the journey of fenix

quiz

2012-02-01T12:40:00.000+11:00

What does Vung Tau (Vietnam) have in common with Rio?

Aside from hot, humid weather :-)

Vietnam holiday

2012-01-31T14:12:00.004+11:00

I'm currently visiting friends in Vung Tau, Vietnam. I'm missing my grappling :-)

However, I'll probably be visiting Saigon BJJ on Saturday afternoon before I fly back. I'll report back...

all geeked out

2012-01-22T17:46:00.002+11:00

So I saw a lot of interesting stuff at lca last week, and had a great time of watching geeks in action ;-)

I did attend the morning session with the martial arts geeks. That was pretty cool. Everyone talked about their style for a bit and then did a little demo. Lucky for me, a guy volunteered to be my grappling dummy :-)

After it was done, someone put up a couple of pictures on the lca wiki page. Enjoy. Oh, and no bonus points for identifying the BJJer!

geeks and martial arts

2012-01-16T22:39:00.000+11:00

I'm doing the geek thing at present:

Seeing it's right here in Ballarat, I decided to take some time off work and attend some sessions. It started today and runs for the whole week. Certainly, the talks at the miniconfs today were interesting. I went to some sessions regarding women in IT and programming.

As part of the whole thing, which attracts geeks and wannabe geeks (like me) from all over Australia, NZ and other parts of the world, there are lots of little side meetings and get-togethers. Someone is planning a bof (birds of a feather) session for martial artists. Only down side is the starting time: 06:30 on Thursday. Gawd, I don't function well at that time of night 8-)

But I've put down my name. So far, I'm the sole BJJ player. Would be so cool if another grappling type person turns up. Anyway, should be interesting :-)

Further to the geeks and martial arts theme... I was listening to some talks about the lack of women in technology type jobs, specifically FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) projects, and what could be done to attract and retain more of them. I see a parallel to the lack of women in BJJ. Obviously, totally different sort of thing, but some of the ideas offered at the panel discussion on the subject of attracting and retaining women in IT may also apply to grappling. The ones that struck the greatest chord with me were a couple of points made by one of the presenters:
1. talk to girls early (ie: at a young age)
2. don't tell girls/women that there aren't enough of them, that's like a guilt trip and it won't work. Instead, give them role models, show them women who do it (ie: IT/engineering/technical jobs) well, are respected, are enjoying themselves and are not necessarily trying to emulate men in the process.

Another presenter spoke of the need to make friends and have like a network for support. That is where for BJJ, groups like Australian Girls in Gi come in.

I think this could translate to BJJ/grappling. Food for thought!

Women's BJJ in 2011

2012-01-08T13:51:00.000+11:00

For a round-up of women's BJJ in 2011, read this post on the Fightworks Podcast.

how to from here?

2012-01-07T22:39:00.000+11:00

The quiet holiday time is nearly over. We'll be back to our normal weekly BJJ routine starting on Monday. I have missed it, yet I've enjoyed the bit of a quiet time. I've managed to get to 6 open mats in three different schools. Each and every session was good in it's own way and I took something away from it.

I didn't overeat or overindulge in any other way over the holidays, so I have no regrets and nothing to work off. Possibly, my body appreciated a bit of slow time, so I'm feeling great and I'm totally looking forward to get back into the thick of things.

Of course I've had a little bit of time for reflection. I have loads of questions, such as:

? Is it the right approach to try to firstly understand techniques primarily on an intellectual level. By this I mean to deconstruct it, analyse the prerequisites, the necessary steps, the possible finishes and the variations. See where it logically fits into the context of other known positions, attacks, defenses or other moves. Discover the mechanics of it, determine the best use of leverage or weight distribution. See how far from the ideal scenario I can take it and still make it work succesfully.

? Or is the right approach (for me) to investigate how something should feel. Try stuff out in flow rolling and then in live sparring. Only consider the broad approach, not focus on specifics and let the body figure out what to do and when. Like when I flow roll, I find sweeps just happen, I realise that I can shift someone's weight by making some small adjustment to my own position.

? How can I avoid information overload? We are so bombarded with techniques, on lists, on FB, on blogs we read and of course by way of instructionals we buy. Already, I only superficially look at stuff that sounds a bit interesting. The only techniques I look at more closely are those which fit into my game or are similar to things we currently work on in class. And still it is too much. I want depth, not breadth. Yet I watch because some part of me thinks that getting a broader idea of a technique will give me a better understanding (= more depth).

? What is my game? Well, I know what it isn't! But is my game what I do when I play, what I do when under pressure against someone my size and skill level, what I do against someone better, how I roll when with a big spazzy newbie or what I do when competing? It seems like totally different things I need to do to succeed. So what IS my game? Is it maybe what I THINK I should be doing, or what I WANT to do? And what is it I actually want to do in each of those scenarios?

? Where am I going? All I know is that I want to improve and that I want to have fun doing in. Don't mind doing the hard yards, don't mind various levels of discomfort, because learning means I need to know how to lose, how to be in bad positions and how to survive. But should I have specific goals? And if so, what should those be?

? I feel I'm been overtaken by guys who started after I did. I know we all have our own journeys, and on an intellectual level, I understand that. But on another level, I'm disappointed. For all the fact that I'm pretty easy-going, there is a fiercely competitive streak in there somewhere, and it's not at all happy. That part of me wants to know if I'm just lacking drive or dedication or understanding, which are things I can improve on. Maybe I'm pushing against boundaries I can't shift, such as age, physical ability, ability to concentrate and absorb more knowledge. Honestly, I don't know, so I can't tell my competitive self whether I'm doing well under the circumstances, or whether I'm just a slack-arse who needs to step up a gear and stop complaining about how tough it is.

Soooo.... Not only am I unclear about where I'm going, but I also don't know how to go about going there :-) Methinks I have a lot more thinking to do. But then I wonder if I should spend so much time in intellectual self-debate, or whether I should just pull my finger out and get to work. Or in other words, just shut up and train...

? Hmmm..... !

Women who grapple

2012-01-04T10:26:00.000+11:00

I've had my share of frustrations lately. The whole box and dice of thinking I suck. Seeing guys who started later than I doing 'better' than I. Being stuck in a 99% defensive game. Wondering if I'll ever improve. Scratching my head about the need/want to compete. Generally questioning at times whether I 'have it', it being the necessary drive, agression, pushiness to ever develop any sort of successful game.

It's been good to talk to a few other women lately. A lot of what goes around my head is echoed by others. I absolutely see the need to train with other women if I want to compete.

If my goal is to roll at the school and generally improve, it doesn't matter. Though this will continue to emphasise the development of my defensive part of my BJJ skillset. At the very least, I have several male training partners who are close to my weight, which is a bonus. Another bonus are the senior guys who freely share their experiences and help me get better. I love rolling 'at home', and the guys are like family. Every one of them, no matter the experience, size or type of game they play, is good value hand helps me become a better grappler.

On the other hand, to do well in competition, I need to do two things: train with women and compete more. Competing more isn't so difficult, we now have several decent comps in Melbourne every year, and nothing stops me from travelling further for more. Regular training with women is another story. It is simply too difficult and time consuming (considering my job, uni and the farm) to travel to Melbourne a lot. I'm very fortunate that I've met Jess, Jody and several of the other ladies who train in Melbourne. I wish I could train with them weekly, but that's not going to happen.

On the same subject, there is a decent thread on Sherdog, titled strength in womens grappling. It is (so far) devoid of the usual meathead remarks which wreck most open discussions involving women in any grappling sport. Hillary Williams has contributed some lengthy posts which are quite interesting. Several others are discussing mental and physical aspects of grappling in an intelligent and interesting way. Quite useful.

first roll for 2012

2012-01-02T23:07:00.000+11:00

I couldn't resist the temptation of an open mat on New Years Day. How could I?

So on the invitation of Deon and a bit bit of urging on from Jess, I headed over to Perkins Jiu Jitsu in Ringwood (on the eastern side of Melbourne). Deon and his partner Jodie own and run PJJ. I met them and Jess Fraser at the Australian Girls in Gi day camp. Jess is the brains behind AGIG.

It was a stinker of a hot day, and despite A/C in the car, it was a long 2.5 hr trip from home. It was hot in the gym, too. But despite that, I had several rolls with Jodie and Jess, who are both blue belts.

I don't get a lot of chances to roll with other women, so it was a great opportunity for me. I understand that both of them are heading for the ADCC qualifiers in Sydney in February, so they are training as much as they can. Therefore, female grappling partners are very welcome.

Interesting to see our very different games. I was the only real guard player of the three. But I was encouraged to see that my guard was fairly effective against these two very competitive ladies. However, I seemed to still get caught in a lot of chokes :-)

It was very hot, and it was tough to keep up the wet stuff. But I'm taking the heat very well this year, so I'm pleased with that.

After we agreed to meet again and keep in touch by way of the usual social media, I departed the small but very friendly school.

While in Melbourne, I caught up with my sister and her family. I stayed the night and went for a nice ride with my sister in the morning, before it became too hot again. So the two days made a nice change from my usual routine. Now I'm back home and getting organised for work in the morning.

Our usual BJJ classes will resume on the 9th January, until then we are planning to have open mat most nights.

happy new year!

2012-01-01T00:02:00.001+11:00

Only five minutes left to go of 2011. And what a year it was!!

Lots and lots of stuff happened, both in BJJ and outside. A busy year, and a good year. Three cheers to a great year drawing to a close.

I went to three open mats since Christmas. Small affairs, but fun. I'm lucky to know some really nice people through BJJ. We share the same passion and we all couldn't wait until classes resume in early January :-)

Tomorrow, I might go to Melbourne. I heard there is an open mat going at Perkins Jiu Jitsu in Ringwood, and a few people I know are attending. So I might use the opportunity to start of the new year with some good BJJ, and catch up with my sister afterwards.

Should be great. Anyway, midnight is now, so wishing you all a fantastic 2012!!

running, holidays

2011-12-26T09:08:00.002+11:00

I've started to do a bit of running. Can't stand being cooped up at work for 8 hours straight. Ha, won't do my cardio any harm anyway.

And now that we have the 2 week break over the holidays with no Jiu Jitsu, I need to keep something to keep me sane. So what did I do on Christmas day? I went for a run. Yes, yes. Most folks would count that as insanity...

I went along a trail on a loop we usually do on horseback. I sure felt further on foot :-) That made me curious about how far it is. So found this handy-dandy website which uses google maps to calculate any distance between two or more points: Google Maps Distance Calculator.

Cool. So I figured I ran 2.7 kms during my lunch break on Tuesday, and 4.5 kms last night. I know, that's not a lot, but I'm just starting out. For me, it is a lot. And the run on Tuesday included hill work. And this morning I'm feeling pretty good, the legs are not killing me. I was a bit tight in the hamstrings after the run, but a good stretch took care of that. Be interesting to see if my calves will cop the delayed onset muscle soreness.

Ah yeah, and I don't really have to miss out on rolling for two whole weeks. I'm meeting some other addicts on Thursday and Friday night, and then more next week :-)

We had a totally awesome last open mat on Friday. I rolled well and despite the rather warm and humid weather, I just kept going and going. After that, we had a barbeque with everyone from the dojo. A great way to finish a good year.

power output: perceived vs real

2011-12-07T21:26:00.001+11:00

I had two sessions today. The lunchtime class was small. There was only three of us. We did a little bit of work on leglocks and then rolled. After a few minutes with one of the light blue belts, I was called over to roll with Sensei. This lasted for just under half an hour and I got thoroughly thrashed.

He said he was rolling a bit lazy as he's recently had some time off due to the flu. Mind, he always rolls slowly, deliberately, with crushing pressure and a game three steps ahead of mine. I consider myself lucky if I manage to nearly get a sweep or nearly threaten a sub. Occasionally he has to take defensive action, but then I just get into deeper shit ;-). Hell, I consider it a good day if I can defend his attacks for a bit and actually escape once or twice before the inevitable tap.

And throughout all that, his energy output was less than mine. Far less. Ok, he's a bit heavier than I, but he shuts me down with technique. He knows exactly when a bit of strength is needed, and he brings that into play, but no more than necessary.

Fast foward to the evening session. One of the blue belts was teaching and I was helping out. At the end of the session, we rolled for a bit.

First, I got one of the newish white belts. He's tall and strong, but he's getting a handle on basic techniques. Pleasing to see, he tries to use what he's learned rather than just smashing his way through. He's actually said he learns most from the light and no-sub flow rolling we sometimes do. Ha, I call that promising.

Next, I had one of the other white belts. I said seeing it's the last roll for the day and I'm stiff and sore from luncthtime (no exaggeration!), let's go a bit easy. No sooner than he had the slightest grip, and as I sat back for some open guard, he smashed my legs aside with all his power and dropped across for a heavy side control. I laughed and said OK, but that's not what this was all about. That I would like him to use 10% power output instead of 100%. He was surprised. HE THOUGHT he was only using 10%. He said he is using way less than what he would have used when he first started. I replied that he still needs to reduce it 90%. We reset and had a more hesitant version of the first roll. I just protected myself and otherwise let him do his stuff. Eventually, he went for a rear choke which was a pure neck crank and I tapped.

I showed him the difference between a correct rear choke and the crank he had applied as well as a way of getting the choke. So that was all cool.

On the way out, he expressed again that he couldn't understand why I thought he was using too much strength. I tried to explain again, but it's hard to explain something I can't really demonstrate. It's a bit like explaining the scent of roses to someone who has never come across a flower.

The problem with using every muscle in the body at the same time and putting all one's power into a move, is that you can't feel what you are doing, or what your partner is doing. I pointed out that with more experience, he will feel for himself that he can use 10% of his current power output and do good technique (and last longer). And that we ALL started of going full bore and not "getting" it until later. Still, he looked disappointed in some way, or at least unconvinced.

I just wish there was a way in which we gain that awareness and control over our power output earlier in our grappling careers. Hell, I know I still try to muscle stuff at times (as if that works..!), and I do know better. In the end though, I think it takes mat time, especially mat time with senior (purple+) people to conquer that learning curve.

2011 gi survey

2011-12-07T21:17:00.001+11:00

Check out the Results of the 2011 gi survey, courtesy of Aesopian.

It will be interesting to see the full results.

Meanwhile.... I'm waiting for my Scramble gi. Hope it'll be here soon :-)

Judo to music

2011-12-06T22:45:00.001+11:00

another grading

2011-11-26T23:01:00.001+11:00

It seems like the squillionth grading I've been to without actually grading myself :-) Well, I clocked up three years of BJJ on October 25, so I'm sort of becoming part of the furniture. So it's not really surprising that I've seen a grading or three.

Being a blue belt and (slowly!!) heading for purple, I'm not going to grade myself any time soon, which gives me plenty of time to observe and work with and help the guys which are still in the lead up to blue belt and do gradings relatively often.

At our school, gradings are a pretty casual affair. Yes, the guys have to work, and from fourth stripe white, they have to push the boat out a bit. Their attitude and determination is as much on display as their technical knowledge. But there is no paying for the priviledge, no airs and graces, and coloured belts get handed with the same minimalist outlook on ceremony as stripes. And this in a traditional Karate school. There are no belt whippings, ceremonial throwings or any of that stuff. Just a bit of bowing and lots of handshaking and congratulations from fellow grapplers. I love it, it's great.

So we had a grading. Three guys were promoted to blue belt. Danny, Justin and Mark put in a lot of hard work and so deserved it. Hunter and Glenn got their fourth stripe. All these guys had to do a lot of rounds of rolling in addition to their technical demonstrations, and I had the pleasure to be able to step in and be part of this. They did great. Several more people gained 1st, 2nd and 3rd stripes on their white belts and from what I saw, they all showed great technique.

All round, it was a long, hard but fantastic Friday evening. I really was proud of them all :-)

open guard + half guard

2011-11-25T16:22:00.001+11:00

Thats' what I'm working now. Open guard. All flavours.

We recently did a bit of work ont the Z guard. This kind of came in handy, as I found I got to that position a whole lot anyway. But of course I didn't know what do do with it.... So now I have a nifty arm-drag, a sweep and some other stuff. And with that came a better understanding of how to deal with someone else's Z guard.

I've just started playing with the DLR guard as well. That's very much unknown territory, but I figure I have all the time in the world to experiment. I want to get away from just playing closed guard all the time. Sure, that means I'll get passed a lot. But so what.

I've had complaints about my half guard (bottom). I seem to escape from all sorts of positions to half guard. Often, it seems, I totally frustrate people because they work so hard to get past my halfguard, just to find that I've already got it back on them on the other side. Ok, so that's good. But I still felt like I was getting stuck there. Oh sure, bottom half is better than being mounted or having someone on my back. But I didn't seem to be able to capitalise on it much. Still, having spent so much time there, it certainly has given me plenty of time to work with the position.

I had an interesting discussion about this with Sensei. I mentioned that I feel I get there easy enough, and I'm happy about that, BUT that I can't do much with it. He said that in addition to learning attacks and sweeps from there, I need to change the way I look at it. Rather than saying "I ended up there", I should say "That's what I want" and "see, I got it!" and "now I'm attacking". We've already been working a fair bit on the deep half, which has helped me a lot. I am having a fair bit of success with it now.

I know that with a lot of the stuff I try, I fail because I don't commit, because I don't really believe I can do it. Same same for bottom half and entry to deep half. Once I can get around to viewing it as a starting point rather than a stalling point, I will be able to capitalise on it much more. BJJ is such a mental game. I sometimes wonder if it pushes the physical boundaries more or the mental ones. Either way, I'm forced to step outside my comfort zone remarkably often, and that is a good thing.

GTA comp

2011-11-17T16:07:00.000+11:00

A quick and late report from the GTA comp in Melbourne on October 29....

It was only the second tounament organised by GTA. The first one was no gi (which I missed). This one was gi. It was well organised and well run. The five of us from Ballarat who competed had a lot of fun, and we all brought home some shiny stuff.

I only had one fight. I think there were only about 4 or 5 blue belt women there on the day. I competed against another senior in about my weight bracket. Not much to report, I pulled guard and avoided her attempts to get past my guard while still open. Once I had closed guard, I tried for the cross lapel choke, armbar. Had no problems controlling her posture. Maybe should have looked for other opportunities, but she really protected her arms well. And then I went for the armbar again and made the mistake of not cutting down hard enough with the top leg. So I lost it and she passed. There was less than a minute left to go, and I was on my way to escape side control, but I ran out of time and lost on points.

The guys did pretty good and all had a great time. One of them had had about 2 months off because of a broken kneecap, and decided to make his comeback at the comp. He didn't win, and he was down on himself, but we assured him that while it was maybe a little stoooopid to do what he did, but he wrestled well all the same. He's been to another comp since, and done really well.

I declined going to the Pan Pacs and the Melbourne Open because I had a hell of a load of work due for uni, and exams (which I have now finished).

WBJJL comp in Qld

2011-10-27T23:00:00.000+11:00

Just a quick report from the comp I went to on 8th October... It was at Nerang in Qld, and organised by the Women's Brazilian Jiu Jitsu League (there is a problem with their website, so I won't link to it at this stage).

It was a small comp only. Sadly, the same weekend saw a couple of clinics with visiting overseas BJJ big names, so the turnout was smaller than last year.

I won my first gi fight by armbar (from guard). Then I lost the two fights in open gi, one one points (and I was a few seconds short of finishing a choke from guard when the bell rang), the other by choke. In the weight no-gi I lost by back choke again and the single fight in the open no-gi on points. As in my second fight, I was actually back to guard and attacking, but I'd left my run too late and didn't get the submission. So result-wise it was a bit of a mixed bag. I was happy with some stuff I did, not so happy with other bits.

I did suffer a bit from the high humidity and the slightly higher temperatures, and somehow I felt very flat. The comp only ran for the afternoon and was all wrapped up within three hours or so. Which means a lot of fights in a short time. That, coupled with the fact that I wasn't feeling top shelf, meant that I really was suffering. I was sooo tired in my third and forth fights. But then I got a second wind, which did show up in how I fought. And I'm not too upset that I lost the last one on points, because I finished strong and I played my game for the second half of it.

The girls I competed against were all from NSW and Qld, and it was nice to meet some new faces. They made me feel very welcome and I was very glad I went up.

Here are some pictures:

I had a fantastic weekend, during which I caught up with my friends Elyane and Rupen. They were kind enough to take me from their place to Nerang, and they stopped by and watched the comp for a bit. Rupen took all the photos (and a bit of video footage) for me.

Despite being worn out and tire, I wasn't too tired for some silly stuff:

Oh, and I must mention that Elyane is a FANTASTIC Naturopath. So if you are ever in Sydney or in Murwillumbah, and looking for some advice on health matters, DO go and see her.

After such a great weekend, I think I know what I'll be doing the same time next year :-)

not keeping up...

2011-10-27T22:34:00.001+11:00

It's that time of year with uni. I just can't keep up with this blog while I'm up to my teeth in assignments and getting ready for exams.

I just entered for another comp though, the Australian Jiu-Jitsu Classic. That's on Saturday. It's only the second event of that kind. I didn't go to the last one, but decided I should really check it out. On the one hand I have a guilty conscience because I feel I ought to be studying. Also, I'm not that fussed about competing anyway. On the other hand, it does sound like a good event with excellent prizes, and I think it should be supported. And well, I can't study all day, every day, can I??

I rolled really well most of last week and did well against guys who are senior to me and/or considerably stronger and bigger. Then, tonight, I had that awful feeling of being unable to move again. I nearly chickened out on entering. It was only because I had (wisely?) told several people that I intended to compete, so I wasn't willing to publicly admit to being a coward. Oh, how fragile the ego ;-) So, here I come.

Part of me looks forward to competing, and another part goes bah! Though I've entered as senior, I'll probably be competing against adults, as there still aren't that many entries in the women's divisions. And yeah, I've rolled with young blue belts. I don't have the speed, sadly. And to work my cardio up to the level of some of the competitive blue belt girls takes a lot of doing. But I'm not making excuses, I'm doing it for the experience, and the chance to try myself. If I win, it's a nice bonus. Funnily, there is current discussion on Sherdog, where some guys say they feel too old to compete. And the oldest one of them is about 5 years younger than I. Sometimes I do wonder if it's worth competing. Am I just too pig headed to be sensible or is it a good thing. Honestly, I don't know. There is no pressure from my school to compete, it is something entirely up to me.

My 48th birthday is creeping closer. So I surely won't be competing for many more years. Which is another reason why it's good to get in a few more now. The Classic will be my third one for this year. And then I'll just see how it all pans out for next year.

I'll let you know how I go on Saturday :-)

I'm back

2011-10-12T21:29:00.001+11:00

It's been too long since I've posted anything here. I blame it on my quiet lifestyle and my ample spare time (as if..).

I competed at the WBJJL tournament at Nerang in Qld on the weekend. I'll write about that in another post though. And I do have photos this time :-)

Training is going pretty well, I just dont' have time to write about it. But I'll make more of an effort in that direction in the future. Aside from training, I've been continuing to teach the Wednesday classes, which has been interesting. Both interesting as in: challenging and as in: fun and excitement. More about that later though.

I got some new gear, and I've been meaning to write about that, too. My latest acquisition is a Jiu Jitsu Brotherhood rashie from Tatami Fightwear. Very happy with that one. Will post some photos when I get a chance.

I finally indulged myself and joined MGInAction. Due to study and being away, I really haven't spent a lot of time on the site as yet. But what I have seen so far looks awesome. It certainly will be a great resource to me, both in terms of stuff useful for my game, and stuff useful for teaching the guys. If you want to try it out, you can get a week's free trial HERE. That is a referral link, and if you join, I get some money off my renewal :-)

stuck or lazy?

2011-09-23T23:16:00.000+10:00

Lately, repeatedly, I've been getting stuck in bottom half guard. Actually, that's not correct, that goes back a lot longer. Just somehow, it's become a bigger problem. Or maybe it's just become more obvious to me.

I find it relatively easy to convert mount bottom or back control to half guard. That's the good bit. Strong defense, to the point where it frustrates purple and brown belts. Very happy with that bit.

