30/06/2011 - Teaching (Attacking Closed Guard)

Teaching #010
Gracie Barra Bristol, (BJJ), Can Sönmez, Bristol, UK - 30/06/2011

Building on what I taught last week about grips, I wanted to go into some basic sweeps. That started with a drill for the flower sweep, using a helpful body movement drill Roy Dean includes on his Blue Belt Requirements DVD set. Start on your back. Bring your right leg up and out. Swing it away from your body, down, then back towards your other foot. At the same time, swing your other leg up and across, using that momentum to turn your body over. You then go back the other way, repeating side to side. It's a bit like a breakdancing move.

Like I mentioned last week, there are lots of entries for this sweep: I began with the grip I showed previously, double wrist control. You then switch to gripping the gi material by either their same side knee or ankle. Put your opposite foot on their other hip, then use that to swivel your body to a perpendicular position. On the knee/ankle gripping side, kick your leg right up into their armpit, aiming to off-balance them over towards your other shoulder.

You then continue the motion from the body movement drill, bringing that armpit leg over your body (go diagonally, towards your shoulder), while chopping the other leg underneath. It's important you clear that leg out of the way, in order to smoothly roll through to mount. If you fail to chop that leg through, you'll roll your opponent on top of your own leg. At best, you'll then end up with a very sloppy sweep, but at worst, you'll block your own technique and end back in guard.

Next, I showed one of the first entries I was taught, which is much tougher to establish (sufficiently so that it put me off trying this sweep in sparring). Break their grip like I showed last week, dragging their arm across your body and pulling them towards you with your legs. Prevent them regaining their posture by wrapping an arm behind their head, which also traps their arm: they can no longer use that to post out. From here, grab the material by their knee or ankle, then complete the sweep as before.

Yet another option is to go for the sweep if they raise their knee: you can then hook your arm behind that knee, otherwise completing the sweep as before. Finally, I showed how this combines well with the armlock, as going for the armbar puts you in the right position to get the flower.

Upon reflection, I may have gone a bit overboard with all those entries. My intention was to give lots of choice, so people could try them out and see which worked best for them. However, I probably should have cut it down to three at most, particularly as people were definitely having some trouble with the flower sweep motion itself. Normally people don't need much correction or ask too many questions, but tonight I was offering pointers to pretty much everybody as I wandered round.

That also fed into the usual three minutes of progressive resistance, which for most people became extra time for drilling the basic move rather than refining it under resistance. The main problem seems to have been getting perpendicular, so when I teach this again, I'll spend some more time going through putting the foot on the hip and swivelling, kicking the leg into the armpit.

Next was the scissor sweep, which is a lot easier. Start by getting a deep grip on their opposite collar, then with your other hand grab their same side elbow. Put your foot on their same side hip and shrimp out slightly, to make space to insert your knee. Slide that knee over, once again to that same side, until your shin is across their stomach. Hook your instep around their other side. Another option is to angle your knee towards their shoulder, which can act as an entry into the triangle.

A key detail is to then raise your elbows towards your head, so that you're pulling them onto your shin. The aim is to load them onto your leg, which in turn means that their weight is no longer on their legs. This should make them lighter: drop your other leg to the mat, chopping underneath them as you bring your hooking leg over, rolling into mount.

That shouldn't require much strength, so if you're having to strain, you probably haven't pulled them forward enough first. You can also get this sweep is they raise a knee up. Drop your same side knee towards their opposite hip, then continue the sweep as above. If you're finding that when you try and chop their leg they simply step over it, raise your chopping leg slightly. You might even try hooking behind their knee with it, as that will immobilise the leg, although it may also make it more difficult to get a smooth chopping motion.

Finally, if for some reason you're having trouble chopping out their leg, you can switch to a push sweep, which is very similar to the scissor sweep. Everything is the same, except that you don't chop the leg. Instead, move your head back in line with theirs, so your torso is square on, then slide what would have been your chopping leg backwards. You now have room to use the foot of that leg to push into the side of their knee. Tracing a semi-circle, you're then going to shove their knee straight back, which will knock them off balance, whereupon you can roll through to mount as before.

A common mistake is to try and push the knee backwards right away. That is unlikely to work, as there will probably be too much friction. You need to push the knee slightly sideways first, then trace that arc to get the leg back. They should start to fall as soon as you do that, meaning that gravity will help you initiate the sweeping movement.

