DV8 Bjj 21//3/13

This is gonna be a quick entry as I'm on call and have loads of other shit on too. Week two of Ian being away from training. Originally Glenn Cutter was to take the class but he had a work commitment so offered me to take the it. I thought the respectable thing to do was to offer the class up to fellow blue belt, Dan Foster, the chance to take it instead of hogging all the opportunities myself (although I gladly would've taken it). 

Venue: Sweat FA, Weston Super Mare, Uk.
Instructor: Dan Foster.



Warm Up:

We started of with some laps of the mat and some sprinting.

We then did stretches upper and lower body.

And then finished with Squats/Press ups/Crunches. x15 x3 (if that makes any sense)



Techniques:

Following on from what I did last week, Dan demo'd another closed guard break. From kneeling in your opponent's guard you put your hands under his arm pits and jump to your feet. You need to keep the hand positions (underarms) without leaning to far forward. From there you put your right leg forward into the guys ass (coccyx) and then knee down, pushing forward with the straight arms at the arm pits, breaking the guard. A good move but being short of arm I struggled. If you are the same it's worth altering the straight arm point to the belt.



Next up was the figure four arm control from side. This is a technique I have been using for ages. I think it's great because of all the options to finish it gives you. You start with a good side control on your opponent, laying across him so your head is on his left side. The guy underneath tries to start his escape by getting his right arm underneath you to control your hips. Using your left leg to push that arm inwards you then flatten it across his body using your bodyweight. If at this point you haven't already got your left arm passed behind his head (depends what your favoured side control position is) you should now work to get it there. Now using a combination of your body and right arm to push it up into position, you want his right arm roughly around his upper left pec. From this position you can grab his right wrist with your left hand (keeping your arm behind his head) and pull on that arm so it almost looks like the guy is trying to RNC himself with his own arm. This should turn the guy slightly onto his left side so you are able to get your left under his back. You then pass your right arm up under his upper right arm to grab a hold of your own left wrist. This is the figure four control. Now with your right leg you either put the knee into his right side to help with control or you step it over his leg to form your first hook (for if you're doing a rear mount transition/finish).
Finishes you can quickly transition to from here are:

Kimura
Arm Bar
Americana
Ezekial Choke (side or rear)
Half Nelson Choke
Bow and Arrow Choke 
Head and Arm Triangle

Basically this is a really good set up which supplies many different possible finishing combos or you can just use it to easily transition to mount or to back.


Dan then ran us through a quick drill which is a good one for both training partners. The guy on the bottom of side control has to try and work his offside arm to underhook the top guys leg side arm so he can attempt to shift hips out as if coming up to knees to turn the opponent over. The top guy however drills to switch sides when the bottom guy gets the underhook in, by walking his legs around the other guy's head to come round to for the control at his other side. Rinse and repeat and it's quite a work out to drill this one for about 10 + goes each. Phew.


Sparring:

This week I rolled with Luke Brown, Rob Morris, Chris Whiting and Chris Cook. I got a couple of taps out of that lot but nothing special and I was particularly impressed with everyone's survival skills and instincts this week. Especially Chris Whiting who I seemed to be attacking from advantageous positions for ages (nearly two rounds actually as he took over from half way through Rob's round) and didn't get anything on him. Damn good defense by Chris.

As I mentioned above, sorry about the hastiness with which this has been written this week. At least I'll be getting a decent bit of training in next week in the run up to Easter. 

Bring on the pain ¬m/

DV8 Bjj 14/3/13

So another week of Bjj goes by and it's been an ok week for me. Not quite up to last week as far as mat time goes but I've still managed to get some good teaching in so I'm happy. On Tuesday lunchtime I was down the gym with club mate Chris Cook, first running through some techniques to help improve his game, then getting in a good 35 minutes of hard sparring. Would've got a lot more mat time in but my current regular training partner, Luke Brown, is out sick at the mo' so he took the week off from Bjj.


For this week's class our instructor, Ian Rossiter, is off on a family holiday enjoying the wonders of Egypt so I was fortunate enough to be given the reins for the session. The fact that I am trusted enough by Ian to run a class occasionally is a great boost of confidence for me, even more so for the fact that anyone bothers to turn up. As it was we had a decent turn out too so that shows some good club loyalty.