Only then I don't capitalize on the position. Somehow I allow myself to get flattened, as I stay defensive, and as a result, eventually I get passed or submitted from there. The feedback I've been getting is that everybody gets trapped by my halfguard. And then as they say "oh, crap", and expect bother, it doesn't happen, so they have all the time in the world and few distractions to proceed to some attack. Interestingly, if I get half guard top, I also go "oh, crap", but before I get a chance to manage an attack, they get the hell out or I end up back in full guard. As my instructor pointed out the other day, I'm defensive, regardless of whether I'm in halfguard top or bottom. Why?? Why not attack.

And since I end up in half guard bottom a lot more often, that's what I've been working on. I spent a fair bit of time with Ben last night, looking at ways to get to a low half guard early. There, not only can I protect my neck and arms, but I can position myself to set up sweeps. We drilled a couple of specific techniques, and then we sort of flow rolled to get the setup for half guard sweeps. That helped a lot, made me realise two very important things:

if they are keeping low, go at deep as possible right away, fight for underhooks, go deeep half if possible, trap a leg and work for a sweep
if they sit up and threaten my arm, sit up and into them, glue my head to their middle, then when I rock back (or rather, to one hip), the sweep is easy

I didn't get a lot of chance to work on that tonight in open mat. But I did succeed in getting deep half on a decent sized guy once, and yes, there was a sweep. Hoorah!

Anyway, I did ponder the why for a bit. Why do I get so stuck in bottom half. What I was told on Thursday was neither rocket science, nor anything new. It's all stuff I've been told before, principles I know and techniques I've been shown before.

All I can think is that I fell into that old mind trap again. The little voice that says: "well, no point trying, you just can't do this!". That leads to half-arsed attempts, which fail because they are half-arsed. And then the little voice says: "see, told you so!". And there I was thinking I had completely overcome such silly notions, ditched the "I can't do it" attitude. Evidently, not quite...

Believe me, it's embarrassing when you swear black and blue that you CAN'T DO IT. And you have two senior guys say: yes, you can! And they make you try again until you do it right. And then you just have to admit that you were wrong |-) But it's still a liberating feeling, throwing another "CAN'T" in the bin and adding a little bit more to the growing pile of faith in your own ability.

I do wonder if some of this "I CAN'T" attitude is just lazyness. It is easier to sit back and say naw, can't than to put in the effort to fight to make it work. It ends up an excuse. But what good is formulating an exucuse for shitty technique, when I could spend the same amount of mental energy on figureing on how to fix it?

I really need to learn to recognise these mental ruts, before they get so deep that I need someone else to point out that I'm stuck without the need to be there. I need to get off my lazy backside instead of flopping around like a beached whale while complaining that I'm stuck. Ha, looks like I have a bit of work on.... '

another comp!

2011-09-23T22:41:00.004+10:00

Yes, yes, I entered the WBJJL comp, and my flights are booked :-)

I'm flying to the Gold Coast on the Friday, will get picked up on arrival Friday afternoon we'll take it easy and visit the horses. Saturday we'll leasurely drive up to Nerang. I'll compete and I'll try and talk my friends into staying and taking some video footage. And provide cheer squad support!

Sunday will be another day of leasure, maybe go horseriding. And catch up on the events of the last couple of years. There will be good food and much merriment.

Then, I'm due to fly back to Melbourne early on Monday morning. I might make it back in time for my lectures at lunchtime. Or maybe I'll just go home and recover from the strenuous weekend ;-)

It's a mini-holiday with my three favourite activities: BJJ, horseriding and eating good food.

another comp?

2011-09-20T14:37:00.000+10:00

Hmm, very seriously thinking of entering this one:

It's in Queensland, and I would need to fly up. BUT... I have a good friend who lives pretty close to Nerang, so I could visit her on the same occasion. Now THAT would be fantastic! I'm looking into flights :-)

more from the girls in gi camp

2011-09-13T22:01:00.001+10:00

Here is some more footage from the camp:

The Gathering and other weekend stuff

2011-09-12T22:10:00.000+10:00

The complete set of results is on the Will/Machado BJJ Australia site.

I had a mixed weekend. I actually had a fair bit of fun and overall, I felt that I went well. Numbers were down this year, so there weren't very many women. Only one other blue belt, so I competed against her in the 16-29 / over 74kg division. And got beat up :-) Placing: 2nd out of two. Woopee...

To give us girls a bit more fun and to have something for a visiting NZ purple belt lady to compete, they put on a mixed women's division at short notice. This was actually held just before the other one. There were the two blue belts, the purple belt and one senior white belt from NZ. I drew the white belt for the first round. It was interesting in that I had a chance to play my game against a very technical opponent of my size. She pulled guard and went straight for an armbar. But I passed her guard and it went from there. As so often though, I couldn't get anything from side control and eventually, things ended up such that she was in my guard. From there, I launched my usual attacks. Almost succeeded in getting her back. Couldn't finish anything off though and finally won on points.

The next (final) round was against the purple belt lady who had won her fight over the blue belt. This was a fun fight. I spent most of it defending. Eventually, I got armbarred. Really technical she was, and it was great. Even the grip fight at the start was good. I'm hoping that someone took footage of that one! Compared to other women I've competed against, she used technique, not grindy, nasty stuff.

So that was a 2nd place out of four.

Nothing to set the world on fire, but I found the right mix of being competitive and laid back and generally just enjoyed the day. What was also great was the chance to see most of my team-mates on the mat. They all did really well. Most brought home some shiny medals. But whether they won or lost, they all showed some awesome technique. And I think they all had a good day as well.

Sunday morning was the seminar with Rigan Machado at Dominance in Richmond. It revolved around d'Arce chokes and a bit of deep half guard entry to sweeps. Really good stuff.

On the way home, I got stuck in a traffic snare just before the Westgate Bridge, which resulted in an extra 3/4 hour I had to spend in the car. By the time I arrived home, I was nicely stiff and pretty worn out.

Another fantastic thing about the weekend: I finally (after 15 years or so) caught up with a good friend of mine. We used to go to agricultural college together back in 1982-85. Ha, yes, there was a bit of reminiscing.

And today, the post-weekend effects: sore shoulders, some matburn, still a bit tired and a messy house :-) But, more importantly, the memory of a great weekend and a lot of food for thought for weeks and months to come. I'd call it a success.

The Gathering looms

2011-09-08T21:04:00.000+10:00

I'm finally getting my head above water after another couple of intensive week of studies, tests, assignments, work and working horses. So I haven't had too much time to concentrate on The Gathering. Which may be good or it may be not so good :-)

I will admit that I haven't really spent much time or effort on preparing for this competition. Aside from being pretty, oh, absorbed (???) with other parts of my life, I'm just not that fanatical about it. I do BJJ primarily for fun and enjoyment. I don't mind competing, but it's not my reason for doing BJJ. So it suits me that our school doesn't put that much emphasis on it. But certainly, Sensei Glenn will be there on Saturday to support THE TEAM. Which is fantastic.

I had a truly shit session on Monday night. Not so sure why. I guess we all just have days when for whatever reason, the mind is not quite online and the body is sluggish. Well, that was me on Monday. I took the warm-up, and I must admit I was puffed at the end of it. Doh. But it wasn't a very hard warm-up and I could see no reason why I should feel like I did. In hindsight, I didn't eat well during the day. Not enough, and not the right stuff. Too much running around between lectures, and for other reasons.

Anyway, so I grappled like crap (I think it was Leslie who coined the term "crappling", which would have been a good description for my performance on Monday. The white belts ran rings around me. The rounds killed me. I was a sorry sight. So I was a bit upset, and hey, it's not the best way to be in the lead up to a comp. How can you get in a positive frame of mind??

Sensei reminded me that competition wins aren't his measurement of our progress. And that aside from that, the main goal of going to the comp is to have fun and learn. Winning is merely a bonus.

Words of wisdom.

Still am undecided if I'll go to the Pan Pacs the following weekend.

I taught a class on Wednesday, and I didn't get any rolling in. But I didn't mind so much. I was very pleased because I think I successfully taught two very new guys and at the same time two very experienced whites. I found I had something to give to all of them. New concepts and techniques for the new guys, tweaks and improvements for known techniques for the other two. All using the same techniques: have closed guard, break down the opponent, cross lapel choke. Transition to armbar. If they pull out and expose the other arm, go to omoplata. And if they posture ouf of that, triangle. So, so much there....

Tonight (my last session before Saturday's comp) was rolling but from specific positions. I found some Jiu Jitsu again :-) Or maybe it found me! I had one slight lapse of reason early in the night. I started rolling with Ben when in short order, I was on the bottom. And just as my brain was going to kick into neutral, turning me into an uncoordinated bundle of clueless strugglemania, I despairingly said: I'm HERE AGAIN!! Someone kindly pointed out that I WAS rolling with a purple belt. So maybe, just maybe, there ought to be no reason to lament. So I shut my stupid mouth, came to my senses. And from there onwards, I enjoyed myself again. Ben is just the best to roll with. And in the end, I got ample chance to work on getting the back and attacking from there. Oh, and sweeps.

After that, I had a couple of other partners. At times we went fairly hard, but never silly. And though I was a bit tired, I did pretty good. In the end I helped one of the guys troubleshoot getting from a low single to a good position. That also helped me, because I could see what worked or didn't work for him while at the same time learning more on how to defend someone doing it to me. It was a multi-layered learning experience, so to speak. Good stuff. But the main thing is that I'm pretty sure it helped him.

So, that little "blip" on Monday aside, I think I'm pretty positive heading into the comp. I'm actually looking forward to it now. And of course, on Sunday, we'll have the Rigan Machado seminar:

Last year's was the first one I went to, and it was fantastic. All in all, I have a great weekend coming up. Comp on Saturday, spend Saturday night with an old time friend (from waaaaayy back when we went to Dookie Ag.College together). I haven't seen her for years, so that will be great. And we're going out for dinner at a Persian restaurant. And then on Sunday, the seminar.

The toughest job tomorrow will be to decide on which gi I'll wear at the comp :-) Oh yeah, and pack my bag for an early start on Saturday...

pictures from the all girls day camp

2011-09-06T11:46:00.000+10:00

Here is a little movie, which Jess Fraser made from photos taken at the Australian Girls in Gi day camp:

what a week!

2011-08-30T22:01:00.000+10:00

That was rather a long week, last week...

After training every day (including a Tuesday double of no-gi and MMA), I spent Sunday at the Girls in Gi camp in Melbourne. That was a really good day. I had lots of fun, lots of rolls and learned some stuff as well.

Unfortunately, I'm flat out with assignments for uni and studying for two tests this week. So I don't really have time to write about it (yet). But meanwhile, have a look at Laura's post about the camp. It includes a few photos and a short write up.

Sunday work-out

2011-08-21T19:29:00.004+10:00

I live on a (small) farm, with lots of horses. After a long, wet winter, we finally had a few nice days. So instead of working out in the gym, I worked out. Outside, that is :-)

- over an hour of pushing a heavy duty mower across rough/boggy ground to mow tall woody bracken fern under fence lines
- trimmed some hooves on a semi-cooperative stallion

- rolled out some fencing wire and did sundry fence repairs
- dug some small trenches to drain water from horse yards
- hung up horse rugs to dry

and finally...
- went out riding

The sunshine is lovely My body and soul appreciate it. I'm so glad that spring is coming!

And it was so nice to finally go riding again. We had such a long, cold, wet winter, and with work and uni I didn't have a lot of time anyway. It seemed to always rain on weekends when I did have time. But spring is on it's way, there will be long and warm evenings. Which means sitting outside on the verandah watching the sun go down or going for rides on a good horse.

It also means no more cold feet at the beginning of BJJ classes. Some of the guys have been wearing socks. But that just looks too silly ;-)

on a roll...

2011-08-19T23:43:00.000+10:00

I had another great session tonight. Just open mat. Worked on some of the deep half guard stuff we've been doing in class during the week. Also worked back control, which is my current goto position.

Things have been going well. Not too long before the two comps in September. I'm feeling very positive and I'm getting in enough tough classes that I know I'll be fit enough to compete.

With MMA classes starting up in town, I had my first standup session in over two years. Ah yes, a few things came back, about footwork. I still remember the differences between a jab, cross, hook and uppercut :-) And I still know how to turn the heel for a roundhouse kick. But yes, it's all a bit rusty.

That was a tough night on Tuesday. After an hour long BJJ session (which in itself was quite a challenge with a solid warm up, drilling and plenty of timed rounds of rolling), we did a bunch of striking/kicking drills and then ended with one minute rounds. These alternated between the hanging bags, the ground&pound bags and some Thai clinch work.

I sure slept soundly that night!

The Saturday before, there were Karate black belt trials at the dojo. A couple of us BJJ types were invited to come in and help, as the school has grappling as part of the Karate curriculum. So in order to make sure there were plenty of people for all the candidates to roll with, we were asked if we wanted to come in. Sure we did :-) And we all had fun.

What else is new.. Oh yes, I'm teaching all the Wednesday day classes until at least the end of the semester. I'm taking that in my stride now. It has become routine so I no longer stress about it. I do my best to pass on some knowledge to the guys, even if I sometimes don't feel totally adequate for the task. But wiser people than me said that if we wait with teaching until we are perfect, then we'll never teach. So I just do my best. And we all have fun.

The Girls in Gis day camp is next weekend. It seems like they got 30 girls/women and it's now closed. I just received my info pack (which is pretty comprehensive and the whole thing seems to be pretty well planned and pre-organised). According to the organisers, about half the attendees are white belts, there are ten or so blue belts and a couple of purples and one brown. And ages range from 17 to 47. Haha, guess who's the oldest ;-)

Anyway, I'll report back on that. It will be rather strange to roll with women ;-) But it might be a good prep for the comps. In any case, a day long BJJ event sounds awesome, and the chance to roll with people I don't know is fantastic. I'm really looking forward to it!

new instructionals

2011-08-06T13:34:00.003+10:00

I just bought Ginastica Natural with Alvaro Romano, as well ans Ginastica Natural For Fighters (Vol.1 + 2).

I've been interested in that set for a while, after watching a few youtubes. But I haven't had a chance to watch any of them yet. When I do, I'll report back.

a complicated relationship

2011-08-03T17:17:00.001+10:00

It's kind of hard to articulate how I'm going at the moment. There are a lot of conflicting signals.

We all have highs and lows (and days inbetween). Overall, I'm feeling settled in bluebelt-dom. I've finally put behind me the need to justify to myself and others why I should be wearing that belt. Some days I dish it out, some days I'm on the receiving end. That's the way it's meant to be. I feel that I am improving and generally heading in the right direction. Never mind those odd days when I feel my gi is better at BJJ than I am ;-)

I recently had a few days off due to a mild flu. While I was back on the mat with not too much time off (didn't cough, sneeze and splutter), it did take it out on me more than I thought. I didn't realise just how much it knocked me back, but even the following week I was feeling sluggish and stiff. On top of that, one of the first sessions back was a full on no-gi class. Lots of take-downs, high intensity rolling etc. I was wrecked. It was the first time in a long time that I really was gassed. On top of that, my right knee was feeling pretty unhappy. So for the first time sort of ever (that I can remember), I had to stop and sit out. I didn't quit, I rolled again after. But I had to concede defeat to un-technical, cranky front chokes because I was too stuffed to defend properly. But what mostly pissed me off was that I felt I let my training partner down during the drilling part of the class.

At that point in time I felt that I was going backwards big time, with an injury hanging over my head. With 3 comps coming up, not a good way to be.

At the same time, rolling in my gi classes was going pretty good. I was actually kicking some butt, as long as I was being a bit careful with my right knee. What I figured out though is that I can roll for very long times now because I preserve so much energy. My cardio is only average, but it doesn't matter because at the level of intensity I usually roll. With my energy-preserving skills, it's well untruly enough. So on one hand I'm happy, to have that sort of fuel economy :-)

On the other hand, it won't do for the comps. Totally different intensity. So I do need to crank it up. What I need to work out is which line to walk in terms of the time I have left to prepare and keeping the knee happy.

I was driving myself batty about the issue of letting people down in training. I was doing ok in the gi classes, but in the no-gi classes, where the intensity and the amount of take-downs are being stepped up for the comps, I felt like I wasn't holding my own. Worse, that I was adversely affecting others. I missed several classes due to procrastination. And then I decided to ask. I was prepared to let it go until after the comp and then go back to training there when they are back to normal. But the answer I got was a resounding NO. That I am part of the team, am holding back nobody and to get my arse over there and train.

I did. And it felt good. My cardio isn't as bad as I thought. He's finding takedowns that won't tax my dodgy knee so much. It's all good. But I had to ask.

You see, all things aside, it's still a matter of pride. I know it shouldn't be. But I'm the only woman in both schools. I do NOT want to be the weakest link. I'm a realist and I know I can't be the best (what is good/better/best anyway??), for all sorts of reasons. But my little ego is not happy about being the weakest/worst team member. I am not going to be the one the others shun as partner because I'm perceived to be weak/wussy. Don't get me wrong, I don't need to tap people out all over the show. And I don't mind getting tapped out. But I do need to feel that I am giving everyone problems when rolling. I need to be good enough to challenge my training partners, same as I want them to challenge me (in a positive sense).

I think if it got to the stage where I don't feel I'm giving enough, then I'd rather not be there, rather than being carried by everyone. That is probably an ego thing. Oh well.

On the positive side, I'm making progress in several areas: holding mount, transitions from/to back, attacks from the back, attacks from the closed guard. And sweeps. Yes, sweeps are starting to happen. All in all, I'm going to be able to go into my first blue belt comp with an actual game plan. So in a way, I'm actually really looking forward to the comps. If nothing else, to test it out against people my size :-)

So that's where I'm standing at the moment. It's complicated, my relationship with BJJ!

more teaching

2011-08-02T21:52:00.003+10:00

Looks like I've scored the Wednesday lunchtime classes for the next few months at least.

Cool. Should be fun.

sadistic bitch ?!

2011-08-02T21:49:00.001+10:00

So we were working on armbars from mount. A tight, slow version, where you use your posting arm against their neck, to make them a bit uncomfortable. My partner's comment: you do that really well! (the grindy forearm on his throat, that it..). My pleasure.

So then we were drilling cross lapel chokes from mount... Next thing, he tells me I'm a sadistic bitch. Wo-hooo!!

And there I was, thinking I was being "gentle", trying NOT to grab skin. But hey, it's BJJ :-)) Anyway, it was said in jest, and we both laughed.

Someone suggested I should use it for a gi patch :-)

my excuse

2011-07-29T14:26:00.000+10:00

I've been thinking about getting a new gi. Do I really need an excuse? Ha!

But I did make a deal with myself (as before). I would only get a new one if I would manage to finish the semester at uni with the results I really wanted. Sort of as a reward :-) Does that sound like a good enough excuse?

Anyway, I did get the results and I did get the new gi.

I spent quite some time looking and was torn between several really good options. The exchange rate is good for buying stuff overseas at the moment, but the killer is the postage. $50 per gi is just just a large cost on top of the item, that it has to be a really, really good deal OR something I reallly, really want and can't get in Australia.

My criteria were good fit and blue and long enough knee patches. After realizing that I still only have a couple of gis which really fit me well (and thus deciding to sell on a couple of the others), I decided that I don't want to experiment this time. Every brand is different with their sizing, and it's not just the absolute size, but also the cut which makes a difference.

My best fitting gi top is still the SYR, but the whole gi isn't holding up well at all. Also I didn't want to wait until they make a blue one and that whole - preorder and pray you get one in the mad rush - kind of rubbish annoys me. The Tatami Zero G fits well, too, but it's not available in blue. I'm not a great fan of the pants, either.

The Koral Light gi I picked up a few months ago (second hand) isn't a bad fit, though I don't fancy the ripstop jacket material. One of the guys at our school has a navy blue Koral MKM, which I really fancy, but I checked them out everywhere (in Australia and overseas) and can't get one for less than $300. And somehow, I baulk at that, especially as the colour isn't comp legal from what I understand.

So in the end, I looked at the blue Koral Classic in A2. And I found them to be on special at Grapplingstore.com for $220(AUD). They also have the Fuji pants in blue which I wanted to replace the SYR pants. So I ordered the Koral Classic and the Fuji pants.

I've only worn the KC once. It's a tad bigger than what I like. They are supposed to be pre-shrunk, but I do expect it to shrink a whisker, so we should be about right. I'm hoping to give it a good work-out this week. But my first impressions are good. I love the fit of the pants. I could wear these all day :-) I may need to take up the sleeves a little, but that aside it feels pretty good. It looks nice as well, the badging isn't over the top.

So there, the inner gi-whore is once again satisfied. At least for now... Doesn't mean, of course, that I won't be keeping my eye open for bargains or amazingly cool looking gis in faraway lands ;-)

another favourite brekkie

2011-07-26T01:11:00.001+10:00

This doesn't look as cool as the purple porridge, but it's another one of my favourites.

Semolina. Yeah, I know that's no longer fashionable. But who cares.

Add semolina to boiling milk. Stir while doing this to avoid lumps, until it goes thick. Turn off the heat. Add more milk if needed and sugar (or honey to taste) and a pinch of salt if you want. And now the best bit: add a whole egg. Make sure you stir it in right away, unless you want chunky white and yellow bits in your semolina! I use a whisk to stir the semolina and the same whisk makes sure the egg is well mixed in, too.

I love the taste of semolina, so I often eat it just like it is. But you can improve on it with canned apricots, peaches, mandarins or mangoes. As a kid, I used to always have a bowl of semolina with an upturned tinned peach, to make it look like a fried egg :-) Of course, you can always team a bowl of warm semolina with banana or fresh berries or stonefruit. In the picture, I've added tinned mangoes and some juice.

things that go ....rip!

2011-07-24T14:59:00.002+10:00

A couple of weeks ago, I tore my gi pants. Pretty much trashed them, in fact:

Yes, that's the Shoyoroll pants, belonging to the gi which I've only started using in the middle of last September. This gi has been used in a rotation with several other gis, so it has had a maximum of two training sessions per week for less than 10 months. Frankly, I'm pretty pissed off about that.

I always questioned the wisdom of knee reinforcements which end right under where my knee usually touches the mat when I'm kneeling. For all of the hoo-ha about using the pearl weave material on the knees, what good is that, if the material doesn't totally cover the zone of the most wear? So, the pants ripped right on the sewing line where the knee patch ends. The other side is nearly worn through as well.

I emailed SYR. I didn't whine about it, I didn't ask for replacements, I just let them know it happened and that I'm a little disappointed. No answer. Oh well.

I think I'll attempt a repair, and use them for spares. Meanwhile, I've bought a pair of blue Fuji A2 pants. I've swapped the material drawstring with the nice rope drawstring from the torn pants.

But it's not just the SYR gi pants that are showing premature wear. The collar is rubbing through in several places. There is an obvious wear spot at the back of the neck on one side, and I can see another one starting on the opposite side. In addition, there are wear marks at the bottom of the lapels.

What pisses me off twice over is that this is my favourite gi in terms of fit and comfort. I recently put a big school patch on the front of it, hoping to use it in the comps coming up in September. Well, I can forget that :-(

I bought the Fuji pants because I had a plain Fuji gi for a while. Only thing I didn't like about it was that the A3 I had was just too big. The pants were well constructed and I liked the feel of the material. That's why I got myself a pair of A2 pants in blue, to go with the SYR top (while it lasts...). After one wash at 40 degrees C, they have shrunk a touch and look like they'll fit perfectly. In fact, they fit better than the SYR pants did.

..............................

Update - June 27:

Firstly, here is a picture of the collar of the gi (note that the hole on the right hand side is only just starting to appear).

Secondly, here is the answer from SYR, after I contacted them about the gi:

Hello Chris,
Thank you for your feedback. I apologize for the delay, as I've been out of the office due a death in the family. We definitely appreciate it. Yes, we have modified our pants and the knee pads come down longer below the knee. 

Thank you for supporting Shoyoroll.

Best Regards,
Melissa

This it is the message I sent to SYR:

To: info@shoyoroll.com
Subject: SYR gi

Message Body:
Hi guys,

I've got the blue Superlite Batch 6 gi in size A2. I love this gi, it's the one which fits met the best and I like the feel of it.

Sadly, the pants ripped a couple of weeks ago. There is a big rip below the reinforcement on the left leg, and the right side is about to rip in the same spot. Also, the collar is starting to wear through near the top and at the bottom, near the SYR patch. I only started to wear this gi in September 2010 (wasn't allowed to wear a blue gi until I got my blue belt..). 