Equipment Review – Defense Soap

Short Review: Defense Soap sent me a sample of their shower gel, which is meant to prevent ringworm, staph, MRSA and various other unpleasant skin infections. The active ingredients are tea tree and eucalyptus oil: there are numerous links on the website to follow up if you want to investigate the scientific basis for their efficacy. Judging by other reviews, there are lots of happy customers, some of whom claim Defense Soap has actually cleared up their ringworm. I've never had any skin infections, so I don't know for certain if I can thank Defense Soap for my continued health over the last few months. Nevertheless, if you're looking for an anti-bacterial and anti-fungal soap, as far as I can tell, Defense Soap is a respected market leader.

Full Review: You certainly can't fault the customer service at Defense Soap. When Guy Sako announced he would send out his product to anyone who asked over on this thread, I took him up on the offer. A sample was sent out to me almost immediately: I received the shower gel version. The package also included some coupons and Natracil soap. I've now given the Defense Soap shower gel a thorough test, after several months of use, so it's time for a review.

The product itself is a light orange colour, with a fairly liquid consistency. It smells somewhat clinical, but not offensive. It doesn't go quite as far as the brand name shower gel I compared it with, but that little blob in the palm of my hand was good for light coverage over most of my body. I found that on a few occasions when I had mat burn, such as on my shoulders, the product stung slightly. Though to be fair, on that particular night they also stung when I lowered myself into the bath, either from the water or the bubble bath (yes, I love a good bubble bath. ;p)

I've now been using Defense Soap for the past three months. It is difficult to judge just how effective it is, but I can at least say that I haven't had any staph, ringworm, MRSA or anything of that nature over the period. Of course, I've never had any of those in the five years I've been training. For a proper test, you'd need to have a few people along with a control group roll at several gyms where there had been an outbreak (though that could be a somewhat dangerous test, so probably not advisable or ethical). For me, that currently means the main benefit of a product like this is peace of mind.

From the little pamphlet that was included, the whole range includes bar soap, essential oils, shower gels and wipes. The literature states that this is superior to anti-bacterial soaps because of its 'all-natural' ingredients. I have to admit that when I read 'all-natural', I tend to assume that is a euphemism for 'untested', which is unfair on my part. I have no issue with synthetic products, as I'm more than happy to trust in science and progress.

According to the website, Defense Soap is endorsed by USA Judo. It also has a section entitled 'Defense Clinical Studies', which states that somebody called Erhardt Bell from the PetLabs Diagnostic Laboratories conducted a trial in April 2006. I'm no scientist, but as far as I can tell, it states that Bell grew some bacteria in his lab, then transferred it to some plates. A few drops of water saturated with Defense Soap were added to the plates and marked. After nine days, there was lots of bacterial growth, except for those marked areas. Bell and PetLabs does pop up when you do a Google search, so that is presumably a legitimate study. Bell also appears in a few MMA related articles, like a piece on staph for Fight! magazine.

Elsewhere on the main website, the active ingredients are listed as tea tree and eucalyptus oil. Below that information there is a long list of references, which you can follow up here. There are even more sources to check out on the active ingredients page. Personally, I'm dubious of anything purporting medical properties which hasn't been through lots of clinical trials: it would seem that Defense Soap has been through at least one successful test, and if the sources listed on the site are reliable, the main ingredients have been carefully examined too.

Continuing my brief background check, I then typed in "defense soap" and "fraud", to see if any criticism came up. The first result was the review I already mentioned, where the guy says it cured his ringworm, so nothing critical there. Second result? This thread, which apart from an obvious troll was entirely positive, not only about the product, but the company too.

There also appear to be plenty of other reviews around, judging by the same search engine. This guy claims it cleared up his ringworm in 2008, whereas this guy does a pretty thorough job of comparing a number of different Defense products. No complaints over on Amazon, with two five star and a three star review: that includes another claim that it cleared up ringworm, along with a wrestler who says he uses it regularly. Finally, the mighty Meerkatsu did a comparison with Fight Soap a while ago, where his verdict was essentially that they're both ok, but he wasn't sure if they were sufficiently superior to a simple high street alternative to justify the higher price.