Venue: Sweat FA, Weston Super Mare, UK
Instructor: Me :o)   -  Martin Eyre (Blue Belt, Checkmat DV8)


Warm Up:

Started off with some laps of the mat with arm windmilling, knee ups, butt kicks, and side steps facing in and out.


We then went on to do stretching of upper and lower body.

To cap it all off we did some lengths of that mat doing different techniques.

These were:
2 x lengths of forward roll breakfalls

2x lengths of backward roll breakfalls

2 x lengths of hip escapes

2 x lengths of spiderman (gator/croc whatever you want to call them) crawls



Techniques:
(As usual I will describe techniques from the side I initially learnt (taught) them). 



To kick things off I showed a technique for break open an opponent's closed guard. I often see a lot of guys at our club struggling with the same old guard break, trying to open their opponent's legs when that guy knows exactly what technique is coming and what he needs to do to counter it. So I decided to show them a guard break that's quite different from the usual one they use. Starting in your opponent's closed guard with you on your knees postured up you take a good strong grip of your opponent's belt with both hands and ensure that your arms are fully straightened. You then move both your knees back about a foot and a half so you're body is stretched out and it nearly seems like you are planking on your knees and hands (which are pressed into his waist). Now to break the guard you just need to sit your bum back on your heels while keeping your arms fully extended. This should neatly pop the closed guard hold open giving you the opportunity to pass. I was teaching the technique with a follow up knee inside to combat stance (using my right knee) to ensure the guy can't reclose the guard. A lot of the guys were enjoying this method of breaking closed guard as they're bigger stronger blokes with the ability to power out quite well.



Moving on from there I went on to a single leg stacking smash pass. Starting with the guard break so they could get really used to it, landing in my right leg forward combat stance I then reached under the opponent's right leg with my left arm, going nice and low down the leg to avoid getting triangled. I then reach up with the left hand and take a grip of the guy's left lapel, using a pull on that to help assist me in pushing the opponent's leg down, crushing it in to him. Now with my right hand I reach under the guy and take a grab of either his belt or the lower panel of his jacket and use this to stack him right up, lifting his ass fully off the ground and removing pretty much all of his hip movement. You can now carry on leaning all your weight against the guy's right, really crushing it in to him with the stack as you pass around the outside to his right. It was even mentioned at this point that it's possible to tap someone out using the pressure of the stack alone although this is quite unlikely against anyone whose been training for a reasonable length of time. What will definitely happen however, is the opponent, to release the discomfort of the crushing, will be trying to push his right leg away whilst in this stacked position. You will feel this happening and just allow him to push his leg forward while you are pushing it down so you'll end up slipping over the leg and coming over to side control, the opponent will most likely have had to turn over on to his side away from you by this point too. It's your decision from there as to whether you'd just prefer to flatten him out for the full side control or if you'd rather take the slightly riskier yet still very attainable transition to back mount.



Next up was one that I rarely use but have recently been trying to push into my game for the control it allows on the pass. Once again using the initial closed guard break, this time, instead of coming up into a combat stance, I went with the double underhooks. Bringing both arms underneath the opponent's legs and then gripping  hands just near the guy's waist area, you can now lean your body weight into the back of the guys legs, stacking him up quite effectively. You now just need to decide which side you are passing and lean your weight into the leg on that side, really pressing down hard and passing on the outside. As you are just coming to the end of the pass and getting to side control it is preferable for you release your gripped together hands but take a grip of the guy's pant legs to ensure that extra bit of control for as long as possible. A quick and flexible opponent will be able to bring a leg up and around to block off your full pass if your don't keep the legs controlled for as long as you can, trust me, I do it all the time. Try to resist sloppy guard passing.


