rolling, lots of great rolling

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

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!!

not training tonight

I feel like I might be coming down with a cold. So I restrained myself and gave class a miss tonight. I'm not coughing and spluttering, but I'm a bit achy, with a vaguely sniffy nose. Last night it was a sore throat.

I knew it, I knew it, when I heard all the coughing and sneezing in the exam hall last week!! Anyway, I'm hoping that by taking it easy today, I will be good to go again soon. At least I'm not in bed or anything drastic.

I was visiting friends on Saturday and after dinner we sat around and talked. As often, I played with the cats and the dog, and Greg loves to take photos of all the silly rubbish I get up to. Here is me annoying poor long suffering Lilac.

I was thinking it's pretty hard to choke a cat from back control.

Aside from not being able to either get a proper seat belt grip or get your hooks in, you really have trouble closing your arm around that little neck.

Cats also didn't read the rules about no scratching...

I suppose if Lilac wore a gi, I could try a cross lapel choke ;-) Ever seen a cat tap?

I know, I know. I'm going to have another beer and watch some UFC. Enough sillyness for one day.

looking back at the week

I felt a bit flat and useless at the end of last week, but this week has been better. Don't know what it was, but I'm pleased I'm ok now.

As we have the Will Machado Nationals coming up next weekend, we've been doing a lot of rolling. I missed the Wednesday lunchtime class as I had to go to a meeting, but had lots of rolls on Monday, Wednsday, Thursday and Friday.

There seems to be not much pattern or logic to where I go or which submission to try. Of course, I still like the closed guard, and my most effective attacks seem to be collar chokes. But that aside, anything goes from anywhere, as long as I get out from under people. I suppose it's a good thing that there is always something I know I can go for, and it's always several things in a row. The stringing together of techniques is starting. But as yet, there is no set game plan and therefore no setting up of techniques. It's all a bit ad hoc, so to speak.

I had a few really good rolls with a purple belt during Thursday night's open mat. I hit a couple of sweeps, passed his guard and actually threatened him a few times. I also had a lot of success in breaking him down inside my guard and going for things (not that I succeeded...). And then we ended up in all sorts of weird positions which were way off the map and needed serious rearranging of limbs to go back to known positions. Well, I suppose that's not all bad. Let's call it experimental :-)

I nearly did a dummy spit on Wednesday night. We went from standing and I just couldn't get my act together. So I was frustrated with myself. I got pinned under a large white belt and just couldn't bloody well get out. I just expect that I can do better than that by now! At the end, I had two rolls with a purple belt. First roll took some time and though he took me down, I did at some time get a top position. It took several minutes before he could armbar me, as I escaped several of his submission attempts. So I should have been happy. I mean - do I really expect an experienced purple belt NOT to beat me up?? So then we start again, and he took me down with a textbook double leg. He was worried it was too hard, but no, it was very controlled. Then he made short work of me seeing we landed with him in such a good position. And that was totally fair enough. Still, I was grinding my teeth. Sometimes I'm such an idiot.

I came home and reread all the stuff about just shutting up and training. And found this post on dealing with frustration on Liam's blog. I needed that reality check. Three cheers to my fellow bloggers, they have saved my day many times :-)

So instead of spending any more time thinking about how well things didn't go for me, I started planning on how to deal with specific problems I've been having.

For example, a big strong whitebelt is one of the few people who simply mows through my closed guard. So instead of hanging on to a lost position, I need to be pro-active. Go to open guard, get feet in. Control his arms and put feet on his hips and make space. Or at least get a knee in. And guess what, Friday night I did exactly that. I also paid particular attention to using my hips more. And lo and behold, I not only held him off for about ten minutes, I got top positions a coupe of times and actually threatened him several times. That would have been advantages :-)) Did I feel good about it? You bet.

Inbetween rolls with him, I had the little guy. What a strange feeling, going from one opponent who outweighs me by 30kg to one who is half his weight, and about 15kg less than I.

Today, Saturday, we drilled an escape from turtle where you trap an arm as you sit out and then go to back control. I was paired up with a young guy who has only had a few classes. Hihi, he was making comments like: "I'll go light on you because I don't want to hurt you", "I can be really heavy", "oh, I could try THIS instead" and "AU - your elbow" :-) .

