Wednesday with a surpise visitor

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!!

so much to think about

We haven't covered a lot of new stuff (=techniques) in class lately. Which is good, because my head is quite full enough as it is.

Lately, I see so many more details in the so called basics, details which I've been missing. Which is probably why some of my basic techniques have been somewhat ineffective. Especially since I don't get away with crappy technique as they are mostly bigger than I. So that's good, it forces me to get the basics right.

I'm beginning to understand that I should not give up on something simply because it seems difficult. Giving up is easy. Blaming the technique is easy. But what I need to do is buckle down and try and try again and troubleshoot what is the part or parts of the technique that I do incorrectly. I'm lucky to have an instructor with a great eye for small things and who can dissect things down. So he can pinpoint where I make mistakes and find a way to show me how to do it successfully. He has been quite inventive in thinking up ways to not only explain but to give me little drills that allow me to feel and understand what I need to do.

I know now, more than ever, that my hip movement has been woefully inadeqate. That explains why my escapes aren't that great and why sweeps aren't happening too well. Awareness is the first step to improvement. Then comes a plan. For example, during open mat on Thursday I had a couple of plans. One was to go for arm drags. The other was to use my hips. Basically, I tried to remember to make a bigger effort to hip out or bridge up. As a result, I had better success in regaining full guard. And I finally pulled off the escape from side mount, where I get both arms on the far side, bridge and then rotate around his forearm until I'm head to head. I had never been able to make that work before. So I think I'm on the right track there. Incidentally, I've lately found it much easier to do laps of hip escapes (during warm-ups), and I've been getting much bigger and freer movment. They feel powerful and fast now. On the one hand I'm amazed that it's taken the best part of two years to get decent hip escapes happening. On the other hand, I'm glad that they are happening!

Other stuff I've been working on some more are hooking sweeps. We did some work on setting up an arm drag from sitting (hooks in ) guard and then transitioning to a double hooking sweep if they resist the arm drag. Vice versa, if the sweep fails, I move my weight to the other butt cheek, hip out a bit and can either try for arm drag or for a sweep to the other side. It all involves such fundamental stuff that I desperately need to work on, mainly the hip movement and effective hooks.

We also did some work on arm drags from standing and from closed guard. That, coupled with the guard transitions we practiced a fair bit after the Rigan seminar, is yet another set of related basic stuff. Basic, but fits right into what I've recently been working on, if only from closed guard.

So, without covering much new stuff at all, my head is buzzing :-)

I have a bunch of instructional dvds and books. But at the moment, I refuse to look at anything that doesn't tie in with the stuff I'm working on. I think I finally am starting to have some sort of game plan. Which is nothing like what I anticipated it to be. It's growing in an organic sort of a fashion out from where I feel powerful and have the most success. Guard.

BJJ was always fun, but I'm astonished to see it's more and more fun all the time.

 

BJJ is a bit like a fractal. Any part of it you happen to investigate is intricate and interesting. You try and get an overview and see the whole thing and make the areas you know fit together. Then you realise that every branch has lots more intricate details. Many of them fit in with other branches. And the more you zoom in and look, the more you see yet more intriguing and interesting details.

I've had an offer to tag along and go to classes down in Geelong, maybe as often as once a week. That means classes with John Will or one of his black belts. I'm sure it will be fun as well as tough going, especially since I now have to attend the advanced classes. I shudder at the thought of a room full of experienced coloured belts. They'll have me for breakfast ;-) Maybe I should have a "fragile - handle with care" sticker on my gi?? Naw, it'll be good and the learning will be well worth it.

Z-guard sweep, armlock and armdrags

Saturday lunchtime class only consisted of a bluebelt, myself and three of the very new guys.

The threesome were taken to one side to work on guard passing and some basic attacks from guard.

We were introduced to Z-guard. I'd only seen in in pictures and seeing I'm busy with plenty of other guard types which I have yet to master, I had never given it much of a second look. So we worked on the basic position and what it's control points are. It is really a subset of halfguard, and a pretty open version. The leg that's across the belly is in certain danger of leg attacks, so that's something to be mindful of.

We started learning a sweep. Say my partner is kneeling in front of me. I have Z-guard on him with my right hip on the floor, my right leg hooked behind his right knee and my left shin across his belly with me left foot on his right hip. I need to grab his left sleeve with my left hand so he can't post. I reach for his left pant leg with my right hand, so I can stop him from bracing out. Using my left hook against his right hip pushing to his left (the way I'm facing) and my right leg to pull his right leg to his right, I unbalance him to his left. This felt a bit awkward at first, and it took a few reps to get the hang of it.

Next we learned that if he braces with his left hand, we can attack with a figure four armlock. To start that, I need to grab his left wrist with my right hand to secure it. I need to shoot my left leg through (straighten it), so my knee is no longer between him and myself. At the same time, I sit up into him, to attach my left shoulder to his left shoulder and reach over with my left arm. This allows me then to fall back and as I do that, I grab my right wrist with my left for a figure four.

Then we were shown two variations of an arm drag to get to the back. One was a basic arm drag. I grab his right sleeve with my left, cup under his bicep with my right, pull and attach myself to his right shoulder and go for a seatbelt grip. The second variation is for where he has a grip with his right arm or he is leaning into me hard. I grab his right sleeve with me left hand, push him up with my right and insert my knee into the crook of his right elbow. Holding onto his sleeve, I can use my knee to push his arm away from his body. This creates a gap under his armpit. Into this gap, I push my right hand. I pull up with my right while using my shin and my left arm to elevate his right arm. Then I straighten my legs and duck under his arm to get his back. That sounds complicated, but is actually quite easy to do.

The rest of the class, we took turns from Z-guard, trying for the sweep, the armlock or one of the armdrags.

I've found myself in Z-guard a few times by accident, usually when someone was starting to pass and I gut my shin across. While I don't think I'm ready to successfully implement a Z-guard game, it gives me a few options if I'm in that position. If nothing else, I can threaten my opponent, so he will have less chance to pass my guard, and it might open something up. But I'll give it a crack, as I think the armdrag might work on some of the bigger folks, and the open guard is something I want to spend more time with anyway.