Update June 2011: PizDoff just shared a link with me to this interesting Bullshido thread reviewing both Fight Soap and Defense Soap, including contributions from the founders of both companies.

I think I'd have to agree with Seymour. However, I say that as somebody who has yet to suffer from any skin infections: as per the aforementioned reviews, there are at least a few people who found Defense Soap actively cleared up their ringworm. I was impressed at how confident Defense Soap appear to be in their products, given that they clearly send out plenty of free samples (my review is one of many).

They also sponsor lots of grappling related sports and events. Looking online, I can see they're involved in judo, wrestling and MMA, along with charities like Maya's Hope Project and the 'Grapple For the Cure' benefit held by St Jude's Children's Research Hospital. I particularly like the fact that they support female fighters as well. According to this interview (where he comes across well), Sako started his company after his youth wrestling team had a major ringworm outbreak: he states he has been involved with wrestling for thirty-four years.

If you want a respected, natural, anti-bacterial and anti-fungal soap from a company that not only supports grappling but appears to have a social conscience, Defense Soap looks like a good choice.

Update Sep 2013: Unfortunately, Defense Soap's most recent choice of advertising was ill-advised, as discussed here, but still nowhere near as bad as Fight Soap.

27/06/2011 - Gracie Barra Fundamentals

Class #407
Gracie Barra Bristol, (BJJ), Nicolai 'Geeza' Holt, Bristol, UK - 27/06/2011

Geeza has mentioned to me in the past that for maintaining side control, you need different approaches depending on the kind of escape they are attempting to accomplish. Tonight's lesson went into further detail on that point, focusing on how you progress to mount from side control.

The first side control to mount transition was for when you're facing somebody who likes to play the top game. The main goal of a top player under side control is to swim their arm through and gain the underhook, so they can start to turn to their knees. Therefore it is imperative that you secure the underhook instead, immobilising their arm with the standard side control using a gable grip, your other arm under their head.

To progress to mount, you want to get your knee over their belt line, twisting their torso by walking your fingers up towards their head. When you can get your knee to the mat, fling your lower leg out to slap the mat. This is to avoid being sucked into half guard: you'll need to swivel your hips slightly to bypass the danger zone.

If you want to go from side control to mount on a bottom player, Geeza recommended a quite different type of side control. Rather than an underhook, the bottom player will be looking to sneak their knee under, in order to recover guard. To block that, bring your hand to their near hip. Your other arm will be over their head, with your elbow slotted by their shoulder. This is comparable to reverse scarf hold, which indeed is the position you'll be moving to next.

Grab their knee and push it to the mat, then swing your leg over the top. You need to make sure you've got control of their knee, or they will try to snatch half guard as your leg comes over. In other words, this is a bit like what I taught a while back, except that with Geeza's position, you're already almost in reverse scarf hold.

I almost never use that method of maintaining side control, so as we were given the choice of where to start in specific sparring, I took the opportunity to practice that side control variation with the hand by their hip. We started in side control, but if you managed to escape or get to mount, next time you had to start in the opposite position.

I began underneath, with Oli, who also wanted to try that hand on the hip (as he knows I'm more of a bottom player). I was able to do the running escape, although again it was a little sloppy so I almost got my back taken. Later on, in the same position, I managed to just about time the Tran escape where you bridge, ending up in top half guard.

When I was on top in that position (strangely enough, both times against the same white belt), I found that if I had the arm over, the elbow seemed to help stop them bridge into me. Despite their efforts to upa, I was able to slide through into mount. However, the second time one of us must have done something different, as this time he was able to snatch my leg into half guard.

Finally, with another white belt, I found that he kept giving me his arm by gripping too deep around my back (which I'm guessing meant I was turning from the running escape). That meant I could lock it to me and roll him over. As so often happens, although I had the arm and was pressing my back into him, I wasn't able to control the hips. They could therefore simply get back to their knees, or otherwise move back on top.

About the third time that happened, I tried something different. It wasn't very technical, but with my free hand, I grabbed his head to stop him moving. That gave me enough control to be able to turn around and move into sidemount. I'm sure there is a better way of doing that: I was trying to use a grip on the pant leg too, but that didn't seem to give me the control I wanted.

