A ton of people showed up for the seminar and grand opening last Saturday, and I’m betting it was for two reasons – 1) to learn from a sixth degree black belt with a ton of experience and stories to tell and 2) to see exactly where it was Dalla learned it all. You know, [...]

Class #256

RGA High Wycombe, (BJJ), Kev Capel, High Wycombe, UK – 29/10/2009

Shereen, a female BJJer who I became aware of due to this thread, has just set up a training blog here. She isn’t your average woman, at over 200lbs of muscle with many years of bodybuilding and powerlifting behind her. So, I’m very much looking forward to following her training, as for a female BJJer, she has a fairly unique combination of attributes.

Tonight Kev continued with the half guard, but this time it was orthodox rather than lockdown. First up was a drill for demonstrating how to recover full guard from half guard. Step out your leg and shrimp out to the side of half guard, making space to wedge your knee into their chest. Use that pressure to straighten up your torso, free your other leg, then put your feet on their hips. You can now either go to full guard, or stick with open guard.

That was followed by passing the half guard, where as on Tuesday shoulder pressure was paramount. Begin by securing a grip under their head and arm, gable gripping your hands and driving your shoulder into the side of their face. The aim is to turn their head away from you.

Now that you’ve jammed their upper body to the mat, you can push off your toes and straighten your legs. This feels vulnerable because your hips are raised, but if you’ve got your shoulder in the right place, they won’t be able to capitalise with a sweep. To finish, get your knee free and slide it to the mat for mount. If you can’t quite pull out your foot, use your other foot to push their away.

If they manage to shove your head to the other side, it makes little difference. You’ll simply trap their head there instead, by putting your head onto the mat, right next to their skull. Straighten your legs and raise your hips as before, but this time you’ll slide your knee the other way, moving through into scarf hold instead of mount.

Being squished flat on your back is tough, but there is a solution. Kev showed us two related sweeps from half guard, dealing with exactly the situation he’d just demonstrated on top. You first need to overhook their arm on the same side as the leg you’ve trapped, reaching through to grab their collar (this can act as a handy grip, pulling it up to their armpit). You’re also going to hook over the other arm with your own, reaching back towards your head. This may telegraph the sweep, so if you wish you can leave it for later.

Release your top leg from half guard, maintaining a good grasp with the remaining leg behind their knee. Switch the top leg to a butterfly hook and lift, also basing off the toes of your other foot. Bridge and drive diagonally to the side, lifting with your hook. Done right, this should put you straight into mount.

It is possible for the person being swept to widen their base, preventing your sweep with their knee. If that happens, simply step closer with your basing leg and push again. Eventually, they will go over, as you have much more leverage than they do.

Alternately, they might get their arm free from your hook and base out that way. If that happens, you can switch to butterfly guard, then bridge the other way. As you have their other arm locked up, you should be able to sweep to mount that way. Even if you can’t, you’re still in butterfly rather than half, and can normally recover full guard from here.

Specific sparring with Callum went similarly to previous times I’ve been in his half guard. He wasn’t wearing a gi, which didn’t help, but the central problem on top was that I still can’t beat their underhook. I can get that whizzer, but fail to do anything much with it. This time, I tried harder to use that grip to try and wrestle them back down to the mat, but without much success.

Underneath, I also didn’t get very far, and the same thing happened with Joel. I realised later that the very obvious problem was that I wasn’t doing what Kev had just shown us. Instead, I was thinking too much about my foot position, although I did get a chance to play with the lockdown and work harder for the underhook. Still, even though I had double underhooks on Joel, I couldn’t move his weight. He’s a fair bit bigger, but my technique was of course the main problem.

On top with Joel, I did remember to use Kev’s technique, trying to get that shoulder pressure. I could just about get the grip, but wasn’t able to straighten up and get my legs free. What kept happening was that I’d raise my hips, but then Joel would get a lockdown and pull me back down again. Then again, that gave me the opportunity to practice releasing the lockdown, which went as per drilling: shift down to put pressure on the grip until you can circle your foot free, then hide your leg.

I’m not one to hawk my shit here on the ol’ blog, but I had to put this up here. My buddy Justin had the idea to make a patch for my blog. At first I resisted the idea, but he won me over, and we came up with this design: Fueled By Fear.It was actuall…

So, the day approaches.
In the end, it’s only me and Andy competing with A coming up for moral support.
Andy should do well. He’s competing in the beginner’s category, but he is strong and fast and determined. It depends on who he comes up against but he should have a good showing. Hope there aren’t any [...]

