.


Good sesh. Ian told me at the end that he's got a wedding schedule for next Thursday so I may get another teaching session in. Cool. I best start planning now.

¬m/

No Training - Easter Hol.

Got a lot of lunchtime training in with Luke Brown on Tuesday and Wednesday (26th 27th) and had a visit from my good old training buddy, Marcus Hedley, on Thursday and got loads of technical training and a ton of rolling that lunchtime too. It was looking like being a nice packed week of training. Unfortunately I was on call for work and got called out just before Thursday night's lesson. Massive bummer.

So I missed the Thursday night class and I've been off for Easter week with the wife and kids so I've not had any training at all this week.

I have however, been watching some pretty cool vids and reading up on some stuff that I'm dying to try. I also want to carry on trying to improve my Berimbolo sweep which I've been working on with both Luke and Marcus last week. I previously felt that this was just an overly flashy technique with minimum practical use but if mastered it becomes a valuable weapon in your guard game. Coupled with a strong De La Riva guard this could really open up some great options for me from open guard. I just have to work on the strong De La Riva guard bit.  This is stuff I will be trying next week during my lunchtime training and maybe in class. 

I look forward to getting back. I've had a great week off. Now all I want to do is redouble my efforts in training.

¬m/