Incidentally, if like me you found the latest update of Firefox killed your Google toolbar, try this. Seems to do the trick. Also, I booked my accommodation for the ADCC in September: I'll be staying near the arena at a cheapo hostel. There is a group of us going up from Gracie Barra Bristol, and I'm also looking forward to meeting up with old friends (like the crew from RGA Bucks, along with hopefully some of my even older training partners from RGA HQ I haven't seen in ages, like Dominique, Christina, Tran etc) and new (e.g., if Caleb does a 'coffee with the family' thing, like he does for the Worlds).

26/06/2011 - Gracie Barra Sparring

Class #406
Gracie Barra Bristol, (BJJ), Nicolai 'Geeza' Holt, Bristol, UK - 26/06/2011

I had intended to pop along last night, but as my gf was heading off for the weekend and had a tough day at work, she wanted to go out for a meal. Nevertheless, as she was away, that meant I was free to head down to the Sunday sparring session. After the warm-up, Geeza moved into a bit of specific sparring, from guard. On top, I was looking to control the leg, create some distance, then pass over the top. I think I'm getting a bit mixed up on where to put my head and which side to underhook, but at least I'm remembering to try both of those.

As ever, I normally get stuck in half guard when trying to slide through, then work to continue the pass from there. My control of their hips remains poor, which is a key element of passing I've been missing for...well, ever. Most of the time when I do get past, it feels sloppy. Some day, it would be nice to be able to pass the guard crisply and reliably. A good few years off yet, unfortunately.

Underneath, I wanted to attempt the techniques I'm planning to teach on Thursday, which are all basic sweeps from closed guard. None of my partners were sufficiently obliging today, so instead I ended up practicing spider guard and basic sweeps from standing. Still useful, as I'll be showing some fundamental open guard sweeps against a standing opponent in a few weeks time.

My spider guard continues to be mostly a holding position: I'm not doing enough with it. However, I'm pleased that I haven't been forgetting to at least try those basic sweeps from open guard, the tripod and sickle. Working on the set-ups is useful, as is experiencing the typical problems and resistance. Something I'll be looking to incorporate into the lesson. The most useful thing I've learned regarding those sweeps is probably what Kev showed, getting a double grip on one sleeve and clamping your elbows. Seems to be a strong grip.

Class moved into free sparring after that, with Geeza pairing people up. I started off with a white belt, where again I wanted those sweeps, but strangely found myself in Barbosa guard (which is basically a counter to the double underhooks pass, but Abmar Barbosa has a whole series of techniques from there). I reviewed his instructional set a while ago for Jiu Jitsu Style, but discounted it for my own game as too advanced. However, given that I ended up there three or four times today, I'll have to give Barbosa's DVD another look (it was all pretty advanced, but there must be at least one or two things I can try).

With another white belt, I again found I couldn't get into position for those simple sweeps I wanted. My backup plan of the tripod and sickle didn't work either: I was creating plenty of distance by pushing on his hip, but he didn't stand up as I'd expected. A lot of people are also putting their knee up when I go for the spider guard. I did have a sweep to try from there earlier, but I've forgotten the details: time to review my notes!

There was also a more challenging roll, with a big blue belt. I think he said he weighed about 100kg, which is at least 35kg more than me. Nevertheless, he didn't go nuts and stayed fairly relaxed. I looked to work my escapes, particularly the running escape, but I'm not swivelling enough. I keep ending up vaguely going for half guard, but with a very poor position, so I normally get passed in short order. I also gave up my back at some point, getting caught in a bow and arrow choke.

That happened again during my next roll, with a visiting purple belt from Gracie Barra Cardiff, Dan (or it would have done, if time hadn't ran out). I was mostly defensive, trying some random things like wrapping my collar and gi over his hand as he tried to feed it through to complete a choke. That isn't something I've done before, so it may be a vagary of the ripstop gi (though I doubt it's a viable defence: fun to play with, though).

There's a seminar with Mauricio Gomes coming up in early July, which I don't think I'll be able to make as I'm still having to cycle back to my gf's parents. Shame, as it's been a few years since I last trained with Roger's father. It will be good when I don't have that time constraint anymore: still working on the floors in the new house!

23/06/2011 - Teaching (Maintaining Closed Guard)

Teaching #009
Gracie Barra Bristol, (BJJ), Can Sönmez, Bristol, UK - 23/06/2011

Maintaining closed guard could arguably be called stalling. However, I'm looking at this from the perspective of the old "position before submission" mantra: you can't be offensive from the closed guard if you can't hold it for more than a few seconds. I didn't have quite so much material to draw upon when researching this, as I can't think of too many instructionals that focus on this aspect of the guard.

