DV8 - 25th July 2013.

Managed to get in a couple of good sessions on the mats with Chris Cook this week. Chris's game is really coming along with him trying out loads of new stuff I've never seen from him before and really tightening up his defense too.

At Ian's class this week there was once again quite a good turn out with some new guys coming along for the session. It's always good to see new young guys turning up and lately a lot of them have been sticking to it as semi regulars. Promising things for a potential strong future team. Keep it going.

Venue: Sweat FA, Weston Super Mare. Uk (Possibly for one of the last times as we're supposed to be moving in August sometime).
Instructor: Ian Rossiter (Checkmat Black Belt).


Ian started us off with some Spider Guard drilling for positioning and how to improve your spider guard grips and how to maintain it under duress. Starting out with you on your back and the opponent standing, you have grips of the opponents cuffs and feet on hips, you can transfer the feet to the arms or the shoulders. When the opponent is trying to pass your guard on one side of you, you extend your leg on that side, keeping him at bay. We drilled this with your opponent lazily trying to pass you while you practice the motions of keeping him away.


From there we use the feet on hips Spider Guard to unbalance the opponent pushing him backward then, when he tries to push back forward you use his momentum to kick your legs up and flip him over the top of you. This is remarkably easy to pull off in rolling when everything is random and yet, when a training partner knows it's coming they sometimes have a problem giving it up for practice sakes and end up squatting a bit to much stopping you from landing it. It's just instinct that you don't want to be flipped on your ass I suppose. Great move when you land it though.


We then mess about a bit with a Spider Guard Helicopter Arm Bar. When you're got the position for the flip, instead of flipping the opponent over you hold them up in the air so your legs are extended up and the guy is being balance on your feet (with you still gripping his arms at the cuffs). Now, dropping your left leg out to the side while simultaneously pulling the guy's left arm in close to your body and pushing his right over the top of it, the guy should neatly deposit to the south of you. With a quick adjustment your right leg is in tight below his arm and you pass your left leg over his head for a nice arm bar.



Last up was a Clock Choke on Turtle. The guy is huddled up in his turtle with you out to left side leaning across him, keeping him down in turtle using your body weight. You reach through under his neck with your left hand to grab his collar quite deep, then reach over his back and under his right arm with your right arm to grab his forearm. Pulling this forearm in whilst putting body weight on him will push his elbow out so he can't roll you over at this point. Now you switch your legs so your whole body is facing north of him by kicking your right leg through under you and out. You now apply wicked pressure to this move by walking yourself around his head. This is a great move when you land it (which I never have properly in sparring or comp). Very tight. I just never find myself remembering it when I'm in that position. I will have to make it one of my aims for the next few months.


Good session in all and I am happy that I'm now back to full rolling with the rib injury a distant memory. Let the good times roll (sic). ¬m/

Checkmat Bjj 10-7-12

Due to the fact the it's been my birthday this week (35 years young) and other general busyness I am typing this log of Chico's Tuesday class out on Saturday morning. So I may have some of the details a bit fuzzy as my notes always sound weird in my own head a couple of days after writing them. Also, I'm awake early on a Saturday morning writing this with a pounding headache caused by a ridiculous excess of vodka last night and my little daughter Jolie is hassling me. Not ideal blogging conditions I must say.
Once again, after a couple of lunchtime sessions with Marcus I was pretty knackered but I was feeling a little bit better going in than I had previous weeks. Maybe I'm getting fitter, maybe I didn't work as hard, maybe it wasn't as hot. Who know's? I felt a little bit more comfortable though. It's also worth noting that I've taken to wearing my rash guard under my gi which is helping me cool off. Strange how that works as I'd always thought extra layers would make me hotter but I read somewhere that wearing a rash guard helps your body relieve itself of the excess sweat and by jove it seemed to work. I've also stopped wearing antiperspirant when I train allowing my body to sweat more to cool itself off. All this time I thought I was trying to be nice to my training partners by restricting the amount I sweat on them a little and it turns out I was stunting my own auto cooling system.

Venue: Bristol Combat Legion, LA Gym, Bristol, Uk.
Instructor: Chico Mendes (2nd Degree Black Belt, Checkmat)


Warm Up:

Chico had Josh Kersey run us through the warm up. He did laps of the mat with butt kicks and knee ups and side steps. We then did lengths of the mat doing front rolls, back rolls, frog leaps, gator crawls (or Spiderman crawls as Josh awesomely calls them) and perhaps something else but I can't remember what, - 2 lengths for each exercise. We then did some stretching.

