2 Man Training 18/9/12

As mentioned last week, I have managed to get a session of lunch time grappling training in with one of the regulars down the gym (Sweat FA, Weston Super Mare).

Tom is a brown belt in Judo and is soon to go pro as a boxer. He also works full time as a doorman up in Bristol, so often has to use his Judo training to eject troublesome patrons or break up incidents.

It is Tom's knowledge of Judo that I am trying to leech upon during these sessions (not really overly bothered with Boxing) and it really is helping my stand up improve no end. We've generally just been drilling a couple of throws each week, then stand up sparring for about 10 to 15 minutes.

Previous weeks we've done the old faithful Seoi Nage shoulder throw, the O soto Otoshi hard trip and the O goshi hip throw (Glenn Cutter will be elated that I have actually bothered to learn those names :o).  This week we worked on a trip where you do a little skip step forward and take out the guy's opposite leg.
I have found out that this technique is called Ko Uchi Gari and thanks to the joys of Youtube, I'll never have to write up a lengthy Judo description. Yay.

Video courtesy of Matt Brink, Youtube.

We drilled this both sides and then threw in a variation where you don't hit the first trip so you switch the position of your leg and trip his second leg instead. Very cool move.

We then did about 10 minutes of stand up sparring during which time he managed to take me down about a half dozen times. I managed to get in three myself which was an improvement over the total bitching he gave me last week.

For the portion of the session where I taught him, I showed some simple chokes from guard that can also be adjusted to use from standing. The Loop Choke that we did in Ian's class a couple of Thursdays ago was one and the Cross Choke using the Fist on one side was the other. 

After that we hit the mats for a bit of ground sparring which went pretty much the way you'd expect it to although his escaping techniques are improving and I can definitely see him attempting some of the moves I've taught him. I'll just need to drill with him more so he can get to the subs more naturally with out tipping me off way in advance as to what he's going for. 

To make matters even better, a boxing trainer named Matt, who has been training a lot of young guys in boxing while I've been there grappling in recent months has asked me if I fancy doing a bit of No Gi training with him on a day or two a week. Could be good. Well all mat time is good really.  

¬m/

DV8 Academia de Jiu Jitsu - 13/9/12

This blog is a land mark for me in my Bjj Obsession for 2 reasons. Firstly, it's my one hundredth blog entry, which is pretty special in it's own right. Secondly, and more importantly in my eyes, it's the first opportunity I've had to teach this martial art that I love so much. Yes, that's right, I am chuffed to fuck because I was allowed by my long time instructor, Ian Rossiter, to instruct part of this nights class in his absence. I say part of as I shared the instruction privilege with Glenn Cutter, who for half of the class, ran us through some very handy throwing techniques.

Wahooo, I finally found a program that will make transparent backgrounds for my pictures :o)

 

Venue: Sweat FA, Weston Super Mare, Uk.
Instructors: Martin Eyre (Blue Belt, Hey that's me :oD), Glenn Cutter (Blue Belt).


Warm Up:
 I started the warm up with the usual laps of the mat with arms windmilling, then butt kicks, then knee ups, side steps facing in, side step facing out. We then stopped for some arm stretching and neck stretching. Then some leg stretching. Then, at the request of Rich Presley before the class, we changed it up a bit and paired off for some no handed guard passing/sweeping, then some guard pulling (10 each). We then did some break falling up the mat. First forward rolls. Then forward rolls into backward rolls. Then another which I can't remember (d'oh). Everybody was breathing fairly heavy after all that.




Techniques:
(I will explain the movements from the perspective that I first learned them for ease of description)

For the techniques this week, Glenn Cutter took the first half of the class and showed us some pretty excellent takedowns. He demonstrated techniques that lent themselves well to Bjj stand up, particularly against a resisting opponent.



 First up was a pretty cool method of getting a trip takedown against an opponent's guard pull attempt. So your facing off against the opponent, both collar and elbow grappling for position to initiate a throw, with your right hand on his collar and left at his elbow. The opponent decides to pull guard and you are quick enough to see this happening. As he's raised his right leg up and started to wrap it around you, you twist your grip on his lapel about a quarter turn clockwise whilst pushing that fist against him to bring him off balance. You then step forward to bring your right leg behind his left and then pull back with it whilst simultaneously pushing forward with your clenched right fist. The guy should go flat (and quite hard) down on his back with you following him down to land with your right knee across his left inside thigh - to close it down from any counter attacking or defensive movement - and a large part of the rest of your body weight leaning against his other leg. The pass should come very easy from there.
I drilled this and all other moves with Rich. We both enjoyed this move and indeed the whole takedown segment of this class.