The last technique of the night was little nod to Ian's old penchant for including a disco move in all lessons. Using the guard break (they really drilled the hell out of that thing) and underhook movement from the above technique, this time instead of gripping my hands together in front of the waistline I grabbed the guy's belt at the front and then moved my hands out to his sides a bit (still gripping the belt). You can now stand up quickly and pull the guy's hips right up off the ground by his belt, leaving his head and shoulders pointing down to the floor. Using this move (recommended to be done quite fast) you can flip your opponent over backwards so he lands in the turtle. You now need to come down heavily across his shoulders/upper back so you appear to be in back side mount. I demo'd the move with my lower body coming down to his right, my upper body coming over to his left. You then reach under his left arm using your left and take a grip of his wrist, holding that arm in place. You then just need to force your right foot inbetween his right arm and head and then wrap that leg around his right arm, closing the hold up with your left leg in a triangle style. You now hand the guy in a crucifix hold, you just need to use your left  foot to kick off, pushing your body weight over the opponent's back (but not so you loose that triangle style clamp on the right leg) and forward roll, pushing the guy's arm across in front of him as you go so he can't base out on it. As you roll over onto your back your leg grip on his right arm pulls him over with you and you can pull his left arm out with your left arm so he's fully crucifixed and ready to be finished. From there it's easy to just reach around behind his head with your right hand to grab his left collar quite deep. You then just pull on the collar and abgle your arm up so the forearm finishes the choke.
I. Fucking. Love. This. Move. I've already hit it a few times and I've only been using it for the last month. It's cool as hell and works really well. It's worth mentioning that some of the guys were finding it hard to initially get the courage up to forward roll with the guy locked up. Some were using their hands to help them push off, but in such a cautious position that it was actually hindering them from completing the move. Once we'd eventually drilled it in to them that they just needed to duck their heads down and roll forward everyone was landing it well.




Rolling:

For sparring this week I went against Tom Hill, Rich Presley (who was training hard for competition), Dan Foster and Jay Curtis. Can't remember many details. I got a few subs and didn't get subbed but that is about as much as I can recall. All rounds were pretty damn hard rolling which is just the way I'm liking it lately.

It was great to be allowed the honour of teaching people once again and it is definitely what I wish to do in the future. I'd like to thank all the guys who attended the lesson and hope they take a little bit of what I taught them away and find good use for it in the future.  ¬m/

DV8 Bjj 7/3/13

I've had a brilliant week of training this last week. DV8 club mate Luke Brown has been training very regularly down Sweat FA at lunchtimes and he's really pushing his game on. He even got his first sub on me on Tuesday with a cheeky little arm bar. His technical knowledge is coming along great and I honestly couldn't be happier. If there was ever any doubt in my mind that I wanted to teach before, seeing the likes of Luke and Chris Cook advance their abilities with direct input from me has definitely solidified my long term intentions with this martial art I love so much.

This week down Sweat FA was a good one. Numbers were up a bit from last week and the returning Cameron Rothery was good to see. We even had our first girl in a long time training with us!? She seemed to like it enough too.

Venue: Sweat FA, Weston Super Mare, Uk.
Instructor: Ian Rossiter (Checkmat Black Belt).


Warm Up:

We started with some laps of the mat with arm wind-milling and side stepping, then went on to some upper body stretching.

Next we did our Tabata circuit featuring:

(All these items are done in unison)
Everyone doing 20 seconds of high knee running on spot

then 10 seconds of pausing in squat

20 seconds of press ups

10 seconds paused in plank

20 seconds of crunches

10 seconds paused in a v sit up

20 seconds of jump high on spot

10 seconds of pause in squat

Then do the same circuit again.

We then finished off the warm up with a bit of  lower body stretching.



Techniques:
(As usual I will describe techniques from the side I initially learnt them).


The first move Ian ran us through this week was a back take transition from closed guard. With the opponent in your closed guard with his hands clenched into your waist line or gripping your belt (to try and push your hips to the floor), you first need to break their posture down. To do this you pass one arm under his opposing arm, in my case my right under his left, and pass your left arm over his right shoulder, gripping your hands together behind his back. You can now use your body weight to pull the guy's upper body down toward you, collapsing his posture. From this position you can use your right arm to shunt open a larger gap between his left arm and his body so you can pass your head underneath the arm and escape out to your right (his left) side. Keeping the opponent held in position using your arms you can now open your guard and bring your left leg inside and put it between his legs, triangling that leg with your other. You can now bring yourself up to your knee, maintaining the half guard from behind type leg entanglement on the guy, with him turtled up. To finish the transition you just need to pass your right arm under his right to take a grip of his (right) wrist and then fall/topple your weight over to your left whilst pulling his right arm up. You neatly fall sideways and then (depending on your weight to opponent's weight ratio) come up into a seated position, pulling the guy in front of you as you go. As you've use his arm to get him there it should be in a pulled up position so there is plenty of room for you to pop your right hook in to get the full back mount worth 4 points in competition. A nice transition that is very attainable against a resisting opponent. 