The warm-up went as normal, with one addition. I wanted a drill to help people maintain their closed guard. I thought that if one person stands in the guard and other person then does sit-ups from there, that could help them build their leg strength and stamina, in a specific closed guard setting. It might also benefit the person standing, in terms of developing the base and balance required to stand and effectively pass.

For technique, I decided that I would start with grips, which is one of the more obvious ways to keep the position. I'm certainly no master of grips, so I just went through the main ways of setting up a good attacking position. A basic but very useful grip is to get a really deep grasp of the collar: you may find it helps to sit up to get that in really deep. Once you have it, that provides three main advantages. Firstly, this gives you great control, as you can pull them down towards you. Second, it could be the beginning of a choke, and perhaps more importantly, it will make them start to worry about that choke rather than thinking about passing.

Thirdly, it means you can establish a collar and elbow grip. There are various attacks you can do from there, the most common of which are probably armbars, scissor and push sweeps. I'll be going through the latter two options in my next class, so for now I just briefly showed how it could be used as an entry, rather than getting into detail about the attacks.

Something I've found a few times when teaching, such as when going through the trap and roll, is that it feels like I could give them more to practice. I therefore wanted to do a few more grips, particularly as it doesn't take long to show them. Adding to the collar and elbow, I then suggested double wrist control. This also meant I could re-emphasise the two main types of sleeve grips: either make a pocket with your thumb and insert your four fingers (rather than putting four fingers inside the sleeve or trouser cuff: that's not only competition illegal, it's dangerous), or get a pistol grip, where you grab a heap of cloth in your fist.

That will lead into the other sweep I want to teach next week, the flower sweep. There are various other ways of setting it up, but double wrist control is a simple entry. Another grip that could get you to the flower sweep (among others) is to grab their trousers by their knee, the other hand on their sleeve. This also helps to stop them getting a knee into your tailbone, and will normally make them nervous, as they'll assume you're setting something up.

Finally, you can simply grab them around the head and pull them down. Again, this could help you set up various other techniques. It might be that you could start making space for a choke. You might start sneaking under their arm to get an armwrap. It could also be the start of the aforementioned scissor sweep, if you also trap their arm across their body as you pull them down.

Progressive resistance on grips was a chance for people to get used to knowing when to release and re-grip, rather than burning out their fingers. This is an obvious thing, but I've certainly forgotten to do it in the past. Having an iron grip is great, but being able to flow through is even better, as then you don't waste energy.

Normally, I have everyone do four minutes of drilling each, then move into resistance. However, getting the grips didn't take much drilling, so I had them start upping the resistance about every minute. Training like this does put some responsibility on the students, which is interesting: some people make sure to really test out the technique, whereas others start just playing around with stuff they want to work. For example, there were a few people moving from the grips into triangles, or going to take the back.

I could step in and insist people stick with just those grips I showed, but like I've said before, I want to give people a certain element of choice. What I'm offering are suggestions and ideas, rather than an awesome competition-tested game. I'm a noob purple belt who doesn't compete, which means I always feel uncomfortable stating "this is the right way, so don't do it like that." So, having a relatively open approach to drilling works for me: time will tell if it works for people attending the class.

Next, I moved into breaking posture. If you want to maintain closed guard, then you need to stop them setting up their pass. If they try to pass from the knees, the first thing they normally do is put a knee into your tailbone, or somewhere else on your bottom. The easy way to scupper that is to grab onto the gi material by their knee and shift your hips back over to the middle.

That can be very frustrating for the person trying to pass, which is good for distracting them and working an opening to attack. On the downside, it can consume a fair bit of energy, as you might find yourself doing it repeatedly if they're really persistent.

You can also try pulling their elbows out and then towards you. This is particularly handy if they've got both hands on your hips, or something like that. Using your legs is key here, to help you pull them forwards. This is a general point for the guard: make sure you involve your legs, as they're a lot more powerful than your arms alone.

This is also true if they want to stand. Carefully time the right moment, then as they stand, pull your knees towards your chest. That should knock them back onto the ground. It could also put you in a better position than before, as they may end up falling into you, meaning you can get superior control. Ideally, they'll make the mistake of posting on their hands, as that means you can go for various attacks, like the kimura.

