May 23rd 2014 - Gi (Defrag)

Theme & Techniques: Countering Knee Slide Pass

I was half expecting to work on the triangle again, since Greg has been repeating the same techniques throughout each week.  However, I was more than happy that Conan chose to share some of his magic. 

The main thing I took away from today's class is the use of the stiff arm.  Normally I fight hard for the underhook when I'm being passed.  It works well against the new guys but not so well against my seniors.  I may have to put some more work into this.

I worked with Dave on this portion of the class.  While I feel like what we worked on was conceptual and a little advanced, he did a good job. 


Rolling: Open Guard Postion (3 x 3 min)

I did my best to use the stiff arm as much as possible while on the bottom.  From the top I only tried to do knee slide pass but did deviate a couple times when I had to.  I had rounds with everyone in class: Austin, Dave, and AF Brian.  I felt pretty good about the stiff arm and was able to hold everyone off with it, except one time Brian took my back. 

New Analogy: Defragging the Computer

Bhuvana has been watching some instructional videos lately and was a little concerned about how complicated everything seems in BJJ.  I tried to explain that she's trying to take in a whole new technique which is difficult.  Usually when I watch a video I already know the basics of the technique and I'm picking out minor details to improve.  So I tried to relate learning BJJ to how a computer stores information.  Hopefully it makes sense, let me know what you think.

A computer saves information on the disk in blocks and often the blocks for 1 file can get written in separate places on the disk, making it fragmented.  The hard drive has to work harder to get all of the information when a file is accessed.  Defragmentation puts all of the blocks in sequential order so the information can be accessed faster with less work.

We learn BJJ in pieces at a time.  After being taught an armbar we have most of the information but it's difficult to put it together.  We need to go through the steps and possibly repeat them out loud.  Over time we drill the technique and eventually attend another class where it's covered again.  Each time the technique is worked on the data in our heads is being "defragmented" to put all of the data blocks next to each other for easier access.  Too bad I just can't run the BJJ defragmenter each night while I sleep.