February 25th - Gi (Dead Spider)

Greg taught last night and had us do a sickle sweep from spider guard against a standing opponent. After doing the full technique several times he had us break it down and do a little bit at a time.  So one round we switched our hands to cross grab the sleeve and then grab the ankle over and over.  The next time we repeated those steps and then moved our foot to the hip over and over.  This was great and how I like to drill things.  Mike was great to work with and gave me some pointers along the way.  I did have a little trouble getting to kneeling in the end of the technique, but otherwise everything else was progressing along.

We trained guard passing/sweep/submit with the spider guard from standing.  Since it wasn't that big of a class Greg's goal was to have everyone train with everyone.  Now I really like the idea of spider guard, but boy do I suck at it.  Everyone was easily defeating my guard and I had a hard time passing everyone else.  I did have one cool moment where I arm dragged Adam because he was so concentrated on my spider guard.  Regardless my spider guard needs more work, but it was an awesome class and I got a good workout out of it.









 

February 24th - I missed you

After 2 weeks of inactivity from knee recovery and being sick I finally made it back to class. It was a great class with quite a few people.  Conan's theme was sweeps starting from closed guard using an underhook or an overhook to make an armbar.  I liked the progression that we went through as it was a good way to teach a rather complicated subject as we had to use the opponents momentum to sweep them.  After drilling several different ways to accomplish this sweep we did some training with a little resistance but still eventually letting the person complete the sweep. 

We broke for open mat and it felt really good to roll again.  I rolled with Tate first and he submitted me 3 + times.  I was impressed as he was pretty fluid yesterday, I think he's getting ready for an upcoming fight.  I rolled with Wes next and he also gave me a little trouble.  It's always cool to see someone improve, plus it keeps me on my toes as I've got to keep training and improving so the guys less experienced than me don't catch up.  I say this light-heartedly as it's supposed to be more about my personal improvement rather than a competition with everyone else, but the in-house competition is a factor.  Jerad demolished me next, I didn't have any real defense and he passed my butterfly guard with the same pass 3 times.  I defended the best that I could, but I couldn't get off of my back.  He eventually got me with an Americana from mount.

I'm scheduling an appointment to go back to the orthopedist and get my knee checked out again.  I've been biking and lifting a bit at the Y and I bought a foam roller today for home use.  These things have been helping but it still feels injury prone so maybe the doctor's opinion has changed since I haven't completely healed yet.

February 10th - No Gi

Conan taught class yesterday with the leg smash pass being the main theme.  We started out working on the scissor sweep and then progressed to defending the scissor sweep with the leg smash/hug and going to one side or the other.  I think this is one of Conan's go to classes as I've been through it a couple of times, however there were some different additions in this class that made it unique.  I like the idea of going back and forth and learning the offense for something and then learning the defense from the other perspective and then repeating the cycle so in the end we have some answers for offense and defense.

After working on several different ways to pass and several different ways to defend we trained starting in the scissor sweep position.  This was not as good as starting from half guard the other day.  The scissor sweep is pretty easy to defeat if you know it's coming.  Plus I went up against Ray and Ken and they are both difficult to deal with.  We did king of the mat from closed guard to finish out class.  I wasn't really feeling it yesterday and took it easy as my knee is still bothering me a bit.  Although I had some decent exchanges with Conan, Ray, and Adam.

I'm a little sick today so probably won't make it to class tonight.  I may also take some more time off from Jiu-Jitsu.  I need to get over this injury hump. 

February 7th - Gi (I'm back?)

Greg focused the whole class on one technique, which I really enjoyed.  It was a half guard pass from the top position when they have the dreaded underhook.  This is the position I love to have from the bottom so I was a little concerned when we started to learn a defense for one of my favorite positions.  The technique was to straighten legs and arms in kind of a bear crawl position then to kick over and sit in inverted half guard next to the opponent.  The hardest part for me was during the kick over and sit we were to grab the back of the gi and do a cross face with our shoulder.  The cross face in this technique is probably the single most important thing to keep control over the person.  From there we feed the gi into the hand that's behind their neck then work our leg out with shrimping and then putting our foot on their thigh.  I know that's probably confusing, the video at the bottom of the post was the closest I could find to describe what we worked on.

We kind of free rolled from the starting half guard position for this pass.  I noticed some people weren't trying to the pass which was odd.  Why not get some practice in on what we're working on?  Every time I failed was due to not being able to effectively keep the cross face.  However, there were a few times I was able to complete it.

We did king of the mat from closed guard and I was king of my area for a several rounds.  My left knee was still a little iffy and I eventually let one of the new guys pass me instead of trying to risk keeping guard and hurt myself.  When I "tried" to pass Greg's guard he blew me away with how he setup spider guard and then easily swept me into half.  Hopefully one day my spider guard will somewhat resemble his.