Next up we did the same but without the guard pull attempt. So basically, you push him away with your clenched fist grip, then step in and try for the trip. This version, as Glenn pointed out, can be a lot scrappier and no where near as clean, as you go into a kind of locked legs struggle, but as long as you persevere you can get the guy down eventually by waiting for him to try and turn his weight against you then just taking him down the opposite way.



The third takedown of the night was one I really enjoyed. Taking a grip of the opponent's right sleeve cuff with left hand and a grip of his collar (either side) with your right, step away from the opponent to the opposite side from which of his hands you have - in my case I had his right so I stand away from him to his left . You then quickly turn away (turning left) from him whilst pulling him around in that direction rapidly as if to swing him over. Consequentially, his body moves at a much faster rate than his legs can carry him and he goes over on to his back with the arm you had originally secured presenting itself neatly for the arm bar finish.

While doing this move I commented to Rich about how friggin awesome it would be to pull the whole lot of it off in a competition. The swing takedown into arm bar. The would be up there with flying arm bars for silky smooth finishes.



For the last move Glenn demonstrated a step in for O Soto Gari, then turning it into a Seio Nage. You're standing facing your opponent with left hand grip on his right cuff, and a right hand grip of his right collar. You then step your left leg out slightly left so you can bring your right leg forward to the outside of his right leg. This is where you'd usually go for the O Soto Gari. That's exactly what the opponent will be expecting too so for this move, Glenn showed us a slick way to turn it into a Seio Nage. By then swinging your left leg back and around in a sweeping motion, so you have essentially turned you back on him, you can extend your right left straight and flip the guy over your shoulder, hard to the mat and end neatly in side control.
I found this move difficult at first because I kept bending the right leg right at the end taking away my power to throw him over the shoulder and basically turning it into a trip. Got it ok in the end though.

Some great moves there from Glenn and a lot of the guys commented that we could maybe do a a regular half class of takedowns, maybe on a monthly basis. I'll have to put that to Ian and see what he says.


The second half of the class was taught by me. It was a real land mark in my Jiu Jitsu progress that I was allowed to take this and I was really chuffed. So I decided to do the segment on my old personal nemesis, The Half Guard. I used to find the half guard a real problem when i first started Jiu Jitsu, seeing it as more of a position I was trapped in and must escape from, rather than a position where I could easily transition to rear mount, sweep or submit an opponent. The key thing I have found is to make the space to get off you back  so you are turned onto your side facing in to your opponent, preferably with an underhook in too.

With this in mind, the first technique I demonstrated was a method of breaking free from the flattened out half guard bottom, to get to the attacking half guard on you side. Starting with my opponent laying flat on top of me with his right leg trapped in my half guard (his left leg basing off to my right side), lying diagonally across me so his left arm has wrapped around under my head and his right arm is under hooking my left and reached up to grip his other hand to the left of my head. He's rather fiendishly using this position to stall, maybe because he's short of breath, maybe the times nearly up and he's ahead on points. What you need to do first is make some space for yourself. You do this by reaching up with your right hand to take a grip of gi underneath his left arm pit, and reach up over the top of his right arm with your left, sliding the arm under his face/neck, to grab a handful of his gi  at the top of his left shoulder (your hands should be framing his shoulder, one above, one below). You can now bridge up using your legs to assist you, pushing out with your hands to make enough space to get your head in under his head/upper chest. Once it's in there you can quickly swing your left hand down then up to go under his right arm and reach around to take a grip of his gi or belt as far as you can reach around. You can now bring your right elbow in close to your lower stomach, until you can get it under you. You can now use the combined strength of your arm, shoulder and body, to move yourself into a more upright position. This is now a much more attacking Half Guard position, giving you a good set up for a transition to rear mount or some good sweeps.
I had the class just practise getting themselves out of the troubling flattened position first.


Moving on from there I added a sweep to it. You've got yourself to the attacking Half Guard set up position above. To pre-empt any attempted moves to back, the opponent quickly gets the whizzer on your deep under hooking left arm. From here you start to push your weight into him, sitting up very slightly as you go. When the guy inevitably starts to push his weight back against you, you quickly reach down to grip his gi pants at the left knee with your right hand, then quickly fall/turn backwards while pulling him over with your deep left under hook and then pushing him over with the pant knee grip. If executed correctly you should be able to easily sweep even a much heavier opponent to his back and come up in side control.
I seemed to get a fairly good reaction for this sweep which was good.