Finally, you need to be able to break their grips too. A simple method is to wrap up their wrist, then yank upwards. You could try and add to the power of doing that by raising up slightly with your hips first, then dropping back down with your hips as you pull up with your hands. This is a good set up for moving into the arm-wrap, which I mentioned earlier. There are various attacks from here, which I'll show at a later date. For the moment, try it as a controlling position.

As a general tip, you can also try raising your hips, so that you're closer to their hips. This is something Braulio recommends in the most recent issue of Jiu Jitsu Style, which I've also seen suggested elsewhere (might have been Saulo). I often forget to try this, but it is an option to play with.

Again, everyone did this for four minutes, gradually upping the resistance. This time, there was a slight difference in that I had everybody stay on their knees. Standing changes things, so I wanted people to have an opportunity to focus solely on control from the knees to start with. When we moved on to the three minutes each of progressive resistance, I added standing to pass back in.

The warm-up, demonstration and drilling didn't take so long as usual: I had a good forty minutes of the ninety left to play with. Fortunately, jiu jitsu has an easy solution when you've got more time than you'd expected: sparring. I had everyone line up, then did the Gracie Barra Birmingham method of counting them off 1-2-3. All the 1s then went on their backs, where they stayed for five minutes. The parameters for specific sparring tonight was the person on top wants to pass, whereas the person on the bottom wants to sweep or submit, from closed guard.

I didn't want people to start flying off into many, many variations of open guard, so kept reminding people to keep their legs closed. Of course, that does make things a little awkward if the person on top manages to open your legs and start to pass. I left it to people to use their judgement: you can of course go for the various basic sweeps like the ankle grab or handstand, but the goal should be to recover your closed guard if they've broken it open (given the topic of the lesson).

When the 1s, 2s and 3s had all had a go, there was still time for them to each have another five minute round. This time, it was guard passing, but with the person on top allowed to stand. There were about eight or nine people, which meant the 1-2-3 arrangement worked fairly well this time.

21/06/2011 - BJJ at the Martial Arts & Poetry Seminar

Teaching #008
University of Warwick, (BJJ), Can Sönmez, Coventry, UK - 21/06/2011

The third issue of Jiu Jitsu Style is now out: it's available all over the place, with print issues available from the main site as well as Budovideos, or digitally through iTunes. Most of the usual blogger crew have pieces in there: in case you're wondering what I contributed this round, I was responsible for two of the interviews, with Carlson Gracie Jr and UK standout Luke Costello, along with a history of Gracie Barra. There is a bunch of cool stuff in this issue, like Meg's article on families in BJJ (featuring Kev, Yas and Family Mat-ters, among others), J-Sho's detailed analysis of the 2011 Mundials (although the version I read, from a pre-release of the magazine a week or two ago, didn't go into depth on the women: see Jen Flannery's awesome site for a great review of the women's results) and an inspiring chat with cancer-survivor and Abu Dhabi World Pro champ, Lagarto (interviewed by Oli Geddes, himself a notable figure on the UK BJJ scene).

My class today was rather unusual, as I was teaching BJJ as part of a seminar combining poetry and martial arts. The MA in Creative Writing at the University of Warwick does lots of fun stuff like that: after my seminar, I was able to pop along to another seminar in the same series, this time on fractals. I'll just focus on the brief bit of BJJ teaching, but if you're lucky (depending on if you think the martial arts and poetry crossover sounds dubious or not), there may be video up later, as it was recorded. :D

I had to think carefully about what to teach beforehand. Normally, my main concerns would be things like the most useful techniques to help beginners, or the kind of class I would have liked to have as a white belt. However, this time I wasn't teaching BJJ beginners at a BJJ school. I was teaching Masters students who were studying creative writing, who for all I knew didn't care in the slightest about martial arts, or indeed sports in general.

BJJ also isn't something that comes naturally to most people. It involves a lot of close physical contact, in positions that can understandably make people a little uncomfortable at first. My initial thought was to go with a simple trap and roll from the mount, as I thought that out of all the possibilities, that was one of the least potentially awkward positions. Unfortunately, mats weren't available at the venue.

