Checkmat - Bristol Combat Legion 26/6/12

I didn't have any lunchtime training sessions with Marcus this week as he's had a virus so I was really looking forward to Tuesday night's class at Bristol Combat Legion. And it was another blazing hot session under Chico Mendes on the top floor of the LA Gym. I'm thinking that my alcohol binge last week has taken a bit out of my cardio and my ability to cool myself down. I kid you not I was sweating my life away during the second half of Tuesday night's class and I felt so weak I think even my dear old Nan could've tapped me out (she throws up a mean triangle choke does Nanny :oD). Even so we worked on something that I haven't really worked much on before so it was still a rockin' experience.

Venue: Bristol Combat Legion, LA Gym, Bristol, Uk
Instructor: Chico Mendes - Checkmat (Grade 2 Black Belt)


Warm Up:
For the Warm up we did laps of the with knee ups, butt kicks, facing in for a couple of laps, facing out for a couple of laps, two steps facing in/two steps facing out for a couple of laps, touching the mat for a couple of laps.

After that Chico had us practice our stand up stances for a Bjj competition match. Chico says it is best to concentrate most of your weight on your back as this with defending takedowns as well as with your manoeuvrability. He also advises that you should use the same side arm as your forward leg for your collar/head/shoulder gripping arm to avoid any disastrous counters from the opponent. So we practised moving about in stance, forward - backward, side to side, all the while offering the correct hands and legs with weight distributed correctly.

Once done with that Chico ran us through some Spider Guard tactics and a couple of sweeps. Chico says the key to a good Spider Guard is to have you feet in the opponents elbow crooks with a good grip on his cuffs. Try no to start or default to legs extended, try to have your legs bent with feet pushing out into the elbow crooks so the opponent is relatively close to you and under your control. When the guy tries to pass to one side, extend you leg on the other side. Don't be to tempted to extend the leg on the side he's trying to pass as he then knows the full extent of your range and can also just pull the leg up and spin past. With the other leg extended you're dragging half his body back to position, you just need to shift your hips and re-angle your body to return to your starting position.

Chico also showed us a few sweeps from Spider Guard. One I remember was where the opponent is trying to pass and you've extended the opposite side leg. You then bring your unextended leg and push it against the opponent's opposite side leg (so you've now got a leg in his elbow crook and a leg on his lower leg, all on the same side) and with your spare hand you reach under his free leg and us a combination of the holds to sweep the opponents over you and over on to his back. This was the sweep that I found the easiest.


Another was where the opponent has raised one leg against your rear to try and make space. You extend your leg that is pushing out the other side of his body and lean forward and grab the back of the leg he has pushed against you. You can then lean forward into him while pulling the leg to tip him over and come up into top control.

There was also another sweep but I cannot remember the details. I've been trawling footage on YouTube but nothing seems to ring any bells.

The next part of the session involved us situationally sparring with a partner from Spider Guard. We were first off just trying out our Spider Guard positioning but were progressed on to sweeping and passing.  I was already pretty hanging by this point in the session.

I rolled this section with many opponents. The ones I can remember are Justin, Kamil, Andy and Sam. We then went on to practising turtle-ing up from from this position. Chico made a rule that if anyone gets their guard passed to side control, the whole class does 20 push ups.

The logic behind this is that if someone is passing your guard in competition but you give up the back into turtle (make sure they don't get hooks in!!) the opponent will get and advantage. If you then try to regain your position and accidentally give up side control, they don't get the points for it as they haven't passed your guard. I never knew that. Great bit of knowledge there. Anyway, it was at this point that I ended up with Ronan (the Man Mountain) Fleming in front of me. I was already totalling shagged and I had to try and resist this giant. I failed. Quickly and impressively. I was the reason that everyone had to do 20 push ups (except Ronan who was exempt being the passer). I would've been embarrassed if not for the fact that I'd managed to sweat ever emotion out of my body by this point.

We were then moved on to a situational roll starting from stand up and going for takedowns. I was against Tom "Egg" Kocur for this and it must've been the easiest thing he'd done that night. My most effective weapon at that point was the ability to fall on Tom. I think he impressively took me down 3 times and for that I can only apologise to Tom for not supplying him with a very tough challenge.

I finished up with a light situational roll against Judo Andy but as both of us were dying we didn't really achieve anything. The whole night was a very unimpressive performance from me really. I am going to have to take away some hard learnt lessons here. These are:

1/. Bristol Combat Legion Gym is Hot, Hot, Hot and unless I'm prepared for grappling in high heat I am not going to get anywhere.

2/. A whole week on the lager (on school nights too, thanks Euro 2012) has wreaked havoc on my cardio.

3/. My body really gases out very badly when the above combination come together leaving me about as much use as a grappling dummy.

4/. Chico finds this funny.

I am seriously gonna have to work on the main two problem, firstly, my cardio - back to running nightly and hitting the interval training in the gym- and secondly I need to drink more water or preferably Performance Sports Drinks during the day as my body is seriously overheating and I could also do with regularly working out at higher temperature to acclimatise my body to the heat. Doing all this will help me out with training at Bristol Combat Legion and possibly stop Chico from taking the piss out of me while I'm trying to die in the corner. Now that's gotta be worth any kind of hardship.

On the plus side, Big Justin, whose been training loads with us at Ian's and Chico's recently is improving loads and even tried his hands with a couple of rolls No-Gi toward the end of the sesh as there were a couple of guys without opponents so Justin was more than willing to step up to the plate. He didn't do badly either. Fair play to him, it's always good to see newer guys kindling their own Bjj Obsessions.

Now I've got to wait for Monday (hopefully, if Marcus is better by then) for my next does of Bjj-ness. I hate long gaps in training. ¬m/