The next couple of techniques were collar chokes from the closed guard. The first was a standard cross collar choke. With the opponent in your guard you open his collar and get a good deep grip of his right lapel with your right hand. You then pass your left hand over the top of your right arm and take a grab of the gi material at his left shoulder. Now, keeping your elbows in tight to your body, you pull the guy in tight toward your body. The movement of your elbows running down across your sides scissors the forearms across the neck/throat of the opponent to finish the choke.



For the second Ian varied the move for if the opponent blocks your initial attack. You've got as far on the above technique as the right hand getting the deep grip of the opponent's right collar. You go for the grip with the left hand and the guy uses his left to block it. Instead of playing for the collar with your left then, you can now switch your aim and grab for the opponent's newly presented left arm at the cuff. With a firm grip of this you can then pull it across his body so it acts as the other part of the choke. Bringing your upper body out to the guy's left side you can now pull tight on the collar with your right hand while pushing across with your left so his arm tightens the choke across his neck. A very creative move.



Sparring:

For my first roll this week I had the pleasure of going against an ever improving Rich Presley. We had a pretty good, competitive roll in which although I had most of the control, I still didn't manage to get a sub.



Next up was my weekday regular training partner, Luke. Luke's confidence has grown quite a bit since hitting the arm bar on me earlier in the week and he's really attacking with stuff now. Being quite strong and athletic makes him really tough in the scramble so when I over committed for a takedown, Luke was quick to capitalise and nearly got me with another arm bar. My defending was better this time though and I managed to escape and take his back, quickly securing myself a bow and arrow choke. Luke has grown to hate that move :o). To his credit he didn't loose his cool after being tapped, unlike previous times we've sparred, instead re-setting and coming in slowly to try and gain position.


Next up was Chris Cook and I was pretty chuffed with this roll as I managed to hit another crucifix roll to gi choke on him. Not bad seeing as how I only learned the technique last week.



Last one was a go against Ian. It was a damn good round with Ian gaining side control on me quite quickly to which I was able to recover to half guard nice and quick. I was stuck there for a bit though with Ian playing a strong controlling half guard top game and me having to switch sides and angles quite a bit to get a recovery. I managed it in the end though, coming up to my knees and taking him with a single leg. The round ended with me attacking his guard.


So that was another eventful week in Bjj for me. Lots of training and sparring and I'm even starting to introduce techniques into my sessions with Luke and Chris that I need a lot of drilling on also, so I'm getting a bit more out of the sessions.

Until next week ¬m/

DV8 Bjj 28/2/13

I managed to get in a damn good amount of training this week. Tuesday evening I was at Sweat FA, Weston, with Chris Cook for some hard sparring. Wednesday and Friday lunch times I hit the mats with Luke Brown for some technique training and sparring. And of course Thursday night was our usual class with Ian Rossiter down at Sweat FA. Gotta love loads of training. In fact I would gladly train every day if I could. Although I think I'd probably ache like crap. Anyway......

Warm Up:

This weeks warm up started with a little taste of the old style with some laps of mat with arm wind milling and side steps etc.

We then went on to the usual upper body stretching.

And then we were back to our Tabata circuit featuring:

(All these items are done in unison)
Everyone doing 20 seconds of high knee running on spot

then 10 seconds of pausing in squat

20 seconds of press ups

10 seconds paused in plank

20 seconds of crunches

10 seconds paused in a v sit up

20 seconds of jump high on spot

10 seconds of pause in squat

Then do the same circuit again.

We then finished off the warm up with a bit of leg stretching.


Techniques:
(As usual I will describe techniques from the side I initially learnt them).