It's in a rotation with a couple of other gis, and it is worn no more than twice a week. I recently put a school patch on the gi top, because I wanted to wear it to my next comps in September '11. However, the pants are now finished and I don't know if the top will be legal with worn collar.

I was hoping to get at least a couple of years of normal use out of the gi, so it's a little disappointing that this has happened after only 10 months of moderate usage. Mostly I'm upset that I won't be able to use my favourite gi at the comps.

I would love to get another SYR gi, but until I see that the leg reinforcement comes further down the leg to well below my knee, I don't think there is any point. 

Anyway, while it's not all positive, I thought you might appreciate the feedback. In case you are interested, I have photos of the torn pants.

Cheers,
Chris

Update: 7 August

After only about half a dozen more wears and washes, the collar is noticeably more worn through:

I guess that means it won't be good for the comps :-(((

yikes, I'm getting behind...

2011-07-17T16:24:00.002+10:00

I just realised that my last (real) post was back in the middle of June. Time is just running away on me...

I finished all my work and all my exams for uni. Got my results and I'm quite happy :-) Since then, I've had a house full of visitors and I'm still working, so I haven't really had holidays. I've just had time off from uni, haha. And I'm due to go back on August 1. But I'm not complaining, I'm having a lot of fun.

The only thing which I'm not happy about is the dreadful weather. It's cold, wet, windy and generally miserable and grey. Not many opportunities to go and ride horses or enjoy any other outdoors activities. And cold toes at the beginning of every BJJ class. That does tend to pass though ;-)

Due to a wedding today, I didn't get a chance to go to the small comp in Melbourne yesterday. But there are two big ones coming up in September. There is The Gathering on September 10 and the Pan Pacs the weekend after.

I've been working on a few things lately, and I think I finally have some kind of game plan I can call my own. So it will be very interesting to see how that will affect my grappling at the comps. So far, I just went with the flow in the comps I've been to.

Strangely, back control is crystallizing out as one of my got-to positions, and I'm having more and more luck with not only getting there, but actually holding it. And I get submissions, too. In addition, I have learned to transition to other positions, like closed guard or technical mount, if I feel I'm losing back control, and from eithe of those, I can get the back again. That is making an enormous amount of difference.

I continue to fall into the trap of thinking I'm hopeless (will never be a grappler's armpit, blah blah..), and then I surprise myself with getting submissions from unexpected places. Or hearing from people that they will give up positions, just so they don't end up in my guard (or with me on their back), because it's a horribly dangerous place to be. Then I go: Oh! Maybe I AM doing something right. Aw, BJJ is just as much a mental game as it is a physical one :-)

I've booked in for the girls grappling day in late August. It will be very interesting to roll with a bunch of women. As I only have guys in my school, I absolutely have no idea how I stack up against female blue belts. I have rolled with a couple of female blues at John Will's school late last year, and did well. But of course, friendly rolls are a different ballgame to comps. So it will be very constructive for me to actually roll with women in the lead up to the two comps in September.

I had a good learning experience the other day. For the first time in a little while, I ended up rolling with a very new white belt, considerably bigger and stronger than myself. For the first time since starting BJJ, I didn't spend the whole roll worrying about his strength and being defensive. That in itself is a huge leap forward. He wasn't spazzing too much, but he just poured out a huge amount of force. Tried to choke me from within my guard, etc etc. This time, instead of pretty much panicking, I started attacking him. Sometime in the process, I ended up in mount on him and started on my latest favourite technique (cross lapel choke from mount). Got rolled in the end, but had the grips in deep and choked him from within my guard. I can't say how much of a difference that made, knowing that this is possible. I have spent so much time just whining about the size/strength of the guys, defending and staying in under and eventually getting squashed or muscled into submission by some sloppy technique. The watershed in this piece of mental progress was letting go and moving. For example, insteading of hanging on to a close guard which was about to get stacked or passed, I can now open, put feet on hips and push to get distance or transition or attack. I guess it's all part of the overall learning curve. Took me long enough!!

Due to our instructor being away, I've been teaching a couple of classes most weeks. That is a good learning experience, too. It's hard to troubleshoot problems for people with vastly different body shapes. It's also hard to teach new white belt guys how to rolls light :-)) But it's happening!

purple porridge

2011-07-17T15:57:00.001+10:00

One of my favourite breakfasts is porridge with honey and berries. Especially on cold mornings :-)

So you start with a rolled oats, cover them with milk and microwave that for a couple of minutes. Stir and give it another minute. Then stir in a generous teaspoon or more of honey. Add more milk if needed and stir. Add a handful of berries. I like either mixed forest berries (fresh or frozen) or blueberries. With blueberries, it looks like this:

Then, stir the berries in and give it another thirty seconds or so in the microwave.

Now it looks like this:

Purple porridge :-)

First Australian Female Only BJJ Day Camp

2011-07-12T19:22:00.000+10:00

I just found out about this. So for all you girls in Oz, take note!!

Seeing it's on a Sunday, I guess I should be able to make it. I have only ever been to one women only BJJ class, so a female only day camp will be a new experience indeed :-)

does your dog grapple?

2011-06-18T23:17:00.002+10:00

My best friend Yvonne has a black German Shepherd dog who goes by the name of Nemo. He comes and visits and plays with my dog Vito. Yvonne got Nemo as a pup and we've been watching him grow. Firstly, he was tiny and Vito used to just put his paw on the fluffy little black thing and pin him down. Then time went by and Nemo grew, and grew. He is now a big black dog. Fast and sleek. And still just as precocious as he was when he was a little pup.

Here are some dogwrestling pictures with a very young Nemo and my Vito, taken last August. Feast your eye on black and white action scenes!

(All pictures by Yvonne Lehey)

Whenever I go and have dinner with Yvonne and her husband Greg, Nemo brings his toys and wants to play. I've often played roughhouse with him, and as a rough sort of a youngster, he's always thought that was great fun. Last week, I got down on the floor with him and we had a roll :-)

Now I wouldn't do that with every dog, and I wouldn't recommend that anyone else tries with with their friend's dog. Nemo is surprisingly controlled, he doesn't bite or go stupid. If he accidentally meets some part of your anatomy with his open mouth, it's just by accident. He's what's called soft mouthed. The worst danger I'm in is a long hot tongue in the ear, or across the face. Eeew. Dogslobber...

So much to the amusement of the onlookers, Nemo and I had a good wrestle. He thought it was great fun until I grabbed him in a headlock, haha. Anyway, here is photographic evidence of the shenanigans....

Hey Nemo, wanna wrestle? Cool, sure!

I pull guard, but Nemo is fast and passes straight away!

.. but I regain guard and start breaking down his posture.

.... and now Nemo is in trouble, because I've got high guard and I'm looking for a submission!

But shortly after, he escaped :-)

Another attempt, this time a choke after I get his back:

(Photos by Greg Lehey)

And what's worse, tonight I was over there and we had another wrestle. I haven't seen Greg's photos yet, but I shudder to think what he captured this time :-)

Ah yeah, and I we had a great class this morning. It was a grading, and the guys did really well. One got his fourth stripe, there were a couple who got their third and a few who got their first. I was impressed with how they applied themselves and how well they did. Good work by all!

Interesting for me was one roll where I pulled off a picture book omoplata. Not bad for a hopeless old girl who until recently couldn't move the hips enough to hit that submission during no resistance drills :-) I see it as a sign though that all the information which was filled into my brain over the last 2+ year is still there. As my brain is knitting the hitherto seeminly unrelated bits together, I'm seeing things from places where I didn't see them before. And the movements I studied but thought I couldn't do are right there. That's amazing. But very encouraging :-)

Patches!

2011-06-15T21:14:00.000+10:00

I finally got around to taking photos of the patches I put on two of my gis.

The blue SYR only has the one patch on the front. The white Zero G has one on the front and one one the back. Doesn't it look pretty with the blue of the Zero G shoulder patches?? Awww :-)

Anyway, I reckon they came up looking arrrright!

What else is new?

I'm half way through my exams. I should be studying, not playing with this blog...

I missed out on training today because of exams, but I had an awesome no-gi session on Monday night. Well, two more exams tomorrow, then it's over. And tomorrow night, I'll be rolling for sure :-)

John Will seminar

2011-06-12T13:40:00.000+10:00

On Friday night, we had had John Will for a seminar. It's been a while since he's been to the Ballarat Dojo. With work and studies I haven't had much of a chance to go down to Geelong to train with him recently, either. In fact, I haven't seen him since about January this year.

We spent some time on a single leg takedown. John broke the technique down so that we could drill specific parts of it, then we added to it. Finally, he showed us a way to break a wrist grip, progress to a two on one hold which we then use to unbalance our opponent to get the foot position we want to get that single leg. And we drilled that some more.

We looked at two ways to stall guard passes. In the first scenario, our opponent has stepped back, grabbed our pants and is pinning our feet to the floor while walking around our legs. The technique in essence is to block his cross shoulder while bracing. Moving our butt, we get a relatively stable position while denying the pass and then we switch hands, still blocking his shoulder. The free hand now goes for an armdrag. Depending on how quick this armdrag is, the size of your opponent and how quick he is, this will result in him turtling or faceplanting :-). Either way, I can get the back nice and easy.

The second scenario was a low hugging guard pass. Both our legs are trapped, and he's trying to flatten us out while coming around and holding the legs. Before I get flattened out, I reach under his near arm, over his head and clasp my hands together. Then I need to move my lower body a bit away from him before I can bridge. This, if all the angles are right (and it took me a few goes to achieve that), will lead to a sweep sort of over my head. Keeping my grip, I walk around to his front, from where I'm perfectly set up to go for a D'Arce choke. We followed that up with a few reps of the choke, after being shown how to do it.

Finally, we looked at side control escapes. John has some interesting and pretty useful views on improving one's situation by 5% when in a bad spot, and then another five and so on, until the balance is tipped in our favour. He has just written a post about that very subject, so have a read of that to get it straight from the horse's mouth :-).

At the end of it all, we had pizza and sat around for a bit. John told some tales from his travels in the US.

nose in books

2011-06-10T12:06:00.000+10:00

That's me at the moment, my nose is in books - or rather computers. I have uni exams next week. Until last week, I was flat out getting assignments done. I barely kept my training diary up to date, let alone the blog... Well, another week, and it will be done :-)

Of course I've been training. I missed a couple of sessions due to my uni workload (and I'm working part-time, too), but I've been able to get in nearly six sessions per week all the same, so I can't complain.

We did a fair bit of work on cutting armbars, spread over several sessions. How to get them from closed guard and from side control. The latter in two flavours: either with the opponent flat on the back, and we do a KOB and crawl over, if they've made the mistake of putting their farm arm around our neck. The other flavour is served up if they hip out away from us (which means they are facing us), and we can grab an underhook on the far/top arm.

Then we did a few sessions on closed guard attacks. Firstly, an arbar that works just by trapping an arm across our middle, controlling the head so the arm is trapped. Then get a good angle, use our elbow over their trapped forearm, lift the hip under their elbow and... tap. That ties in beautifully with the cutting armbar from closed guard.

Then we spent time on grips. How to get a fantastic deep cross collar grip right on the back of their collar, and then bring our elbow down for a very controlling grip. This can be used to pull and push, and it can control the spine enough that we can open our guard to get angles for attacks, set up sweeps or whatever. Depending on where their arms end up, it is a perfect setup for everything from figure fours to chokes. And of course, sweeps.

The last session we spent on the cross lapel choke from that setup. This is the version where we already have that deep grip, we've got their upper body pushed to the side of the arm that has the collar grip. Pushing up and down, we can make a little gap at the back of the collar and get the thumb of the other hand in. Then comes some wriggling until we can get our body across (unless, of course, they push that way to straighten up!), the forearm slides across the back of the head and there is the cross lapel choke. And this one is tight!

We did a fair bit of situational sparring, starting from closed guard. That's my world anyway, so I was happy for the practice :-) I am appalled though at how easy it is to be broken down. On the other hand, I have trouble breaking down people. Actually, that's not quite true, I do succeed with most of them, but there is this one tall Blue Belt... When I was utterly frustrated, he did show me what he does.

What came out of all that closed guard stuff is that I need to be more inventive. I need to be prepared to switch from one thing to another. Or more specifically, attack with one thing, knowing what they will do to defend and then use that to launch the next attack. Somehow I still can't get that happening. I have so many attacks from closed guard, and yet I seem to get stuck in one place or another. I simply can't see what other options I have.

On the other hand, there are techniques, like omoplata for example, which I've always struggled with. For some unknown reason, those are coming to the surface. Have we recently worked on omoplatas? No. But somehow my brain is making a connection there, and CLICK, out comes the technique.

I quite honestly don't know why my brain works the way it does :-)

Another example: We spend a session working on something. I start off like a klutz, be it a new technique, or one I know but never had any luck with. Then we go over it, drill it and I get my head around it. I might get quite fluent with it, and even have some luck in situational rolling that day. I think "I GOT this!!". But then, next session, we revisit that technique. I'm all excited, because, after all, I GOT it last time, and I'm keen to get more reps in. But to my horror, though I remember the steps, my body had lost all it's feel for it, and I'm back to feeling like an utter klutz. This has happened to me lots of times. If we spend more time on that technique, it comes back again, and overall, I have improved. But it's weird to make such a huge leap forward in the first session, to then lose most of that.

Not sure if it's just the way it is, ie: a natural, common way to learn. Or if it is something ridiculously stupid just limited to my overanalytical brain. I do spend a lot of time going over what we learn in class. Not just to try an memorize it, but to see where it fits in with other things I know. I'm always trying to work out if I could use a technique from other, similar setups.

I don't know :-)

Anyway, it's not just my brain which is having a hard time lately. My left ear had a dodgy, squishy spot in it, and that required a bit of draining. Nothing like sticking pointy things in your ears late at night, when sensible folks just have their slippers on and sit in front of the TV, or are asleep in bed. Oh, and the knees are having a fun time lately. After my right knee made an abysmal noise a few weeks back, it's been behaving well. Only, last Monday, when I was rolling in the no-gi class, the left knee made exactly the same damn noise. A loud CLANK which made everyone stop in their tracks. We weren't going terribly hard, either. It felt fine after, and I did go to my gi class after. Though I was glad we only drilled moves.

Same as the right one, there is no pain, a vague bit of stiffness the day after it happened and no swelling or other problems. This is the knee I damaged many moons ago, first by a fall with a horse on a road, then again by stepping on a rock which rolled out from under my foot... Well, I can only hope that I won't have further issues. One of the guys at our school has been out for weeks because of damaged ligaments in his knee. He is much younger than I am. I'd go silly if I couldn't do BJJ...

John Will is coming for a seminar to our school tonight. That should be good fun. I shall report :-)

random stuff

2011-06-09T15:19:00.000+10:00

I'm studying for my uni exams next week. In my readings about software engineering and UML, I came across this quote:

Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.—Jim Horning

Well, I'll eat my hat if that doesn't perfectly apply to BJJ!

belts

2011-06-08T20:44:00.000+10:00

After a couple of us had a bit of a discussion about belts, their meaning and the stresses they can cause, it was fitting that I cam across Georgette's blogpost on that subject. So instead of me elaborating on it, read her post There's always time to fill in the holes. She, and the people who commented wrote so much good stuff, that I really have nothing to add. Other than: thank you Georgette :-)

discovery and transformation

2011-05-26T22:44:00.001+10:00

Oh yes, Roy Dean doesn't just make excellent videos, he writes so much good stuff, too. He just wrote a piece on the meaning of "Discovery who you are", which is the guiding theme throughout all his videos. Read and enjoy!

evil armbars and upside down triangles

2011-05-19T21:59:00.003+10:00

I ended up only training three times last week. The knee took it well. But on Saturday, I couldn't make it anyway. I had to stay home because the horse-dentist came. He did six of our horses. Nice guy, and finally a guy who knows what he's doing. A real horseman (they are getting rarer these days, I swear!).

Anyway, it was probably be good to take it steady last week. This week, I've been training every day. The easy week has given my body a chance to recover a bit. Yes, I think I had been overdoing it recently... Sigh. So the question is whether the knee was a result of overtraining or unrelated. Anyway, it made me ease off a bit and I feel better for it all around. And finally by tonight, I didn't even think about the knee.

It's been an interesting week. On Monday, we did cutting armbars. I think I might have finally understood what makes them work. So far, I can only say I've got close. But now I know why I couldn't finish them off, and I think they'll make a handy addition to my arsenal. We looked at cutting armbars from guard and from side control. Whichever starting position, the key to it is to pin his upper arm against me, get a gable grip and slide that along until I get to the sweet spot near his elbow. Ideally, I will rotate his arm while I do that, just with the pressure of my gable grip. And if all goes well, his lower arm and hand will be lined up perfectly between my neck and shoulder. But the main part is the starting pressure. At the end of drilling and experimenting with it, I really could feel that pressure.

Tuesday night was no-gi. First time back since "the knee", so I was hoping to get a training partner with a degree of ahem... sense. I got lucky. Small class, uneven numbers, so I scored John as the drilling partner. We did a little bit of warming up getting x-guard. Then we drilled an open guard pass to knee on belly. As he hips out and rolls towards me to escape the knee, I step over his head and spin my legs back to get behind him. I need to get an underhook on his top arm from the rear. Then I sit up, rock back and take his back. The latter part is exactly how Ryan Hall describes a version of a back take. So it was great to be able to rep that out a few times.

We finished that class with about 20 minutes of rolling. I stayed with John. I was still very mindful of my knee (and so was he), so it was pretty light. But still, it was interesting stuff (most of which finished with my "destruction"). But the good part was that my hips were working and I managed some good escapes. Even got positions to launch a some submissions. I didn't stay for extra open mat, but it was a really good night.

John also showed me how to finish a weird upside down triangle, which I sometimes get, but could never finish. I tried to pull it on him, but failed yet again. Now that I know the finish, I think I might be doing some good with it. I catch people from bottom side control with this :-)

Yesterday's lunchtime class was very small: just myself. So Sensei Glenn decided that I should be his guinea pig for some new stuff he's been working on. And the other half of the class was mine. My choice was to work on the armbar from hell. I have been getting the high guard, with one knee over my opponent's shoulder, quite regularly. From there, I hunt for that armbar. But something was missing and I couldn't figure it out, so I've been going for a sweep, or a cutting armbar instead. Or sometimes I let them push their shoulder through, but keep their arm across, and then take the back.

However, after seeing what I've been doing, Glenn made a couple of suggestions. One was to square my hips back up. Hard to explain, but I know how it should feel. That gives me a much better angle for the armbar. Second suggestion was to have a much better grip on the arm. Even hold it with both my hands instead of using my left hand to push on his head to get my leg over. After some back and forth, and my usual non-faith in my own abilities and him giving me a bollocking for not even trying, I got the hang of it. And he was right, I do not need to let go of the arm, all I need is correct hip alignment and the will to do it. He let me drill it then, against increasing resistance. And at long last, it looks like I've nailed that technique..

He then reminded me how close to that are the related triangle and omoplata, depending on how one of my "victims" reacts. :-) Hehe.

We rolled for a bit after that. I got figure foured a few times. No surprise there, it's his favourite technique. But I defended a couple of those and somewhere along the lines, I threatened one of his arms, another time I regained guard and started going for the high guard. And as he said after: he didn't want to be there, that's now dangerous territory. He gave me some other valuable feedback. So all in all, a great session.

BJJ and age

2011-05-15T13:38:00.000+10:00

Cane Prevost has posted a great piece called The Gift of Age on his blog The Gentle Art.

Highly recommended!

knee is behaving

2011-05-11T19:06:00.000+10:00

After giving myself a break on Monday and Tuesday, I went back to training today. The knee is feeling pretty good. No soreness, no swelling.

Warmup went well, but there was one move where I could feel a slight instability, so I gave that a miss. Otherwise, all good.

We worked on the "holy trinity" of closed guard attacks: triangle, omoplata and armbar. Yeah! I think I've finally figured out why I have so much trouble with armbars from guard. Some of my transitions from one to the other are smoother now, I guess that's all part of my hip-brain connection :-)

Afterwards, we did a bit of rolling. I had Danny as partner. He's lighter than I am and very controlled in how he rolls. He felt guilty, as it was he who I rolled with on Saturday when my knee went. I assured him it wasn't his fault, but I did ask to go reasonably light. That we did, and he was very considerate to my leg. He let stuff go and so did I, but we both did some really good technical stuff. At the end, when I was getting his back for the third time, and the class was nearly out, I threatened to choke him with my belt, which had come undone :-) Sadly, it was time out. It was BJJ how it should be: good flow, minimum strength application, and all around great fun for both of us.

It was great to be back. My knee feels fantastic and I'll be rolling again tomorrow!

my hips are joined to my brain

2011-05-11T18:53:00.000+10:00

No, my brain and hips aren't directly physically joined. :-)

But I made an interesting observation in class the other day. It was a repeat of the same thing happening under slightly different circumstances the week before. Only it didn't strike me the first time.

We were doing something which involved step one (do X), then step 2: hip out, then step three: something else etc. I found that I automatically did the hip out step while I did step one. It was like my hips were on autopilot, and knew where they had to be for the next move. I can't recall what we did, but I remember that it was a known patten. So knowing where I needed to be, I automatically lined up for the next move in the progression. Step 2, the hipping out, happened without conscious thought.

The week before, we did some X-guard entries in our no-gi class. The guy I drilled the moves with is fairly new. He's young and strong (plays footy), and found all the moves no particular challenge. However, he had to make a deliberate effort to add in the hipping out step, which was critical to being lined up properly. I had trouble getting my old achy body doing some of the moves, BUT I automatically did the hipping out as part of the move before, because I/my body KNEW where it had to be to do the next move.

I only realised the significance of that on Saturday, when it happened the second time (well, the second time I took notice of it).

I have recently made a special effort to use my hips more, especially in escapes. As a result, I've noticed that when we drill hip escapes, they are becoming more powerful and more effortless. And concurrently, I have more luck regaining guard. That makes sense. Most intesting though is what I'm calling the brain-hip connection. My brain is starting to be on autopilot when I move, telling the hips to do their stuff. The result of that is more efficient movement and more "spare" brainpower to deal with other grappling problems.

Is that progress or what?? :-)

Blue =/= the blues, but the knee clonked

2011-05-10T19:54:00.000+10:00

My training is going ok. I've had lots of awesome sessions. And I've had a few where I feel like handing my blue belt back over... Yes, yes, I kow that's a common enough thing.

I had a chat about it all with Sensei the other day. It was a talk about expectations, dealing with frustration, being too hard on oneself and learning ways to put negative thoughts aside in favour of positive thoughts.

I suppose that part of the problem is my general work/uni workload at the moment. I just feel a bit worn out. I've been cutting back a touch on my training. Believe it or not, sitting in front of a computer or in a lecture theatre all day, can be physically as well as mentally draining. Some nights, I just want to get home. Oh, and there is such a lot of assignment work due that I really can't be training every night (as I would like to) anyway. So, I suppose my overall stress levels are affecting my rolling :-(

Certainly though, rolling is stil the best way to get balance back into my life. Without BJJ, I'd go insane!

I think I just need to get it into my thick skull that there are NO pressures to perform "well" (whatever that is) on the mat. It can be my recreation, my stress release, my pure enjoyment. So why do I have such problems to just let go and enjoy? Why do I have to keep on stressing myself by expecting to be "good" or "better" (whatever level that might be..)? I got to the point where I felt embarrassed when they guys said (jokingly or seriously) that they are respect my grappling skills. I need to just be happy about that. And I need to accept without argument when a higher belt tells me I did something well.

I need to go back to just rolling for fun and tap to every damn white belt who sets foot on the mat. Really.

I hope that I've finally figured it, and the talk the other day did help in that respect. And hopefully, I'll get over the blues. I need not feel weighed down by my blue belt, it wasn't given to me to beat myself up with it.

But all is not lost, I had a couple of terrific rolls, too. Including some with Sensei (first one in ages). Sure I had to tap, but I made him work a bit. And as he said after: he got the white belts with his newer techniques. To get me, he had to resort to his old bread and butter stuff. And I sure don't feel bad about getting tapped by a brown belt with his "good" techniques.