So, I'm back after taking a week off.  I thought I was finally done worrying about my knees with the lifting, biking, and swimming I've been doing.  My recovery time was a lot shorter this time and it didn't feel as injured as it did the last time I tweaked it.  I was able to get back on the bike on Monday and I've also started using the foam roller which feels good.  I'm going to try another round of this and if I end up injuring it again I may have visit the doctor again.

January 31st - Gi

Greg taught a good class about choking from the back mount.  It's nice to go over the same topic with 2 different instructors within the same week.  Our warm-up consisted of jogging and movement drills around the mat we did some shrimping and rolling.  It appeared that everyone got really dizzy.

Greg demonstrated on me for the first technique.  While it's very cool to be used to show techniques it is also makes me a bit nervous.  Often times the instructor wants you to react a certain way to show how someone could foil the technique being taught.  There's always a chance that you do the wrong thing in front of everyone.  It has gotten easier over time with experience. 

I had some trouble finishing the first choke with Fuji.  The problem ended up being that I needed to secure a higher grip with both of my hands.  I also had a little trouble with the gi grip but Greg showed us a little trick to use when there is a difficult collar to grip by folding it over as a handle.  We did the same cross grip for the next choke be we did it from a shoulder mount position with a gift wrap.  It was one of the Judo chokes that I've always had problems with, because you raise their arm over their head into kind of a half nelson.  Doing it from the shoulder mount made this quite a bit easier.  This made Fuji tap quite a bit quicker.

We partnered up and did some back mount training with 2 minute rounds and then switched the position or switched partners.  I partnered with the new girl at one point and she was actually pretty impressive for her first class.  I did well and only had problems with Fuji.  We did King of the mat guard passing to finish the class off.  I need to learn how to deal with lasso spider guard because both Fuji and Greg were kicking my butt with it.  Ray had me in a tight deep half and tweaked my knee a bit but it's okay, I probably should have tapped though.  Greg performed a guard clinic on me a couple times by switching from spider to lasso to some combination of spider butterfly to x-guard and then the standup sweep. 

January 28th - Gi

Had a great class yesterday with Jerad teaching attacking from back mount.  We started with some basics of the position (where to put the hooks, how to clasp in seat belt, which side to roll to based on the underhook.  Another thing that Jerad brought up which is probably obvious but I haven't heard it brought up before is you need to keep the underhook and then the opposite leg hook to keep control.  If you have the underhook and the leg hook on the same side they can easily turn into you.  From there we focused on choking using rear naked, x-choke, Ezekiel, and finally bow and arrow.

I like partnering with Mike because he tends to find flaws in my techniques.  Sometimes I get a little annoyed with his teaching style because he can be pretty blunt at times, plus my ego.  I just need to keep reminding myself that I still have a lot to learn even with things that I feel like I'm already good at.  My problem last night was with staying tight on his back and keeping close with my seat belt grip.  Normally I don't hold myself that tight to my opponent from the back and even with just drilling Mike was escaping my hooks easily.  So I choked up a bit on my seat belt grip and put my chin in tighter on his shoulder and was able to control him better.  I think I was used to bigger guys and that my hands hook at a certain place in my seat belt, but I think I need to be choking up on everyone from now on.

We did king of the mat at the end of class with guard passing.  There were 3 groups and I was able to pass several times and then defend several times as well.  It seems for me I'm at a skill level where I decisively beat the new people and I decisively get beat by the people more experienced than myself.  Which is probably how it should be.

Jerad and I were the only ones to hang around and roll afterward for open mat.  This was really good for me, besides destroying me, he went over some pointers and a pass that we worked on before.  We discussed knee on belly defense which is something I need to work on a little more. 

I feel like I may be plateauing right now and to overcome it I may need to find an aspect of Jiu-Jitsu to focus on.  So I extend the question to anyone that reads this, send me your suggestions on what specific things I should try to improve?  So if you've rolled with me or watched me roll others and thought, "Josh would be so much better if he improved X" please drop some knowledge on me.

January 27th - No Gi

I got to request that we work on some side control yesterday due to my recent shortcomings in rolling.  As I have posted recently I have been told that I lay on my side and stay there when put into side control.  Mostly what Conan focused on was having us create space and regain guard. 

We did a lot of reps of the basic shrimp and then knee in to guard.  From there we did a couple of sweeps using the scissor sweep position.  We worked on making space when someone was in close in side control by getting our hands inside as a frame to push their chin away.  Another interesting technique we worked on was when one arm was trapped to not allow them to get the other arm free to finish the submission.  This is something that I hadn't thought about and turned out to be an informative exercise.

During open mat I rolled with Adam quite a bit.  He appears to be all about ankle locks now because that's what he got me in several times.  Other than that I did okay. 

I rolled with Wes as well and implemented some stuff that Conan and I talked about before class.  I've been having trouble with the half way back position where I have passed their arm but can't fully get up to take the back.  I relaxed a little more and instead of fighting to get up I allowed him to twist a little more and was able to sweep him into back mount.  I had him in mount another time and he still hasn't learned to keep his arms in and kept pushing up with straight arms so I was able to armbar him.  No worries, I remember having a hard time getting over that myself.