double seminar

After a rather busy week (2 sessions Monday, 2 sessions Wednesday, double sessions Thursday and Friday, and a normal one on Saturday, I went to a seminar in Ringwood.

The seminar was hosted by Deon and Jodie at Perkins BJJ.

Bruno Alves and Antonio Carlos Jnr ran a joint session which attracted people from several clubs. It was a very relaxed two and a half hours with plenty of individual attention.


Bruno is an omoplata machine, so he showed us two omoplata setups, one from side control and one from a sprawl on top of a double leg attempt. The third submission he taught was a neat setup from closed guard to triangle, but which could equally as easily be converted to omoplata.

Antonio showed us three related sweeps from an open guard setup. None of us had see this open guard before, so the question was asked what it's called. He sort of shrugged his shoulders and laughed, so it was instantly christened "Antonio Guard". Of course :-)

After that, we took turns practicing open guard passing. Ha, when I stepped into their open guards, it was like entering a lion's den, and it was a quick kill indeed.... I haven't felt so out of my depth since I stepped on the mat as a fresh white belt. Whoah...!

Anyway, both were really nice guys, more than happy to help and answer questions. I like the way they taught as well, it made sense. There was enough detailed information, but there were overarching themes. I came away with a far better understanding of omoplatas, in addition to knowing new ways of going for them. The open guard sweeps were harder going, but we had a small discussion about foot/leg placement at the finish of the sweep, which go a long way towards explaining some issues to me. With that more general knowledge, I think I can well finish some of my other open guard sweeps with a higher percentage of not getting caught in half guard.

So it was pretty awesome. Jodie took loads of pictures, including the usual lot of silly ones. Check out the PJJ FB page if you want to see them :-)

After the seminar, I stuck around for another hour, as there was a girls open mat. I had a roll with Jodie, Jess, Deone and Anne-Marie. Unfortunately, I couldn't stay for too long, as I had to go to my nephew's 4th birthday party afterwards.