Venue: Sweat FA, Weston Super Mare, Uk.
Instructor: Ian Rossiter (Brown Belt).
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 15x2 then 10 x 1, Squats 15x 2 then 10 x 1, Crunches 15 x 2 then 10x 1, then some leg stretching.
Techniques:
Ian started us off tonight with the basic Kimura from Side Control. You establish a strong side control on your opponent with lots of downward pressure on his torso. Next you push his far side arm out at a 90 degree angle to his body, then bend his arm at the elbow so it's pointing south from his upper arm, also at a 90 degree angle, and secure the arm in that position by grabbing his wrist with your far side hand (the one closer to his legs). Now take your other arm and thread it underneath your opponents upper arm, reaching to grab your own wrist forming a figure four and massively strengthening your hold. From there you switch your legs so they are turned toward his head and then step over his head with your top leg. Applying the sub now is a simple matter off pulling up and toward you on the arm that's threaded underneath while keeping the opponents wrist held down. This move is not one that your training partner will thank you for if you hammer the technique on as it is quite an intense shoulder lock.
I practised this move with Rich Presley (still in fine competition shape) .
Next, Ian ran us through a variation of the same move. The setup is the same as the last move all the way up to having the arm secured in the figure four and switching your legs to face his head. This time though, instead of stepping over the head you just walk yourself toward his head using your top leg to kind of drag yourself across. As you do, apply the shoulder lock in the same way and the hold will come on, arguably tighter than before.
We were constantly swapped around tonight and I drilled this second move with Big Steve. In an actual Bjj or grappling competition I do not think I would have any chance of getting this move on Steve as his shoulders are pretty massive and I have fairly stumpy arms. Threading underneath to reach for my wrist process would probably not be attainable in a fight situation with that kind of size disparity.
To give our dying shoulders a bit of a rest Ian moved the next move on to something else. The technique was started from Side Control then transition to Knee on Belly then switch back around for a North-South Gi Choke. I was particularly chuffed with training this as we rarely do Knee on Belly in either of the classes I attend and consequentially I rarely find myself utilising the Knee on Belly position as it's not one I find myself going to automatically. From Side Control you grab your opponents collar around the back of the neck using a thumb in grip. With your other hand grab the guys belt at his far side hip. You can then quickly push yourself up into knee on belly using the downward pressure at neck and hip to keep the guy from escaping out of the way (be sure to maintain this position for 3 seconds in comp as it's worth 3 points). From there you use the hand that was at his hips to reach up into his collar using a fingers in, thumb pointing down (towards yourself) grip. You can now transition yourself to North-South and by doing so your forearm (of the arm you'd just secured the collar with) will come to rest across his neck. Push this arm down toward the floor to put the pressure on the throat for the sub. This is one of those moves that if executed correctly, you will make the guy tap real quick as the pressure on your throat is very painful.
I practised this technique with Neil 'Touché Turtle' Owen who is another fairly big guy so I was pretty grateful for the fact that he didn't dive into the Knee on Belly with vigour. I have this horrible memory of being tapped out by Ian in my early days of Jiu Jitsu training by the Knee on Belly. Not pleasant at the time and I was such a newbie that I didn't have a single answer.
Which lead neatly onto the second part of the technique which was how you traditionally react when the opponent hits Knee on Belly and then how the guy on top can use that to finish the sub anyway.So to start with we did the escape from knee on belly which involves the guy on the bottom putting his far side hand on the opponents attacking knee and his nearside hand against the guys chest or in his arm pit. You then push away while shrimping out to the side and from here you can bring your knees in to recover to a guard position. The actual point of this technique though was to show how if the guy on the bottom uses this traditional Knee on Belly escape, you can still hit the choke (as long as you've managed to get the hand in the collar). So from the Knee on Belly, if you quickly get the fingers in grip at the collar, then the guy tries to escape using the usual KoB escape, you can use the momentum of him pushing you away to still rotate around to North South for the Gi choke and with a bit of good weight distribution you can still hit the sub.
I drilled this move with Rob who is a relative newbie to Bjj so I was content to focus the learning on him, allowing him to first drill the Knee on Belly escape and then doing the escape resist into North South Choke.
