DV8 Bjj 28/2/13

I managed to get in a damn good amount of training this week. Tuesday evening I was at Sweat FA, Weston, with Chris Cook for some hard sparring. Wednesday and Friday lunch times I hit the mats with Luke Brown for some technique training and sparring. And of course Thursday night was our usual class with Ian Rossiter down at Sweat FA. Gotta love loads of training. In fact I would gladly train every day if I could. Although I think I'd probably ache like crap. Anyway......

Warm Up:

This weeks warm up started with a little taste of the old style with some laps of mat with arm wind milling and side steps etc.

We then went on to the usual upper body stretching.

And then we were back to our 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 the warm up with a bit of leg stretching.


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


The first move Ian showed was the a nice touch on one of my old favourites. A Flower sweep to dummy to arm bar. Your training partner is in your closed guard. You can't seem to get a decent grip on his pant legs as his legs are tensed up leaving no slack on the pants. To rectify this you raise your legs effectively pulling the guy toward you with your closed guard. This makes him untense his legs slightly, giving you the opportunity to grab a hand full of pant leg at his left knee with your right hand. With your left hand you grab his right sleeve at the cuff with a pocket grip and force the guys arm down toward his lower body by straight arming it. As you lower you legs back down so he comes back to his knees you are at the set up point for your flower sweep. From there you open your guard and, angling your body out to your right, use the high leg kick up with your right leg at the rear of his left shoulder whilst pulling up on his pant leg to break the guy's posture down. You then bring your left leg up over the top of his face/head and kick forward with your legs whilst pushing up with your right arm pant grip to flip the guy over onto his back with you in the traditional arm bar setup. As you had his right arm straight armed down toward his crotch/lower belly area, when you kick out forward and flip him down his arm is positioned neatly between your legs in your arm bar trap. Now depending on how defence savvy your opponent is you might have an easy arm bar or you might have to fight for it. Alternatively, if the guy is stronger and you're not having a lot of luck breaking his arm bar grip defense you can just jump up into technical mount anyway.

 

The second technique we did was the Flower sweep from closed guard. My old friend. Ian knows that I like this one so much that he let me demo it. And as it's one of my favourite techniques I did a write up on it some time back which I'll link Here (flower-sweep).


We then did a line up drill of both techniques by having two groups. 1 guy on each team gets on his back and the rest of his group approach him one at a time and he does the one of the moves on each in succession (being sure to mix it up). Quite a fun method of drilling the techniques.


After that Ian changed it up and, at the request of one of the guys, demo'd an Escape from a nearly sunk in Rear Naked Choke. With the guy behind you in full sat up rear mount with both hooks in, he has his right arm around across your face/neck and is just levelling it up with the crook of the other arm, passing that arm behind your head, to finish. First thing to down is pull down on the guy's cross face arm and get the chin down inside the guy's arm. Next, and this really should be done very quickly, you scoot you ass down so your head is no longer up level with his upper chest/neck but rather, has dropped down to his lower chest. Now he'll have a hard time finishing the move giving you more time to work. With your left hand you reach up and grab his left hand (the one that's behind your head) and pull it down forward to totally relieve the pressure. Bringing your feet up to near your butt moves the opponent's hooks up high allowing you to then drop your right leg quickly and use you right elbow positioning to edge the hook outside. You can now quickly flip over to your left side taking a hold of the guy's left leg when you get there. If he's quick and intelligent he'll realise he's lost the position and at least try to recover some semblance of half guard. If he's and idiot and tries to keep on with the rear mount (you know we've all been there), you can get a good single leg grip on him and use it to pass to side control.
A great escape from a difficult position bit it really is all about getting the movements in quick before the RNC is fully locked in. Otherwise, to quote Kurt Osiander, "Hey Bro, you fucked up a long time ago".

Rolling:

This week I got a good roll in with Dan Foster. Something I look forward to as he really know's how to push me hard and make me work. During this roll I managed to hit a De la Riva sweep to back which I was chuffed to fuck about. Dan managed a pretty damn good rear mount escape shortly after that while I was kind of mentally patting myself on the back so he had a good moment too.


My next round was with Sean Errock who once again dazzled me with his wrestling technique to get me to my back. I was able to tap him from my back eventually but I can't for the life of me remember what with. It certainly wasn't the gogoplata that I very nearly hit him with I know that much.