Still, the week did bite me in the butt in the end. During a pretty laid back roll on Saturday, I tweaked my right knee. It suddenly said "clonk!" quite loudly. My partner stopped, I stopped, we looked at each other and then disentangled. I carefully moved it but it felt ok and was fine for the rest of the roll. I was slightly puffy and stiff the following day. I used the usual ice/iboprofen/rest/horse liniment strategy over the weekend. I can report that it feels pretty good now. Gave training a miss last night and tonight, just to be on the safe side, but I think I can go and roll tomorrow. Maybe I'll stick on a knee brace. At least that will remind me to be careful with it...

technique videos

2011-05-03T20:25:00.000+10:00

I found this YouTube Channel. It's done by the guys from the VT1 Gym in Sydney.

Some cool stuff. Enjoy!

gear reviews

2011-05-03T19:19:00.000+10:00

I just found the SEA MMA Gear Guide. It has some pretty good reviews.

never a dull moment

2011-04-21T17:49:00.000+10:00

I managed to get my uni assignments done on time. Currently have a couple of weeks off from uni, but I'm still working. I'm settling in to whole days in front of a computer, but it's hard going. Thank goodness for the opportunity to do something physically demanding at the end of every day. Without BJJ, I'd be going nuts.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the studies and the job, but it's soooo much sitting down. And as we are heading into the winter months, the days are getting too short do do anything with horses when I get home.

The way things have panned out, I can train at least once every day except Sunday, and work finishes in time for me to get to classes easily. So no complaints there.

Last Friday, we were treated to a three hour seminar with Scott "Einstein" Epstein at the 10th Planet school here in Ballarat. That was pretty good. The seminar was well attended, and I think that most of us would be keen to go to anothe seminar with Scott. We didn't do anything relating to rubber guard or twisters, but we learned another whole lot of interesting stuff. Some new techniques and some tweaks to well known techniques, such as the rear choke. At the end of the seminar he asked for a technique people wanted to work on, and as most of the group wanted the d'Arce choke, that's what we worked on.

My training has been going well as a whole. Some days I feel like a klutz, some days I feel awesome. But lately, I feel I'm moving better. I guess I have to, some of they guys who are now 3 and four stripe white belts are getting pretty good. They make me work :-)

I have finished the book "Talent is overrated" by Geoffrey Colvin. That was interesting, as it goes into what makes people really good at what they do. While the book seems to be aimed at making people and teams better in a work/corporate environment, I found a lot of the info pretty relevant to not only work and study, but also to BJJ. Interesting was the comment that it takes about ten years to become "good" at something. Which is roughly equivalent to the time to get a BB in BJJ. It also ties in my with my personal observations in other areas.

I've worn my fancy new grappling tights to training. When I rocked up with them under my black Hayabusa shorts, I got a few smiles. Don't get me wrong, I love black. But when everyone in the nogi class wears mainly black, a bit of grey and white and otherwise there are only minuscule dashes of colour, then it's time for MORE colour :-). The instructor laughed. Otherwise I nary got a response. However, when I went back the next day, sans brightly coloured tights, they wanted to know why I wasn't wearing them. And it transpired that some admiring comments were made.

I guess they think I'm crazy enough as it is, to be the only female in a nogi/mma gym, being at least twice as old as most of them to boot. Crazy old birds can get away with wearing almost anything, even on the mat :-) I'm an introvert, really, but the older I get, the more crazy stuff I do...

And what are they like to wear? Nice! I was worried they'd be too hot. But not so. I've even worn them under gi pants and that was fine, too. So when the colder weather comes, I think they'll be great. So I can only recommend them.

clothes make the grappler

2011-04-10T16:22:00.000+10:00

I have been bad. Bought more stuff. Just couldn't resist.

A couple of weeks back, it was the Koral Light gi.

Then it was a purple Scamble Hoodie ... and purple shorts (with lots of yellow).

But then came...

These are also sold by Scramble in the UK.

They are so way out, so crazy, I just had to have a pair. I'll have you know that once upon a time, I was a shy, introvert kid. I don't know what happened in the meantime.

What can I say? I grapple, therefore I must be crazy by definition, so what's a crazy pair of grappling tights?

How they'll be received by my training partners, that I can't be sure of. I mentioned these tights to one of the guys. He had a look at the pictures and his comment was: "Wrong. Very wrong."

Oh dear. But never mind.

I so can't wait to triangle someone while wearing these.

They'll look so increadibly cool under my black grappling shorts, it will blind the guys. And while they blink, I'll choke them. How's that for a plan.

I suppose now you expect me to post a picture of me wearing these?

injuries

2011-04-10T16:03:00.000+10:00

I found this video clip on the DSTRYRsg blog. Well worth watching.

I just wish I'd known all this when I first started BJJ :-)

just...things

2011-04-10T16:01:00.000+10:00

First, I need to have a moan about life :-)

I'm so busy! Studies, new job etc. Assigments due for uni. Looking after the horses, keeping up with the housework. Rah rah ra!!! I seem to eat, sleep, shower and pack my bags for the next day when I'm at home. Oh yeah, and work on the assignments. Other than that....

Hmm. Last Monday I actually finished work & uni. I had an hour to wait around before the first no-gi class, and I could have stuck around there until just before the start of the gi class a couple of hours later. I would have been home just before 10pm. Only I was overcome by being tired and a strong feeling of wanting to go home and calling it a day. I know better than being a hero these days, so home I went, had early dinner and worked on one of my assignments (sigh).

But that aside, I trained at least once daily for the rest of the week :-)

After all that sitting down and listening to lectures, work inductions and staring at the computer, BJJ is my release, my sanity. Even if it means I come home late after a long day, feeling all beat up.

I learned some good new techniques in the no-gi classes. For example, how to get out of half guard bottom if the top guy has a solid over/under grip. With hipping out, a gable grip pressuring his shoulder and the correct leg position, I found I could break even the grip of some of the guys (something I have always struggled with, weakling that I am). From there, it's easy to take the back, or try for a cutting armbar. As an alternative, if I can't break his grip, I have enough space to try for a Zombie, get a frame on his neck with the other arm and finally feed my foot through (kung-fu move), to finish with a nasty shoulder lock.

Then a similar move from full guard bottom to break the grips. Only this time, I go to overhook his near arm and do the swim move to roll him over for an armbar.

With all of these, we got lots of reps in. And this time, I didn't feel too retarded :-) Even the swim move worked, and that is big progress :-)

In the gi classes we did some stuff on sweeps from turtle position. And we worked on transitions from half guard to knee ride. The sweeps from turtle address a part of my game I'm keen to expand on, so that was really useful.

Rolling started crappy early in the week. I fell back into the habit of straining, using muscle. Why?? Presumably because my little ego was concerned about looking bad when rolling with white belts. Thankfully, I woke up to that after a few rolls and I eased off. Miraculously, not only did I roll better, more open, more smoothly, but I actually did a lot better, too. Duh.

After that, things improved. I kept on reminding myself to try new things, to flow, to give my partners opportunities. And it felt so much better. In the no-gi classes, I got caught in twisters several times. I am recognising the setups earlier in the piece these days, but not early enough yet :-) Still, it was good and there were several no-gi rolls which I was very happy with. Especially one with a guy who is not that experienced, but he is considerably heavier and stronger than I. He went at it with typical speed and power and strength. I will admit I couldn't stop some of his passes and he flattened me out several times. But I had good hip movement, so getting back to half and full guard was easy. And I successfully used hooks to frustrate many of his passing attempts. He was straining so hard to get a grip and set up armbars/armlocks, but just couldn't finish anything. I wished I could have spent more time attacking. But realistically speaking, I think I did quite well against him, and I expended maybe a quarter of the energy he did. So I was happy with that, because it proves to me that the art I'm learning is effective.

We had a couple of brand new guys in for the gi classes. I spent some of my time showing them basics. When I was showing the cross lapel choke from mount, I thought of a little thing which I was already doing unconsciously. But doing it made sure the second hand goes into the collar correctly, and it opens up the lapel at the neck, too. Talking about the technique to show the guys made me aware of it. And once I showed them that particular bit, they picked up on that detail right away. As so often, teaching the stuff you know make you more aware of it. It shows where you have holes in your knowledge, but in trying to articulate what you want to teach, it also brings better understanding for yourself.

At the end of the week, we had a grading. The guys did really, really well and I'm proud of all of them. Lots of stripes were handed out, and there were happy faces all around. Great to see.

We lost a couple of people for various reasons. One guy to take care of his family, one guy moved to Melbourne. Matt, one of our Blue Belts is moving to Queensland with his family, and we bid him farewell in our Wednesday class.

gi observations

2011-04-03T22:16:00.000+10:00

I've had a chance to wear my new Koral Light gi quite a few times over the last two weeks.

As I mentioned before, when I bought it (second hand, near new though), I wasn't even aware that the top is the rip stop weave. All my other gis are a more traditional weave, either single or pearl.

The pants on the Koral are without reinforcement over the knees. The drawstring is material, not cord, but it's not too difficult to pull through. I personally prefer cord though, and may replace the material some day soon.

The pants material is fairly rough cotton (compared to all the other gi pants I have). Like the top they are very fast drying. As I air dry my gis, this is a definite plus. Especially in winter, as I have to hang it on a coat hanger in the house for drying. However, the rough material has one draw back: it is rough. We were drilling the sit out from turtle on Saturday, and I ended up with gi burn on my right knee. Considering my knees are quite well acclimatised to BJJ, and can cope with the shorts or gi pants for hours every week, that was a bit of a surprise. The only explanation I have is that the material is so rough that it rubbed my knee raw. It's still sore, a day and a half later. I don't fancy a band-aid and knee brace on it tomorrow, but I don't have a choice.

The gi top is well cut and fits me perfectly. It's quite light due to the material, but not insubstantial. What I have found though is that it has less structure than a standard single or pearl weave. What I mean by that is that it behaves like softer, thinner material. And although it has a pretty thick, stiff collar, it tends to open up, even when the belt is done up. The innate stiffness of normal gi material keeps the front halves sort of across, untill there is a lot of pulling and the cloth gets very wet from sweat. With the ripstop material, it acts like a limp curtain and the front halves just start parting and hanging down. That's not a problem, more that I look untidy even sooner than I normally do when I roll :-)

Another thing.. The collar is covered in the same material as the pants. Or at least that is what it looks and feels like. And guess what else caused me abraded skin last week? We were drilling lapel half nelson chokes. These DO have a tendency to be a bit harsh on the neck. But lucky me was the demo dummy. And after a few applications of the choke at the hands of an expert, the skin on my neck was starting to protest. Oh, and wasn't the after training shower pleasant on that spot. ... And the next day....

So, that material, in the space of just over a week, caused me gi burn twice. Not good.

Apart from that, I'm quite happy with the gi. But I'm still debating if I should keep it.

holy crap, it's April already!!

2011-04-03T21:55:00.000+10:00

So how did that happen?? I was cruising along in March, I blinked and now it's April.

Of course I've been training. Had a couple of days off because I had a very mild dose of a head cold. Felt a bit woozy and stuffy. These days I know better than just soldiering through and hoping it'll go away. Instead, I give training a miss for a couple of days (grudgingly), and I get over it and that's the end of that. See, I am capable of learning.

I've been busy with uni, we had the first little exam for the semester and I have three assignments due within the next couple of weeks. I never thought that an IT degree would be "easy", but the sheer amount of work to get assignments and other course work done is quite staggering.

On top of that, I've started in my new IT job. Totally new field to me. It's part time and is part of my studies. There is still a lot of getting used to the new workplace, settling in, getting to know people and places and routines and all that sort of stuff. Hopefully, by next week, I'll actually be starting to hook into some real stuff.

With part time work, full time studies, the farm and horses, training (between 6 and 10 sessions per week), I barely seem to have time left to eat, sleep and do the other household jobs. Ah, it's a grand life ;-)

I know it sounds silly to some people, but some of the lessons I've learned in BJJ are coming in handy. Such as: not giving up, accepting that some things need to be done in small steps, staying positive, having a game plan, believing in myself ... and... not giving up :-)

Anyway, back to BJJ.

As always, there are ups and downs. The down side is that I haven't been able to get to Geelong to John Will's school. And it looks I won't have much chance for it over the next few weeks as well. With all the travel time, it just takes too much time out of my Tuesday, and at present, with work and study it just can't be done. But at our school, the Ballarat Dojo, there are five classes per week plus open mat, and I usually get to all of those.

In addition, a new gym opened in Ballarat which also offers grappling. Ininite MMA is a 10th Planet affiliate run by John Campbell. There are no-gi classes and later on there will be MMA classes as well. I know John and a lot of the guys who train there from before. We rarely do no-gi at the Dojo, so it's nice to have the opportunity to play with that aspect of BJJ. The 10th Planet stuff is pretty different, almost a wholly new skill set. My flexibility isn't fantastic, but not bad either, so I can integrate a lot of those techniques into my game. Also, I have the chance to roll with more people, giving me a broader range of training partners. I go to that gym 2-3 times per week, as time permits.

Needless to say, I'm the only female at that grappling establishment, too.... Only that the average age of the guys who train there is even is lower than at the Dojo. So if I weren't so hard-headed and ignorant of what is seemly for a middle aged woman, I'd be feeling even more out of place ;-) But the sad truth is that I don't give a ... As to what the guys think? Who knows.

Had a chuckle last week when I went there. The first couple of times I went, I drilled and rolled with guys who I also train with at the Dojo. But then I went one evening, and the only guy I train with was already paired up and that left an unimpressed looking young guy who seemed hesitant, but was the last one left and just had to drill with "her". :-)

So we drilled stuff. Turned out he's much more of a newbie than I am, and I helped him a bit with some of the positions and transitions. Which he took well. And after a bit, he loosened up and we helped each other. Then we did some positional rolling to put the new stuff into action. We worked really well and both got a lot out of that. And at the end of class, he smiled and we shook hands. And as I walked past him a little later, he thanked me again and looked very happy. So I'm guessing that he no longer has issues drilling and grappling with "her". Good stuff!

Since then, I've drilled and rolled with others and there have been no issues at all. I had some rolls with John and I was thoroughly destroyed in the process. But I consider it a small win that he had to change tactics a few times, and that it took him longer than 30 seconds per roll to make me tap out.

At the Dojo, we had a lot of fun as well. Last time I wrote, it was the day before the grading. That saw several guys get their first stripe. And it saw several guys get bounced on stuff. There has been some pretty dedicated drilling of techniques since then, and this coming Saturday will see a re-run. I expect to see all the guys get their next stripe.

We've been doing a few sessions on the switch from turtle. I really had a lot of trouble with that. Mostly because I didn't have the technique quite right and because I lacked the commitment necessary to pull it off. But a few sessions working on different variations (depending on whether the guy sprawled on top has his arm in below my arm, above my arm and reaching for the collar, on in a guillotine choke) and I'm starting to get some confidence with it.

Last Wednesday evening, I took the class. I was going to show three collar chokes from closed guard and do some slow rolling and chess game. But we started with the chess game, swapping partners ever so often, and somehow we all had that much fun that we ran out of time. Everyone said they got something out of it. One of the blue belts discovered a hole (and a new attack!) in his game, and all the white belts used the chance to play what-if from different positions.

Generally, I'm still under the impression that my rolling is pretty aimless and so-so. Some days I manage some really inspired stuff, other days it feels completely lack-lustre. Funny enough, I seem to fare better against the big guys, I don't get pinned so often. I get back to guard surprisingly often, and even get to superior positions regularly. On the other hand, the two lighter guys really have picked up with their grappling, and their speed and squirmimess is now a real challenge. Also, they are onto my favourite attacks and are developing good defences. But that just goes to show that nothing was ever meant to be easy, and that the only thing which is constant about BJJ is the amount of change which happens within us and our training partners.

So, that, in a ramply, incoherent sort of a fashion, is what happened within the last couple of weeks.

I'm just so glad I found BJJ :-)

ouch! and new gi

2011-03-19T12:07:00.000+11:00

So, we had no class on Monday. Public holiday.

Wednesday lunchtime class, I managed to do something to my neck. Nothing serious, feels like a pulled muscle on the right hand side. It happened when I rolled, although I wasn't rolling hard, nor putting strain on my neck. It's on the side of my previously injured shoulder, and it's been a little tight for a few days. So I guess it was just waiting to cause me trouble. We didn't warm up very much before class, and the light roll was part of the warm up. Ah well. As they say: shit happens. Considering all the issues I used to have with my neck years ago, it's holding up damn well to all the abuse it's getting.

But bottom line was I that I missed Wednesday night and Thursday night :-(

I did go to open mat last night. Rolled very lightly with an advanced white belt who I know is pretty controlled, and he let go of everything, including chokes which went anywhere near my neck. So that was good, I got my BJJ fix and my neck wasn't any worse off. The rest of the time, I helped some of the other guys who were working on stuff for today's grading.

So, today is grading day. I'm really glad that my neck is up to participating. Not that I'm grading, but I like to be there to help and there will be quite a few guys trying for new stripes.

Other news... I got hold of my new (well almost new) gi. I got hold of a barely used Koral Light gi. Price was right, size was right, and I'd been looking for another blue one. I didn't realise that the gi top is rip stop rather than a traditional style weave. I realised this when the guy handed me the gi. Oh well, looks like now I have a ripstop gi. It fits pretty well. Due to my &*#$*!! neck, I didn't get a chance to use it until open mat last night. The top is a lot lighter than the other gis, and I found that the lapels came undone/loose very easily. I guess if I were less vain and tied my belt tightly around the narrowest part of my middle (instead of sort of around the hips...), it wouldn't be so bad ;-) So, first impression is a little mixed. I shall report back.

I picked up a patch kit. Been deliberating about that for a while. But since the school ordered a bunch of kits, I finally got one. Yes, one. Contrary to rumours being circulated, I won't be buying all the patch kits to badge up my entire gi collection. I shall post pictures once I've decided which of the gis will be prettied up, and how.

more about the winning business..

2011-03-19T09:52:00.000+11:00

On the subject of winning and the meaning of it, read this excellent post by clinzy:

What does it mean to win in the gym

Turn your training time into a win-win situation!!

the last fortnight

2011-03-14T22:11:00.000+11:00

My oh my! I'm behind by a fortnight. Not good...

It's just been a busy time at uni, with job interviews, catching up on work at home/on the farm and training, of course. Being away all day and then training and finally sitting down for dinner sometime around 10pm is not a good when it comes to finding the motivation to write blogs :-)

Anyway, training wise things have been going well. In class, most of the white belts are preparing for the up coming grading, so they are doing a lot of syllabus stuff. I have been roped in several times to help, other times, they were working on their stuff and us coloured belts worked on other things. Or just wrestled.

In the way of techniques, we worked on the basic sweep (shin across), the single and double hooking sweep. I finally seem to be getting my act together on that double hooking sweep. I managed it to both sides. To get more reps in and develop some kind of sensitivity, we did a drill where our partner is on our hooks but defends our underhooks, so that we have to get one, which then determines the side which we have to sweep to. I really got that happening, effectively blocking his arm. Somtimes I found that I wasn't quite lined up, but when I rocked back, I just elevated him on my hooks, rocked again and then set him down on the side I wanted. That was a very useful session for me. A lot of things clicked.

Another day we did open guard sweeps if someone stands in your guard. I worked with on the blue belt (going on purple) guys. There was a version with a same side grip on his sleeve, and an axe kick to the back of his leg. And another version with a cross grip and a hook behind his knee. Drilling the sweeps was no problem.But when it came to doing some free guard passing to use them, I was like: ??? What??? I knew I wanted a push and pull and at least three points of contact. But it just kind of didn't happen. He passed my guard effortlessly virtually every time. On the other hand, I think I managed to pass his guard once or twice, the rest of the time I got swepts in every which direction. I was THIS close to a severe sense of humour failure. I hate being a klutz. Oh, and to add injury to insult, I ended up with blisters on the tops of both ring fingers from gripping his sleeves. Hurt like anything in the shower, and has necessitated band aids every class since them. Wow. Ah yeah, and my fingers hurt, too.

One night we worked on omoplatas. Oh yes. Big sigh. O-dear-o-platas. I had two left legs and two left arms and couldn't coordinate shit. It was sad. Sometimes, in a wrestle, I hit an omoplata out of the blue, but if I try to set one up, I can't for the life of me get my hips into place, let alone get my arms and legs sorted. I think that needs a lot more work. But I'm sure it will happen. One day... :-)

A couple of classes were spent on rubber guard. I don't mind that, having long and relatively flexible legs. It's another type of guard I can hassle people with.

The rest of the time in class and open mat of course were spent on having fun. I rolled slow with those who wanted, did some stuff from standing with the guys going to the comp, and helped some of the new guys with specific problems they were encountering.

I focussed on not getting hung up about having to do well, so I deliberately let stuff go and trying for things I don't normally do. I think that was good. I accidentally found sweeps where I hadn't seen any before and I discovered a way to the back from half guard bottom. I also had success against the nemesis :-) Managed a sweep, had an fairly effective open guard, got top positions a few times and even managed to choke him out once. I was ecstatic just over the sweep and the open guard!! That aside, I had a number of really good rolls with some of the senior guys.

I've given up worrying about not having a coherent game plan, or stringing several techniques together, or better still, attack with one technique and setting up the next by capitalizing on their defence. I'm sure that will all come to me when the time is right. I've learned that nothing is fixed, my knowlege and my skill levels are expanding (though sometimes it doesn't feel that way), and just because something has not been working doesn't mean that it will never work. So I'm getting more patience. The puzzle pieces are slowly but surely being added to the big picture, and big chunks will start emerging soon enough.

The other day I had a mini insight. I was travelling to class and thinking of what sweeps might be possible from an open guard position I've recently been getting to. I think it's called Z-guard. Anyway, as I was picturing my position and my opponent's positions and trying to figure out what I could do to take away his base and sweep him, something occured to me. I can't just look at the position and the grips (both of us), but I must consider the pressures. For example, it would be vastly different if he sat back as opposed to him coming forward to try and stack me. So the two types of pressures would need different sweeps. And then the next consideration is what I can do to maybe change his pressure to set him up for something I want.

And suddenly, it's all even more complicated :-)

I think I will ask my instructor about this, and then I can go and experiment and think about it some more.

amazing

2011-03-14T09:20:00.000+11:00

Following a post on the UG Forum, I found a story about DJ, a BJJ student. He went from 179kg (396lb) to 79kg (179lb) in just over two years.

That is nothing short of amazing. Just think of it: he lost more weight than he ended up weighing. Or put in other words, he is now less than half the size he was when he started. My hat off to DJ and to the people at his school who helped and supported him.

I've read other stories about big weigh losses and life transformations through training BJJ or other demanding activities. It can be done!

My wish is that more of the big people can be motivated to help themselves. I see so many of them. But then again, there are so many people of all sizes whose main exercise area is the couch in the loungeroom. Too busy, too old, too tired, too unfit (!) are the most common excuses cites when some form of exercise is suggested.

We don't all have to turn into fitness freaks. But everyone can do something to help improve their health and their life in general. And those folks like DJ, who have made extraordinary changes, are an inspiration to others.

beginner advice - repost

2011-03-12T17:10:00.000+11:00

I'm reposting Nev's post on the Aikido Journal. I think all this equally applies to BJJ. Enjoy!

NON TOXIC DOJO - STOP BEATING YOURSELF UP!