For this week Chico took us back to the Spider Gward techniques they've been doing for the last few weeks. To start we had to use some of the sweeps we've been doing over the past few weeks in a light back and forth drill which was a fun way to help us remember what we'd been doing. I was drilling with Marcus who still looked fresh a daisy, regardless of the two lunchtime training sessions. Git.



The first technique Chico showed us was another sweep from Spider Guard. You have your opponent in your Spider Guard and you lasso one of the arms. The guy tries to step away with the non lasso side leg so you hook him close with your free foot behind that leg. You then shift your angle out slightly to the side where you have his arm secure and change the cuff grip to your other hand so you can reach under his leg with your same side hand. You can now either sweep him by leaning into his leg and swiping the other leg out, or, pulling yourself underneath him and flipping him over the top of you.


Next up was a Spider Guard to single leg. From Spider Guard the opponent tries to pull away. You kick his far leg out further to off balance then bring your other leg down and around his near leg and draw it in toward you, then pass the secured arm to the other hand and use the first hand to secure that arm around the back of the leg. You can then stand, hooking the secure leg between your legs to either through off balance and arrive at a commanding position or have him standing in front of you teetering on one leg waiting for the trip or takedown to come. Cool move and very controlling. There was a particularly hilarious moment I witnessed whilst drilling this technique when I turned to see Ronan "Man-Giant" Fleming with a wry amused look of patience on his face as his training partner attempted to secure the single leg on him. It looked like a dwarf trying to hug a tree. Muchos amusing.




Chico then demo'd different ways to get to the above. First, if the guy tugs his arm away hard enough he'll be pulling right back anyway so you won't need to kick his leg, just jump in for the single leg.
Second, if they're trying for the push legs in then jump back Spider Guard break, you can anticipate this and roll forward as they jump away and take their leg the same way.

Chico also stopped us all to stress this point. Make sure when taking the single leg that your head is on the inside of the leg and is very tight to him or he can push you away and attack the collar by taking a collar grip and rolling forward for whatever easy finish he wants. Me and Marcus briefly tried this and were pretty amazed at the cool tight gi collar chokes you can get from that set up.


The last technique of the session was a continuation of the single leg attack. Instead of meekly going to his impending single leg doom, the opponent sprawls forward landing in a precarious half guard top position. Precarious because he's mostly off to one side and your half guard leg grip is in the perfect position to do the following. All you need do is ram your top leg into the back of his trapped leg whilst your arms escort him forward. He should shoot past you with you able to neatly come up over the top to take his back. Genius.


Situational Rolling:

This was a pretty funny session of situational rolling as Chico said it was two minute on the top, two minutes on the bottom. Spider Guard drilling. Guy on bottom has to sweep or submit. Guy on top has to pass. To make it interesting Chico said if anyone passes guard the entire class do 20 push ups. Amazingly no one in the entire class passed guard that session, now who would've believed it? I was with Marcus for this and we swept each other excellently for our respective two minutes. :oD

 

Rolling:

We then went on to some proper rolling (I suspect Chico realised people weren't taking the other thing seriously) and I was feeling a little bit (only a little bit) more energetic than I have been the past few sessions in Chico's class by this time. I first rolled with Tom Hill's cousin whose name I can't remember. He's been coming on and off for quite a while now but never really fully committed as much as Tom. I went fairly light on him but still tapped him twice with the arm bars from the guard to demonstrate why he shouldn't be extending his arms to push me away while in my guard. At one point I managed to get an X Guard sweep on him too which I was particularly chuffed with, until Marcus told me later that he'd managed to hit an X Guard Triangle on Tom. I think I got a triangle on him too toward the end of the round.


My second roll was with Cameron, a guy that came up with us from our Weston class. Cameron is fairly new but strong, athletic and keen. A very good combination. He's still at the stage where I just let him work at stuff and give him a few pointers though. I did get him with an arm bar from the guard at one point to show him that he can't do the arm extend thing (same as with Tom's cousin) but mostly just let him work some guard breaks and mount escapes on me.


