Royler Gracie seminar

The seminar was held at Gracie Jiu Jitsu in Kilsyth, an eastern suburb of Melbourne. This meant a 370km round trip, but it was well worth it! Four of us went, so I had company, which makes for a more entertaining and seemingly shorter trip.

Royler was awesome. What a nice guy!

As expected, we went through some of the Gracie self defense techniques. Two of them dealt with problems from the front (grab/shove), three responded to choke holds from behind. Simple and as far as I can see, pretty effective.

This was followed by a series of techniques involving standing guard passes. Yes, some of it was specific grips, but a lot of it was more broad, like how maintain good posture. Not just to avoid the sweep, but to prevent the guard player from placing feet on hips. He emphasized that we need to adjust level when standing in guard as needed. We then looked at a similar scenario, but where the guard player has double sleeve grips instead of holding our heels. We learned a neat way of passing which negated those grips. From there, we looked at what we can do in case the guard player gets his feet on hip and bicep. Some very simple but effective grip changes were shown to deal with this, and where necessary, bringing a knee into play to dislodge one of his feet.

We drilled the setups and techniques independently, and then had a "play" with it, where each partner could present the other with scenarios, which required one of the passes we had just learned. Royler repeated reminded us of how important it is to be a good training partner.

Lastly, we looked at two side control escapes. Royler started by saying that sometimes you have to give something up to make progress. So if you are stuck in bottom side control and can't budge, the only resort may be to stick an arm out. However, within reason :-) Of course, it's also possible to end up in bottom side control with the far arm in a bad position anyway, and then we are forced to deal with that bad situation anyway. The two escapes both started from me having my far arm between his near shoulder and head, but with my elbow out - the worst place to have it... One ended with a head arm choke from the bottom, the other (recommended for when the guy is too big to do the choke) is basically just an escape that leaves the other person turtled with me on top.

At the end, we had some time for questions. They ranged from how to deal with berimbolos and similar techniques to what he might recommend for a small woman trapped on the bottom of a bigger guy in a self defense situation. Someone also asked about Royler's most memorable fight.

Royler was generous with his time during questions, and with photos afterwards. He's awesome.

John Will seminar

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.

four days... six classes

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!

great escapes

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.

put that boy down!

I still feel weird stepping out on the mat with a blue belt around my waist. Not only because it's new and slippery and wants to come undone. It's just... strange :-)

On the one hand I feel like maybe I have more responsibility. On the other hand, I'm pretty relaxed. I don't feel (so far) that I have a target on my back, that I need to prove anything or that there are sudden higher expectations which I must fulfill. The guys have been great. Oh, I get teased. How much the belt suits the colour of my eyes. One guy keeps saying he wants to roll with the champ. And there's the "now that you are a blue belt.." sort of stuff :-)

To be honest, it worried me to begin with, but now that I know the sky isn't falling on my head, I'm enjoying myself. With the comp over, I can experiment to my heart's content. Both with new techniques and with modifying ones I already know. Rolling is more fun all the time.

Keeping up with the theme of basics, we worked on guard passing on Friday night. For a change, it was only a very small class. One of the senior blue belts took it, then there was myself, and three guys. One of them with only a couple of classes behind him. I had the new guy for a while and was reminded how much people rely on muscles :-). We went from some drills to free guard passing against minimal resistance, then to guard passing against more resistance with the bottom person really working on breaking down posture. And finally free rolling. I mainly rolled with the two more experienced white belts. When it came to rolling, one came in grinning, called me champ and ran around to my back to attack. Silly bastard :-) We had a lively roll. I had him in a crucifix which I lost when I was experimenting. From then it was a tangle of arms and legs with several sub attempts from both of us, because this guy is pretty fast. I had a ball. He kneed me in the back of the head on an armbar attempt. We stopped to check for damage but it was time anyway.

Then we did a warm down. Oh yeah. 100 crunches. Push ups. Hold pushup position with arm/legs off the floor. Hold halfway down. Just hold for two minutes. Ha, that was funny, too. Hold the position came last, with arms & backs already tired. First he said let's hold for a minute. Cool. Two of the guys were groaning. Then he said how about two minutes? I said cool. That instantaneously led to the collapse of one of them :-) Another failed seconds later. Hehe. I don't know why, but I really find that quite easy.

Then he said, ok, let's wrestle some more. Arrright. I will say I wasn't too fresh by this stage... But the two guys I wrestled were my size or smaller, so I was going quite well. Finally, the blue belt wanted a roll. And then it was kick my arse time :-) Oh well. He always explains stuff after he catches me out and he's shown me loads of stuff. But I did feel I was getting it dished out to me. I think the best bit was when he decided to congratulate me on the new belt whilst applying a pretty nasty crossface and then ripping my arm out. Haha, fun times.

Saturday class was also reasonably small. Before the class, one of the brown belts showed me a couple of new things which he picked up from John Will and Rigan Machado down in Geelong. He couldn't stay for class, but we had a few minutes before it started.

First thing was a refinement of the standing open guard pass to knee ride. That was one of the passes we had worked on in Rigan's seminar last Sunday. Then he showed me a way to break the gable grip around the legs if someone is doing a double underpass. It's combination of making heavy legs and arching up. Next technique was a defence against the standing pass to attempted knee ride. You have to do a bit quick for this one. As he steps around my legs on my right side, I roll onto my left elbow, rock back onto my left shoulder and get my legs up. I then swing the legs in a circular motion to the right, rocking onto the the right shoulder and then the right hip, which either gets him back in my closed guard or a triangle. But you have to be quick, otherwise....

The last technique he showed me was a side control escape straight to d'arce. We didn't have a lot of time, so I only tried that one once. I'm mulling it over in my head and will have try it again a few times. But very interesting!
 
