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.

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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.

Half Guard - Making Space

If you, like me, realise that part of your problem with the half guard is making the space to shift your hips out to one side then I found a couple of technique vids on YouTube that you may appreciate. I don't have a problem with guys of a lower weight than me, I find I can get the hips out just fine then, so that tells me that I am just using Strength/Power to get in to position rather than any proper technique.

Last Thursday I rolled with two guys from our SJJA club, 1 (Craig) was about the same weight as me but physically superior,  the other (Justin) was just a massive beast who outweighs me by about 2 and a half stone and is so much stronger than me it's not even funny. Now Craig has always been a bit of a master of top half guard control, being able to flatten you out and distract you with what he's doing with his arms to the point that you can't spare the time to attack from the bottom (flimsy excuse I know) so I actually looked forward to rolling with his this time, what with my current goals in mind. From the point our roll hit half guard I was once again smothered to the floor, occasionally managing to escape my hips for a few seconds before being pancaked back to the floor. In the end it was all I could do to go for the cheap option and recover full guard.

In my roll against Justin, a fairly inexperienced white belt, I jumped into half guard and he leaned his weight on me and then used his vastly superior strength of arm to try and grapple a submission out of me. To his credit he was trying for Americana's, Kimura's, a Straight Armbar and even a Head and Arm Triangle. I managed to evade all this (with effort) and realised that I was once again falling into a Half Guard bottom survival role. I should of been attack him and threatening sweeps or something but I was making myself too busy fending Big Justin off and not really considering what I should be doing to improve my position. I wasn't until right at the end that I got a nearside underhook , escaped the hips, trapped his base arm and turned him over into his guard but this is something that I should have been doing straight away.

To that end I've sat down and thought about where I was going wrong and it has become plainly obvious to me that the problem lies in me not getting the space I require to work in quick enough. I am allowing larger/stronger opponents to lay on me and where I'm used to using strength in that situation I am becoming stuck. My technique at this point is missing. To that end I dug up these two videos from YouTube, posted by TechniquePrevails, which were handily titled Creating Space from Half Guard. Even though these techniques are demonstrated in No Gi the principals can still be applied to Gi grappling.

I particularly like this easy option for making space. Framing your arms out to push the opponents head back seems so obvious and simple I can't believe I never thought of it before. The trick here will be to ensure that you can pummel your arms to the inside.

This second one I believe I have studied and drilled before and forgot due to my previous lack of focus on the Half Guard part of my game (idiot). Simple premise, just ensure your opponents leg is secured in your Half Guard and your arms are underneath his arms then lift his weight up and to the side.

I shall be training down Sweat FA again this Thursday and hope to see either Craig or Justin (or one of the other heavy guys there) to practice my Half Guard some more. I need to get better at Half Guard.

Laters. \m/

SJJA 26/1/12

IT was great to get back to Ian's Thursday night class at Sweat FA, Weston Super Mare tonight after missing 2 weeks straight. Numbers were pretty good too and we had two enthusiastic newcomers who have done a bit of BJJ years ago and are looking to get back into it. Their names elude me but hopefully they'll return and feature on this blog at some point in the future. 

We were also graced with the presence of Nathan Moore-Pointing, elite level Purple Belt who trains under Pedro Bessa, but also takes a class for SJJA down in Taunton on a Wednesday. Also good to see Nathan and get tied in knots during the sparring.

 

 

Venue: Sweat FA

Instructor: Ian Rossiter.  (SJJA)

 

 

Warm Up: Laps of the mat, including arm windmills forward and back, ass kicks, knee ups, facing inward for a lap, facing out for a lap. Neck, Arm and Shoulder stretching. Push ups 10 x 4, Squats 10x 4, Crunches 10 x 3,a round of seated knee tucks X 5 per person and then some leg stretching.

Ian split the class up today as there were students of a significantly different level in attendance. The higher level guys started on wrist/sleeve control triangle from guard. 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. 

Additional tactics to get this locked in and earning a tap are:

1/ When the leg is over the shoulder, secure it in place by pulling down on it with your same side arm until you feel comfortable that the leg will go over adequately.

2/ Ensure the arm of the opponent that is through the figure four gap has been pulled right across your body, raising your hips and the moving the arm can help with this.

3/ Pull down on the head when it's locked in to add extra constriction to the choke (I personally don't like this method as I'm a bit of a jiu jitsu snob and I feel that if the you have the technique correct you shouldn't need to pull down on the head).