Last up was a returning Rich Presley. Had a good back and forth roll with Rich this week with neither gaining the upper hand. Rich was exhibiting some really high quality inverted moves to stop my passes too so he can take the moral victory there for style points.

And so it was that another brilliant week of Bjj training had come to pass. A better week of training than some I have to say, especially with the amount of mat time I got in and with the advancement that some of the guys at our club seem to be making. I'm particularly proud of Chris Cook and Luke Brown who are both coming on very well, benefiting from the extra technique and sparring sessions they're putting in. With Bjj, the more effort the student puts in, the more apparent their advancement of skills. Keep up the hard work lads and it'll reap its own rewards.

DV8 6/12/12

Wow, I'm slipping with these log updates. It's now Tuesday 11th and I'm only just getting around to writing up on last Thursday's class. It's mostly a combination of working hard in the build up to Christmas, and of course the build up to Christmas itself. For those of you that don't know, I'm a mega Christmas nut. Love this time of year. Love the festivities. Love the buying of the presents. Love the decorating. I love taking my family out on Christmas related nights out. I'm a big fan of the whole season.

That and I like to drink and eat a decent amount over December. I'm fairly sure I'm way above the 13 st 2lb I was weighing in at a week and a half ago. I can't even count the amount of take-away food I've had since the Hereford Open on one hand. I'm trying to keep a handle on it though. I'm still only eating a healthy breakfast and a chicken salad for lunch so at least I ain't fatting up during the day. Night time is my weakness though. I seem to have this alter-ego called Fat Man. My will power dies once I get home and bask in the lights of my Christmas tree. A beer might come out and the take away menu draw is looming large in my direction. Ah well, I can't diet loads in the new year. I'll be skint enough!! ;o)



Anyway, on to the subject matter. Good numbers at Ian's class last Thursday. Most of the regulars turned up. A damn good sesh too.

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

Glenn Cutter took warm up, which is never fun. It's not like he does much different to what we usually do, it's just the length and intensity he drives us through it. You always feel a bit shagged after a Glenn warm up.




Techniques:
(For simplicity, I always explain techniques from the side and using the grips that I initially learned them)


The first technique was just a quick recap of Ian's favourite method of breaking closed guard. You're in the opponent's closed guard. Using you hands to push his hips down to the ground, drive your right knee into the guy's butt. Now open your left leg out wide to the side and a little behind so the guy can't get a good grab of it without having to move a lot (your left foot should be flat to the floor). From there you just sit back, leaving the knee forward. This should break open your opponent's guard although sometimes you might come up against a guy with a strong guard lock or a guy who just has freakishly long legs. In this case the judicious use of your left elbow on the guy's right inside leg is always a help.
This is an Old Skool Ian technique. Anyone who has trained with him for longer than a couple of months will have this technique ingrained in their DNA. And rightfully so as it's very high percentage as a method of breaking close guard. Ian's point with it on this occasion though was to show how you can counter the guard break.



For this particular demonstration it was countering into a triangle. When the guy is going for the positioning for the above guard break and is readying to sit back, you cross grab his collar with your right hand (grabbing his right collar), grab his right arm sleeve with your left to keep it close to you, open your guard and plant your left foot into his right hip, pushing your self back away from him a bit. Your grips will pull him toward you and give you the time and the space to bring your right leg up and inside of his left arm to pass it over his left shoulder across his back. Releasing the collar grip you had with your right hand, you can reach over his right shoulder to grab the leg that you've passed behind him. Pulling this into position you should be able to fold your left leg over the shin of the right to close the triangle tight. If the guy's a bit bigger or if you've got short legs, you may have to shift your hips out to the right a little to get enough of your right leg over his back to be able to close the hold on him.




Ian moved us on from there to one of my favourite techniques, the Flower Sweep. As I've done a lengthy write up on this move before I think I'll just link that HERE instead. Still love this move and use it all the time.