The first move Ian showed was the a nice touch on one of my old favourites. A Flower sweep to dummy to arm bar. Your training partner is in your closed guard. You can't seem to get a decent grip on his pant legs as his legs are tensed up leaving no slack on the pants. To rectify this you raise your legs effectively pulling the guy toward you with your closed guard. This makes him untense his legs slightly, giving you the opportunity to grab a hand full of pant leg at his left knee with your right hand. With your left hand you grab his right sleeve at the cuff with a pocket grip and force the guys arm down toward his lower body by straight arming it. As you lower you legs back down so he comes back to his knees you are at the set up point for your flower sweep. From there you open your guard and, angling your body out to your right, use the high leg kick up with your right leg at the rear of his left shoulder whilst pulling up on his pant leg to break the guy's posture down. You then bring your left leg up over the top of his face/head and kick forward with your legs whilst pushing up with your right arm pant grip to flip the guy over onto his back with you in the traditional arm bar setup. As you had his right arm straight armed down toward his crotch/lower belly area, when you kick out forward and flip him down his arm is positioned neatly between your legs in your arm bar trap. Now depending on how defence savvy your opponent is you might have an easy arm bar or you might have to fight for it. Alternatively, if the guy is stronger and you're not having a lot of luck breaking his arm bar grip defense you can just jump up into technical mount anyway.

 

The second technique we did was the Flower sweep from closed guard. My old friend. Ian knows that I like this one so much that he let me demo it. And as it's one of my favourite techniques I did a write up on it some time back which I'll link Here (flower-sweep).


We then did a line up drill of both techniques by having two groups. 1 guy on each team gets on his back and the rest of his group approach him one at a time and he does the one of the moves on each in succession (being sure to mix it up). Quite a fun method of drilling the techniques.


After that Ian changed it up and, at the request of one of the guys, demo'd an Escape from a nearly sunk in Rear Naked Choke. With the guy behind you in full sat up rear mount with both hooks in, he has his right arm around across your face/neck and is just levelling it up with the crook of the other arm, passing that arm behind your head, to finish. First thing to down is pull down on the guy's cross face arm and get the chin down inside the guy's arm. Next, and this really should be done very quickly, you scoot you ass down so your head is no longer up level with his upper chest/neck but rather, has dropped down to his lower chest. Now he'll have a hard time finishing the move giving you more time to work. With your left hand you reach up and grab his left hand (the one that's behind your head) and pull it down forward to totally relieve the pressure. Bringing your feet up to near your butt moves the opponent's hooks up high allowing you to then drop your right leg quickly and use you right elbow positioning to edge the hook outside. You can now quickly flip over to your left side taking a hold of the guy's left leg when you get there. If he's quick and intelligent he'll realise he's lost the position and at least try to recover some semblance of half guard. If he's and idiot and tries to keep on with the rear mount (you know we've all been there), you can get a good single leg grip on him and use it to pass to side control.
A great escape from a difficult position bit it really is all about getting the movements in quick before the RNC is fully locked in. Otherwise, to quote Kurt Osiander, "Hey Bro, you fucked up a long time ago".

Rolling:

This week I got a good roll in with Dan Foster. Something I look forward to as he really know's how to push me hard and make me work. During this roll I managed to hit a De la Riva sweep to back which I was chuffed to fuck about. Dan managed a pretty damn good rear mount escape shortly after that while I was kind of mentally patting myself on the back so he had a good moment too.


My next round was with Sean Errock who once again dazzled me with his wrestling technique to get me to my back. I was able to tap him from my back eventually but I can't for the life of me remember what with. It certainly wasn't the gogoplata that I very nearly hit him with I know that much.


Last up was a returning Rich Presley. Had a good back and forth roll with Rich this week with neither gaining the upper hand. Rich was exhibiting some really high quality inverted moves to stop my passes too so he can take the moral victory there for style points.

And so it was that another brilliant week of Bjj training had come to pass. A better week of training than some I have to say, especially with the amount of mat time I got in and with the advancement that some of the guys at our club seem to be making. I'm particularly proud of Chris Cook and Luke Brown who are both coming on very well, benefiting from the extra technique and sparring sessions they're putting in. With Bjj, the more effort the student puts in, the more apparent their advancement of skills. Keep up the hard work lads and it'll reap its own rewards.