I drilled all tonight's stuff with a returning Craig Webber, one of the old guys from Sjja's Burnham days.It was good to see him but man that dude's strong as an ox. With all that marine training he is far stringer that I am.

We moved on from there with a triangle escape demonstrated by Nathan. 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 and you can step over into whatever position the scramble will allow (usually side control).

The next technique was a variation of the last. From the point where the opponents got the diamond round you, just posture up and step over the guys body on with the leg on the same side as the through arm. Turning you body round as you guy the guy easily lets go of the hold and you can swing the other leg over to land in side control.

We carried on with this them with Nathan showing us another Triangle escape. This time you're in the diamond on you knees, you bring your leg on the opposite side to the through arm up and back so you're on one knee and one foot (slightly off to the side and rear of you). Then pivot your whole body away from the opponent, towards the rear leg and you effectively step out of the hold. This move looks like you are giving them the omoplata but we worked out that the likeliness of them realising they had before you'd stepped over into side control was virtually none. 

We drilled these for a while and then Ian moved us on to some Butterfly guard stuff (excellent). He started us off with a quick drill to obtain a proper butterfly guard. When the opponent has got you flattened down on the floor with his arm to your side and his head on your chest (as if he's got a strong position and he's taking a breather) you push his head to one side using both your hands then push those hands down into his shoulder whilst simultaneously kicking out with your legs. The opponents flies backward and you can moved toward him in sitting up butterfly. 

Ian moved us from there to the back take. The opponents instinctive thing to do from there is attempt to secure your legs (a hand grabbing each leg) so you can freely cross grip his lapel and step the leg on the same side as the lapel out (your legs are much stronger than his arms remember). You fire your other leg deep between his legs and yank on his lapel while turning on your side. The opponent has generally gone to turtle from here and all you need do is obtain some control. Suggested methods were; reaching over (but underhooking) and grabbing the lapel, reach over then securing the seat belt grip, and push your through leg in quite far and leaning your weight against his hips.

Me and Craig drilled this for a while, with Craig's testosterone levels starting to rage out of control always trying to compete for full back control or rear mount to the point where we were basically having a mini sparring sesh. I have to admit to getting sucked in to his little games a couple of times until I mentally berated myself for wasting good drilling time.

For the very last technique, Nathan chucked in a bit of disco with a really cool follow up move. When you've got the opponent in the turtle with the nearside hook in deep and strong hip control, you can then turn your body so you're facing away from the opponent (South to his North) reach down and grab his secure leg and roll forward. Your weight and momentum should take the opponent over with you. You can then reach over and grab the opponents arm and kick with your leg and the guy land neatly into your seated up back control. This move was amazing but extremely hard to explain from the point where the guy has flipped over with you. Basically it's a move that once you've seen you'll remember how to pull it off but the explaining of it is difficult. Felt really good when I nailed it though. 

From here we had some rolling.

I got the big gun out the way first and went against Nathan. As per usually he did his sort of attacking butterfly guard start, which I'm pleased to say he didn't manage to sweep me with. He did manage to end up in a strong kesa gatame though and then went into a mount. He then got into the armbar position with me defending it for about a minute. Inevitably though, he managed to find a way to break my grip and sunk in the arm bar. Now, from that position usually I have found due to my flexibility and technique I have a better than 50% chance of escaping the hold but on this occasion I had no chance. Nathan's grips and clenched legs were so tight that I had absolutely no room to move and I was forced to tap. Reset and Nathan went straight back to the attacking butterfly but I managed to avoid it, we scrambled and tussled for a bit, then I was on my back in half guard. Nathan took my back from here but managed to turn round to present my front to him. Unfortunately he had me mounted though and went straight back for the arm bar. I did manage to scout this one and roll out of it though (see, 50%) , coming up in Nathan's guard. From there though he hit me in a tight triangle and while I was thinking of all the cool escapes I'd just learned I had no chance of pulling any of them out of the bag as Nathan had it locked in tight. A second tap. We rolled a bit more then time was called. I enjoyed that roll with Nathan more than when I get to steam roll guys because I learnt a lot more about the weak point of my game against a much better opponent. Thanks Nath.