My last roll was with Rich Long. I was a little sapped for this but still more game than I had been at this time on the last couple of Chico sessions. I managed to tap him quite quickly with an achilles lock. After that we had a terrific back and forth roll with Rich passing my guard a couple of times. At one point I was pretty weary and couldn't be bothered to try an escape from side control (my side control escapes are pretty shit and lack lustre when I'm worn out) so I gave up the mount. Believe it or not I have a much higher success rate for escaping mount. Not a good tactic for competition though. Whilst in mount, Rich manoeuvred around for an arm bar set up but lent forward to far on it so I turned my body throwing him off of me. At one point I managed to pass his guard to side then get to mount and moved to S mount so I could use the gift wrap transition to take his back. At that moment I got a really good shot at a bow and arrow choke on him and had it locked in quite tight but Rich showed fantastic tenacity and level headedness by holding his collar tight to relieve pressure, waiting for my arms to gas then turning toward me and shifting his hips out to come up in my guard. Great escape. I later saw the exact same escape demonstrated by Nick Brooks in issue 8 of Jiu Jitsu Style Magazine.

Another great week of Jiu Jitsu done and now I've just got to wait for the Lucas Leite seminar on Sunday (hey that's tomorrow now :oD). Cool.

2 Man Gi Training - 2nd and 3rd July 2012

 
Back to lunchtime training with Marcus this week. For the Monday we basically covered a few spider guard techniques as a sort of follow on from the stuff Chico's been doing in his classes lately.


Marcus pulled some stuff off YouTube for the Spider Guard from a Caio Terra demo vid (although Ciao doesn't seem to actually teach any of the techniques in the vid)

We did the first two techniques in the video. I loved the sweep from leg lasso fake. Very good and I very nearly hit it in sparring a short while after learning it. When Marcus blocked it I also nearly hit the arm bar. Both good techniques. The other stuff we did was recapping some of the Spider Guard stuff shown by Chico last week. We then had a very healthy long rolling session. Totally knackered after. For the Tuesday session we managed to cover a lot more stuff. Mainly because Marcus came a bit more prepared. It was my anniversary the night before so I had absolutely no chance to look anything up so my input was minimal. We kicked things off with a couple of alternate methods to finish the Bow and Arrow Choke. Basically if you're trying to get the leg over his shoulder to put the pressure on and he keeps dropping the shoulder, your leg will slide right off. In this situation you can escape your hips out a fraction (not enough to lose the grip) and use the knee of that leg to push against the near side of his head to apply the pressure for finishing the choke. The other is very similar but instead of using the knee you turn the leg to point inside and use the shin. Both cool variations. Next up was an Ezekial to the back of an opponent. You have full seated rear mount on the opponent and one of your arms has snaked around his neck but he is refusing to let you get your other arm over for the RNC. Instead you can reach under and up behind his head but while doing so catch your gi sleeve with the fingers of your choking arm. If you then push forward with both arms whilst leaning back with your body you get a really cool choke. Nice move. We followed that up with a double underhook pass counter to triangle. Now that's a lot to say in one name and doesn't really convey the move very well. What's basically happening is your opponent has you with both your legs around hi head and his arms around them preparing for a double underhook pass. What you need to do is pull yourself away from him and tuck your feet under and in between his legs so you can lean up and take a hold of his belt at his lower back with one hand. You can then use your other arm to tuck under his same side arm and start to pry it up slightly as if to remove his underhook. Then with some speed you can open your leg on that side and the guys arm will pop up through and you are able to quickly pass that leg over his back and hit the triangle choke. Very nice move and I have to say quite useful as I always find myself in that sort of position so it will give me another good option. Next up was a move we had played a little bit with the day before but really had a go at on the Tuesday. The Hell Choke to turtled opponent is where you have rear side mount on a turtled opponent and you reach in nearside(in between shoulder and head) to grab the guy's opposite side lapel with your head that is nearer his head. You can then Very quickly stand and pass your far leg ( the one furthest from his head) over the guys back and around to over his head and fall backwards. This places a fantastic amount of pressure on the guys neck and will usually gain a very quick tap. Amazing move. I will be trying to hit this very soon :oD We also did a load of chokes from side control and rear side using your own lapel but I will have to save the writing up of them for another day as it's getting late and the moves are awesome enough to require their own log entry.

I've got Ian's class tomorrow evening at Sweat FA and I'm pretty pumped for it. Can't wait. ¬m/

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/