January 16th 2014 - No Gi

Theme & Techniques: Fit-in Takedowns, Guillotine Choke from guard and a follow up

I showed up with my brand spanking new rash guard that I just received in the mail before coming to class.  Lo and behold Conan and Jorge also had the same idea.  We got made fun of a little but it's still a cool rash guard and I'll wear it whenever I want to.

I asked Greg if it was okay for me to train gi during no gi class since it was going to be the last class before Saturday's tournament.  However, I am now planning on going back tomorrow morning, so I'm going to make this post short.  My nerves have been shot all day and I've found it difficult to be my calm laid back self (at least that's how I see myself).  I switched my music during work to some rock ballads and tried to get my mind off it as much as I could.  I know I'll do fine and I feel good, but it appears this is something that I can't control because it happens every time I compete. 

I was partnered up with Henry, Monsieur Guillotine, for the technique portion of class.  The follow up technique was the cool part.  If they were hand fighting the choke, we would butterfly sweep them into a quarter mount tripod position and then use our knee to slide on their bicep and break their grip.  Apparently this is another one from Marcelo Garcia.

Rolling: Light? Free Rolling, Drilling

Henry had to take off which left me and Mike as the only gi wearers.  We did a couple of matches that were supposed to be light but we got carried away a couple of times.  You really can't give him an inch because he'll find a way to stick a foot or knee in that space and exploit it.

After we rolled we drilled pieces of our respective game plan, which I won't go into.  Mike had some good tips for me on a few things that we were working on, which helped determine what I drilled.  I consider him a true asset to our school.

It's probably being a little paranoid but I already know a few people from other schools in the area that read my blog.  I suppose if you've read previous recent posts you know what I'm good at and like to do and probably would I'm bad at and get caught with.  Fuji directed me to some videos of a few guys that are potentially in my division, so I would assume that many would try to do this type of research.  So for better or worse, my Jiu-Jitsu is cataloged in this blog.

January 14th 2014 - Gi Noon & Evening

Noon
Theme & Techniques: Shoulder Throw RNC Defense, Farside Armbar, Scissor Sweep

My coworker Bhuvana returned once again, we'll convert her to BJJ yet.  John and Air Force Brian were also in attendance.  I guess Jordan's schedule has changed so he may be missing our noon bromoplata sessions.

I worked with Bhuvana for the technique portion of the class.  She seems to be doing well at breaking down the moves and following the directions step by step.  She had a little trouble with the first one, mostly because a shoulder throw is a little daunting at first but I let her down nicely.  It took a little time but she was able to throw me without any trouble.

The other techniques went about the same she'd memorize the steps and then carry them out in order.  Later back at work, we equated BJJ to software programming with Guard being a our main class which inherits from position and defining collar grip as a variable and calling the shrimp class etc.  Well, I guess it's kind of an inside joke.

Rolling: Side Control & Guard Position, Mock Tournament Match

It took it pretty easy on her but tried to make her work for the techniques that we worked on in class.  After that Brian and I started from the feet and I did the best I could to not give up any points and maintain my gas tank.  On our third roll I was a little too lax and he got me in side control and then took my back off of a failed straight arm escape.  I've been working on this escape, so I'm a little confused what happened.  We drilled our techniques for a while after that.  For some reason work is more important than BJJ, so I had to leave after that.

Evening
Theme & Techniques: Knee in Side control escape, Farside Armbar, Breaking Armbar grip

Greg offered to have me come in a little early and drill some variations on the straight arm escape that he saw on MG in Action.  Pretty cool to get some extra reps in and be asked to stop by a little early.  The technique was a response to if they sucked their arm in instead of allowing it to go straight.  I tried looking for a chance to use it today during rolling but it never came up.

Anthony, a potential student, named showed up for class tonight.  He had worked out with us a couple times at Roseberry's and did some Judo in the past so he was able to jump right into class.  I ended up partnering up with him for the technique portion.  I'm getting better with the side control escape, I think the main factor that I was missing before was pointing my knee to the sky, that seemed to make all the difference.  The gem of the day was a slight tweak to the far side armbar.  I asked Greg if there was a way to avoid getting the foot caught in their armpit and he said to either knee slide over their arm or make a shuffle step before going farside.  That made all of the difference and hopefully my armbars won't be foiled by that technicality in the future. 

