Venue: Sweat FA, Weston Super Mare, UK.
Instructor: Ian Rossiter.
Warm up:
Laps of the mat, including, ass kicks, knee ups, facing inward for a lap, facing out for a lap and arm windmilling for a couple of laps. Neck, Arm and Shoulder stretching. Push ups 10x3, Squats 10x 3, Crunches 10 x 3, then some leg stretching.
Techniques:
Ian started us off with the very first sweep I ever learned off him. The Scissor Sweep. I must confess that I don't use this sweep very often. I see lots of guys using it but it's just not one of my favourites. Starting with your opponent in your closed guard you grab a hold of his gi at the elbow or triceps on one side and at the collar on the other side. Then,opening your guard, hip escape to the side you have the collar grip, leaving your far side leg flat to the ground next to his leg, while pulling the near side leg up to push against the opponent at the torso (Ian prefers it to go diagonally up across his body). To finish the sweep you steer the opponent sideways toward the side where you have the triceps grip whilst simultaneously 'scissoring' your legs to sweep the guys base out from underneath him and flip him over on to his back.
I was drilling all of the nights moves with Dan Foster. This one being an old move was fairly straight forward and both of us knew it well anyway.
Next technique Ian showed was a variation on the first. Same set-up as before but this time, when trying to turn the opponent over, he bases out well with his far side leg. To counter this, just bring the sweeping leg up and press your foot against his basing out leg. Then just push hard on that leg to knock the base out and continue the flip over the same as before.
We then drilled the above two sweeps in continuous motion by having the opponent Upa escape out of the mount back to guard. We did 4 turns each then swapped. Did this for a couple of sets.
The next move was a technique I'd not seen before. Starting from closed guard, reach up with one hand and secure the same side collar of the opponent using a pistol grip. Now, bait your opponent into trying to pass guard on that side of your body by dropping the leg a bit. Let him pass one leg over but clamp his second leg in (effectively going into half guard). Whilst the passing was going on you should be using your other hand to grab his other collar using and inverted grip (upside down pistol grip, so fingers are in). Now, moving your far side shoulder in toward your opponent, you can bring the inverted hand collar under the opponent's chin and then pull up the other side of his face to start applying the choke. Sometimes this will be enough to get the tap but if the opponent can resist this you just need to bring your far side leg up and over the top of the opponents head to pressure down on him making the choke much tighter. A real eye popper.
Me and Dan both really liked this choke once we'd got the hang of it.
The next technique was a variation of the above. Same movements up until the point that you're applying the choke. This time though, the opponent has managed to get his near side arm in between the choking arm and the leg that comes up, taking the pressure off the move. From here, you just simultaneously shift your hips out to bring the inside leg up to rest against their ribcage while securing the blocking arm to your chest. You can then extend your legs for the arm bar finish.
Nice and flash.
Funnily enough, me and Dan had been trying to work on how you could change it into an arm bar just before Ian demo'd the technique. Works really well.
We then worked on blocking cross chokes as Rich had requested it. Standard block of pushing the elbow of the top arm of the cross choke a little bit further across so you can bring the other hand up in between his cross choke and rest that hand against the top of your head (not on the lower part of your face or a strong opponent could break your fingers). This totally defuses the pressure of the hold.
We drilled this for a bit.
We started on another gi choke technique then but I can't remember the details as I didn't get a chance to drill it. We stopped to roll soon after the demo.
Rolling:
We had a nice long rolling session in this class. I went against Dan first. I started by pulling guard and we spent a good couple of minutes with Dan trying to pass my guard and me doing everything I could to not let that happen, occasionally I would threaten a sweep by grabbing a leg too but Dan was really energetic in his pass attempts and didn't give me a lot of time to work anything. I eventually managed to wrap a leg under and around his leg and swept him down into 50/50 guard and then came up into his guard. Dan then threw up and triangle attempt which he turned into an arm bar attempt. The round played out with me desperately blocking his arm bar attempt. He was VERY close to hitting it but I was twisting my arm to stop the pressure being put on.
My next opponent was Rich Presley and I was happy once again to jump guard. This time though I baited Rich to pass over my leg into half guard and then wrapped my untrapped leg over his back behind and around his head and grabbed the leg on the other side of his head with my outside arm. I then passed that arm under his chin and pulled the leg tight while pushing the arm up into his throat for the choke. I was chuffed to get the tap from this as it's the same Pace Choke technique that Me and Marcus had been drilling on Tuesday. Although the proper way to finish it is to extend the leg so the arm closes tight across the throat. Ah well, I'll work on that. Great move though. The rest of the round played out with guard play and a bit of side control on both parts.
My next opponent was a new guy called Steve. As Steve didn't really know what to do I didn't really spar with him, I just showed him a couple of methods of passing guard and let him use them on me. I showed him the knee up ass, extend legs guard break with the smash pass and also the knee over then rear leg over pass. He seemed very appreciative of this.
Chris Whiting was next. Chris is a strong but not very experienced white belt. Once again I pulled guard (couldn't be bothered to wrestle for position that night) and tried for various sweeps and other moves under Chris' vigorous guard attack. I eventually shot my legs up and turned him over for an arm bar. Chris took a breather for a sec and then we were just restarting when the time buzzer went.
The next guy I sparred with was Rob (still don't know his surname) who after starting from guard I managed to tap ridiculously easily with an arm bar. I didn't realise Rob was as new as his skills as he appeared. So instead on carrying on rolling from knee to knee I let him first of start in side control which I found escaping quite easy (probably down to the super slippy new mats) and then gave him tips on side control pressure. I then let Rob start in mount, a decision which I nearly regretted as Rob went straight for the throat, literally, as he latched on a very tight cross choke from mount. His arms were particularly strong on this and it took a lot of strength for me to perform the choke block that we were drilling earlier. I was able to Upa out of the mount though and the round ended.
Last opponent was Marcus, who I managed to sweep but landed in his half guard. From there a bit of arm wrestling lead to me hitting a straight arm bar on him. The round played out shortly after that.
That was the end to another wicked Bjj lesson. I can only say I am loving this Martial Art and Sport more and more as my time in it passes. I have some ideas on things I won't to improve on which I will talk about in upcoming posts. And I'm developing a small list of techniques I really want to hit. I'll probably be doing a bit more training on Monday and Tuesday lunch with Marcus too. We're thinking of doing a No-Gi session on Monday which'll be cool. \m/
No comments:
Post a Comment