When you train ENJOY.
Enjoy movement for its own sake.
Do not obsess with “getting it right” the first time, then stand around beating yourself up mentally because you think you are wrong.
Or chattering.
You are not on display.
It is not an exam.
You are not wrong.
Simply try to come close.
Then repeat.
And continue repeating.
As the mind-body-ki connection is healed through practice THE TECHNIQUE WILL REFINE ITSELF.
Not because of stress or volition or undue striving.
Nor because of intellectual understanding, which will come with time, but because you are MOVING.
Movement is life.
Breathe and move.
Do the best you can do for that moment and let it go.
You are not here to be judged or to judge yourself harshly.
You are in the dojo to unlock and release all that junk that is getting in the way of you being YOURSELF.
The dojo is a place where with respect, you have permission to be YOU.
So drop the social acting, role plays and expectations.
BE YOU.
Stalling in this way is useless.
Trying to intellectually understand a technique before doing it is futile. MOVE!
Do something. Anything is a good start.
There is no “wrong” movement, just less or more harmonious movement but you can only make a start from where you are at right now!
The more you move, the better it gets and improvement is guaranteed!
Provided you do move.
Standing around thinking is a waste of time.
Just do what is best for you for that moment. AND LET IT GO. Forget it.
Tomorrow is another day.
Remember, however, that it is a martial art and one thing which will get you hurt or killed in a real situation is freezing.
This freezing is a reflection of old trauma, parental abuse and bad schooling where you were told you were wrong, embarrassed, humiliated, violated, or abused.
None of these are teaching techniques.
They are abusive.
The error lies with the abusers.
Reclaim yourself… MOVE.
You are not expected to do a technique perfectly for the first 500 years.
And after 5000 years you have to begin refining again.
And…
It never ends but now is now.
Start with a single step.
Even the best sensei and the greatest master is still learning and will continue to do so.
So when you train do so for enjoyment.
Yes it is a dojo, show respect.
Yes it is a combat art, be aware, awake and vigilant.
Yes it is physical, mindful and intense so be present.
But above all leave your ego, your worries, the world and the past OUTSIDE.
When you bow onto the mat you enter a ‘spiritual’ domain where you and your dojo compatriots are dancing with The Great Cosmic Universe.
Nothing else matters.
There is nothing wrong with you.
We all get a tad “rusty” from the rigours of life on earth and lack of regular fine tuning and proper use
And though many will not admit it, we all started with some degree of clumsiness, two left feet, all thumbs and possibly even bad suicide habits from other arts.
That’s life. Accept it. Accept yourself. And accept that all new endeavours carry some measure of discomfort because CHANGE is disturbing the inertia of old entrenched habits.
This too will change, but only with regular, manageable installments of regular training input and movement.
Transformation is guaranteed but it takes time and due season and cycle to bear fruit.
There is great healing in this, for you, for those close to you, for society and ultimately the world.
So enjoy training, MOVE and be kind to yourself.

more figure fours

2011-03-01T23:12:00.000+11:00

Monday night we worked on attacks from closed guard. Following last week's theme of figure fours, we first drilled the figure four from guard.

Then we looked at the hip bump sweep and got in a fair few reps just working on getting good technique at smashing our hip into our partner. Lots of reps. It was pretty jarring to be on the receiving end, but it was really good to get a feel for it. It's a technique that's always been hard for me, and I think I have a much better handle on it now.

Next we looked at the hip bump sweep to figure four combination. Essentially, as he posts his arm on the floor to avoid being swept, we secure that hand by grabbing the wrist. Next, we separate that hand from his body (to forestall him grabbing on to something to defend later) by pushing our hip against his hand. For this, we have to open our closed guard, and I found I ended up sitting about 1/2 body width toward the side of his trapped hand. Next step is to bring my knee forward to tip his elbow towards me. That angles his body across mine and makes it much easier to reach over and get the figure four grip on my other arm.

Next thing I do is to bring his elbow to my armpit (on the side where I'm reaching over his arm) and then I rotate the lower arm for the submission. Bringing his elbow forward like that really makes the lock come on sooner. I experimented with this and found that by the time I reef his elbow across and into my armpit, I get the tap. If I just rotate the lower arm, I need to rotate it a long way.

When I looked at the angles, it corresponds perfectly with what Ryan Hall says in his back control concepts, where he talks about the figure four grip from the back. It made a big penny drop in my head.

We rolled for a bit at the end of the class. I had one partner only, one of the bigger white belts. For my taste, I spent a bit too much time having him in my closed guard and not enough time doing stuff. But I nearly got an armbar, and I got his back once, easily. Stupidly, I was too busy trying to choke him and not spending enough time ensuring I controlling him, so I lost it. Oh, and I was too busy laughing because a certain someone was making comments about the "poor guy". End result was he got away. Oh! Ah well, he had three chances to try for a submission from good positions, and ever time I got him back into my guard. In the end it was a fun roll. I could have done much better, could have worked more open. But what the heck, I'm not going to continuously beat myself up over stuff. He's a big boy, and I gave him a lot of grief. Plus, we both had fun and we both took something away from it, some thing was learned. And that is (to me at least) one of the measurements I apply to determine if it was a good roll.

busy, busy... but have progress to report

2011-02-28T13:02:00.000+11:00

My holidays are over. I'm back at uni and I'll be starting part time work as well. I still have some 28 horses at home and of course, I also train BJJ - about six times per week! That aside I'm trying to get a bit more painting done on the house, too. But I keep getting interrupted by bad weather anyway...

I feel a bit like a juggler at the moment, trying to keep everything up and not dropping anything :-)

After realising that I was going too hard and for the wrong reasons last Monday, I made an effort to ease off. I think that bore fruit. For me, it meant that I moved better, which showed up a lot during open mat, but really, any time I rolled. For my partners it was probably also better :-)

The week was a bit shorter than usual, as there was no class on Saturday.

One evening, I was partnered with a guy who was having one of those days when you think you are useless, and he really looked discouraged and upset. I didn't coddle him, but I ensured that I didn't smash him, either. Also, every time he made a good attempt, I told him so. Yes, I let him get sweeps, but only if he set them up right. I was hyper aware of not going hard to keep the upper hand. Instead, I let him work to good positions and then I defended and reversed. That way, we both benefitted. And when we finished up, I think his confidence had been restored a little.

During the week, the white belts worked on figure fours from side control, the rest of use started from half guard top and then we looked at a roll to finish the submission. One day, we went over a sequence from mount escape to half guard to lockdown and then how to sweep from there (three different ways).

I used some time during open mat to try out some of the back control transistions and subs from the Ryan Hall DVD set. Hey, that was fun, I finally got to try out the crutch lock and roll :-) That is so cool! The young guy I conscripted for the purpose thought so, too. Anyway, for his troubles I showed him two gi chokes which really lit his eyes up. Some of the other guys started hovering but I told them no, they have to wait (the young guy I did show is smaller and lighter than all of them, so I figure it's fair to give him a couple of extra "tools". Plus, us lighter people have to stick together ;-) ).

And it's not like I don't show everyone stuff anyway...

Another positive thing.. also during open mat: I started rolling with a fairly new guy and managed to get him to roll slowly, flowly and controlled. Had ro remind him a few times, but it did work. And he was amazed, because all of a sudden, he had time to notice opportunities, had time to try new moves and all that sort of stuff. A few times we stopped when he had questions. It was really good.

For me, that was way better than what I did to him ealier in the week....

of turtles and silly fools with egos...

2011-02-22T20:26:00.000+11:00

I got lucky. My cold didn't pan out to be a bad one and I felt quite good by Monday evening, so I went to training. I didn't even feel out of breath or tired. Good stuff!

We had a pretty large class. One guy had returned from a broken thumb and it was good to see him back again.

We briefly revisited the turtle attacks from last week: clock choke and crucifix. I got myself a purple belt to drill with. He hadn't seen the alternate roll to crucifix and I had trouble explaining it from the bottom :-) Sensei to the rescue!

We then looked at transitioning from the front to the side to the dovetail position and how to unturtle the turtle by cupping the far knee while loading the near hip and pulling him to 5 o'clock. Having pulled him off base and so exposed him to attacks, we looked at a figure four, or if he defends and turtles, start over again. All in a sort of drill, sort of see-what-happens scenario.

I discovered a way to go back to turtle if he threatens my arm. To begin with, I felt pinned and exposed when he turned me over from turtle and hunted for my arm. But I found if I stretched out the leg nearest him and dropped that hip to the floor, I could easily re-turtle. That was my genius moment for the evening.

Us blue belts got sent out and the rest was instructed to roll, which they did with relish. As people were tapped out, we went in. There was a guy I had had problems with in the past, because though he is new, he is fast, strong and goes hard as nails. So if I could have picked one I didn't fancy rolling with, it was him. I'm such a chicken at times.... I've really struggled with him in the past. So guess what, he tapped out this other white belt and it was my turn with him next.

What ensued lasted the whole time until the end of class. I tried for a snap down but failed, and then it wasn't hard to pull guard after that. From sheer strength, he avoided my high guard armbar attemps. But of course it means my technique wasn't good enough, too. I looked for other attacks but I will admit that I was too concerned keeping my guard closed to control him and not enough to hunt for submissions. Finally, I had opened up to attack his arm and he passed to half guard. I tried for deep half but didn't quite succeed and he eventually got my back. I managed to turtle and so he had time to try out the new stuff from the class. However, I easily defended all of that. Finally, I got back to bottom half and lockdown. And there I got stuck. I tried to sweep, I tried to get out. But the bottom line was this: I was too cowardly to open my lockdown and look for opportunites. I was so concerned about not getting into a worse spot that I mucked around and hung in and wasted my and his time. Then time was called.

On the one hand, I was happy that I can defend well and even threaten a guy bigger, faster and stonger than myself. On the other hand, I was pissed that I couldn't do better. And there lies the crux of the matter. Instead of saying "who cares" and go all out for something interesting, I was worried about "losing". Dammit!! I was worried about getting squashed and tapped out. And I'm not talking about getting hurt, at no time did I feel I needed to protect myself from a spazzy uncontrolled white belt. Yes, he was going too hard. Yes, he was frantically hunting for stuff. But hey, I'm big and old and ugly enough to not expose my precious limbs. The honest truth in hindsight is that I was too chicken to play and experiment because I didn't want to risk getting into inferior positions, or "losing". Bah!

My first response after was to ask Sensei about a bottom halfguard escape. As he began to show me one, I couldn't help but say: I've just answered my own question: I should have opened lockdown and gone for something. And it turned out, the two escapes he showed me, I already knew. AAARRGGHHH!

I am such an idiot.

We then had a brief talk about me needing to stop worrying about things, and if need be, deliberately letting things go and tap. Ain't the ego such a fantastic thing??

And here is little old me bitching about the guys going too hard and needing to learn to roll slow. Time to eat my own words and choke on them!

I have a drive home that takes about a half hour. Plenty of time to reflect on things. Boy, did I do some reflecting.

choking turtles and other funny business

2011-02-20T20:02:00.000+11:00

I didn't go to class last Thursday. When I turned up for open mat on Friday, I was told that the guys missed me... AAAAWWWW!

:-)

I also heard that the Wednesday night class was well received. Obviously it was talked about and given the seal of approval by the participants as well as our instructor. How good is that??

The joint mobility warm up I gave them also had chins wagging. I heard I made them do such terribly(!) complicated arm movements and other weird stuff. It was soooo hard. Sensei asked if I made them do my favourite weird and complicated arm movments, but when I explained that all I expected were figure eights, we both had a good laugh. But I got talking to one of the Karate BBs who has done some FlowFit and wanted to know if I knew of it. As it happens, I do have that DVD, as well as some others. So we might get our heads together some day. From there we started talking about kettlebells etc.

Ha, it's funny how one experimental evening class has led on to so many other things.

Anyway, I took open mat easy because I didn't feel so fantabulously fit and well. I suspected the beginnings of a cold, and that prediction has in fact come true :-(

So I started by slow rolling with the nemesis, and I think we did some really good stuff. He is very controlled and we got a great flow going, with loads of good transitions. Terrific warm up. We laughed, as after 10 minutes, we had warmed up and learned something in the process. The other guys were heaving and panting. I'm not saying they didn't learn anything... Anyway, we proceeded to a normal speed roll with submissions, and I promptly fell victim to his methodical crushing annihilations. Sorry, I have bright moments, but overall he still kills me. That's why I gave him that nickname. But pssst! don't tell him ;-) And when I grow up, I'll crush him!

I had a couple of rolls with another white belt. Similar size, a bit less experience. He rolls more open, and by being more aggessive, he opens stuff up. So with him, I tend to have much more luck, not just escaping, but everything else. I often catch him in subs, too. Mind, he will give me hell's own trouble once his escapes get better and he learns to be tighter. He had a few question regarding (you guessed it) escapes, so at the end, I showed him a few things to help escape mount and side control, emphasizing that he should start escaping before his opponent settles. He did very passable hip elbow escapes at the end.

On Saturday, Sensei asked me to take the warm up, and just do joint mobility stuff. Haha, more figure eights for the guys... More frowns. I also asked for figure eights using the hips. Oh dear. Haha. And then, to annoy them, I said that with a bit of practice, they would make reasonable belly dancers. Sensei thought that was funny, and pointed out that the other lady who used to come and grapple teaches that in her spare time. Foolishly, I replied that I, too, used to bellydance. That brough a chorus of "oh No!" from the ranks. :-)

Then, in the spirit of the era of experimentation and crazy stuff, we were told to wrestle (lightly), but with a twist. We had to start by lying belly down on the floor, facing each other and gripping hands. Then, imagining we had to stay low like in a commando crawl, we had to try to submit each other. As there were "imaginary machine guns" at about Sensei's eye level (sitting down), it was imperative NOT to sit up. In fact, any body part sticking up was "shot". At one point I lifted my partner's leg with a hook from guard bottom, just so it would be shot at. :-) Mean. Ha. And then was just getting around to choking him when we had to stop.

After all that folly, we were paired up and worked on attacking turtles with clock chokes and crucifixes. I think I have this clock choke business pretty worked out. And I even managed to roll over well to get the crucifix. The only thing that went wrong was an elbow I got to the side of the head. But it was purely accidental, and I forgave him immediately.

For the last few minutes, we wrestled. Though I wasn't feeling totally fantastic, feeling the advancing cold, I made a thoroughly good job of dominating my poor partner. It is soooo nice to be paired with someone about my size. Sweeps work! At one point I got some overhook on his arm from guard bottom, with my hand in the opposite collar. But somehow I couldn' finish the choke. So I swept him and finished it from mount. I probably couldn't keep the dumb grin off my face. I'm just not used to actually stringing stuff together, let alone plan ahead. And a similar thing happened again. Lots of time to think. My partner fell into white belt habits again, straining hard. But for a change, I didn't just strain against him, instead I worked around it. So that felt really good and made for a nice finish to the week.

And now it's Sunday night, my nose is running, my eyes watering and I'm hoping that by tomrrow night I'll be ok. But probably it'll take another day. Meanwhile, I'm working my way through watching the Ryan Hall DVDs. Really good stuff, can't wait to try it all out.

turtles, deep half and slow rolling

2011-02-17T22:23:00.000+11:00

I didn't head to Geelong this week, and I missed out on training tonight. So it's just been three classes so far this week. Booooh!

I just wasn't up to the double session at G'town, followed by the Wednesday double. It's hard slog for me and I've learned to listen to my body a little these days. The last thing I want to do is burn myself out, this is a marathon, not a sprint. With the high humidity, all classes are tough anyway. So, with a bleeding heart, I gave it a miss....

Anyway, Monday night we did some more work on entries to the deep half guard. I drilled with one of the guys who missed all the deep half sessions so far, so I helped him with things. And unlike last week, my rollover to a single leg worked fine this time. So I was happy with that. I guess I just needed to get some more reps in.

We rolled for a fair while. Interestingly, I got people's backs a couple of times, at least the seat belt grip. I experimented with the stuff I learned on the Ryan Hall Back Attacks dvds, trying to pin myself to their back. Through I can't say it was great, I definitely felt like I had more control, and both guys had to work very hard to escape, even though I wasn't positioned very well and didn't have hooks in. Goody. That aside, one of the guys was hunting for leg locks and caught me several times. This needs work! Much better were several of my escapes out of his armbar attempts. And I got high closed guard on him, controlled his far arm and got very close to taking his back or doing a figure four. He commented later that he had great trouble and he thinks I'm very strong.

That was meant as a compliment, however, I don't really want to hear that I'm using strength. On the other hand, if I can manage to continue to improve my technique, then decent arm strength will be an attribute I can throw into the mix when skills are more even.

On Wednesday, we worked on attacking the turtle. Transitions from head to head to the side, clock choke and crucifix. It was a very intensive session. I finally figured the correct way for that transition. I had been circling out and around in an attempt to get to the side and drive my knee between his elbow and thigh. Turned out I need to drive the knee straight forward against his thigh, then angle off. That angling off and driving the knee in gives the necessary penetration. The pushing and twisting motion does the trick. Also, by going straight, I'm not telegraphing the move and take less time. So he has too little time to block me with the arm on that side. Big light bulb went on!! That aside, it felt a lot neater, tighter and faster. And on the way through, my hip lands on the back of his head, keeping him busy...

The clock choke I had learned before, but I was very glad to review it. A few more little things dropped into place in my head. And my first choke attempt resulted in a very fast and strong tap, and someone with red eyes (momentarily, thank goodness). Main thing to remember there is to slide down before switching the hips out. I certainly didn't need to walk very far around the clock to get the tap..

Finally, we looked at the crucifix. How to set up the trapped arm and switch it so that his hand points to his feet (because once rolled over, it gives me far better control over his upper body). It took me a bit of brain pain to work out how to move the legs to get that switch, but once I sorted my brain and my limbs, it was obvious and easy. We looked at two possibilities for chokes from the crucifix position and drilled both.

As I said, it was an intense session. So many aha moments, and not a new technique learned :-)

Wednesday night, it fell to me to take class. My instructions were to get the white belt guys to drill their respective syllabus stuff and roll the rest of the time.

I felt it was the perfect opportunity for an experiment. I had read Christian Graugart's blog post about slow rolling, and the drills he uses to teach people how to do it. So when we started class, I told the guys that I was going to use them for an experiment.

We did a very light warm up with just joint rotations, then I explained the chess drill and we all had a go, swapping partners a couple of times. Everyone was a bit tentative at first, but soon got the idea. Participants varied from experienced blue belts through to relatively new white belts. It wasn't long before everyone was experimenting...

We put in 20 minutes or so of drilling the basics as instructed, then went back to the slow rolling drills. The monkey drill was next. I was so busy experimenting with this crazy stuff that I didn't spend much time watching the others, but I did hear some laughing. We ended up with another round of the chess drill.

All in all it seemed well received and I think I've given them something to think about and to play with. They seemed interested to follow it up another time also. So I'm having great hopes that this will be a useful tool to get our group to understand and employ slow rolling.

Here is Christian's excellent instructional video on slow rolling:

grappling technique vs strength/size

2011-02-16T15:22:00.000+11:00

I recomment reading this excellent post by Liam:

BJJ Tips: Using BJJ / Grappling Technique to Beat Strength / Size?

a determined sack of potatoes

2011-02-13T19:01:00.000+11:00

I've had a week of ups and downs. Some days I felt I did great, other days, I felt like I'm the world's greatest klutz.

My open mat was fantastic. I moved well, I rolled methodical, controlled and had fun. I hit sweeps, a couple of subs and had some great aha! moments when we tried out stuff on one another. I actually went home that evening, thinking how great it is that some distant and hitherto unrelated techniques and positions suddenly all start to knit together. I even felt like I'm onto something resembling a deadly game plan which will make me a force to be reckoned with in the next comp. I didn't go as far as thinking I'm fantastic, but I really felt great about my wrestling.

Comes Saturday... Working on deep half entries and sweeps. Stuff that worked for me earlier in the week is suddenly not working any more. And new stuff had a hard time fitering into my head. I thought I got it, but when I tried to drill it, I was just a bundle of awkwardness. A klutz.

In horserideing, someone who sits on a horse looking shitty and awkward, we say that he/she sits like a sack of potatoes. Think bulging, lumpy sack with no balance. Ugly and ungraceful.

Well, I felt like a sack of potatoes on the mat.

And then I wrestled. I was destroyed by my fellow blue belt. I'm sure a sack of potoatoes would have put up a better show than what I did!! It was horrible. I was truly disgusted with myself. There were no sweeps (except the several he did to me!), there weren't even any decent escapes. There was only awkwardness and missed opportunities. He went a little harder than what I expected. But hey, THAT should not be an issue. And it sure isn't an excuse for me.

I certainly wasn't happy with myself. But at least I didn't get all pissy with myself about it, I managed to shrug it off.

As we sat in the line up after finishing, Sensei said a few things. He said he was happy with the wrestling he'd seen from everyone. He also said a few things about his expectations of people. He reminded the white belts that it's a journey. That to get their fourth stripe, they need to be able to demonstrate correct techniques, but they also have to show 20 different techniques while wrestling. Not necessarily succeed, but make a valid try which shows they know when and how to use it. Then he went on to say that to get a coloured belt, we are expected to show not only correct techniques, and the ability to apply them, but also a certain mindset and the ability to persevere. Finally, he added that he compares his BJJ blue belts with his Karate black belts. Not so much in terms of technical knowledge (the Karate students to have to know a lot more stuff), but certainly in terms of dedication and determination.

That blew me away.

four days... six classes

2011-02-11T13:28:00.000+11:00

Ok, ok. I've already admitted to being an addict. What else can I say??

In Monday night's class we worked on half guard and lockdown escapes.

Tuesday evening I went to Geelong. I took two of our three stripe guys with me who wanted to try the intermediate class. And another one of ours met us down there.

First up was the advanced class. John showed us some variations of a sweep from hooks in (in USA known as butterfly guard). We drilled first the movement pattern, then worked on positioning and locking ourselves to our opponent using the hook, the knee and the grip on the belt on his back. Finally, we looked at several possibilities for blocking his free arm from posting. There was the overhook, underhook with grip on the sleeve near the tricep. Another possibility is to grab the sleeve, push down hard and scoot our butt next to it. Finally, if we can't get the arm, we can push the neck away with the forearm, reach over his back to grab cloth and sweep him over his head.

The intermediate class was about side control escape to knees, controlling the top, changing position and finally attacking with a rolling lapel half nelson choke.

Of course, there was much wrestling during the classes. I was caught in a knee bar once, in some chokes, too. Tried hard to get the hooks in sweep we did in class, but just couldn't set it up/get to the starting position. But I did manage some other sweeps, caught a front choke, and an armbar on the hugest guy in the intermediate class. This guy is huge :-)

I found though that I was going too hard, too fast. One guy actually remarked on that. Shame on me, I should know better. And because I'm not taking the time, I'm rushing instead of thinking and my wrestling is worse. That aside, I suspect I'm muscling stuff. Not good. I was hoping that by doing so many sessions and being tired as a result, I would stop doing it, but it's not yet working.

Wednesday, back on the mat at the home dojo by lunchtime, I was fatigued. And still going hard. I must have too much bloody energy. Didn't help with much with one of the tall, strong white belts. Made a mistake and he got my back. Guys with super long legs are hard to get off my back!! So I tapped to a back choke. Second round went much more my way, but it was time out before I could do something nasty to him. Another guy I caught in an armbar after totally frustrating him with high closed guard. Yet another, newer guy, I shamelessly dominated and submitted several times. That led to some funny remarks from our sensei about my aggressiveness. Hrrmpf. It's one thing being called troublesome, but I feel that warning guys that I'm mean, that just isn't fair ;-)

Aside from a lot of wrestling, we did some deep half guard entries and a rolling sweep to a single leg. After that class, I felt totally wasted. And I noticed that if I get tired, I don't slow down (much), but I do revert to "safe" stuff, which in my case is closed guard and my favourite attacks from there.

Wednesday night's class was taken by one of the blue belts and we drilled four complimentary attacks from north/south: the N/S choke, anaconda choke, d'Arce choke and figure four/kimura. I was kind of glad there was no wrestling, as I was just about dead on my feet :-)

Thursday was about escapes from switch base side control and headlock control. Both involved getting my near hip close, bridge up, get under his hip and roll him over. We also did a little drill where we used that escape from headlock control, but just as we bridge our partner onto his head, he lightens his feet and jumps over to get headlock control on the other side.

Oh, and we wrestled some more. To my shame I have to admit I was rushing again. This led to being taken apart by one of the purple belts. Just wasn't thinking straight, to the point of launching a half-assed attack on his neck while he's busy passing to side control. Where I should have just concentrated on escaping side control, even before he arrived there. Doh. Only good thing I can say about those rolls is that I was very successful in defending back attacks. However, it would have been better if I hadn't given up my back in the first place...

What was nice is that I avoided several triangle attempts from our resident master of triangles. I managed to pass his horrible guard without getting triangled or swept. However, then I proceeded to waste my time trying to peel one of his arms out from side control when I should have just done something else. I get so stuck on one thing, I fail to see other possibilities. Result: he escaped. I can be such a meat-head...

We finished off by doing some drills to maintain back control. I find I'm a lot more successful in maintaining a good seat belt grip nowadays, and that makes things so much easier.

I guess I'll have plenty of stuff to work in in open mat tonight :-) And top of the list: slow down and use technique!

where are all the grappling women?