The next move we did was a variation of the Flower sweep that Chico showed us at his recent Weston seminar. I've also written this one up before but the log is quite long and I doubt anyone reading this will want to trawl through that so I'll just copy and paste it here.
"Next up was a sweep variation for if the guy traps your arm. He's in your closed guard and baited you with the open left leg. You reach under to take it but he's too quick and clamps his leg back down shut again, trapping your right arm in there and cutting off one side of your upper body defence. However this is not the end of the world. In fact after a short while of drilling this move I felt this was an amazing turn of events. All you need to do is ensure he can't move his right hand from your waist at this point then you can sweep him over to your left (his right) side. To do this you open your guard and drop the left foot to the floor and can basically roll him over to his back using a flower sweep style right leg up, kicking him (not proper kicking, it's just a description) at the left under arm to flip him over and come up comfortably in mount. I absolutely LOVE this sweep as a cool variation on the Flower Sweep. I've already hit it a few times in rolling since. Love it!!
You can even just slot your arm inside when he hasn't opened the leg. Works the same way. Amazing sweep."
Saves a lot of typing this does.



Rolling:


First roll of the night was against Rich Presley. It was a nice fast paced roll with lots of positional back and forth stuff. Lots of flow. I managed to get to half guard top on him at one point and choked him out with and Ezekial choke. Soon after in that round I dropped back in his open guard and hit an ankle lock.


Second roll was against Glenn'son, Ash. Ash is only a young kid (about 13 or 14) and a relative newcomer, so I don't like to pounce on him and try and tap him out in seconds. That's a chump move. Instead I had a nice flowing roll, showing him where he makes mistakes and trying to help him polish up his game. He does definitely seem to be getting better too. Could have a good competition future ahead of him if he dedicates himself. I bloody wish I'd got into Bjj at 14 I tell you.


Third roll was against the man himself, Glenn Cutter. Rolling against Glenn is always a fast and furious match up and I frequently feel like I'm on the defensive. Fortunately I feel quite comfortable playing guard and was able to fend off most of Glenn's pass attempts. I think he did pass at one point but I was able to regain guard fairly quickly. Which is much preferable to the other option of getting caught in Glenn's stifling North South :o(  .   When he was back in my guard though I noticed he had his left arm low so I was able to quickly pass my right leg over it and close off a nice triangle. Glenn tapped pretty quickly after that. Not much else happened in that round.


Last roll was against Tom Hill, who I have not been able to get anything on for quite a while now. It's always a hard tight roll going against Tom with not much transition at all. This was the same. Very much a lock horns and go through a physical chess like struggle, trying to find the grip, pull or push that will advance. Neither of us ended with the upper hand come the end of the round and that was the end of the lesson. I look forward to rolling with Tom some more soon. I hope he goes in for some comps this year too. For his weight class (<64kg)he's like a friggin pit bull. Once he gets hold of you he's bloody hard as fuck to shake off. I reckon he's got more medals in his future. He's already medalled in every comp he's been in.

So that's it for that week. I've been training with Luke Brown on the occasional lunchtime at the moment and he's learning at a wicked pace. I've pretty confident I can train him to do well in a comp come next year. He's already got freaky strength for his weight and as a personal trainer his athleticism is well above average too. Couple that with the quickness with which he picks up techniques and he could be doing well in some of the local tournaments next year.


Due to work commitments and a late night shopping promise I gave my wife, I am unable to pick up a class next week. Hopefully Luke'll put in some lunchtime sesh's to cheer me up.

I'll try and get a log up here about something in the mean time. Get the old Bjj writing juices flowing again.

¬m/

Sjja 2-2-12

In Bjj, some nights you have it, where you're on fire and no one can touch you (well, get position on you or threaten with a sub) and some nights you should of just stayed at home. You find yourself stepping back into your early learning phase and dropping clangers all over the place. In particular, leaving arms where they should not be left. More on this later.

Thursday nights class at Sweat FA had good numbers again and we had the bonus of having Gary Davies in attendance which is always a treat. It was pleasantly warm in the martial art room given that the rest of the gym is usually freezing during the day and the temperature outside was a chilly -2C.

Venue: Sweat FA

Instructor: Ian Rossiter.  (SJJA)

Warm Up: Laps of the mat, including, ass kicks, knee ups, facing inward for 2 laps, facing out for 2 lap. Neck, Arm and Shoulder stretching. Push ups 10 x 4, Squats 10x 4, Crunches 10 x 3, and then some leg stretching.