I had a couple more rolls after that where I basically played from the bottom. Quite badly. Craig "The Blanket" Webber basically laid on me for 3 minutes while I fended off his weak submission attempts and Big Justin managed to get side control on me and threaten with a couple of chokes before I regained half guard. After a long half guard battle I managed to get a sweep off on his which was a small consolation but all in all my tonight's performance was pretty weak. Ah well. Some times you have off days.

After class the new guys were really excited and raving about how they loved it and wished the class had been longer (we'll see if they think that after a couple of days of aching). Hope they come back cause they seem like good guys. 

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Leg Pain and Goals.

No training tonight, which could be considered a good thing for my legs as I've been a bit of a stupid muppet. I went to the gym Monday lunch time and met up with my training partner of recent months, Steve, who was just starting on a small leg exercise routine. Now Steve's just coming over a serious keyhole surgery leg op so I figured things wouldn't be too bad with this "leg routine" and I haven't done a decent leg session at the gym in over a year (I know, more fool me but I hate leg workouts) so jumping in on an easy one seemed like the way forward. Next thing I know, Steve's blitzing me with leg presses, 20 kilo lunges and squats on the Smith machine. I could feel that all this abuse was hurting a bit at the time and I was getting to the jelly leg shake stage when we called it a day. For the rest of the day I seemed to be doing my best Charlie Chaplin impression and since waking up this morning I seem to have lost the ability to walk in a straight line down the stairs without suffering excruciating muscle pains.

Lesson learned? Don't believe anything Steve says for one. Bloody taking it easy! Secondly, if I'm going to continue what Steve is already starting to call the regular (I know! After one session?!) Monday leg blitz, go a bit more realistic on the weight I'm lifting and stretch properly before and after. And make sure I have a pack of painkillers on hand at ALL times.

Anyway, subject matter of the day then. I'll be training Thursday and I've been putting up a lot of goals to achieve in Bjj recently. I really need to prioritise which of my Jiu Jitsu aims should be more important and have my immediate attention and which can sit on the back burner for a later date or for when they come up in classes or sparring with out me going out of my way to train them.


The aims I've had recently for improving my game are:

Attempt more triangles.

Attempt more Omoplatas.

Work more from Guard.

Use different attacks when I have my opponent mounted.

Work on my Butterfly Guard.

and of course

I MUST GET BETTER AT HALF GUARD!!


Of these goals I have, at least in some small part, accomplished the triangle and omoplata parts. I've hit a couple of triangles recently and have attempted a few more so I've been bringing them into my game. I hope that I'll now be able to do this on a bit more of a subconscious level so won't have to prioritise it as one of my goals. 


I've also hit a couple of omoplatas in sparring recently and have definitely not been shy of trying to find the right positioning for attempting them. I would certainly say I am hungry for the Omoplata and often find myself hunting for the sub from different types of guard. Job done. It'll be a mainstay for a while I think.


As for working from guard, I am now quite often pulling guard from the face to face sparring (especially against guys I know like to pull guard, hehe) and find myself inverting a little too when trying to avoid being passed. My most favoured kinds of guard in my game at the mo' are probably Spider and De La Riva. I will always be trying De La Riva sweeps and wish to hit the one where you reach around to the belt and spin the player round to take his back. As for Spider, I enjoy hitting some sweeps and have used it quite often to set up the triangle attempt too. 

I still need to incorporate a good Butterfly Guard into my game. For this I am heavily studying the X Guard book by Father Marcelo (The High Priest of Jiu Jitsu) at any opportunity I get, be it out on call at night, on the bog, in the bath etc... It just getting a chance to drill and use any of it. Coming up with something on that front that I may tell you about in the near future.


For the mount attacks, I have been mixing it up slightly. I have been trying some mounted triangle although I think I still need to work on my technique for this. I've also attempted a couple of head and arm triangles recently and even a mounted gogplata (what was I thinking?! It nearly worked mind). I still have room for improvement there but we'll call it a back burner for the moment.


Which bring me on to the Half Guard. Now this is an area that I really need training in, to the point where I think I'm just going to pull Half Guard on guys from now on to try and polish up my technique. I need to view moves, practice positioning technique and drill lots trying to commit at least five sweep variations and a couple subs perfectly to memory. And then use it all in sparring. A Lot.


So in conclusion, my goals for the next few months are to incorporate the Butterfly Guard into my game and improve my technique at that position. And to get better at Half Guard. 

Life seems a lot simpler when you set yourself goals :o)


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