DV8 Bjj 21/2/13

Back to class on Thursday down at Sweat Fa Weston Super Mare and I was feeling very game for it. Numbers were down a bit from last weeks class but the usual enthusiastic bunch were there so that's what's most important.

Warm Up:

We started the week off with the shoulder, arm and neck stretching first, then went on to the circuit we did last week, which Glenn helpfully supplied the name for. Tabata circuits named after the Japanese scientist who created them.

This features;

(All these items are done in unison)
Everyone doing 20 seconds of high knee running on spot

then 10 seconds of pausing in squat

20 seconds of press ups

10 seconds paused in plank

20 seconds of crunches

10 seconds paused in a v sit up

20 seconds of jump high on spot

10 seconds of pause in squat

Then do the same circuit again.

We then finished off the warm up with a bit of leg stretching.

Techniques:
(As usual I will describe techniques from the side I initially learnt them).

We started off the session with a drill for seated hip thrusts. As that name doesn't really adequately describe what they are (it's just what I call them) I will attempt to explain. From a relaxed seated position you extend your left leg and position the foot of the right leg roughly near to knee of the left. Leaning forward and using the strength of the right leg and your forward momentum you come up onto the right knee with the left leg off at a forty(ish) degree angle from forward and bent to take support and balance you while you thrust your hips forward.
We did this as a drill using both sides to get used to the movement from both side.


The above drill was for the purpose of the next technique. Whilst you're on your back, your training partner is on his feet facing you. He steps forward toward you with his right leg. Reacting quickly using the technique above, your left leg is extended on the outside of his right leg while your right leg passes behind it so your foot is near to your left leg. Using the lean forward thrust up to knee to extend his leg, you grab behind his right leg with your arms and push forward in a single leg takedown ensuring your head is on the inside of his body to avoid a potential guillotine. He should hit the ground like a sack of shit :o)


Returning to last weeks stuff we incorporated the seated feet on hips guard to include the sit up single leg takedown. A good natural technique.

Ian then ran us through the seated guard trip takedown from last week. Still love that move.


Moving away from that stuff the next technique was a transition from Side control to Mount. In side control so your head is to his left side, you use your left arm to secure him in place along his left side, bring your right hand down and put it on the mat next to his right hip to keep him from hip escaping. Now turn your lower body so it's facing away from his head and then kick high up in the air with your right leg to pass it over his torso, coming down on the other side to get to mount.

We then did a drill to incorporate that transition. Using the above side control to mount transition first, your partner then upa escapes out to land in your guard, breaks open and passes guard (using whatever pass you want) to land in side control. From there he transitions to mount and you get to do the escape and the rest. Fun drill. It was also good to do as many different passes as I could remember in the string.



Sparring:


Sparred with a returning Tom Hill first and he didn't seem to have missed a step. We had a really good strong roll with both of us threatening a little but getting nothing.


Next up was Glenn Cutter. Good close roll. Nearly hit an arm bar, then a gogoplata (probably committed to long to the gogo cause really wanted to hit it). Glenn was able to take my back toward the end of the round giving me the opportunity to try defending and escaping against an opponent who can really press me. I defended well but my escaping was a struggle. I was just getting out as the round ended. I really need some situational drilling to practice explosive escaping from difficult positions.


Next up was Rob Morris. As usual Rob used his traditional start of trying to physically pull my hard off. I quickly swept him and got to mount. Tried gearing up for an arm bar which Rob shook to get to his side. From there I took his back and spent the rest of the round trying to attack his neck and arm. Rob did a fantastic job of defending his back.


Last roll was against Ash who I'm still going quite easy against due to his age and inexperience but he is definitely improving each week.

Good session. I'll be back with more next week. ¬m/

Hereford Open 17/2/13

Sunday 17th Feb. Comp day had come once again. I'd been quite ill in the form of a lung infection and then sinusitis for the preceding month and a half but regardless I  carried on training hard and sparring hard.

On the Sunday morning I was very grateful to have the company of Justin Thomas and Luke Brown for the journey and to cheer me on and offer advice. Neither were competing they just came along to support me so fair play to them. That is a couple of great team mates right there. Especially Luke Brown who had spent the night doing door work in Weston Super Mare, not finishing until 4, then being up and active for 8:30. Good lad.


