I got another chance to train Judo today with my buddy. He tossed me around good this time but I did get better at breaking his grips and getting mine. Something I have to work on is my foot placement and my mobility while I am fighting for grips. If I stay still I will get thrown. If I move I leave opportunities for throws.

Rick: Hello camper! My name is Rick. How are you doing?Cartman: Well I’m pissed off, Rick. How are you?–from “Fat Camp”, South Park episode 415.Wednesday is Basic BJJ day, but we continued to work on passing the spider guard. Given the less than p…

I think I’m going to start using this warm up. Or maybe not.

First:

….HEAVY RAINFALL POSSIBLE THIS WEEKEND… ABUNDANT TROPICAL MOISTURE AND AN OVERRUNNING PATTERN IS EXPECTED TO PRODUCE FAVORABLE CONDITIONS FOR HEAVY RAINFALL OVER THE WEEKEND. SOUTHWEST WINDS ALOFT WILL TRANSPORT MOISTURE FROM A DEVELOPING TROPICAL DISTURBANCE OVER THE EASTERN PACIFIC TONIGHT THROUGH THIS WEEKEND. A COLD FRONT IS EXPECTED TO SETTLE OVER SOUTH TEXAS EARLY FRIDAY…PROVIDING A FOCUS FOR SCATTERED TO NUMEROUS SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS THIS WEEKEND. RAIN CHANCES ARE EXPECTED TO INCREASE RAPIDLY BY SATURDAY MORNING…WITH THE HIGHEST POTENTIAL FOR HEAVY RAINFALL EXPECTED TO DEVELOP SATURDAY NIGHT INTO SUNDAY. THIS TYPE OF HEAVY RAINFALL PATTERN WILL BE CAPABLE OF PRODUCING WIDESPREAD HEAVY RAINS OF 2 TO 5 INCHES…WITH ISOLATED TOTALS OVER 10 INCHES. THOSE WITH WEEKEND PLANS SHOULD MONITOR THE WEATHER CLOSELY…AND PLAN AHEAD FOR POTENTIAL FLASH FLOODING.

Yay! As you know I’ve been missing fall-y weather, so this is great news for me. I’m hoping for another wet weekend full of my favorite things. It makes training more pleasant, makes it fun to stay indoors and curl up with a book (or one of the instructionals I need to review) and generally puts me in a frisky mood. I guess I’m the opposite of bears– warmer weather makes me hibernate, cooler weather puts me in an entirely different place. Frankly at the moment I’m craving some camping, but that’s unlikely to happen any time soon since I don’t own a tent. Would be helpful.

Training today was great fun. This morning I managed two armbars and a choke from the back- hop hop hop- and then at lunch I at least survived some peeps bigger and heavier than me, and tapped one once (big smile). I was happy to provide a whitebelt “his first tapout of a blue belt”… and then his second, and his third. (#1 was a triangle into a mounted triangle, I became unbalanced during the choke-counter… the other two– an early tap due to my squidgy elbow, and an armbar from mount.) I was happy to see someone else so happy, it reminds me of me!

And I can’t remember against whom, but I have twice now almost triangled people bigger and stronger than me. Granted, I am completely sure my technique needs serious work… but the fact that I reacted properly to their “please triangle me” activity, worked against their resistance, adjusted as much as possible in the right ways, and only lost the one because I just couldn’t hold him down; the other wasn’t going to work, so I converted to a triangle-armbar and got the tap anyway.

We interrupt this self-back-patting session to gripe that Kimbo is talking about himself in the THIRD PERSON on TUF and is mispronouncing “enemy.” Puh-leeze. And while I don’t like Rashad calling him “a big black buck” I do agree he has a greasy looking beard. WTF– he says he can’t even spell jiu jitsu but he wants to learn it, not the pretty way… arrghhhh…. I hope Roy wins! And so far looks good– he gave up mount to get side control, is kneeling on Kimbo’s near arm, and beating his head in. Nice. Oh, repeat of that in round two, and the fight is called. Seriously? Instead of war, Roy Nelson brings a tea party with lace mitts… but Kimbo takes it like a little girl so I guess he deserves to lose.

Returning to the previous program:

In the kids’ kajukenbo class tonight they worked on breakfalls and some judo techniques. I LOVE THESE KIDS! I should have taken some pictures. It’s like herding cats, or jumping frogs, and they make me smile till I feel like my face will split.