For the first technique, Ian quickly ran us all through the Triangle from Guard we did last week. You've got the opponent in your guard, you get a tight grip on his sleeves, open your guard and put one foot on the opponents opposite hip (left for right, right for left). Then with the strong sleeve grip, push the guys arm that's not on the side with the foot on hip into his stomach whilst pulling the other arm up towards you. Now fire your other leg up in the air then down across his shoulders (you may need a hip shift and rotation of the your body out to the side to accomplish this) and lock your other leg over the first to form a figure four around the guys head and forward arm. I drilled these moves with the ever improving (and ever slimming) Rich Presley. As there were odd numbers we were also joined by Gary which was a treat. Gary always imparts a few of his additional little golden nuggets of Bjj knowledge on the people he's drilling with which help immensely towards tightening up the technique.

 

Quickly after that we went on to the first Triangle defence from last week.  As the opponent is going for the triangle you have to lift your head up a bit so he can't get it lock properly and his leg forms into what Nathan calls a diamond. Also, ensure the arm that is through the triangle hole is braced against the opponents hips, using your other hand reached around the outside of his leg and pressing down on the through arm for additional strength on the brace. Making sure your head is back as far as it will go (even going as far as to roll eyes back to emphasize the upward head motion) and the hips are braced down, you can then come up onto your knees (the triangle will break here if the guys got little legs and you have big shoulders) and then further up to your feet. From here the hold should break easily. After a short drilling of this we moved on.

 

From there, Ian and Gary showed us a different escape from the triangle attempt. You start off the same as before so you have your head and back postured up and arms bracing the hips. From here you bring your leg that is on the same side as your trapped arm, around to press against the opponents side and push it in hard as you turn your head away in the opposite direction. The pressure here should be from your knee on his side and the tightness of it being wrapped around the upper leg pushing it inwards while your head kind of pushes the lower leg out. The legs should come open, but you have to be wary at this point because if you follow your instincts and start to pull out and away in the direction your head is facing at that point you set yourself up to be omoplata'd. Instead you can either turn back in and bring your outside arm back in so you're are back in the guys guard to start the passing attempts again, or you can keep pressure on the opponents bottom leg (the one not over your shoulder) with your free arm and bring your previously trapped arm out and around the outside of the guys leg, then pass using the smash method of leaning all your weight on his leg from your shoulder, pushing it to the side until you can slide right by. While we were drilling, Gary picked me up on the fact that I was trying to just throw the leg over for the pass which give the guy on the bottom valuable space to reclaim guard. 

Ian moved us on from here to a fairly tasty sweep. Starting from the feet on hips, hands gripping opponents sleeves, escape your hips slightly to one side. From there, pass the foot on the side you escaped to, over the opponents arm then put the foot on to his ribs (so you kind of have his arm grapevined with your leg). Now, bring your other foot up and bring your leg horizontally across his torso, hooking on the outside ( at the same side your other leg is). From here your opponents natural instinct is to pass to the side where both your legs aren't. When he does this you can grab the material of his gi pants on the non passing side and pull it up kicking up and over with your legs to sweep the guy over. When you come up, the arm that you originally had trapped with your leg is in a dangerous bicep crush position. If you put your weight on that it will  really hurt the opponent but this is an illegal move in Bjj competition and would get you instantly disqualified. You need to allow space for the guy to retract his arm whilst also making sure you've got enough pressure on his upper body to ensure he can't break position and recover guard. 

 

We drilled this move for a while and whilst we were going through the motions Gary showed us how to switch this in to a "cheeky armbar". Same set up as before up until the opponent starts to pass. From there you bring the horizontal leg out and over his far side arm and past his face. With your other leg out on the under side of both his arms you can get a nifty armbar with both his arms in.

Gary then felt a little bit disco and showed us an inverted triangle from the feet on hips, sleeve control position. With this one you don't wrap the leg round the arm instead keeping it inside positioned vertically up against his chest/torso on the his opposing side. The other leg still goes horizontal across though and from this position you push away with your knees while pull in with the sleeve control. The opponent will try to react by pulling away at which point you bring the vertical leg out and up over the guys non opposite shoulder (your right leg goes over his right shoulder or left for left) and start putting downward pressure whilst keeping both your shoulders flat on the mat - I had problems with this cause I kept turning on my sides for this- and curling your leg around his back. From there you fire your other leg underneath and out behind you then wrap it round the top leg to make the inverted triangle. Very flash. Only got a couple of tries on this before we realised we'd left a tragically short amount of time for rolling. 