So we get there at about 9:45 and the place is already very active with Bjj match ups across 4 match squares. The Hereford Competition was, as seems to be the norm for this one, very well organised with the weigh in and match timings being virtually spot on. The guys running this thing have definitely got it down to a fine art.

With my illness and the fact that the festive season was only a month and a half before, the weight cut was particularly gruelling, with me only really getting on course by the last week. So I was very chuffed when my tester weigh in just before the fight came in at 86.6 kg. That's over a kilo under the 88.3 kg limit. Good start. That gave me the chance to blatt back an energy drink and a banana.

By the time we were gathered around our warm up mat I was joined by fellow Checkmat guys, Tom Dalley and Gordon Mills. Also present were a couple of other familiar faces, notably Lee Simpson of Sukata Bjj, a guy who basically wins or at least medals in every competition he enters. And Mark Thomas, the guy who beat me in the first round the last time I entered this comp.

There seemed to be a lot of guys missing from our bracket in the end as a few of the guys were given byes in the first round. I was among the ones lucky enough to get a bye. Tom and Gordon both had first round matches. Both of them unfortunately lost.

When the second round matches were off I had been bracketed with a guy who had already fought. As we were all (or most of us) standing around having a chat and getting to know one another I met my opponent, Wayne Pearey, who seemed like a nice guy. Quite a big guy for the bracket as well and he didn't seemed phased in the slightest by the fact that he'd already fought and won a match.

I'll link the video below for you to see how I did (not particularly well) then explain things as I saw them.

I didn't feel I did too badly from the stand up although he did eventually get the 2 points for taking me down into turtle. He managed to get a couple of good point scoring positions on me (back and side) which, although I was able to escape, I was not explosive enough to get out off within the 3 seconds point scoring threshold. I also escaped a decent arm bar attempt which was a plus point but Wayne was eventually able to trap me in a triangle position, which I had well scouted, but the armbar that followed I did not.
I have to admit that I didn't really feel like I had any significant input in this bout. Wayne basically had me on the back foot all the way through.


For my repechage fight I was put against Daniel Lewis, who'd had a tough first match up against Lee Simpson. I was a little bit more confident for this one as Daniel really did look knackered after his first and I'd had a lot of recovery time. This confidence was misplaced however as Daniel was a pretty damn awesome competitor.

First thing I noticed from the initial grip fight was holy shit was this guy strong. In the first contact he managed to grab my arm and force it where he wanted it and I had to struggle massively to get it moved. After that he pulled guard on me and it was about the only bit of top control I had in the fight. He quickly swept me and controlled me for the duration of the fight, the only meaningful thing I did was escape side control momentarily. Eventually he managed to take my back - a position I'm normally quite comfortable in - and slapped on a game winning Bow and Arrow choke.
My most productive moment in the entire thing was when I tried to steal his victory at the end by raising my own hand. I pretended this was a joke but to be honest I was so spaced out I didn't really know what I was doing for a few seconds.
I had a good chat with Daniel after the bout and he seemed like a really nice guy. If I was being critical of the comp in any way I'd say he was probably easily the second best guy in our bracket but as he'd lost to Simpson, the most he could get was the bronze, which he did. Ironically the repechage final for bronze was between Wayne and Daniel so both my opponents did well. Lee Simpson quite easily took the gold however after winning four straight fights. His opponent, Mark Thomas, who'd mysteriously managed to get to the final after only having one match? I suppose that's the advantage of being one of the home team fighters :o|


So that was my Hereford Open experience for this time round. The highlight of this comp for me was the fact that one of my oldest childhood friends, Lee Bonella, who happens to live about 25 miles from Hereford, came up to watch. It was great seeing Lee but I'm gutted I couldn't win one for him.

I've now got to go away and analyse what went wrong and what I can do to improve my game. I'll do this in another blog entry I think as I haven't done a proper analysis of my game's strong and weak points for a while.

I'd like to thank my Instructor, Ian, for training me, my good team mates Dan Foster, Chris Cook and Luke Brown for the hard sparring sessions on the run up to the comp and Chico Mendes for cornering me at the comp.

I'll finish with this as I think it's awesome.

¬m/

DV8 Bjj 14/2/13

This was my last training session before the Hereford Open 16. I've been fortunate enough to get some mid-week lunch time training in with the always improving and helpful Luke Brown (cheers buddy).