Rolling: Side Control Gauntlet, Free Rolling

Greg, Jerad, and I started on the bottom of side control and then after each round we would get a new white belt victim.  After we went through everyone, then the roles reversed and the upper belts were on top and cycled through all of the white belts.  I feel quite good with my performance from both positions.  I used the straight arm escape several times and I'm getting a little better at rolling when they try to step over my head.  Henry gave me the most trouble, he did a great job of preventing my half guard and always threatening to pass again.

I then rolled with Anthony, Greg, and Jerad.  Greg was on a back hunt and succeeded several times.  Although I did surprise him momentarily with a scissor sweep that he recovered from all too quickly.  Anthony seemed to be gassed a little bit and while he knows what he's doing I think his major problem was being a little too greedy by trying to pass guard right into mount and things of that nature.  I don't think it would take him long though to tighten up his game and eliminate some of those mistakes. 

Jerad lately has probably been the most frustrating person to roll with.  He seems to know my game all too well.  Later on he said I am waiting too much for him to do something instead of mounting my own strategy and attack. He often knows what I want to do and he won't give it to me so I'm forced to either resort to alternate techniques or keep attempting the one I want.  We later discussed this and he gave the same advice that I'm hearing from Mike, to be more active in guard.  I have to impose my game on my opponent.  He also went over a cool quarter guard trick that will be very useful from this day forth.

January 11th 2014 - Kids, Competition, & Open Mat

Kids:

The boys did pretty well today.  They both did all of the animal walks without any problems and they tried a little harder during 1 on 1 foot tag.  They practiced the knee escape from side control, which went pretty well except for getting off track a couple of times.  We finished the class with blob tag and the kids got a little crazy towards the end.  I could tell it took a little bit out of Greg.

Competition Class:

I partnered up with Jorge again for this session.  Andrew from North Platte, joined us to prepare for the tournament as well.  We did a couple rounds of drilling escapes from bad positions.  Then the tough part we did a minute of each conditioning exercise.  I'm pretty sure we did all of the burpees with some lunges and push-ups in between.

We worked on our techniques.  Everything feels great except I'm still getting a sore neck when practicing the single leg.  I was a little worried that I'd lost my mojo with the omoplata but I think it's coming back to me now as I hit it a couple times today during rolling.

We finished the class with some matches and Greg partnered me up with Andrew.  My goal was to not gas out.  I ended up pulling guard but then immediately sweeping.  From there I spent most match in a dominant position, except for once where he escaped my back mount and rolled over into guard.  But the omoplata sweep was there to save me.

Open Mat:

Fuji and I worked together on the ideal game drill.  I used my secret weapon technique that I am not willing to divulge yet and Fuji worked on his ideal game.  Later on Fuji and I had a talk about last week's roll.  While it was a big confidence boost for me, he said that he also got some encouragement out of it.  It made him want to refocus his efforts on the basics and drill his escapes.  That was pretty cool to hear.  

Conan and Jerad both handed my ass to me.  Although I did spend a little time in mount with Jerad on our second roll I feel pretty helpless against his guard passing.  I thought about it a little bit and I'm not sure how much of that is me expecting him to inevitably pass and instead of fighting it to my best ability, I think I'm conserving my energy.  But, I know it actually takes more energy to escape a bad position than to fight to maintain guard.  Conan pointed something similar out to me.  That I wasn't actively trying to escape his side control but just stave off his attacks for as long as I could.  I think it has something to do with lack of confidence against people that I know are better than me.  Not sure how to get over that.

I did my weekly roll with Jorge which was similar to our other rolls.  I spend all of my time attempting submissions and he defends them.  It's a great workout for both of us.  I can't wait until he figures out some escapes, then it will be interesting.  I rolled with Andrew again a few times and played guard until I could sweep.  From there I stayed in side control quite a bit in order to keep him from turning over into turtle.  After rolling a couple times I gave him some pointers on passing guard with the gi.  Hopefully my pointers were welcome.

January 10th 2014 - Gi (Jittery)

Theme & Techniques: Triangle Choke from overhook w/ various alternatives

I'm going to say right now that the triangle choke is not high percentage for me, however whenever we work on it in class I seem to have the technique down.  The place I get stuck the most is where I get to the triangle position with my ankles crossed but then can't figure out how to cinch it up from there without them posturing up.  While working on it today with Brian I felt the most natural that it's ever felt.  It made me feel like trying to develop it in rolling, almost.