Going to sleep now to the peeping of the frogs, the chirping of the crickets, and the pickpickpick noise of some other night beastie.

Monday we worked a basic scissors sweep, which I really like, and have not been working much. So many cool things to work on, not enough time.

Here’s Roy Dean’s take on it. The main difference with what we did is Coach recommended a sleeve grip versus…

As you might have read in one of my recent posts, I am trying to force myself to focus more on escaping sidecontrol, since I think it is the biggest weakness in my game.

I was trying to make an agreement with myself, that I would do at least five escapes every day of training. It worked pretty well in the beginning, but along the way I caught myself forgetting it and not doing any escapes some days. So now I am trying something else. My 1000 flighthours project has been a really good way for me to set a goal for my training, so I have decided to do something similar with my sidecontrol escapes.

In my top secret BJJ notebook, I have made a little table, where I set an X every time I succesfully have escaped sidecontrol in sparring:

My first goal is to reach 100 escapes, then see where that takes me. I will also keep track of the counting here in the blog (look in the right coloumn).

Problems and dealing with them.

I was training with my friend and he has really tight hips which makes it very difficult for him to play the open guard. His body is built for strength so he is insanely strong from on top but doesn’t have a dynamic bottom gave due to the immobility of his hips.

Some things to consider from open guard when the guy tries to pass from a standing position. When he tries to pass, you have to get on your side, use your bottom foot to hip escape. So that bottom leg will be pretty busy. It will be your top leg you use to jam and push and recover guard.

With a problem like that, you have to sit up a lot, play tight, attack, start hooking their legs, and get very good at half guard.

Also I learned how to deal with the back. Pinching that underhook hand tight to your body and using that as an anchor to move your opponents is a big advantage. Something I always get rolled with.

I did some live rolling today and besides having a weak gas tank, I felt just fine rolling even without live training for weeks.

Now that the tournament is over with and I’ve had some time to reflect, I’m already cooking up some ideas for future BJJ events. I emphasize the word ‘ideas’ cause nothing is set so I don’t want to shoot myself in the foot and share too much at this point. What I would like to elaborate on is what I found inspirational about being in the middle of it all at the Thailand Open which was the sense of a community and a positive one at that. Regardless of what happens on the mat, we’re all friends ready to share a beer, train together and add a dozen+ friends to your facebook list when all is done.

The blog is dedicated to you guys/gals so it was great to meet so many of you in person. I feel much more connected to a larger body people that all share this passion for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

With that said, I encourage everyone to extend that positivity to all the events taking place in Southeast Asia or wherever you happen to represent. We have the ability to set the tone for our scene and from the feedback that I’ve received from the tournament, I see that as the defining aspect. We want to keep things positive, free of politics and focus on what jiu-jitsu is really about. We will hit a few bumps here and there and there is no tournament without some conflict but we can all work together to keep things civil, about respect and good sportsmanship.

I was able to work my seoi nage entries tonight in competition class and it was a delight. I like the seoi nage because it seems like it would be so hard, but it ends up being so easy if you have the setup right; it helps that my hips are pretty much always underneath my opponents’– thanks God!

And it totally takes the person off balance– one minute they’re facing you, feet on the ground, feeling like they have the world by the tail (or at least you by the gi); the next minute, they’re jerked up and forward and you’re disappearing underneath them and their feet are skywards and wham, they’re on the mat.

[This is the ideal, which I cannot yet accomplish without considerable kindness from my uke. -Ed.]

I know I’m a long way off from landing this against a resistant opponent, but it was fun to play with, and even easier when we did the walking version.

Alas, I popped something in my thumb, which is now swollen and red like a plum, and I tweaked my wrist doing a mount choke. The jaw Jordan abused was the unlucky recipient of my training partner’s elbow umpteen times as she worked the same choke on me. Still, a satisfying day all in all.

And– it rained. It stormed, actually, in the wee hours of the morning. It was almost five in the morning and I laid in bed, looking out the big arch of our second-story window into the branches of a large crepe myrtle, watching lightning flicker and listening to the rain, enjoying the cool wet breeze through the open glass.

I’m pretty lucky and definitely blessed.