Now the rolling was where my previously mentioned problem occurred. First I rolled with Rich who, as I said before, is an ever improving White Belt who has been training quite heavily lately (3 times a week, lucky bastard). I had a good roll with Rich, his guard game has improved massively and he tends to jump straight into guard rather than try to grapple from the knees. He seems to be favouring spider guard a lot lately and was very close to sweeping me with the high foot in elbow crook sweep (obviously not it's official name). Now I used to get a lot of subs on Rich but recently that has not been the case and this time I managed to pass his guard a couple of times to side but didn't even threaten a any kind of sub so his game is definitely improving no end.

I next rolled against Gary. Now Gary has been off for a couple of weeks due to a new tattoo but rather than come back rusty (that's not Gary's style), Gary beasted the shit out me. I had one of those rolls where nothing went right and I felt like a total amateur. I was falling into obvious traps and not even keeping my limbs in tight. Because of this, Gary managed to capitalise on a couple of  rookie mistakes and catch me in two nice tight armbars. And Gary can finish an armbar well. My 50% armbar escape rule definitely doesn't apply with Gary. 

After that roll I was busy fluffing my crestfallen pride while every other guy was picking another opponent. Because of this I lucked out and was left with rolling against Ian. Ian's been rolling with a renewed vigour recently and I definitely felt the brunt of it. As soon as we touched hands for the start he jumped straight into an aggressive guard and tried for several different sweeps. I managed to stop a couple and get a pass into half guard where he threatened a kimura. Whilst the kimura was on and I was stopping it with a very flimsy gi pant grip, I managed to pass to side control and then escaped the kimura attempt by passing into mount. I tried to threaten a few subs from here but Ian had absolutely non of it and I was quickly back into his half guard then guard. I don't remember what happened after that (heat of the moment and all that) but Ian ended up hitting me with yet another armbar (3 armbars in the night!!!) which I'm pretty sure wasn't straight off from his guard.

After time was called on that roll Ian was about to call time. Me and a few others were quick in asking for more and Ian gave in and said we could have one more roll. I went against long time training partner Marcus. Now it's worth me mentioning here that in all the times we've rolled, Marcus has never tapped me out. Not to take anything away from Marcus though as I outweigh him by about 2 and a half stone and have been training for about a year longer than him. Tonight though, as I said, wasn't my night. Ok, I managed to get Marcus early with a Kimura from side control but after the reset I pulled guard and Marcus managed to pass to half guard. I worked on one of the sweeps I've been practising lately, making use of the framing technique I spoke of in my last log to escape the hips to the side (at this point it's worth mentioning that the 30 second warning had gone off). From that position I pulled his basing arm in and bridged for the sweep, turning him over onto his back though Marcus, as usual, exhibited his speed off his back and quickly reclaimed guard (this is one the strongest parts of Marcus' game). Marcus quickly crossed gripped my collar and I made a very stupid mistake here. I settled myself to pull on one of Marcus' hands at my collar to relieve pressure knowing that there was only seconds left (stupid and poor training practice). Time was called and I can recall thinking "I survived that one" but unfortunately my body did not want to move and then my vision swam. I can remember rocking back and forth thinking "I'll stand up in a sec" and Marcus saying "Martin, are you all right?" and then I was back in the room. 

 

I got up and laughed it off with Marcus saying that he nearly had me but after we'd closed out the class and were getting changed I thought to myself that at the end of the day, if time hadn't been called, I would've been unconscious. Marcus got me. I shouldn't take that away from him, I should help him celebrate the fact as a  milestone in his Bjj progress. I went over to Marcus and told him outright that he basically choked me out. We laughed about it as we left the gym. I'm very glad Marcus is improving that much and hope to have many challenging sparring sessions with him in the future. 

Walking away from that session though I felt a little hollow as I've been making a lot of rookie errors recently. My last two classes my sub ratio has been pretty poor and a lot of guys are training 2 or 3 + times a week and are getting noticeably better while I feel I'm starting to stagnate. To combat this I think I desperately need to find a way to get additional training in. I've been tossing about a few ideas and discussing some things with Marcus and hopefully we can maybe start getting some extra mat time in soon. Even if it's just drilling techniques we know or have seen in a book with a healthy dose of rolling. Just need to get this together. Need to improve my game. Don't like the bad days.

\m/

By the way, hopefully next time I'm at Ian's class I'll have my Video Camera fully charged to coincide with the lesson (idiot) and can film some or all of the techniques so I can post the vids here and you won't need to interpret my descriptions so much. Can't wait for that.