For the last technique of the night we did the good old Side Control Forearm Gi Choke. As the guy on top you have a strong side control, during which you establish the same rear neck collar grip as the last few techniques. With your other hand you reach down (whilst maintaining good downward pressure on the opponents torso) to either the guys belt or his Gi at the underarm. Getting a good grip with that far side hand, you can now bring the arm with the hand still at the rear neck gi collar out and over the top of the head/face to close the forearm across the throat. When hit right this can get a real quick sub as the pressure on the throat is great. Unfortunately, the move is virtually never hit right off against a guy who has a modicum of experience as it kind of telegraphs its self. Although Ian showed us a way that I think is maybe a little less predictable. I have always done this technique using the underarm gi grip but using Ian's clench and twist of the belt you can keep the opponent in place without "showing your hand" to soon. Generally though, most experienced guys are "shrugging up" with their chin low and their shoulders drawn up so you can't land the move. I'd say it's pretty low percentage, although now I've said that I'm sure some smart ass'll tap me with it in the near future.
Practised this with Dan Foster who proved pretty much straight away when applying a little resistance to this you can easily shake the sub.
Rolling:
We did a good amount of rolling at the end of the lesson, although some of the older boys sat out a couple of rounds. I sparred first against Big Steve who has a distinct weight advantage over me so I elected to start seated and try out the arm drag. With Steve fresh it didn't work as when I grabbed the arm he dived straight forward to pancake me out. Unfortunately, Steve seems to have an obsession with trying to choke guys out from within their guard which, to my knowledge, has never succeeded for him. I spent the entire round pushing him away with feet on hips and trying to arm bar him or hit a triangle on him. Now I'm not sure if it's possible for a guy my size to triangle a guy with a neck and shoulders the size of Steve's. This is something I am insistent on trying over and over even though I probably won't succeed. I can see that I would have to get it totally perfect to actually hit the sub. Anyway, the rest of the roll played out with me trying to hit subs and Steve basically sitting in my guard trying to choke me with his forearm. After, I tried to encourage Steve to attempt to try and pass a bit as I can only imagine the kind of hell he could cause if he were to attain side control.
For my second roll I was with Dan. I decided I would go straight to guard and a furious pass guard against maintain guard battle ensued. I even inverted at one point to maintain my guard. Dan managed to pass in the end though and went to side control and then to mount. From mount Dan was trying to take an arm but I was able to Upa out of it back to guard. During my attempt to pass guard though, Dan was able to fire a lose triangle up from a strange side on angle which was smothering my mouth a bit although I had it blocked with my second hand. Unfortunately Dan managed to extend the trapped arm while I was trying to escape the triangle and got a nifty arm bar on me. Good move well earned. The round ended soon after that leaving me having to wait until next time to get some measure of revenge. I also need to remember that I shouldn't go to guard and just try and counter his attempts to pass I should be trying to sweep or sub straight from the off.
Next up was Rich. Rich threw up some good guard play, particularly with his ever improving Spider Guard, but I had the bit in my teeth for this one so I was quickly able to smash pass to side control and then get to mount. From there I tried to gi choke, arm bar and trap the arm for and head and arm triangle, all of which Rich impressively blocked out. I was able to eventually throw my weight down on his arm and hit and Americana though but I always feel a bit cheap after I've hit that move. After the restart I was quickly able to get to Rich's back but the round ended soon after that with me not able to get anything more.
The fourth roll was with the 'Turtle King', Neil Owen. Now Neil is a bit of a tank (his former nick name before the Turtle presented itself), but his cardio is relatively shocking and he has a tendency to 'turtle up' when he gets too tired. So when we started I was happy to jump guard, knowing full well he would most likely take me down easily anyway. From the guard I threatened with a couple of chokes and arm bars for a bit but he gassed out ridiculously quickly and actually said "I can feel a turtle coming on" just before I swept him, to which he virtually DIVED straight to his favourite position. From there I had about 40 seconds of trying to attack his amazingly strong turtle base with absolutely no luck at all. After trying various chokes (can't get his collar) and to upset his base and take him over (Neil's base is inhumanly good), I eventually tried to tuck my leg inside his (for a single hook) to go for a forward roll taking him over to side control. Time was called at this point though so I never got the opportunity to see if it would work.
Last roll off the night was back with Steve again. This time I worked the arm drag from the beginning and managed to get to rear side mount. From there Steve just rolled over giving up the mount, allowing me to attack various neck chokes (unsuccessfully as Steve's got a huge neck) before I managed to push his arm across, whip my leg around and fall backwards for the armbar. From the restart I hit the arm drag again, which Steve resisted this time. Fortunately, Uncle Marcelo supplied me with the answer to this as well as I reach back and secured his near leg and pushed him forward. Steve flipped back over again to give up the mount allowing me to attack from the top once again. The round played out like that with me coming away loving the Marcelo Garcia Arm Drag stuff I learned on Tuesday.
A good session with some good rolling and some things to think about regarding my Bjj development. Specifically, try more arm drags; attack more with sweeps from the guard; use more Knee on Belly; and carry on learning stuff from Marcelo Garcia's books (it all seems to work so far). \m/
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