The last move i demonstrated was the Half Guard Twist Sweep. You've managed to get slightly upright on to your side with your half guard ( the guys right leg is trapped) but he's clapped pushing your left arm at the bicep to stop you from getting the under hook. You must ensure at this point, that you are trapping his right leg using your right leg wrapped over it so your right foot ends up on the outside of his right leg. You must position your right knee so it is pressed against his inside right thigh and then quickly move your left foot to press against the outside of his right knee. From here you use your left hand to ensure he can't base out and stop the move with his right arm, by gripping it in close. Then twisting your lower body left, you push your right knee against his inside right leg, which pushes him over your left foot, sweeping him over onto his back with you coming up neatly into side control. The move is easier if you get it set up and then wait for your opponent to push forward, then use their momentum to help you, but it's a very doable sweep even with out the additional help.
This is easily one of my favourite half guard sweeps.



Sparring:

For the sparring this session I had a fairly mediocre night. I got a couple of subs but nothing that will set the world alight.

I rolled with Rich, Glenn'son, Sean Errock, 'Big' Justin Thomas and Tommy Hill.


That was it for the week for training. I was hoping to get a session in with my mate Tom Gifford but unfortunately it didn't happen. I shall try and coax him into some for next week. Gotta get the mat time in :o)

DV8 Academia de Jiu Jitsu - 26/7/12

We were lucky enough this week to have a mini Judo seminar on down at Sweat FA this week with ex England Judo squad member, Dominique Beach. Now this couldn't come at a better time for me as I'm currently in training for the Uk Premier Bjj open (aka the Bristol Open) and a bit of Judo tutelage will go down an absolute treat.

Unfortunately, the numbers for our class were considerably down from recent weeks. Probably due to a combination of the amazing weather we're having at the moment and the fact that it's officially the first week of the summer hols. Regardless, we were a bit thin on the ground but to be honest that didn't really matter because it allowed Dominique to focus a bit more individually (handy for me anyway).

A couple of Dominique's students also came up for the occasion, which was very cool of them and we definitely appreciated their assistance. A young lad called Joe, who was a Judo blue belt, and young girl who was a green belt with a couple of stripes whose name sadly eludes me (I think it was Cathryn or Carolyn or Christina) so I will just refer to her here as Judo Girl (I mean no offence by this).

Venue: Sweat FA, Weston Super Mare, Uk.

Instructor: Dominque Beach.

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 10x4, Squats 10x 4,  Crunches 10 x 4, then some leg stretching and some back stretching exercises.
 

Techniques:

To start us off, Dominique had us do this strange drill that was equal part amusing and humiliating. Essentially you start off doing this weird side to side dance with your training partner. You grip your partner at collar and elbow and side step together in time down the mat. I was totally pants at this as my dance timing is generally pretty shoddy anyway. The idea was for you to get the timing right so you can sweep your partner's trailing leg out as he's stepping it toward the forward leg. To do this you have to get the timing right and use the flat of your foot. Dominique explained that you should use the flat and not the side of your foot or it would prove painful and damn me she was right. You don't use the side of your foot more than a couple of times :o(
I was drilling all the techniques with long time training buddy Marcus and even his usual skill and good timing was sorely tested when faced with a lumbering clodhopper like me. I sort of got it in the end though



For the second drill/technique we did another dance drill back and forth into a sweep. Another collar and elbow tie up start, for this explain where my hands and legs were for the move. With my right hand gripping Marcus' collar and the left at his elbow, what we did was step forward and back with one leg together (my left leg and Marcus' right). You do this step about three times to get the timing right and as Marcus' is stepping forward on the last one I had to use my right leg (the flat of it again) to sweep his right toward me while pushing on his collar and pulling at his elbow. This action fairly reliably dropped him down to the mat.
I found this technique a lot easier.



For the third technique we started from a collar and elbow tie up once again. This time though you make as if attacking for a Seoi Nage shoulder throw. Keeping the opponent's right arm pulled out straight by using your left hands tight grip on his arm, you release your right hand grip on the opponent's collar and bring that arm inside and up under his right arm pit whilst turning in toward him. This is the standard set up for the Seoi Nage shoulder throw where you'd push your backside into his hips and pull him over your shoulder. On this occasion however, instead of turning your backside right into him, you step in with your right leg going between his legs and snaking around the opponent's right leg. With your right arm you reach down and grab the opponent at the knee. Now all your weight and leverage is geared toward taking out their entire right side and it's easy to pull that away and drop the opponent on their ass. The unfortunate part of this technique when applied to Bjj is that you can give up your back quite spectacularly so for the purposes of Bjj, me and Marcus found that as soon as the opponent's base is taken out and they are toppling it's best to sprawl to land in top control.