2011-02-08T11:47:00.000+11:00

I was hoping to compete in a small grappling comp last weekend. I recently joined the Victorian Wrestling Association because they run several grappling tourneys per year in the Melbourne area. There was a comp on Sunday and I put my name down for it. Sadly, no other women entered. :-(

I'm hoping there will be some female competitors at future events. On April 10, they are running the Australia Cup, which will include grappling and pankration matches. This will be run under FILA rules. More details are on the AusPankration Website.

Ok, girls, pull your fingers out and enter!!!

I've been in touch with Jack from VWA. He suggested something else of interest. On March 5, there will be refereeing clinics in Melbourne for grappling and combat grappling. His argument is that a female referee may have a positive effect in drawing more women into the sport. Well, the question is whethere I have the necessary experience to be useful as a potential ref. But it certainly sounds interesting.

That aside, there is a More Grappling Round Robin Grappling tourney coming up at Dominance MMA in Melbourne, also on the 5th March.

The Victorian BJJ Championships are scheduled for March 18-20. Also in Melbourne. That will be gi and no gi.

And looking further down the track, the date has already been set for The Gathering, which are the Will Machado Championships:

P.S.: the lack of female competitors does of course raise the question whether mixed matches should be allowed. This is just being discussed over at Georgette's blog. I personally don't have an issue with it. In fact, the no gi More Grappling RR in 2010 which I competed in was mixed.

great escapes

2011-02-07T15:08:00.000+11:00

We spent two days last week on side control escapes. It was mostly about escaping from short base side control when your opponent has a nice tight gable grip under your far shoulder, and your far arm is exposed.

In all cases, the first job was to get the near elbow back. If they have good, tight control, they will have it blocked between the back of their elbow and their hip. Essentially, what it takes is a little hip escape towards their hip, with the aim of pivoting my body around my bellybutton. This will move my head and right shoulder away from their near hip a fraction. If, at the same time, I suck in my elbow, I'm nearly always able to get it back in so that I can put my forearm against their near hip. That in itself was a bit aha! moment for me, because I always have struggled with getting my elbow back in.

One of the escapes involved bridging and getting the head free so I can pivot around their far arm and end up head to head. The other one was if I can't get the head free. In that case, I trap a leg. I need to get the arm that was wedged against their hip between their legs. Then I grab the pant leg of the far leg until I can hook my far leg over it and effectively go to half guard. The rest is a hip escape or two under them, grab the near pant leg and sweep. That seemed so very hard at first, until I realised that the more they try to hug you tight to hang on, the easier it is!

Later on, I learned another version which works if they are so tight I can't get the bridge to make any space for my head or arm to move. I wriggle up until I can get my butt between their legs. So instead of having their one knee against my shoulder and the lower one against my hip, the lower one is now more near my upper thigh. From that position, I can fish for his lower leg with my closest leg. As soon as I can, I get my heel over his leg. I use that control to also get my other leg over his. Next step needs a bit of wriggling until I can step my nearer leg between my far one and his trapped one so that the toes are under his leg. This hook now pushes up to control while I insert my far foot also below his thigh. So now I have two hooks under his leg. I can lift with both and get him into my hooks in (aka butterfly) guard. That sounds dreadfully complicated, and I was very confused when I first saw it. But it made perfect sense once I tried. It's just a case of getting the opponent low enough that I can systematically step my feet across until I have two hooks under his leg.

So most of the first part of the week was mount escapes and side control escapes. Drills and positional rolling. I know I always say it sucks (especially when it's hot - and it was!). But escapes are SO important, and there were several new concepts for me to absorb.

I took one class during the week. I made everyone work on their syllabus stuff and helped where needed. Aside from that, we rolled a fair bit. It was good to see one of the blue belts back on the mat who had been away for several months. He beat my arse, but so what :-)

I used open mat to go over some of the side control escapes again with Ben. Also, I showed him the kimura control from the back which I'd seen on Ryan Hall's DVD (more about that in another post when I've seen the whole set). I wanted to have a feel of how effective this is, and we were both surprised how much of a difference it makes.

Saturday class had a new theme: knee ride. We did a couple of drills to work on transitions to knee ride from side control. It also gave me a chance to get in reps of the near armbar from knee ride. Another thing which I could never do properly in the past. For some weird reason (and somewhat unexpectedly), on Saturday my armbars were neat and tight. Not only that, I was able to help my partner a lot with it as well.

Knee ride is a position I never used, because I didn't feel I had enough balance or control. But I'm working my way in from the edges. Every time we do knee ride stuff in class, it feels better. So I welcome every opportunity to learn more about it. One of the drills we did really fits in with my game. We went from knee ride to a slide across with the knee, then knee to the far armpit for high mount while taking the near arm across. We block that arm with our chest and have a lovely high mount with possibilities for armwrap to choke, armwrap to armbar or just plain armbar or head/arm choke.

Rolling-wise it was a mixed week. On the one hand, I had a lot of success in stringing together high guard to sweeps to mount to armbar attempts, or high guard to armbar attempts or take the back and get chokes. But in open mat I was choked three times in a row. Two front chokes and a rear choke. Seems like I need to sharpen my choke defense.... What else? My nemesis walked all over me in open mat as well, yet, another day we rolled for a long time. No, I couldn't submit him, but I made several attempts which threatened him, and I succcessfully used open guard to keep him at bay. Also, my escapes worked a treat, which I needed because he swept me several times. We called it a draw after quite some time. For me, that's a big win. That was in many ways more satisfying than the way I manhandled a couple of the lighter guys during the week.

It is funny how at the moment, I don't have a gameplan like I seemed to have until recently. In a way, so many other avenues are opening up. I never needed to worry what to do from mount, because I never got there, or couldn't hold it for more than two seconds. All I had were attacks from closed guard and the rear choke if I managed to do an armdrag to get to the back. Suddenly, I'm finding myself in top positions. And strangely, I usually can think of a thing or two to do from there :-) So I feel like I'm spoilt for choice.

Time to go and sit down with my written game plans again. With a comp coming up in two months, I better get my head around some sort of game plan!

But I do want to work on back control more, and that's the reason I bought the Ryan Hall Back Attacks set. Already, I'm using bits and pieces here and there. Anyway, I'll write about that another time.

boxing gloves and mouth guards

2011-02-01T12:10:00.000+11:00

It was hot in class last night. It had been stinking hot all day until the clouds came over. Then the temperature dropped from about 40 degrees C to just over thirty. But the sprinkle of rain sent the humidity through the roof, so it wasn't exactly a relief. I assume that training in Rio would feel similar :-) It was horrible in the dojo, and wile we took of the gi tops straight away, it was a sweat-fest. The joys of summer...

I was paired with my nemesis (hope he never reads this blog ;-) ). My job was to help him with his third and fourth stripe syllabus stuff. Armbars, armlocks and headlock escapes. As always, I found it harder to explain than to do it myself. However, thinking about it to help me explain a technique probably makes me understand it better in the long run. But I did manage to help him with several things and he got a lot of reps in.

That took up most of the class, everyobody working in pairs and groups on stuff they needed. Towards the end, we were sent to get the boxing gloves and mouthguards and do a bit more striking mixed in during rolling.

After going through the guys smaller than me like a dose of salts last week, and feeling (only very mildly) guilty about it, I sort of half expected the system to take revenge on me by sending me someone bigger. And as I pulled into the parking lot I had a fleeting thought of how horrible it would be to be under the nemesis while he's trying to hit me, too. I dropped that thought in horror.

So of course I ended up trading blows with him. Can the instructor read my mind? I think he can, sometimes...

In the end it wasn't so bad. I managed to hit him a few times, and locked him up in my guard. Funny how the threat of being hit curtails some techniques. For the first time in ages, I managed to threaten him with an armbar from guard. Didn't get it, but had him worried. Had more luck keeping him off with open guard, and managed to stand up and back away once. So all in all, more success than I expected. But a far cry from beating up the smaller guys. Ha.

Interestingly, I'm not bothered by the mouthguard. I used to wear one when I did stand up sparring during Karate and PFS classes, but haven't worn one in BJJ, not even in comps. Don't know, always figured it would annoy the hell out of me while rolling. But having worn it on and off for the last week, and grappled fairly hard while wearing it, I've come to the conclusion it's no big deal. So maybe I should make a habit of wearing it at least some of the time so that I'm ok with it in comps. Wouldn't be a bad idea, I suppose.

women rolling

2011-01-31T10:28:00.000+11:00

Stephanie has posted a great video about women in BJJ on her Jujitsunista blog. Check it out:

Sure looks like plenty of women enjoy the art, doesn't it? Maybe some of the folks who gave their opinion on this Sherdog thread should watch it :-).

I don't usually go on about women in BJJ. I'm the only one at my school. I very rarely think of being different, and I certainly don't feel awkward. There are funny moments, for sure, but the guys at my school and the other schools I visit are totally cool. I couldn't care less for women only classes for me personally. I just think that more women should take up BJJ, and if women only classes get them started, then I'm all for it. I think the video gives a glimpse of how much BJJ means to those women who not only give it a go, but stick with it. Despite the hardships. Or maybe because?

As for me, BJJ is one of the best things I've ever discovered. I couldn't imagine my life without it.

wouldn't it be nice...

2011-01-30T10:54:00.000+11:00

...if there was a place on the web where people can look up accurate gi sizes?

Something like a table or spreadsheet where for every gi brand, every model and every size on offer, there are jacket and pants measurements? Maybe a google spreadsheet or some such thing...? Preferably it would have before and after shrinking measurements. Something like the way Seymour does in his reviews, for example see the RDA gi review. If the gi manufacturers were so kind, they could provide this information. Otherwise, it could be added by people who buy gis. Eventually, it could end up being quite a complete collection of sizing info.

I'd also love to see a collection of links to all gi reviews made for every gi type. Again, to help people decide on what they require.

It would make gi buying so much easier!

It bugs me that there is such a vast difference in sizing. Every new gi purchase is a guessing game. I have bought A3s that fit, A3s that were too big, A2s that fit, A2s that were too small and A2s with sleeves too long and pant legs too short :-(

If the makers can't decide on a sizing standard, then at least it would be a very good start to have a central place where all the measurements are kept.

hit and miss

2011-01-29T14:48:00.000+11:00

The hardest, yet most fun part of this blog is to think up titles. Sometimes I can't think of something clever to say, other times it's easy :-)

Another whole week has passed. It was a shorter week than usual (from a training point of view) as we missed the two Wednesday classes because that was the Australia Day holiday. I also didn't make it to Geelong this week, because one of my cats hurt it's leg. So it was off to the vets with the furry critter. Poor sod has a broken toe, but the leg is ok.

Monday night's class was yet again on back contol escapes. Again, we did a bit of drilling the escape from back control, from mount and then from half guard, then sweeping to side control, go to north/south and do the boatramp to get back control. Rinse and repeat. Then we did positional rolling, starting from the back with hooks in but hands on shoulders. Everyone had a turn with everyone else. Good news is that I had a lot more success with this than last week, both holding the back and doing chokes and getting out. Even the bigger guys were more "manageable". Most memorable part of the night (for me) was when I started the last roll with one of the beast men, my nemesis. He'd waved me over with that look of "step here, I will end your suffering quickly" :-). As I sat down to take his back, I showed him my hands and said: "See these? They are KILLER hands". Beware!". So we start. And I was going to have that choke. One way or another. It took some doing, but I choked him. Yeah! Killer hands! :-)

Thursday and Saturday morning we did something a bit different. We were paired up. One partner put on boxing gloves. Then we practiced mount escapes with a few variations. First just a bridge and roll, then a frame and push on his hip while hip escaping. The latter works well if they sit back to take a good swing. Aim for both scenarios was to get to our feet and back away. So it was either pass guard and back away or shrimp out and then do a technical standup.

Today we also had a play with the scenario where someone punches while in our closed guard, and then in our open guard. We drilled that for a bit and eventually went to rolling from open guard where the person with gloves on can strike, the other must wrestle only.

It is just amazing how much the game changes when we need to watch out for punches. A lot of stuff came flooding back to me. It's over a year now since I've done any standup/punching but I seem to remember how to cover up :-) Mixing punching with wrestling is highly interesting, and I think it gives you much greater awareness of where your opponents hands are. From a self defence point of view, this is a reality check for sure.

Friday night's open mat was good fun. I had my arse kicked big time by a senior blue and a purple belt. I got out of a bit of stuff but I really, really need to think of my legs!! They are constantly under attack now and I still don't see it coming early enough. I did some interesting thing where I nearly ended up getting back control after I had my guard passed when my partner had his back towards my head. I was pushing on his head, shrimping backwards and then grabbed hold of his top arm. It nearly worked, and he commented on it later. Something I will investigate further..

I'm pleased that I'm feeling opportunities to sweep, and consciously make the necessary adjustment to get them. That is a vast step forward for me. The other thing which is finally happening is that look ahead for submissions. An example: after several rear chokes I wanted to chase something else. Got to mount and decided on a triangle, so I set up for getting a leg over one arm and then went straight for the triangle. Another: while rolling with one partner wearing gloves and punching, I decided on armbars, one each side. Did the first one from guard, the second one from mount. And I was the one wearing the gloves :-)

I'm in the fortunate position to have two white belt guys (good three stripers) who are my size and a bit smaller. Both are nice and quick, so they can be quite a threat, and both have caught me on occasion. What is great about rolling with them is that I can work on sweeps. And because I get top control relatively often, I feel my top game developing. On the one hand, I feel a bit of a bastard because I've smashed and choked and armbarred my way through them all week. On the other hand, I certainly have paid my dues in that respect for quite a long time. I need to work on attacking, sweeping, smashing. So why should I feel bad about it, when I'm not unduly rough or arrogant about it? I miss no opportunity to tell them when they have done something well or when they have really threatened me. And if one of them legitimately gets a sub, I won't thrash out of it, I will tap. For their sake and mine.

We all have ups and downs. Sometimes we think we have a down when in fact all is well, but people around us have an up. I was trying to explain that to someone the other day. Just because some technique worked for us for a while, doesn't mean it will work forever or on everyone. For starters, our partners in the dojo learn which our fave moves are and they learn how to avoid or get out of them. Then we have to get better, more cunning in the set up or move on to a new technique to catch them out. It's a constant evolution. And that's how we have to see it. That constant pressure evolves our game. And that is why tapping is part of the learning curve. We pressure test our technique in live rolls. We must try and we must fail until we find what works. And then we have to keep on evolving our game to stay ahead. Everyone around us on the mat also evolves. Everyone has their own direction and speed though. So at times we come up against seemingly insurmountable difficulties (like me with my nemesis!). Well, we just have to keep trying new stuff and learn from our mistakes until eventually, the previously inconquerable becomes merely another step in our evolution.

As we grow our trickbag of techniques, or balance, strength, resilience and general knowledge, we also grow as a person. This growth can't happen while we are motivated by the number of taps we get. It can only happen if we look at everything that happens as a learning opportunity. So what if I haven't tapped anyone all night, or even all week? It's totally irrelevant. I don't need to hang my head in shame if I spent all week improving myself.

Oh, and next time I'll feel down in the dumps, I will come back and read that :-)

But for now, I'm looking back on another fun week, where the world was in order because some of the time I had my arse kicked and some of the time, I kicked arse. Beware the killer hands, you big brutes!!

more back control

2011-01-23T11:45:00.000+11:00

We spent the rest of the week on back control escapes. Also on mount and half guard escapes. So by the end of the week, we were doing drills where we were stringing it all together.

The idea being that if we manage to escape back control, chances are the other guy will go for mount. Although we try and block him from doing that, he may succeed. At the point of realising he is going for mount, we should start escaping mount, rather than wait for him to settle.

So the drill was that we escape back control and our partner starts to mount. Right away, we connect our bottom elbow and knee and start the mount escape. Hopefully, he won't even get mount that way, but end up in half guard. Next step, again without waiting for him to settle in, we go for the half guard escape we covered last week. From there, we transition to side control. Or, if he exposed his back during the half guard escape, we can take his back.

The point was to learn to string escapes together to maintain the initiative, rather than letting our opponent settle. This requires the ability to figure out where his next move might go or at least recognise his next move in the early stages. Of course, it was also great to really rep out these escapes lots of times. I certainly found that I was getting quicker and smoother with all of them.

But the thing that most stuck in my mind is the concept that stringing things together works on the defense side of the roll as much as on the attack side. Ceasing the initiative and keeping it can this way can soon turn a bad position into an attack.

We had a look another technique called the boat ramp. It tied in with our back control oriented week. The boat ramp allows us to turn a north/south position into back control. We looked at the grips for no gi as well as how to use the lapels for grips.

During the week I had a few frustrations during rolls. We did a lot of situational rolling from back controls. As before, I had a lot of trouble with the bigger stronger guys. They simply shut me down. I described the feeling of having one of them on my back as "being strapped to a post". Not good if you can't move to even start an escape... Hmmm, there's a lot more work for me yet. It was a bit of a reality check. In days gone by, I wasn't too worried about giving up my back, I could hang out there, defend and eventually escape. As the guys are all getting better, it's no longer a safe place to hang out!

I was a bit disheartened in how I fared against some of the bigger guys on Wednesday night. But truth be told, it was during a class which was my fourth hour of BJJ within a 24 hour period, the evening after the Geelong visit. I had a big guy to drill with all evening before we started rolling. He's a fantastic partner, but it is more hard work than being paired with someone smaller. I was actually very fatigued by the time we started rolling. That in addition to always struggling with the big boys anyway, made it a tough session. But I did stay positive.

I will just have to keep working and get better :-)

to Geelong in style

2011-01-20T11:45:00.000+11:00

On Tuesday, I went to Geelong with Warrick. He decided to take his Trans Am for a spin :-) Ha, that rides a bit different to the cars I'm used to (both the Landcruiser and the Starlet!!).

We did the advanced class taught by John Will. Theme of the night were armbar escapes, both the running one and another which is good when the opponent does not have the leg across the belly. We did drills using both escapes. We looked at attacking the trapped arm with an omoplata if our opponent does the running escape.

We had a good amount of rolling. The advantage (for me) in going against higher belts is that they have a tendency to play more open guard, instead of smash and crush and smother... This gives me opportunities and I find I can work both my escapes and my top game and attacks. It's much more fun! I threatened both blue and purple belts with all sorts of things. Of course I didn't get all those things :-) But I got some. And I got caught in loads of things. The most memorable being three twisters by two different guys. A purple belt sprung the first one on me. Having never had it done to me, it was a surprise. Mind, I knew what it was when I was.. well... twisted.

Second time though I saw it coming, but not early enough. And by the time I realised, it was too late. Then, several rolls later, I was lucky to be paired with a black belt. We went here and there and then he starts the set up from half guard. I was wiser to it by this stage, but no matter where I went, and although I half escaped a couple of times, eventually he got me. I need to learn from this, one of my defensive positions gives an opening to lock my legs in. And I am fond of half guard bottom, which is another dangerous place to hang out.

After that, we stayed on for the intermediate class. The Bear had a car breakdown and couldn't make it, so a purple belt took the class. We started off with rolling with the fresh white belts. It is nice to see a young woman in this class. She is lighter than everyone but she has the best attitude and seems scared of nobody. And believe me, there are some big fellas i this class! I had a couple of rolls with her but mainly I helped her with things and played very lightly. I had mixed success with the guys. It's hard(er) when I'm already a bit tired and they come in fresh. After all, they are stronger at the best of times :-)

The class was about two guard passes, one standing one from closed guard and another from open (hooks in guard). We drilled those a fair bit which was great. They were very different passes, and I had a few problems getting my hips low enough to control his leg on the open guard pass. But eventually, I figured it out. It is exactly the thing I need to work on.

Then we played the pit game, with four in the pit whose guard had to be passed. They could choose open or closed guard. As with the rolling, I had mixed success. I got swept a few times, but when my turn came in, I also swept some people. Ditto with the passing. But by this stage of the class, I really was quite tired.

And then, right at the end, we had to do 20/10 tabata intervals with burpees, pushups, situps, lunges. Oh oh. Not fun, I must admit. It was only six minutes all up, but it sure felt longer than that!

And then we went home. By the time Warrick dropped me off, I really, really had trouble getting my aching and stiff body out of that infernal deep Trans Am seat. Oh man!

back control

2011-01-18T14:51:00.000+11:00

Monday night we worked on back control.

There were some fairly new guys in the class, so we started with the basics of back control: the seat belt grip and the hooks. Then everyone had a go at keeping back control when their partner started rolling around a bit.

Next thing covered were the two most common chokes form the back, the rear choke and the collar choke. Not from the point of view of applying the choke, but from the point of view of defending it and escaping back control. With a grip on the collar, we drilled escaping from back control. First, grab the choking arm with both hands, then fall to the side where he has our collar (or if you like: to the side where his choking hand points) so we can get our shoulder to the floor. Now we kick our bottom leg straight to dislodge his hook on that side and put weight on his bottom leg. Next step is to use our bottom hand and grab the pant leg on his top let. This is to ensure he can't come over the top and go to mount. Now it's a case of turning into him and we are in his guard.

I've used this escape plenty of times. Yet I didn't know about the hand to block his top leg. Which probably explains why more often than not, I ended up in mount as I scrambled to try and turn and end up in guard. So, a valuable lesson for me. Did I mention before that I pick up something every time we revisit 'basic' techniques??

We also looked at why it's unwise to cross feet when we have back control. It was just my luck that I happened to be the demo dummy for that part of the evening's proceedings. Ouch.

After that, we had a few rounds of rolling starting in back control. We were allowed hooks in, but hands only on shoulders. Just so our partners had a chance :-)

In my first roll, I started on someone's back. Ha, I snaked my right arm around his neck so fast it was scary, choke, bang! That elicited a giggle from the instructor who was walking past. I'm sure it will just make him say I'm mean ;-) After that, there were several other rolls. I was annihilated by a blue belt. He started on my back, and somehow I ended up in a scarf hold. From there, he pulled off his favourite, the armchair (I think that is what it is called). That is nasty. Do not like.

Then I ended up with a brandspanking new white belt. Big guy. On my back... I escaped but as I turned into him, I made the mistake of not blocking the top leg and he ended up in mount. I escaped that and got guard. He strained and pushed and tried to stack me, all the while attempting a figure four. That didn't work of course and when I tried to collar choke him, he started to grab my collar. If he had been my size, I would have just laughed, but a big boy like that, using all his strength is a different matter. So I went for feet on hips to keep him away. Somehow he realised I had gone to open guard and he grabbed my ankle and shoved it over, landing in side control. I didn't feel dreadfully threatened, but he was heavy. He smiled and told me it's good to be big and heavy. I nodded sagely (how could I argue?) and started escaping :-) . Some place in that roll I also ended up turtled and once I was in mount, but he just tossed me off...

Still, it is good to be reminded what new guys do. I'm pleased to say that while the big new guys still give me loads of trouble, they no longer freak me out. If they do muscle a submission it means I was careless and I need to work on that. But mostly, they get nothing, and I use the opportunity to hone my escapes and my open guard techniques.

Last couple of rolls were fun. Someone more my size. Less experienced, but explosive and squirmy. I caught him in a cross lapel choke from guard. Don't know how I got there. Next round was lively, but time was called. Great fun and we had a good laugh, too.

rolling, lots of great rolling

2011-01-17T14:20:00.000+11:00

Yes, that about sums up the rest of last week!

We had classes on Thursday and Saturday and open mat on Friday. The classes were split so that the guys worked on stuff as needed. Two totally new guys were going through their first couple of basic drills, and some of the three stripers were practising their fourth stripe stuff, like knee ride escape and headlock escapes.

So I spent some time teaching/helping with those things, some time getting one on one help with stuff I needed to work on and a lot of time rolling inbetween.

The thing I worked on on Saturday was the hip bump rollover sweep. That's one of the things which I occasionally manage to pull off, without ever quite knowing why it worked, because generally it does NOT work for me. Haha, very little escapes our instructor, so I wasn't suprised he picked that one out for me :-) It seems like most of it came down to hand placement. The hand that braces and pushes off. We did some tweaks and I spent some time practising and eventually I got the hang of it.