Our fearless leader, Ian Rossiter, and his trusty sidekick, Glenn Cutter, were back for this lesson, fresh from a Bjj related trip to Greece under the awe-inspiring tutelage of Checkmat head, Leo Vieira (lucky bastards). And they were both bursting with great stories and cool Bjj drills, techniques and ideas.

Warm up:
We started off with basic stretching of the neck, shoulders, arms and legs to prepare us for what was to come.

Then Ian put us through a Cardio circuit done in unison. This featured;

Everyone doing 20 seconds of high knee running on spot

then 10 seconds of pausing in squat

20 seconds of press ups

10 seconds paused in plank

20 seconds of crunches

10 seconds paused in a v sit up

20 seconds of jump high on spot

10 seconds of pause in squat

Then do the same circuit again.



We then did a Bjj technique specific circuit featuring:

Mount escaping/maintaining.

Side control escaping/maintaining.

Turtle transition to rear mount/turtle defense.

Takedown positioning/defending.

Guard passing/maintaining.

All of this was drilled at 100% or close to in 20 second rounds over two sets and was really enjoyable, although I'd prefer a little longer on each round. Good stuff though.



Technqiues:
(As usual I will describe techniques from the side I initially learnt them).

To start off Ian repeated the Arm bar from guard stuff that has been covered over the last couple of weeks.
I was practising techniques this week with a guy who recently returned to Bjj after a long hiatus. Gary Batten used to train with Ian in the old days (hehe) when they were training under Carlos Lemos jr. He seems a very nice friendly guy and is a pretty damn good blue belt if he "rusty" state was anything to go by. I hope Gary sticks around to help our team grow in the future. He'd be a great addition to the team.


The next move Ian ran us through was the Kimura from guard. Starting with the opponent in your closed guard using his hands gripping on your legs or side (you rarely get an opponent putting there hand to the floor these days so there's not really any point in drilling it as if it's going to happen that way) so there's a small gap between his arm and his body. Grabbing his left wrist with your right hand using a no thumb grip, you open your guard and shift your hips out to the left slightly so you can lean up and forward passing your left hand over the top of his right arm and reach through the gap between his body and arm to grab your own wrist, using the same no thumb grip. Once this is secure you can pull the guys elbow in tight to your chest and fall back with your entire body weight and closing the guard back up as you go. When flat to the floor you can either; push the guys left arm to a ninety degree upward angle using your arm strength, or, turn your entire upper body to your left, taking the guys arm with it and piling on massive pressure.


Ian ran us through the Triangle from guard after that which has been covered frequently recently so no need to rewrite.


Next up we did a little drill for seated feet on hips guard. You lay on your back with your feet on the hips of a standing training partner and they quite aggressively walk from left to right, increasing and decreasing pressure and you have to keep the feet on hips guard maintained. It is best if you try and keep a minimal surface contact with your body on the mat.


The above lead us on to the last technique which I really enjoyed. From the feet on hips guard you hook your left foot under the guys right inside leg and use this to pull yourself toward his lower right leg to grab that leg with both hands.You then (keeping your right foot against his hip) swing your left leg down and across to chop his left leg out toward you giving him absolutely no base left to stand on. The guy should fall backward like a sack of shit leaving you to come up into top position. Interestingly, if you try to jump straight on top you'll most likely end up in half guard top which is not ideal if your opponent is an awesome half guard player. A preferable idea is to come up to a combat stance with a grip on both of the opponent's legs and push them down to one side to try for a full pass from a strong position.



Sparring:

For sparring this week I had a good roll with Gary Batten who was a very good technical opponent. Neither of us really got anything on the other. I look forward to some good hard sparring sessions with Gary in the future.


For the second roll I was against Jay Curtis and managed to hit him with a Gogoplata which I was particularly chuffed with as it's only the second time I remember pulling one off.


My last two rounds we against Luke Brown who is improving every session. I managed to get him with something in the first round (can't remember what) but the second round he stayed a lot more alert and gave me a good tussle. 


After that good last session I felt pretty prepared for the comp on Sunday. I'll give you a write up on how I did next time. ¬m/