Next up we did a bit of grip fight practice. Your partner grabs your collar with one hand as hard as they can and you grab that arm at the gi cuff with both hands and push away hard to break the grip. Good method of gaining separation.


This lead us neatly on to what Dominique referred to as a suicide roll sweep. The whole technique begins with a collar grip break (opponent had gripped you with his right hand at your left collar and you used the above technique), allowing you to push the grip-broken hand away so you can hold that arm off with your right arm whilst reaching around to their back with your left. Bring your right leg up under their left leg so the shin is pressing against their inner thigh and jump to the right and fall back keeping your leg out straight. If done correctly the opponent should get uprooted and topple backward
with you neatly landing on him in side control.
This is a cool stand up sweep that is fairly reminiscent of a butterfly sweep. Works well but it takes courage to go for it because if you fail you could have your opponent with side control on you.


Ian also showed me and Marcus how to turn this on into a triangle if they resist. When you're raising your leg to underhook their leg, if the opponent step away out of range you can put your foot on their hip and fall back on the floor bending them toward you so you can easily wrap the right leg over the shoulder and around the neck and close the left leg around it on the other side. Very ninja. Nice move.



We were then run through a traditional Seoi nage throw drill. Basically you follow the picture below, stepping in, bringing your arm up under the arm pit, driving your backside into their hips and raising them up by bending forward. You then let guy back down and step out, rinse and repeat for ten goes each.

This lead neatly on to an awesome Seoi nage set up suicide throw. You start as for the picture above getting to the second picture, then instead of pushing your backside in you drop to the floor at the opponent's feet pulling him down then over the top of you so he lands out on his back with you coming up into side control.
This one for me was the technique of the day. I really liked the method of it and the fact that it requires next to zero effort to get your opponent down to the ground. Once again though, as the name suggests, if you don't land the move you'll be left in a whole world of trouble.



Dominique finished up with a nifty little gi choke from a blocked Seoi nage. The opponent has attempted the Seoi nage throw with your right hand still gripping their collar. When he's turned in you you've managed to lean on him to drive him to his knees. As you've still got his collar at this point, all you need to do is step past him on his right side with your left leg to a seated position and use your left arm to push into the side of his neck. This should tighten the collar choke for a quick and easy tap.
Nice move, but I think I'd be more tempted to hit the Bow and Arrow from that position.


Sparring:

As a change we did stand up sparring in the fashion of Judo, where the objective is to trip, sweep, throw or otherwise takedown the opponent. For variation we were all mixed up so we sparred against guys we weren't drilling with.

I went against both of the guys that came from Dominique's Judo class in Street, Judo Girl and Joe. I managed to take both of them down a few times with neither taking me down. Joe came very close with a throw (might even be counted in Judo I don't know) but I landed in a position to take his back with hooks in so I didn't really count it as a loss.

I also went against Chris Hardaway, who I thought would probably tool me as he's a Copper, is ridiculously athletic and is usually really good at this sort of stuff. I actually managed to trip him down and land in top control twice though so I was pretty chuffed with that.


My last round was against Ed (don't know his surname). Ed's quite an old boy but he's very game and he attacked me straight from the off. I managed to get a trip on Ed once but on his second visit to the floor he'd tried to sweep me, landing on his bum so I could just step over and land in top control. Doubt I would've got any points for it in a Bjj match or in Judo (haven't got a clue how these things work in Judo) but at least I resisted and won position.

That was the end of a fantastic Judo for Bjj lesson and I have to say I was very impressed with the stuff Dominique had shown us. I hope she'll be willing to come up for another some time and Ian has already said he'll be going down there to give her class a Bjj for Judo lesson some time. I think I'll tag along for that one and see what new techniques I can pick up.

Think I've got a decent week of training coming up as Marcus finishes his job on Sunday so we can train a bit next week ahead of my competition on Sunday. I can't effing wait for that. Even if I do totally shit I will be chuffed just for entering and particularly for entering at Medium Heavyweight 88.3 Kg. I am pretty well on target for hitting that weight easily on the day (as long as they haven't got Mickey Mouse scales or something) and hope to have a fun day out with some of the other guys from Checkmat Bristol attending. I'll be taking a camera and video camera to capture some of the action and have some stuff for a decent log entry.

Can't wait ¬m/