As before, I came up against the issue of self-destruction. What do I mean by that? Well, sometimes when I've learned a new technique, I try it out and it doesn't work so well (wow, now ain't that a strange and unusual thing!!). I have a fantastic habit of finding an explanation, be it that it's hard against big people or whatever. But the main problem is that I tell myself that I can't do it. And that is the real problem. I set myself up for failure for every other time I happen to try again. I have the expectation it won't work, so I'm half-assed when I do try and then lo and behold, I fail - which yet again reinforces that belief. I know I do it. I know it's stupid. And I still do it. GGRRR!

So at one point when I became frustrated, I actually stopped and said that the biggest problem is that I'm defeating myself. BUT that I wasn't willing to be defeated. Deep breath. Tried again with focus. And... made visible progress.

The main difference is that I now understand the technique better and the additional information will help me to tweak it further to make it work better. It's no longer a black box. But the revisiting of the technique has restored my confidence. I now believe that I can do it, even to the bigger guys. So watch my sweeps!!

Alright, but aside from all that, I had loads of time on the mat to "just" roll :-)

Gustavo joined us again for a class and for open mat. More rolling time with a black belt. Whoohoo!! He also showed me two of his lapel chokes from mount. Using his lapels. Both so simple, so tight. I prefer chokes over armbars/armlocks, so I'm sure I'll find some use for these. The caveat is that I need to get mount first :-)

But as luck has it, I'm actually getting mount these days. Gone are the days when I'd last all of .5 of a second mounted on someone (once every three weeks on average!) before getting rolled off. In fact, several rolls I had with some of our white belts, I got mount and maintained it well, even getting subs from there. For me, that is relatively new territory, but a nice place to be :-) In fact, one of the guys said that it felt very tight and controlling when I had mount on him, comparing it to one of the purple belts. Well, I must be doing something right :-)

Ok, so I can get good positions, I'm getting better at keeping them and I'm able to actually do some damage from there. So now I hit subs which I learned ages ago but could never get because of lack of good positions or lack of time there. So for example, I got the head/arm choke twice. And nearly a third time on one of the purple belts (he told me I was close, but I thought it wasn't working and let it go).

I'm getting sweeps, and I'm starting to be less proned to being swept. I think that I'm paying much more attention to posture and hip pressure. Some of it is conscious, ie: I'm thinking of positioning, I'm deliberately adjusting. But some of it is just happening on auto pilot. Then I go: oh, I just managed to base out, how did that happen?

But oh yeah, I still get swept plenty, and I still have ample time to practice my defences and escapes. Got a big compliment from a purple belt about making him string together a whole bunch of attacks before he finally succeeded in ripping my arm off. Ha, soon I'll be escaping and ripping HIS arm off ;-)

Another thing I did for the first time: I volunteered to start off in a bottom position for a roll with one of the white belts. I let him choose. We did some from half guard bottom, some from side control bottom. I figure I will benefit from the opportunity to work more escapes. Oh, and a couple of times I didn't succeed and I had to tap. Well, that gave him the the chance to work his top game.

So rolling went exactly how it should be: I worked my top game and assorted attacks on the white belts and worked my defence and escapes with the higher ranks. I had enourmous fun, whether I was hammering people or getting nailed.

I said to our instructor that I have the feeling that I'm starting to connect some of the dots. Stuff is starting to fit together in my head. Learning isn't just a case of adding new stuff, but to broaden the existing knowledge base and to find relationships, which help to deepen the understanding.

Wednesday with a surpise visitor

2011-01-14T14:01:00.000+11:00

I was fortunate to make it to two classes yesterday.

We are continuing to have the big wet. With the exception of yesterday afternoon, it's been raining more or less solidly since Monday morning. It is nowhere near as wet as it is in Queensland, but it's record rains for Victoria for this time of year. Thankfully the place I call home is not in a floodprone area...

With the big wet, humidity is near 100%. It's pleasantly warm. Last night, when the sun came out for a while, it soon warmed up some more and it felt much like being in the tropics. So much for the famous cold Ballarat weather :-). Anyway, as expected, the dojo was like a steambath, especially for the evening class. I took the warm up for the lunchtime class and we didn't need much warming up before starting to drip.

Then we had a surprise visitor. A guy walked in and asked if he could join in. Turns out Gustavo is a Brazilian BB, second degree. Do fish swim? Sure he could join in! We only had a small class with four white belts, a blue and myself and he looked like he wanted to roll.

Firstly, we did a few more reps of the arm drag techniques we did on Monday, and our instructor had a few rolls with Gustavo. Didn't get to see much of that as I had some issues with the technique we were practising until I finally figured out where all my limbs had to go. We were interrupted to watch a cool technique demonstrated by Gustavo. It started with a feint armbar, then the arms (both) were trapped with a gi lapel and then there was a forearm choke for the submission.

Then it was my turn to entertain Gustavo ;-) Honestly, I cnn't remember many details. He allowed me to get some good positions, only to sweep me at will. He seems to like chokes. He also likes to use his gi lapels to either choke people or to hold them or tie them down. So many of my usual escapes didn't work simply because there was always a hand, foot or gi lapel blocking my path.

He showed me a technique that beat one of my usual defences, which means that I'll have to think of something else now. Hm. As expected, I was doing all the work. In all, I had the impression that he sort of surfed on me :-) His control was either flowing or tight, and he was always several steps ahead of me. All roads led to being choked! What a learning experience. And what a nice guy.

The rest of the class, I helped some of the guys with their basics, while our other blue belt had a few rolls with Gustavo.

Best news of all: he will be back because he lives in Ballarat at the moment. So we will have further opportunities to roll with him. YEAH!!

happiness

2011-01-11T19:16:00.001+11:00

Happiness is... being back to normal BJJ classes. What bliss!

We had a very large class last night and it was great to see everyone again after the holidays.

The weather was warm and very humid after it rained most of the day. So, back in gi for the first time in about five weeks, we were all suffering a little bit. The mats were covered in small wet patches at the end of the night :-)

We paired up and did hip escapes. Our partner's job was to push forward and our job was to stiff arm his shoulder to keep distance, and hip escape away. After some laps of this, we turned this into an attack. As he pushes forward, I do a little escape, then I go for an underhook with the arm that has been used as a frame. I cup his shoulder from behind and pushing down on it, pull my leg out from between his to come to my knees. Finally, this became a half guard escape. My outside leg is over his trapped leg, and I use my shin against his thigh for control as I push down on his shoulder and get my other leg out.

At that point in time, I have a choice, either I can duck under his arm and take his back or I can attack his arm. The control is very good as I can exert a lot of pressure on his shoulder and I restrict his movement by having my shin on his thigh. It is not hard to just push into him and flatten him out, giving me side control or even mount.

We tried one more adjustment. Using the outside foot near his ankle, we wing out his lower leg to his outside. This turns his foot away from him and his knee towards his other knee. Now add the shin on the thigh and the underhook to get the shoulder to the floor, and you nearly have a submission. But certainly, it gives much more control over our opponent's body. With his near leg locked up in this fashion, it's impossible for him to try and push back into us, but I still have the option of going for side control, mount or back control.

After that, we wrestled. I worked with a small white belt first. We played for a bit with grips, trying to get the hang of sleeves and collars again. I made a point of going for open guard, managed a nice sweep. He is small, fast and aggressive (in a non-spazzy way), and fun to wrestle with. At one point he threatened me with a triangle/armbar when I did a standing guardpass (which was a bit sloppy...), but a shin on his forearm and small adjustments saw that I passed his guard. As I still had his arm pinned, I went for a kimura from north/south. Second round we didn't finish because we all had to swap partners.

This time around I had one of the very new white belts. He is a lot heavier than I. Again, I worked on open guard, but also on guard transitions. I let him work a fair bit and concentrated on using my hooks and doing sweeps. I talked him through some stuff, and tried to get him to start using his feet, by showing him how to push and pull with hooks, push with feet and shins. Also, after a scramble, to come back pushing in to flatten me. I know I'll regret that later ;-)

I had a really great time, and it was fun to grapple in the gi again, even though I had sweat rolling off me. I sure wasn't gassed or tired (I've adapted to 2+ hours of far harder training..), but the high humidity ensured I was sodden. We all were. But happy face all around!

summer has arrived

2011-01-07T16:30:00.000+11:00

We are due to resume BJJ classes next Monday. I'm really looking forward to that, though I've been sneaking in some training this week.

The summer so far has been pretty cool and pleasant, but I think the hot weather has finally arrived. That's perfect timing for training, haha. But I shouldn't complain, our last summer was so hot and started early and lasted seemingly forever.

I was just thinking this morning that it's been about a month of not training in the gi. That's the longest ever since I started BJJ. It's been good, and yet I'm also looking forward to do a bit of gi training. I like both!

I managed to catch up with a few of our local guys for a Monday and Wednesday session. It was really mostly open mat, but we were shown some deep half guard sweeps and we went over the Japanes Necktie and d'Arce choke (which sort of go together). Also, we looked at a lockdown escape and a variation leading into a cartwheel pass. Wheee! But mostly, lots of wrestling. Fairly easy, as people were coming back from time off.

On Tuesday I went to Geelong where one of John's BBs took the advanced class. It was a much smaller class than usual, and there, too, we took it a bit easy.

We worked on takedowns, mainly single legs, and variations on how to get the opponent to the ground once we have hold of his leg. The most interesting was a duck under and roll takedown while we have his leg trapped between ours. We literally duck under and roll over taking him with us. Looked easy, but the first few tries felt awkward. But after a few reps it made good sense and it felt easy.

Then we looked at how to achieve a takedown if we step both legs around the front of his trapped one, or to the back. Repped these out until they felt pretty consistent. We also looked briefly at entries, and what to do to off balance our opponent and get near that leg. Finally, we did single leg takedowns in a bit more of a live scenario, with our partners resisting so we could feel for which was the most appropriate way to get him down. I saw some very interesting variations, and came up with a couple myself ;-)

Aside from that, we had some rolling. I really don't remember too many details. I do recall getting choked by one of the BBs though.

Then it was the intermediate class. The guys came in for a warm up roll. I scored a very big boy, resplendant with mohawk and Tapout shirt... Clearly, he thought he'd have an easy time ;-) I wish I could say I kicked his butt, but that didn't happen. And I will say to his credit, he didn't muscle too much and didn't spazz at all. I had plenty of opportunity to switch from one guard to another and I managed to mostly stay out from under him. I attempted armbars from closed guard even. He finally pinned me after passing my guard and got a figure four. By this time, he was nicely warmed up for his class, and he said that I hadn't made it easy for him. Ah - that was as close to a compliment as I was likely to get. :-) I had him for a drilling partner later and found him to be good to work with.

What we worked on were a half guard escape and and escape from lockdown/grapevine.

Then more rolling, where again, I can't remember most details. I know I still spend too much time using closed guard. I did get the back a couple of times, as usual, from closed guard. My submissions tend to be front or back chokes. Time to get working on armbars and armlocks!

Oh yeah, funny moment of the night. I ended up with the huge guy for the last few rounds. My goal with him is NOT get on the bottom. Closed guard on him ends in disaster. Firstly I only just get my legs locked around him, so he can usually bust out, but worse of all is when he leans forward. You do not want to get stacked up under a mountain! So it's open guard and move, move, move! That was reasonably successful, as the fear of getting squashed sharpened my response times. We had to restart a couple of times because we were rolling into other people. From a kneeling start I managed a (sort-of) armdrag and scuttle to his back. Yeah, I thought, I'm in - a choke coming your way right now! Then he just sat back, leaning into me and laughed (!) as he pushed over the top of me. I will say that I converted my stanglehold to a push and my hooks went from around him to underneath him. Not fair, not fair!!!

As we both rolled on the floor laughing, it was time to line up.

So I managed some six hours of training the week before we go back to BJJ classes. Good stuff!

that was fun

2011-01-02T16:43:00.000+11:00

I had a visitor today. Well, actually, it was my best friend's visitor. Her daughter from Adelaide.

Yana started training MMA/BJJ in Adelaide a couple of months ago. When I caught up with her on New Year's eve, I half jokingly said that if she was interested in a roll, to come and visit, for I have mats!!

And surprise, surprise, she turned up on New Year's day :-) She brought her mum (who came armed with a camera) and her boyfriend (who came armed with curiosity). Well, it transpired that she hadn't been to very many classes, never rolled yet, and was still hazy on some of the basic stuff.

I decided to just go over some of that basic stuff. Turns out the place she trains (I've forgotten the name, and I'm sorry for that) is a Will-Machado afilitate, so they do the same basic drills and things I'm used to. That made it easier.

So as much for the edification of the onlookers (who had never seen BJJ) as for Yana's benefit, we went over some very basic "Basics", ie: a drill that involves side control, mount, dismount, side control via north-south. It's all about the transitions and maintaining pressure. The other drill is the "keep the mount" drill where the top person goes from side control to mount. Then the bottom person tries to escape by bridging first and then rolling to their side. Top person has to keep the mount during the bridging and then transition to side mount, get seat belt grips and hooks in as the bottom person finally rolls over totally and the top person gets back control. The drill ends with the top person flattening the bottom person. A perfect position for a rear choke, of course.

We worked on the back choke for a bit. And then, just for a variation on that theme, I showed her a front choke from guard and turtle top. And that was all we had time for.

No rolling, but it was fun all the same. Here are some pictures :-)

Explaining some stuff before we started. I've no idea why I'm pointing my finger. But I know I have a bad habit of doing that when I work with horses, too ;-)

Explainig concept of guard passing. Notice concern on boyfriend's face. :-)))

Explaining knee through guard pass (as opposed to passing under the leg).

Yana practicing her front choke on me. No other volunteers ;-)

I'm really happy she has chosen BJJ and I think she'll enjoy it. Pity she lives in Adelaide. By the time she visits next time though, we'll be able to have a roll. I'm looking forward to it!

missing the mats

2010-12-30T15:21:00.000+11:00

Sigh.

I'm missing training. It's been over a week and I desperately need a BJJ fix ;-)

I've cleaned and rearranged my mini gym. And yes, I've used it, too. Not as much as I should. But I've always found it hard to motivate myself (when I'm by myself). But at least I managed two decent work outs and aside from that, the place is clean and orderly so it's more inviting to do more.

Last night I did tabata intervals: burpees, sqats, mountain climbers, pushups etc. Only 16 minutes' worth, but by golly that got me nice and warm.

Oh yeah, and I have been doing joint mobility exercises every day, and a bit of stretching every few days. I've also been reading up more about it and am coming to the conclusion that stretching before training isn't such a good idea. On the other hand, this joint mobility stuff seems to be working and I'm trying to learn more about it.

I received my belated xmas present in the mail today: Ryan Hall - Back Attacks. So I guess I'll take the hot afternoon as an excuse to sit down and start watching some of it.

I'll let you know what I think of it :-)

Merry Xmas!!

2010-12-25T14:07:00.000+11:00

I always do an E-Xmas card with horses. It's always a picture of a mare and a foal that was born in that year.

As I have absolutely no interesting BJJ pictures to play with, you will have to cope with a horse picture :-)

I hope you have a great Christmas, lovely holidays and the most fabulous new year.

pre-holiday roundup

2010-12-24T11:13:00.000+11:00

It was the last week before the holidays, and a shorter week than normal. The school is closed until the second Monday in January. Hm, I miss it already... But there are plans to get together for a bit of wresting and cardio work before then!

Monday night's class was about rubber guard stuff. It was mainly a revision of what we went over so far and a chance for everyone to get a few more reps in, particularly the transitions between the positions.

We also learned a new attack. Well, one that I hadn't seen. Please don't ask me for the name of this.... But essentially it's a triangle from New York. Nice and easy. All I need is to get him to post the arm to the floor on the side where I have my foot on his hip. I grab the wrist, adjust my hip and thread my foot over his arm. Then the leg goes on his shoulder and with a few grip adjustments and getting a cut across the back of his neck with my lower leg... triangle. Beautiful.

We did a little bit of wrestling and I did pull off a triangle from that setup.

Wednesday was our last class for the year. After a tabata warmup we were shown and drilled a couple of techniques and had rolls inbetween.

We did the hooks in (butterfly) guard to x-guard transition and one of the sweeps from there. We also did a double leg takedown with a leg trip.

Rolling was just plain good fun. I had one of the newer white belts for a bit. I did my best to tread that fine line between attacking him and working my game and letting him have some fun, too. It's kind of weird to tell someone what he could try to counter what I'm doing. A bit like playing chess against yourself :-) And of course it gives me the chance to work my escapes after I've allowed him him get into a dominant position.

I had to work much harder with one of the purple belts. I spent most of the time defending there :-) However, I managed a couple of sweeps, one from halfguard where miraculously I ended up in high mount. When my brain registered that I had a leg over one of his arms, I converted that to a mounted triangle. Bingo! I have no idea how that sweep worked. All I remember is the feeling of moving well, pausing because I was surprised and then recognising the opportunity. And the triangle was tight, he told me. After that, I was paid back handsomely with figure fours and armbars. Good times!

A couple of things are happening. Firstly, I am starting to get sweeps. No specific ones, but all sorts from all sorts of places. I had all but given up on sweeps, because I just couldn't make them work like 99% of the time. I'm not sure if it's a result of moving my hips better, allowing me to get under people, or because I can feel opportunities and make the necessary adjustments. Probably all of the above. It is as though a whole bunch of little puzzle pieces are suddenly fitting together and I'm starting to get the bigger picture.

The same is the case with recognising submissions. Oh, there are still loads of times when I'm in a good spot and I go: ah, what was the xyz sub from here, which arm/leg does what, doh?? BUT. Increasingly, I get to some position, or rather, I'm in the process of getting to that position when an attack pops into my head and my hands and legs seem to know what to do.

Revisiting techniques: I've found so often lately that things which didn't work for me in the past suddenly make sense now. Make sense and actually work for me. So I did know the puzzle pieces, but they didn't make sense to me, or I couln't fit them into the section of the whole picture I was working on. The other thing about revisiting techniques is that even if I was already successfully using that technique, I'm discovering ways to make it work better, tighter, faster. Or hit it from a different position, or help me see a related technique.

I suppose it's all part of a natural progression. As a result I'm moving more efficiently and I have more time to think and react. That in turn means I'm no longer just defending and getting a seeing to. Goodness knows, that stage lasted long enough for me! And obviously I still get nailed regularly, even by bigger white belts. But I'm spending a lot more time working attacks and giving others a hard time :-). That translates to much more fun.

My next goal is to start stringing techniques together. To use one attack to elicit a specific response which is the setup for my next technique. So far I'm merely reacting to my opponents moves. I certainly can go from one attack to another depending on his defence, but I am not yet chaining things together or setting traps.

I'm still relying on closed guard too much. On the one hand, I have good attacks from there, so it's my main game. On the other hand, I really, really want to be a better open guard player so that I have more options.

What I am pleased about is that I have good defence and a number of escapes from every bad position. So I'm not too scared to experiment, because if I fail, I know I have a good chance to recover from the inferior position I'll land in. What I'm less pleased about is that my top game is still pretty underdeveloped. But that's starting to improve, too.

So I have loads of things to work on next year. I intend to 1. have a load of fun, 2. get better and 3. compete again and do well.

A modelling career? Fail!

2010-12-19T19:24:00.000+11:00

... because I manage to look silly, no matter what. That's why!

See?

Despite knowing I'd produce a bunch of dorkish looking pictures of myself, I was brave and faced the camera today to bring you pictures of my latest three gi acquisitions. I try to keep my belt tied in the cool zone (definition here), but I have a high dork factor nonetheless :-) I must be just a natural.

I've been meaning to put up photos of the Shoyoroll and the RDA gis for some time, but I've been too busy. However, I just received my Tatami Zero G gi, so now there are three I owe you info about. The SYR and the RDA have been washed and worn several times. The TZG has had one wash to get the shrinking happening, and I have not yet had opportunity to roll in it. I'll get back to you about it's performance on the mat.

All three gis are A2. For reference, I'm 172cm tall and weigh in at 66kg (if you can't think in metric units, you'll have to convert that yourself :-) ). I'm really almost between sizes and roll happily in A3 Atama and Fuji Kassen gis. But I bought these three gis in A3, based on the size charts supplied.

So here - in order of when I bought the gis - are some photos and comments:

1. Blue Shoyoroll Superlite Batch 6

The sleeves in this gi were so long that I had to shorten them. I did this by turning them over to the inside and running the sewing machine along the edge. This was meant to be temporary to see if I liked the length, but it's been like that for some time now and is working well.

The pants have a thick draw cord which is very easy to fasten. About six loops ensure that it stays in place around the front. What I don't like about the pants is that the doubled area ends too far up. Basically, by the time I kneel down, the bottom seam of the reinforced area (which is jacket weave material) is right under my knee. It's never rubbed me but it seems pointless to have a reinforced front if it ends above where most of the wear will happen on the knee!

The jacket is a wee bit loose, especially under the arms. But it's nice and light and I feel fine when drilling or rolling in it. The collar is just the right thickness for my liking.

The gi looks nice, the embroidered patches are small. A friend who saw me in in the other day said it looks "sharp". I agree.

2. Roy Dean "Honor" Gi

This gi appealed to me primarily because of the embroidery. The top seems to be single weave material which is fairly light. The collar is quite thick and stiffer than the other two gis.

There was significant shrinkage of the whole top, and especially the sleeves. I would doubt that it is competition legal for me. It fits pretty snugly and I'm very happy with the rest of the fit.

The pants are from a thicker cotton material than the other two gis and are nicely finished with plenty of reinforcement. The embroidery down the leg looks fantastic. The RDA logo on the back of the leg is very nicely done. As there is no lettering on it, there is no problem wearing this gi at another school, as far as I'm concerned. The pants have a cloth tie, which makes it more difficult to adjust than the other pants, but the brown tie looks very spiffy together with the brown stitching of the whole uniform.

I've had several nice comments about this gi. I would have preferred a pearl type of weave for the top, and a bit less shrinkage. All in all I'm pretty happy with it.

3. Tatami Fightwear Zero G

I bought the Zero G because I wanted another lightweight gi. It gets pretty hot down here, and we don't always do no-gi in summer! I was offered this gi at a discounted price and because I had read promising reviews by Slideyfoot and Meerkatsu, I decided to give it a go.

As I said, I haven't rolled in it yet, so I can't comment about usability/user friendliness. It has only had one single wash at 30 degrees C, so there may be a little more shinkage to come. Here are my first impressions:

The top is similar in cut and material to the SYR, but it's a bit more snug under the armpits. The sleeves did shrink a bit but are still on the long side. I will know after another couple of washes if I need to shorten them. The collar thickness is very similar to the SYR. There is a significant difference though in how wide the collar is at the back of the neck. When I lay the gi down flat, it has a narrower neck opening than the others. I can feel this when I wear it, too. It is more tight around the back of the neck. I have a reasonably skinny neck so I can't see that being an issue. Time on the mat will tell which style I prefer. I like the cut of the jacket and I think it looks really nice.

All part of the gi are have clean and tidy stitching and there is decent reinforcement everywhere. I like the blue patches on the shoulders and on the pant legs. The patch on the bum however - it's coming off. Don't like!

The pants are made of an even lighter material than the SYR pants. It seems a very tight weave though. The front reinforcement could come down a bit further below the knees, but it's better than in the SYR. The draw string cord is easy to adjust and I really like it, but a couple more loops at the front would have been better (there are only two near the front). The pants did shrink a fair bit, too. In hindsight, I would have been better off with A3 pants, but then I don't know how bulky they would have been. I also don't know if it's possible to buy mixed sizes. Aside from the length, the fit of the pants is good.

If there is interest, I can post exact measurements. But if you go to Meerkatsu's blog, you will find measurements of both the RDA and the TZG in size A2. Nobody does better or more throrough reviews than the Meerkat!!

All three gis are a bit of a rarity in Australia. I've seen a couple of Shoyoroll gis around, if only white ones. I have spotted one Tatami gi (not a Zero G) and never any RDA ones. The postage on all three gis was similar and significantly added to the cost of the gi. I purchased the SYR and the RDA from BudoVideos in the US. The Zero G was purchased from Tatami Fightwear in the UK.

Japanese necktie

2010-12-18T14:12:00.000+11:00

We had John Campbell as guest instructor last night. Theme of the night: Japanese necktie.

We were shown and then drilled the technique from several setups including half guard top, lockdown top or turtle top. I like the last the best, giving me the best choke.