I like the overhook setup as you can keep their posture pretty broken down and under control.  After the basic setup we moved on to trying to armbar and making it a little easier to get our leg over the jump rope arm.  We finally moved into more familiar territory with some omoplata stuff.

Rolling: Free Rolling (5 x 5 min rnds)

I think I get a great deal out of classes where I am the middle experience guy.  While Conan handles me with ease, I have to struggle use my brain, and fight for every inch.  Still I'll lose and get smashed but it's a workout and I hopefully improve my defense.  With Brian I could flow a bit more try some different things I'm working on and be more offensive (hopefully he didn't get offended). 

Probably the coolest thing of the morning was when I pulled off a little trick that I saw in the video below.  I know that Jerad and Mike have been doing this for a while but after watching the video it finally dawned on me how/when I could use it.  I was attempting to pass Brian's guard standing and I felt like I could knee cut over his shin but it would probably just put me into his knee shield.  Redirecting after the cut worked perfectly!

After class I felt pretty jittery and couldn't calm down.  I attribute it to laying off of caffeine for the past 2 weeks and then taking half a 5 hour energy to get me up in the wee hours this morning.  The energy boost didn't last too long, but it's making me think about staying off soda even after the tournament, we'll see.

January 9th 2014 - No Gi

Theme & Techniques: Obscure Side Control escapes

Once again the beginner class was huge and only a hand full of us were in the advanced class.  Hopefully some of the new guys will be able to start attending the advanced classes, I'm not sure what the criteria is though. 

Conan described the side control escapes as requiring a little finesse and timing.  It's the truth, I've tried the first one we did in the past and have had a difficult time with it.  It's heavily dependent on the other person's leg position.  If they went to a kessa gitama to prevent the first defense then we did the bump and flatten out escape, which I did a little better.  The 3rd technique we did was a little better.  It was a variation on the knee across the belly escape, that we would turn into a modified butterfly sweep.  The final technique was a reverse sweep off of a failed scissor sweep.

Rolling: Free Rolling (4 x 6 min rnds)

My biggest problem today was my butterfly guard kept getting shut down.  I just didn't feel like I could get in a good position to attempt the sweep.  Conan wanted us to go easy on each other and try to use pure technique and no strength.  While I'd like to think that I do that, I found that I had to remind myself to calm down a little bit.  It was easier to do that with Conan because he has a way of setting the pace, but I'm not sure if Adam got the memo cause it felt like rolling normal with him.  Adam did however play some different positions that he normally doesn't, like knee on belly.  I also rolled with Jordan.  We both spent the majority of the roll trying to pass each others guard.  Probably a good goal for the beginning of the year is to improve my no gi guard passing.

January 7th 2014 - Gi Noon & Evening (Ladies' Day)

Noon
Theme & Techniques: O-Soto-Gari, Side control basic escape and americana

My co-worker Bhuvana attended class again today and Sam also joined us.  Greg took us through one of his classes structured for beginners.  However, I did get challenged with the side control escape.  Once I get my shin across the opponents belt it's not as easy for me to rotate to the other side and put my foot to the floor.  After watching Greg do it a few more times I figured out my main problem was not putting my other leg on their back, this seemed to make a difference.  I also think I was mixing it up with a different escape.

Rolling: Side Control Position (2 min rnds)

Greg had them take turns trying to hold me down.  I think this was great because I felt them improve their position and pressure during this short amount of time.  It still wasn't too difficult for me to escape but that's because I know more tricks than they do.  Greg and I went after that and there was no escaping his side control, the one time I got quarter guard he turned it into a back take which was a wow moment.  He later demonstrated on me how to maintain side control for Bhuvana and Sam and it seemed like he turned it up a notch to make sure I didn't escape.  It was fun but clued me in on how little I know.

Evening
Theme & Techniques: Knee on Belly Maintain position, farside armbar, kimura

I ended up being one of two blue belts tonight; Tuesday evening is usually a pretty stacked class.  Sara, who I haven't seen since the seminar, was the other blue and apparently she's back to stay.