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have been attending a number of kickboxing classes and had not posted anything about them. Well, last nights (as well as Monday’s) are worth reporting on. Monday (10/26/09) Renee was at the helm. Normally when Renee runs a class, it is safe to assume that first; it is going to be brutal and second it is going to be different than we are used to.

Well, he did not deviate from his normal form in either of these sessions. I have thrown the term “destroyed” around before and I truly feel like I have not done it justice after going thru these two workouts. The warm-ups were harder than a typical entire session. We kept a relentless pace and he made us perform sooo many reps of sooo many different exercises. Every part of by body hurts. Here is a brief example, when we were at the “cool down” phase of the workout; the section wherein we decimate our abs, there were 12 of us in the class. Renee would count off 10 reps for us then pass the counting to the person on the end. Once done the next person counts off 10 and so on, and so on. Yes, that is 130 reps of each ab exercise in rapid succession. Here is a list of what I can remember:

• Crunches 130
• Planks 130 (counting)
• Planks with Right Leg up 130 (counting)
• Planks with Left Leg up 130 (counting)
• Side Planks 130 (counting)
• Ceiling Touches 130
• Knee Slides 130
• Long Arm Crunches 130
• Raised Leg Toe Touches 130
• Obliques 130
• Flutter Kicks 70
• And many, many more!

Basically total devastation twice this week. Looking forward to doing it again tonight!

BJJ

It had been a long time since I have been on the mats. But since I got thru two brutal cardio sessions with no chest pain, I figured it would be safe. I took my sweet time putting away my gloves and wraps before changing into my gi. I made sure that the BJJ warm-ups were done before joining the class. It quickly became a bit of a nostalgic night as myself, Tank, Kemo, Fritz, Dr. Evil, both Alex’s and Neil were all on the mats. It felt like old times. I drilled technique with Neil and the Doc worked in with us until Tank hit the mats.

We worked on spider guard passes. Particularly we learned the “bullfighter” or “matador” pass. Where, controlling the knees you fake out your intentions by moving their knees either side before exploding around to one side, dropping your near shoulder into their chest. Fritz also showed us a number of ways to pass if they are defending. Including a nifty knee on belly kinda version.

For the rolling portion we did the Submit, Sweep or Pass drills. This was my first bit of “rolling” in quite a while so while I never did get a pass, I had a few shining moments in that black sea of frustration. On my go with Kemo I actually broke his guard, almost passed, got swept but kept him from establishing position, shot for a single, he took my back, I rolled him off and almost drove to side control before he was able to sweep me. All the while I could hear Fritz coaching me and that was awesome. Knowing he was watching and wanting me to achieve means a lot.

My other moment was with Iron Man. I got out of his guard and found myself in his spider, just as we had drilled. I knew he was expecting the Matador so I faked it and tried that Sakuraba style Cartwheel pass. I didn’t quite make it and ended up right where I started but at least I got a good laugh from the sidelines. Ian was laughing his ass off and that made me laugh a bit too. I said “at least I tried it huh?”. At that moment class was over and we did the cool down. Good times.

Bottom line, I am back in action. No chest pain to report on either Monday or last night. So I will keep charging on and getting better.

BTW: I am so very, very, very sore today.

Head coach of the EK BJJ Association head’s out to Romania this weekend with a team to assist family members Absoluto BJJ in the Annual Romanian Cup BJJ Competition.

Last week in class we worked takedowns.  This was one of our key throws so I thought I’d post the video posted by Renzo’s Academy in NYC.  Check it out!

Thanks to Prof Escobar and Fang for coordinating this interview for me. A collaborative interview since I sent in the questions and they were the ones executing it. Also, much thanks to Leo Vieira for taking the time to talk with BJJ-ASIA and sharing with the SEABJJ community his thoughts on the growth of BJJ in Asia as a whole and his future plans as leader of Checkmat JJ. -Luke

More good training tonight. In some ways, competition training is a lot like the training Rodrigo used to do more often back when GB Seattle was a mile or two further south in the Tully’s Building. Although the conditioning is no joke, I really would…