To see what the technique looks like, check this out:

After the technique part of the class, we did five minute rounds from standing, followed by:
50 knee ups
10 burpees
10 pushups
10 squats
1 minute rest

Then we did that twice more. I was wrecked by a white belt who has more than 30 kgs on me, but I didn't get squished continuously for a change. I managed some reasonable escapes and after getting caught in a straight armbar, he couldn't get anything else. I consider that a success :-)

Second round was with a purple belt. He set me up and although I knew he was going for the JNT, I couldn't stop him. We went again and I found means and ways to avoid the choke. I certainly started being very wary of using an underhook! But I found that if I blocked him from getting the second arm in, I could eventually limp arm out of his setup. From then on, I defended it well. I also moved around quite well, so he didn't have it all his way. I didn't do anything fancy from the standing start. I didn't even try for a takedown, because my entries are slow and I don't like being sprawled on. Also, he got me in a clinch. But I did have success in getting half guard straight away when we went down. So all in all, I was quite happy.

Third round was with another purple belt. Again, nothing fancy from the standing start. It was more of a race to see who'd pull guard first. I had his back at one point but couldn't get the choke. He turned and I had him in full guard, going straight for high guard towards the armbar I like. Nearly got it but lost his shoulder. Then I think he passed and we were into his game. Underhook to armbar. We went again. He shot in for the double but there was a neck sticking out, so I choked him as I got full guard. Then we went again, starting with guard pulling. At some stage an opportunity presented itself and I went for the JNT. Had to fight for it a bit, but I did manage to finish it. Yeah!

We were pleasantly tired and glowing at the end of the session.

John answered a few questions about particular issues people were having. I was particularly interested in hearing his comments about head control when someone is in your half guard and they are hugging you low with a view to breaking your lockdown or passing your half guard.

the joys of the holiday season

2010-12-16T18:55:00.000+11:00

I'm sitting here bitching and grizzling that there is no open mat tonight :-(

Bah.

Yesterday, we had a fairly small class, only six guys turned up. I guess it's just the time of year, people have other stuff to do as they hurry about fitting in everything they need to fit in before xmas....

And seeing I was the only coloured belt on the floor, the job to take the class fell to me. That was easy, I gave them the choice of going through headlock escapes or going over some rubber guard basics again. Two of them had missed the last couple of classes, and the others wanted more reps, so that's what we did.

Aside from that, I made them wrestle. Calmly, lots of moving, no busting guts. Flow boys, flow! Even the less fit ones could keep up at that speed and energy output and all seemed happy. I did remind them that nothing stops them from rolling like that more often!

Didn't get to roll much myself as I was busy keeping an eye on things.

what better way to spend your birthday?

2010-12-16T10:18:00.000+11:00

Monday

We had a huge class, including some guys who haven't been in a lot lately.

We did a tabata style warmup with burpees, mountain climbers, pushups, situps and squats. Haha, there was a bit of blowing and panting, and they boys sure looked warm ;-)

We were shown and then drilled a half guard escape which also works when someone has lockdown. Ideally, we want underhooks, then we wriggle down until we can manage a gable grip around the thighs. This pins the knees together. Our head needs to be firmly against his belly so there is no chance of chokes. Also, this helps pin the hips down. Lastly, we mule kick back/up with the trapped leg. This will pop the half guard open. If they have lockdown, it works, too. It's vastly more painful for the person holding lockdown... So much so, that if I have lockdown and I feel them going for this escape, I tend to unlock...

We did some wrestling then, but starting from specific positions, ie: half guard or with instructions to keep going without holding positions for more than 3 seconds. A few rounds of that...

Then we practiced the hip bump sweep, and where that fails because they brace, the kimura from guard. For this, I scored the biggest guy in class. Terrific. It's like smashing your hip into a tree :-) However, he did point out a way to improve my technique, and after that at least I could budge him.

At the end of class, we all had a very short round each with one of the guys who is getting close to blue belt. It was quite funny, as we tagged each other going in, and some changeovers were quite nifty.

Tuesday

It was my birthday and I decided I needed to spend at least part of the day doing my favourite thing. So I caught a lift with a fellow bluebelt to Geelong.

John Will was back from one of his many overseas trips and took the advanced class. He had some visitors from the UK and one from South Africa. But he still took the time to welcome the country cousins ;-) I had a chance to drill and roll with one of the guys from the UK. I didn't catch his name, but he's a nice guy and was a great partner.

Theme of the night was X-guard. First, an entry from standing. Then an entry from hooks in guard. That's one of those techniques where every arm and leg has to do something totally different. Not easy, but once the body 'knows' which way to turn, which leg to kick up and which leg provides the hook that lifts the leg, it starts working.

I've had one previous exposure to X-guard many months ago and must admit I couldn't make head or tail of it. I guess I wasn't ready at the time. This time, it made sense. We did lots of reps to get the movement pattern established. Thanks to John's excellent breakdown of the techniques and subsequent corrections where needed, it wasn't too difficult.

The next thing were two sweeps from X-guard. The first one involved grabbing the near arm (the one closer to my head) and shoving it down. Then I raise my legs and sweep my partner over the near shoulder, where I've removed the post, towards my shoulder. I then have to follow and end up sort of sitting on his leg. I think that in practise, it would depend a lot on which direction they end up rolling in, which is a bit hard to control. And then it may end up in a bit of a scramble. I may well end up back in guard actually, making this sweep a bit low percentage in my eyes.

The other sweep works by grabbing their far arm and pulling it towards our head and then it's more of a push with the legs. As we follow over, we keep hold of the leg which was on our shoulder and we keep hold of the arm. And we land in: knee ride. This sweep felt easy and it flowed, so this would be the one of choice for me. In reality, I suppose it would depend of whether I can grab hold of that far arm.

At the end of the class we did a few reps of a standing guard pass.

And, as always, there was plenty of chance for rolling. John reminded us that we should at least try to have a go at the new stuff, to see if it might be something to fit into our games. I didn't set the world on fire with submissions, but I had good solid rolls and managed several sweeps. However, I felt was was using closed guard too much. Funny, how I revert back to that in no-gi. I have been making a big effort to use more open guard, but I find it a lot easier when I can control people's sleeve. No gi = no sleeves :-) Oh well, something to work on more. But at least I didn't sit still when I had guard, I tried stuff. Even if opening up meant I'd get passed. And when I was passed, I managed a variety of side control escapes and for that I was happy indeed. One of the purple belts pointed out some useful stuff in relation to holding mount, which is one of my very weak areas. What he said will help for sure!

Then it was time for the intermediate class. As usual, the white belts came in and warmed up with rolling. I had a few good rolls and caused people a fair bit of trouble :-)

The class was about headlock escapes. Including the one I really suck at.... I said to the guy I was drilling it with: I suck at this and I'm glad that we're working on it, so I can get better at it. He looked at me and then said: well, that's a good attitude! Haha, yeah. I suppose I have two choices: I can give up on a technique which means it will definitely, positively never work for me. Or I can keep at it and welcome every opportunity to work on it, until I get it right. I think the latter idea is better.

And actually, for the first time, I pulled off that escape with a degree of success without having to use every ounce of strengty. I know now what I've been doing wrong. The escape is the one where I can't get my trapped arm's elbow to the mat. So I've hugged my opponent and have a grip around his middle. I walk into him and bridge, bridge again and if need be again so I can get my bottom hip under him. Then I bridge and rock back over my shoulders to sweep him towards my top shoulder. The imaginary line has to be between my shoulder and my head. In the past, I've tried to heave him across me to my left, which didn't work.

So we practiced that escape and two other ones, where I can suck my elbow back in. I certainly could do with extra practice on those as well :-)

It was pretty warm, not to mention humid, and it was a hot sticky evening for everyone on the mat. I was thoroughly tired when we were finished. But what a way to spend a birthday!

Oh, and it happened to be the day when my new Zero-G gi arrived from the UK. It looks very smart and I hope to be able to try it out soon. Then I'll report back!

assorted interesting stuff

2010-12-13T11:38:00.000+11:00

Another fantastic belt demonstration from RDA

Ah, nothing like a Sunday morning fix by watching yet another fantastic purple belt demonstration by one of Roy Dean's students. These guys are all so fluent!! THAT's what I want to be like. Yeah!

Brian Sortor shows some great combinations. They are so smooth, so a few times I stopped and stepped through to figure out how he actually did things. There are a couple of techniques I'll definitely try, as they fit in with my own game.

Colds, flus and time off

It's only a couple of weeks since I had a cold and needed to take some time off from training. As one who hates missing training, I'm always torn between giving myself enough time off and getting back into it. I'm getting wiser, but I probably still rush too much. For some thoughts on the same matter by someone who is as fanatic about cycling as I am about BJJ, read this insight on Grit & Glimmer.

Eating

On the subject of what's good for us and how to eat more of that sort of food, I found this post on how to eat more fruit and veggies on Stumptuous.com.

I know I don't eat enough greens and fresh stuff. I'm a lazy cook and my inner bastard has a habit of taking over when I come home tired. It's one of the areas I really need to work on. There are some good ideas in that blog post and I'm going to try some of them out.

I can't very well expect my body to perform well if I'm not feeding it well, can I??

Exercising - more ideas for the pesky grapple-free summer recess

There is some information on the RossTraining site on tabata training. Anyway, check out the rest of Ross' Blog for more ideas and some good motivational stuff.

Geelong visit

2010-12-12T13:25:00.000+11:00

Being annoyed with the short BJJ week, I decided to venture to Geelong for some extra fun. That was the first time I went to Black Belt Studios all by my little self. So far, I'd always tagged along with one of the senior guys.

As always, I was made to feel very welcome, and had a great time. Same as the last few times, I joined the advanced class and then stayed on for the intermediate class as well. That amounts to over two hours of training with plenty of rolling. Too good :-)

In the advanced class, for a warm up, we ran a few laps and the did 40/20 tabata intervals with burpees, mountain climbers, squats, situps and pushups. For technique, we drilled a double leg takedown, using the foot that steps in as a hook. Then we worked on a fireman's carry. There were two versions, one starting from having a whizzer on our partner's arm, the other with a grip over the head.

Then we did some work on back control. That was funny, really. I've lately been having a lot of luck getting backs and was thinking it would be great to spend some time on back control and attack. Voila! Wish granted :-)

We were shown a few alternatives for getting the arm across to attack with a rear choke and variations on how to finish. Then we did light positional rolling with several different partners to experiment with those and defending against the choke. We were also shown how to use a hook behind the knee if our partner is threatening to roll into us to escape.

Then we did some rolling into the beginning of the intermediate class when the white belts came on the floor. So there were some 15 minutes for them to roll slowly to warm up. Good to see white belts with so much control and so little spazz :-). After that, all the other coloured belts left.

There were three guys new to the intermediate class, and as a "welcome" they had to roll with everyone until submission. As it wasn't a small class, they were rolling continuously for quite a long time. I was near the end of the line up and by the time I got to roll with them they were getting a little tired... One guy in particular was really suffering. So I went light and moved, moved and urged him to just keep moving. No stopping and starting, go slow but keep going and feel for the path of least resistance. He did good! I know what it's like to roll at that level of fatigue...

I winked at the instructor and asked how come I didn't get that sort of "welcome" when I joined that class for the first time some time last year. He just laughed. Well, he didn't take that class anyway, and it was tough enough, from what I remember!

Anyway, then we did a couple of laps of hip escapes followed by the hip escape, butt scoot escape, technical get up drill along the mat. Then it was hip escapes until we are face down in the opposite direction, come to knees, fade back and repeat. This was preparation for the side control escape to knees we practiced last.

By that time, my legs felt like jelly. My thighs were still a bit sore from the Friday night workout, and all the take down entries and hip escapes were starting to add up. But they held up :-)

We did no-gi all night. I'm actually enjoying all the no-gi stuff, especially now it's getting warmer. I don't mind either gi or no-gi, and love mixing it up. Where I live, it's been warm and a bit muggy lately. Occasionally pretty warm, but the hot time of the year won't start until January. But down in Geelong, right next to the sea, there is a lot more humidity all year around. And though it wasn't that warm on Tuesday, the humidity certainly made it feel like a sauna at the dojo. I was dripping by the end of the warmup (same as the locals :-) ), and was glad about not having to wear a gi.

On the way home (nearly an hour for me), I dropped in on a friend who has recently moved to the Geelong area. I rocked up in a sweaty mess at her place after 9pm and she fed me cups of tea and biscuits and cheese. So we sat and talked horses and I tried to explain BJJ to her. I finally left pretty late and made it to be by 2:15. Guess who didn't look too bright the next day ;-)

shortened week

2010-12-11T11:58:00.000+11:00

Due to the silly season coming up and people being on holidays, we are having a shortened timetable for most of December. No day classes and no open mat. Pout!

I was roped into taking last Monday's class. After the warm up I made everyone roll for some ten minutes. My instructions were: no submission, look at moving a lot, going from position to position, making it at flowing as possible. Avoid muscling, gripping, smashing etc. I watched and made suggestions. I think maybe, just maybe, I saw some lighter, smoother rolling. It's something I think we must all work on.

I spent some time on teaching the technical stand up and made people do a drill where they have to hip escape, then do an open guard type butt scoot to the same side and then follow it up with a get up. After that, get back down and repeat on the other side. I find that a useful drill for mobility.

Lastly, I went through posture in guard, how to protect from chokes and to keep arms safe. How to close elbows and why, how to strip a grip to get posture. Also why it's unwise to sit back too far, to put hands on the mat or to cross the centreline. Hopefully, this will help some of the newer guys.

Finished off with more rolling. Sadly, I missed out myself. Oh well.

One of the purple belts taught Wednesday and Friday. We went no-gi and did rubber guard basics. It's been a while since we've done any of that in class, and some of the guys had never seen it. So it was all basic stuff on how to break down posture and get mission control. Next step was to get the arm to the floor using the zombie (the sound effects to demonstrate this move really were cool!). Then we got to New York and finally chill dog.

On Friday, we added the jiu claw setup as well. And a attack if our opponent postures up and then rolls forward. We let him start to roll but then hold his legs and transition to side control. That was neat.

Oh, I still detest the names, but wonder of wonders, I'm starting to remember them :-). The only thing I hadn't seen before was rescue dog. Say we can't get an arm to the floor using the zombie, we can threaten a sweep or put on pressure with the forearm on his collarbone in mission control. He may well put his other arm on the floor to brace. So we switch our legs and go straight to New York on the other side. We actually did a side to side drill to react to hands touching the mat.

I can't imagine rubber guard as a be all and end all or something to use exclusively. I also don't like it on big strong guys, as they just stack me up or bust out. But I've found I successfully mix it up with open and closed guard as another holding position, especially on people more my size. I have long legs and good flexibility, so it suits me. I'm also a happy guard player, so it fits into my game. I'm still working on having more knee pressure to avoid a guard pass on the side where me foot is on their hip. But that's getting better, and in any case, there is a neat shoulder lock (the Carney?) if they step over my leg to pass my guard while I have their arm trapped. I nearly pulled that off on a guy the other day, except the bell went off :-)

grading

2010-12-05T17:47:00.000+11:00

We finished off the week with a grading. Not for me, hehe. Like the other two coloured belts, I was just there just to help out.

13 guys turned up and tested for stripes. It was a bit hot and it was quite humid. Those of us who had attended the seminar the night before could all feel the pain a bit.... By the time we had a few rounds of rolling at the end, I and the other seminar veterans were a bit on the tired side :-)

But it was a great session. The guys did really well. Everyone put in a solid performance and worked their butts off. A great way to finish off the week.

It was the last session for the year with our instructor who is heading off on well deserved holidays. We have another couple of weeks of classes in December before we break off for holidays. The teaching will be split between the coloured belts. And yours truly is taking Monday evening's class. By then, I my legs should be working again properly!

Friday night seminar

2010-12-05T05:09:00.000+11:00

Friday night was different. We had a visiting instructor for a combined BJJ and strength & conditioning seminar. Craig Robinson is a Will-Machado black belt from Geelong. He and his wife run Bring It On Fitness and are about to open Bring it On Combat.

I've met Craig before. First time was at John Will's Blackbelt Studios in early 2009. I was a two stripe white belt at the time and I'd come along for the ride with one of the guys who attended the advanced class down there. Craig generously allowed me to join his intermediate class afterwards (white belts 3 stripes and up). That was a bit of an eye opener at the time, but what most stuck in my mind was rolling with Craig. Well, who wouldn't remember the first time they rolled with a BJJ BB???

Anyway, one of our guys had organised Craig to come up and hold the seminar. Unfortunately, only 7 from our school could make it. But that was more quality time with Craig for those of us who came :-)

Craig brought medicine balls with him. We got a talk about the usefulness of balls and the need for core exercises to improve posture and for strength. We did some tabbata interval warmups involving squats and medicine ball throws. Then we went right into squats with medicine balls, burpess on the balls with a jump up and lots of mountain climbers. It was done in sets of 3, 4 and 5 (1,2,3 x 50 mountain climbers). And then we did it all over again.

We was sweating. :-P

Craig has a special way to be motivating, coaxing, praising, nagging, cursing. In the end, everyone succeeded.

We did some stuff on grips and controls from standing, using push and pull to control our opponent and get him off balance. From there we went on to an entry to a single leg takedown and a very simple takedown. We got a chance for everyone to try it on everyone else for quite a few reps. Then we looked at attacks flowing straight from that takedown. One being a legbar, the other an armbar. Both incredibly simple and effective. Last technique was a foot choke straight from the armbar.

After that, we did four minute rounds of rolling. Craig joined in so everyone had to wrestle seven other people, with no breaks inbetween. I'll admit I haven't wrestled so fatigued for a long time :-)

But we all got the chance to roll with Craig, which was fantastic. He got me in a nasty collar choke from a place I never expected. Haha. But it's fascinating how black belts can turn "it" on and off to adapt to the level of their training partners. Wouldn't it be great to possess such skill?!

We finished off the session with some more squats and burpees. How many I really don't remember.

Then it was question time. I asked if it was good to use kettlebells for the squats he urged us to be doing regularly. He said sure, as long as the technique is good. And to do the squats in all sorts of variations. Not only to keep in interesting, but also to challenge the body in different ways.

Another question asked was how to escape switch base side control (we all know a big brown belt who LOVES that position!). Craig showed us a different way to the escape we'd learned. It's one I will be trying out soon, seeing I get stuck in that position quite a bit, and the standard escape I can't pull off (yet??).

So, it was a great seminar. I was somewhat tired afterwards, and he promised sore legs. I can attest to that, he wasn't wrong... I hope he will come and do another one early next year. He is a funny guy. He doesn't spare the verbal whip but he is very inspirational and makes you feel good about your achievements.

life's good

2010-12-03T18:18:00.000+11:00

After last Monday's low point, I had some really good training during the week.

Wednesday's class was small and I had mostly one on one time with the instructor. I asked some questions about problems I'm having with people using a low smashing guard pass on me, and he gave me several suggestions. As I thought, the main part of my tactics needs to be transitioning to open guard. I'm abandoning closed guard too late instead of being pro-active. So we spent a fair bit of time on that. He showed me ways to transition and to defend the smash and stack. Then we rolled a bit, always starting with him in my closed guard.

He has exactly the body type that gives me a lot of trouble. Solid and heavy. He ramped up the pressure to pass as we went on. And we did post-mortems when I failed. I failed a lot :-) But I was getting it, and towards the end, I was doing a much better job, in fact started threatening him, and once even getting his back.

Not only did that restore my faith in my own abilities (which had been sorely challenged on Monday), but it also addressed some of the issues I've been having which I needed help with anyway.

For Thursday night's open mat I decided to go no-gi. About half of us did, the rest wore a gi. I finally had a chance to roll with two purple belts. Hehe, I tapped a lot and learned a lot. I felt fluid and did some attacking, a sweep here and there. Good stuff, much fun.

Then rolled with two of the white belts and we all had a ball. I try to hit that balance between working my top and attack game and letting them have a play, too. As we all had a lot of fun, I must have succeeded at least partially :-)

One of them has a preference for the Peruvian Necktie, and although he is smaller than myself, once he gets his grips it, one better watch out, he catches people!! Both the guys have made huge progress and both are the right balance of aggressive without spazzing. They are pretty near my size, a bit lighter, so being a selfish sort of a person, I really like to roll with them. I get a chance to work sweeps and I can try new stuff. But as they are getting quicker and better, I can't let my guard down with them, or they'll have me :-)

hmmm...

2010-11-30T19:09:00.000+11:00

I'm still not totally back to "fighting fit". Felt pretty bleh! on Monday, but went to class anyway.

Dear oh dear, even the warm up felt tough... So I was pretty glad that we started with drills. Was assigned a pretty new white belt and worked through one movement drill he knows but needs to practice. And another drill he didn't know. He has a shortened forearm and a hand with less fingers, so we had to modify some grips.

I've worked with him a couple of times before. He's the nicest guy. Very tense and stiff, like all newbies of course. But I think that if he can stick out the hard yards at the beginning, he will make jiu jitsu work for him. I think it's fantastic that he's giving it a go. I have no experience at all with people who (I'm not sure if this is politically correct to say like this, but here goes...) are shaped different to how I am and I can't know how their shape changes/limits 'normal' movement patterns. So I have asked him to tell me if he has trouble doing what I ask and make suggestions on how we can modify it to achieve the objective. This is a learning curve for him, and for me, too.

Anyway, we worked through two of the drills and he made good progress until I was re-assigned.

I worked with another blue belt. We did some open guard stuff. I say stuff because it wasn't anything specific, it was more concepts and experimenting with positions of feet and knees and complementary grips. Instructor called it the glue that holds things together.

I re-discovered a limitation of strength in my lower back in a certain position and experimented with working around that. Helps to have a good partner!! We had a play with a sweep if our partner pushes forward into us. This I had a few problems with, mainly because I felt flat and the brain wasn't fully engaged. Still, I picked up a lot of valuable stuff, both the open guard options and transitions and the sweep.

And then we were told to roll. Well, well. That was where I really couldn't get my act together. Body said "go away" and brain went on vacation. Damn. In fact, I felt so powerless and unco that I virtually laid back like a limp sausage. I actually caught myself thinking: yeah, do it, get it over with, as he started to put on an armwrap from mount and set up a choke. And then I suddenly thought that wasn't good enough and I ought to be ashamed of myself. So I finally started fighting. And I got out of there. He let me work a little, but not without putting on a fair bit of pressure. No freebies. Still, I regained guard, but he was passing immediately by blocking my foot. I couldn't stop him and was getting pretty annoyed with myself. That's when our instructor stepped in (I hadn't realised he'd been watching). He showed me a really simple way to get the other foot in, on his hip and make space to negate the technique my partner was using to pass my guard. It was SO obvious that I was embarrassed :-(

So we went again. Similar deal, I didn't get a good position, in fact, as he dragged me forward, I bruised my right knee. That's what you get when you are too stupid to move well.... Oh boy. Then it went to switch back side control, where I ended up NOT being able to do the bump and sweep technique. It is one of those things I struggle with. And instead of saying I will learn and I will perfect this technique, I've been saying I can't do it and it's so hard against bigger people. So guess what? I can't do it. And I get caught. At that moment, I could have crawled into the cracks between the mats. Still, we reset and went on.

Ended up defending from bottom of side mount. Generally not a place which is too scary, but this time, I flopped and floundered and uselessly bucked around. Not really blue belt standard, that much was clear. We were stopped again, and the instructor pointed out what I was doing. He didn't call it useless or silly (though it surely was!), but he did a good impression of what my legs were doing... Which was bugger all. By this stage I was beginning to really want to be elsewhere. Then he showed us a really neat way of escaping that very position which I'd never seen before. He explained how it worked and why and then unfortunately, time was up.

Not my brightest day. I apologised to my partner for being useless and not being much of a partner. Oh, and for being a tad.... emotional. Oh, how I hate it when that happens. He told me not to be silly, and reminded me we all have shitty days. He's right, of course. I'm lucky to have nice, level headed people around me.

Well, all I want is for my body to return to normal operating levels, so that I can have fun and feel at least reasonably competent :-) I decided against a double session down at Geelong tonight, as I want to make sure my body recovers and I get back to normal. I'm going to class tomorrow, and we have a guest instructor for a two hour session on Friday night. I want to make sure I'm fit as a fiddle by then. On Saturday, there will be a grading. I'm only helping, but it's usually hard going, so I'd like to be fit for that one, too.