When class started, I took the warmup. Then I was partnered with the young, small guy. We drilled guard passing again, and the new guys were shown and drilled the figure four from guard. Then we went on to free guard passing with a bit then more resistance. And finally the bottom person was allowed subs. My partner and I were the most experienced pair on the mat, so we were sent up one end and mostly left to our own devices.

On the suggestion of our instructor, I worked on standing guard passes. With a light guy like that, it doesn't tax my back too much, and I can actually pick him up. When on the bottom, I made sure I gave him lots of problems to solve, but I ensured that he had some successes when he did something correctly. I showed him some of the several things one can do to slow down guard passing, such as move aside when the passer puts the knee in the middle, stiff arming, heavy leg on the under pass and such things. I showed him one of the crushing guard passes and then how if you don't control the arm, the bottom person will climb on your back. He's very ego free and thinks it's really cool when you catch him in something. But then I always show him what I did and what he might do to avoid it. And he picks stuff up fast. I was busy having a good roll with him and was busy taking his back, when I was told to "put that boy down!" :-). I made disappointed noises and we all laughed. End of class.

escaping side control

On Monday, side control escapes were the theme.

We had a medium sized class of mixed levels, and I ended up with a fairly new guy. He's still apologising for all sorts of things, but I'm working on him ;-). He made a real effort and listened to me when I helped him. Good to work with.

Starting in short base side control, the first escape began with a hip bump into his knee, so I could get my lower elbow past his hip and against my body. That was followed by a bridge to make the space to bring my arm out on his far hip. Now I had both arms on his far side, sort of like a forklift. Next move was another hard bridge and a slight twist towards him. It moved him up a bit and me out from under him, so that I could "see the light" on his far side. Holding on to his arm, I had to spin around towards his head, ending up face down while holding his upper arm. It was necessary to keep pressure on his shoulder, and we ended up with him turtled and myself nearly front on, with my arm still inserted under his. From here it was easy to go for a collar choke or a head arm choke.

Next scenario was if the top person switches out their legs before I could bump them forward and escape out their far side. Switched out, he is well based to the front, but has nothing at hisback, so could I sit up. I found I needed to raise my legs up, and then kick out or swing them back down, to get a pendulum effect. Also, I needed to brace out on one arm. But once I started, it was easy to tip him over all the way and end up with me in side control top.

Another option from that switchback scenario: if my arm (the one near his hips) didn't end up on his far side, and was in danger of getting attacked, I reached over his back and made a gable grip with the other hand. Then I walked into him, pinned him to me and swept him over. Very much like the headlock escape.

We played with this a little, changing from getting the arm through or not, and from the top person staying in side contol to going to switchback.

Lastly, we revisited a sidecontrol escape which John Will had taught us at a seminar last year. I didn't "get it" at the time, but this time, it made sense and I think it would work for me, excepting maybe with a really big guy. This one is useful where the top guy has his elbow against your head, and your top arm is trapped outside (you couldn't get your elbow wedged against his hip). Say he is positioned with his head on my left side. I had to reach over my head with my exposed right arm, and grab his gi near his left elbow. Then I had to bridge up and to my left, punching his elbow as far away from me as I could, while I roll onto my left side. As he pulled his arm back in, I needed to get my left arm under me so I could roll to my right and end up face down under him. The tricky part was to get my right arm around his right arm. But after the bridge, there was a lot of space to get my arm in. Ideally, I wanted my left arm between his legs, cupping his left thigh. Last step: looking left towards his feet, I got to my knees, and raising my butt, I rolled towards my right shoulder (that's why it was important to look to the left). As I became a "hill", he rolled off. As I rolled over, I still had hold of his right arm, and could attack it with several techniques, for example a figure four.

It really was great to revisit that escape. It's fairly technical, but you end up in a good attacking position, and it's not a sweep anyone expects.

We did a few minutes of wrestling, for which I had the same partner. I pulled guard to work on my attacks from guard. I still didn't feel my usual self, too stiff and too tired to do much, so when he made a good attempt at a guard pass, I didn't fight it too much. That was as much because I was tired as it was to let him work a bit :-). But I managed a couple of sweeps, one from half guard, one from guard. And he managed a textbook escape from side control like we had just drilled. So that was excellent and I didn't fail to tell him that.

For part of the night I scored the job of being demo grappling dummy. All in all a good evening, and those escapes certainly are pretty useful.

north-south choke

We had a very small class on Saturday. And for the first time in ages, I was the lowest ranking player on the mat.

Of late, I've ended up scarily near the right end of the line-up. That means having to take the warm up. And worse, I will get roped in to teach stuff...

Anyway, Saturday was about working on the north south choke. With only four of us there, we took our time to work on the small details of this choke. How does it work, what makes it work better? And we got a fair few reps in. I had read up on this choke recently, so it was very interesting to have the chance to practise it. We looked at a variation where you set it up while in side control and then go to n/s to finish the choke.

Then we had a crack at an escape from side control where he has an underhook on our far arm and the other arm around our neck. A three step affair. First step, hip out so we are on our side facing the opponent and our free hand on his hip. Second step is whizzer him on the underhook side, then bridge up while shoving up with that arm. This creates a space under him big enough that we can feed our head through towards his far hip. Step three is to put the head in that gap, and holding on to his whizzered arm, we rotate around it until we are face down in front of it. This requires that we swing our leg as we rotate to get some momentum while we pull on his upper arm.

Then we sat around and talked for a while and went over some other small stuff. It was quite a laid back affair.

Oh yeah, aside from a few wrestles we had at some point. I was severely squashed and manhandled by a big purple belt. I was pleased that I fended off several attacks and bought time, but the outcome was inevitable in every roll. Having said that, he did stop a couple of times to encourage or correct something I did. So while painful, it was a good learning session :-)