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 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/