Oh, and then we were told to roll, with the usual caution not to break the newbies, and the newbies to take it easy and not to use muscle. Haha. Well, I broke him three times. Gently.

I hit sweeps all over the place, and choked him. Well, I guess that's what I do, so I might as well resign myself that that's my goto move for the comp.

But while we rolled, I helped him and pointed out when to go for a bridge and roll, why not to try and choke me from within my guard, and to keep his elbows in when mounted. Then it was time. Ah, and he did point out he could have armbarred me, from within my guard. Ok. Right.

But it was fun :-)

We had a visiting brown and purple belt on the floor. Sadly, there was no chance to roll with either of them. But there will be a chance another time. And the brown belt showed me a knee bar from switch base side control. Well, once I'm a blue belt, I can and will use leg attacks. I did learn some a while ago when I did some no-gi grappling at another school, but here we don't use leg techniques until blue belt, so I haven't thought about it much.

the rest of the week

Friday evening was another smallish class. Aside from one brand new guy, we were all four stripes plus, so for a change, I was very much on the left side of the line up.

We revised the heart attack sweep from open (hooks in) guard. I worked with one of the bigger guys. That ensured I did it right, for otherwise... he no move! Done right, it feels very easy :-)

Then we worked on a sequence. Again, starting in open guard. We get double underhooks and stretch him out. Then we go for a cutting armbar by grabbing over his left shoulder with a gable grib and wriggling upwards. His reaction will be to turn his hand and retract his arm, which brings his elbow down our centreline. At this time, we cup this left elbow with our left hand, hip out to the right and get his left elbow to the floor on our left side. The we reach over the top with our right arm and grab his chin. Really, we want a gable grip on his chin, but we may need to lift/move our hip to get the left arm free to do so. We need to pin him down on us tightly and then hip out two or three times to the left until we feel that he is "over the hill". From here, it's easy to sweep him over to our right and move to side control.

Landing there, we go straight to a gable grip around the bottom of his neck and under his left arm and pin him to us. From here, there are a couple of options to go to armbar. We experimented with this a bit, and depending on body size and the size of the guy on the bottom, it might be easier to step over his middle with our left foot while controlling the head with our elbow (and then step over the head) or possibly to step with the the foot over the head first and the leave the left foot against his side.

We also discovered that if you can snare his left lapel with your right hand, you can pull him over with that instead of by his chin. That's nearly a choke in itself, but as he's swept over, he's in a perfect position for a lapel half nelson choke.

After class, some free wrestling. I watched the new guy spazz on one of the blue belts. Scary.

Then I was lucky enough to be able to spend a fair bit of time with one of the blue belts. He gave me some openings, so I worked on my attacks. Managed some nice transitions and actually felt semi-competent :-). I always can think of an attack now. But chokes seem to come the easiest. I should be working on armbars, but I guess if I attack with chokes, that opens up elbows and that might lead to armbars.

A little later one, that exact point was proven. He was hunting for armbars, and as I'm getting pretty good at defending and protecting my elbows (beware his underhooks!), he then went for chokes. Although I knew I would expose my elbows, I still had to defend the chokes. So I was armbarred :-)

But that really helped make stuff sink in.

The Saturday midday class consisted of myself and three fairly new guys. I took the warm up.

With a grading coming up in a few weeks, they needed to work on their four basic drills. I was the grappling dummy for demonstration purposes. Then, in turns, I ended up working with each of the guys. Oh, they tried so hard to do it right, and they use so much strength. Well, less than two years ago, I was just as tense, and it is good to be reminded sometimes. I did my best to help them get good base, correct positioning and transitions. And I reminded them to breathe, smile and relax :-).

Every time I see something "basic" demonstrated, I see some little thing I've missed before (or which I've forgotten about). Today, it was another simple little thing: someone has mount on me and I want to bridge and roll. I want to catch their right arm to remove their chance of posting. The most effective way to catch it is to get an overhook and trap their elbow. To get space to move my left arm up and over their arm, I move my head across towards my right (towards their left arm). That small movement really makes it easier to move my left arm.

I also use running through the basic drills as an opportunity to polish my moves and to really work on good hip movement. There was a time when I was disappointed if I had to do basic drills instead of being allowed to wrestle. But I have realised there is much below the surface. There is so much room for improvement in the moves that make up those drills. So I apply myself fully and instead of resenting the drills, I welcome the chance to improve my technique.