I worked with Jorge for the majority of the class.  From the look of things this was several of the student's first time, which was cool to see people playing with it and learning new things.  The most important thing I learned today was when doing the farside armbar, Greg likes to put his elbow on the opponents wrist to keep them from wiggling out of it.  Something I never thought about.

Rolling: Knee on Belly position (2 min rnds), Free Rolling with calisthenics in between (5 min rnds)

I partnered up for the knee on belly exercise with Jorge, Brian, and Sara.  I kept the top position pretty well with everyone and was able to escape mostly to butterfly.  I think I had the hardest time with Sara, because she's so small and I didn't want to crush her with my knee. 

The tournament people (me, Jorge, and Brian) had to do some extra work with each roll.  20 burpees, 20 pushups, and 30 squats.  Burpees suck, and doing them first makes the other exercises suck that much more.  However, I went up against the other two people that did them as well so everything was equal.  I was able to pass their guard and then work from side control.  On my second roll with Brian, he pulled off a pretty good guard pass and put me into back mount.  I was unable to escape before time ran out.  He had tried the bow and arrow choke but with the underhook arm instead.  Which Greg went over the proper bow and arrow after class and I had Brian practice it with me a couple of times.

January 4th 2014 - Kids, Competition & Open Mat

Kid's Class

Greg returned to teach class this morning along with Conan.  I was happy with Jayden's animal walks today as he didn't stop in the middle like he has been lately.  Jace however did not want to partner up with anyone except his brother.  It causes a little trouble because Jayden would like to work with other kids, but he's nice enough to work with his brother.  They played 1 on 1 foot tag in the ring, which I enjoy watching.  Sometimes they forget that they need to get the other person's feet to win and both kids play defensively.  They worked on the double leg takedown again, which both of my sons seem to like and do well at.

Competition Class
Drilling: Over Under Pass, Omoplata from cross guard, arm drag to single leg, pulling guard

Wess and his son Tristan, Gina, and Jorge were all initiated into the competition class.  Jorge and I were partnered up due to being closest in weight.  Greg told us not to change anything since we only have a couple of weeks to prepare for Circle of Iron.  We got right into by doing some mount escapes and then went into working on our 3 things.  Everything felt pretty good, Jorge reacted differently with a couple of the techniques so I had to adjust to make everything work.  I applied some things from Tinguinha's DVD to my omoplata and my open guard pulling. 

Rolling: 1 tournament style match


Greg matched me up with Fuji and my only goal was to not end up on the bottom.  I attempted some takedowns and we grip fought until Fuji pulled guard.  Then I knew I had to avoid his spider guard and leg lasso and stay on top by keeping my elbows in.  I was able to pass his guard and mount and finally back mount but it ended up taking it's toll on me and I gassed for a little while.  I knew I was ahead on points by a lot so I had to keep from getting submitted.  Fuji went for his brabo choke and it was very tough to defend.  Time was almost up and when the choke didn't happen he started to scramble to score some more points which allowed me an opportunity to sweep into mount when soon after time ran out.

While this was a huge confidence booster, I also realize that 9 times out of 10 Fuji has my number.  Greg and I also discussed my gassing out as this isn't the first time it's happened during tournament match practice.  I'm not sure how much is mental and how much is actual cardio, regardless I need to improve on it.

Open Mat

I was pretty tired for open mat, but still rolled with Jorge, Henry, Greg, and the new girl Sam.  As I've probably written before, Jorge is great at defending submissions.  I threw everything I could at him but at the same time making sure I didn't get reversed.  Henry and I had a pretty good roll.  I felt like I was controlling the match in the beginning but gassed out again and he submitted me with a mounted triangle.  I really tapped from jaw cramp pain but the choke was there.  I felt worthless with Greg.  I don't remember much but I'm pretty sure he took my back 2 or 3 times easily and made me tap with an RNC.  Since it was Sam's 2nd class and I was tired, I took it pretty easy on her.  I would get to mount or side mount and then walk her through how to escape.  She seems to like BJJ so far, so hopefully she'll stick around as our female population is very small.

Tournament Prep

Diet has been going well.  I'm not snacking as much and haven't had a pop since Monday.  I'm planning on doing some swimming this week as well as the weight workout Bauer sent me.  I think both will be good for my cardio.  I may look into doing some extra rolling after each class.  I also bought some school patches for our gis that I'll get stitched on soon.  They're a really great design and I'm excited to represent LBJJC in a tournament.