I'd anticipated that might be the case, so my back-up plan was to go with the rear naked choke. Arguably that is more intimidating than rolling out of the mount, but it does have the advantage that mats aren't so important, as both people can simply sit on their bums when drilling this technique. I had a few concerns, as some people might well be scared of the idea that someone is trying to choke them, and it can also be hard to incorporate resistance without mats. I couldn't do without resistance, as that was integral to the whole lesson.

When I got the physical part of the seminar, I could see a few people were already looking worried. I tried to calm them down as best as I could, saying that nobody had to do anything they weren't comfortable with, and they could practice on me if they would rather not have anybody choking them. I wasn't convincing enough, as two people left at that point (though I guess it might have been they had something else to go on to).

Still, I had around ten people who stayed and were willing to give it a try. We began with a brief warm-up, which I included for safety: I didn't want anyone to somehow pull a muscle or something. I thought it highly unlikely given we were just drilling a rear naked choke, but you never know. So, we went through some star-jumps, squats and sit ups, then did the usual stretching routine for the legs, arms, neck and back.

I explained that the rear naked choke was due to not gripping material, rather than people being nude (I know if the situation was reversed, I'd raise an eyebrow if some guy said "now we're going to do a naked choke" ;p). In terms of technical detail, to begin the choke, you can start from either a proper back/rear mount hooking inside their legs with your feet for control, or simply sitting behind them. Naturally you wouldn't do this in a normal BJJ class, but for the purposes of the seminar, it wasn't essential.

Bring one arm around their neck, so that the point of your elbow is under their chin. You don't want to leave any space, as the idea is to press into both sides of their neck. This will close off their carotid arteries and prevent the flow of blood to the brain. That is an efficient and safe way of subduing an opponent. At this point, I emphasised that you should immediately tap on your opponent when you feel that choke, again for safety (not that you're going to fall unconscious straight away, but that will eventually happen if you don't ask your partner to release the choke).

You are then going to grip the bicep of your free arm. This is to lock the choke in place. Bring the hand of that bicep arm to the back of their head: generally I'd recommend you press the palm into their skull, but there are various options, coming down to personal preference. Also bring your head next to theirs on the bicep gripping side, to further cut off any space.

Staying close to their back, expand your chest and squeeze your grip. This should block off the arteries, at which point your partner will tap. Make sure you haven't left any space, and also try to do it with control. There is no need to pull their head off, as one of the great things about techniques in BJJ is that they can be applied gradually.

Interestingly enough, it seemed that the women present were more willing to get involved than the men. Attendance was about even between the genders, but it was a woman who volunteered to help me demonstrate, and the women were the ones asking questions about improving their technique during drilling (e.g., they asked about other positions you might apply it from, meaning I could talk briefly about how you could flatten them on their front after they roll over under mount, a common application in early MMA).

The men, on the other hand, frequently stopped and started chatting, rather than continuously drilling for the allotted four minutes each. I'm not sure if that was because they were less comfortable with the contact, or they simply didn't like the sensation of getting choked (which would be understandable!).

That was also true during progressive resistance, which I introduced as trying to prevent your opponent applying the technique: pull on their arm, block their attack with your hands, try and turn around towards them and so on. Like in my regular classes, that was for three minutes each, starting off light, then encouraging them to up the resistance at the one and two minute marks.

The practical part of the seminar finished with a warm down stretch, again for safety, before we continued on with more poetry. As usual I left my email, along with further reading, which included the websites for two local BJJ clubs (Gracie Barra Birmingham and Combat Athletics, both of which I've trained at, so there are log posts here and here). I'll be very interested to hear if that has sparked an interest in BJJ or grappling in general among anybody who attended. Would be awesome if so, but then the aim was to present a different angle to their writing rather than proselytise for BJJ. Would nevertheless be cool if one of them started training. ;)

19/06/2011 - RGA Aylesbury

Class #405
RGA Aylesbury, (BJJ), Kev Capel, Aylesbury, UK - 19/06/2011

It's been about a little over a month since I last popped up to my parent's new place in Aylesbury. Last time it was to help them with their move, whereas this time it's because I'm teaching a seminar at up Warwick Uni on Tuesday. I was looking forward to seeing my sister and nieces again, as well as catch up with my old training partners at RGA Bucks.

Like last time, my sister and entourage arrived around 11, but this time they were only staying until around 4 or 5pm. So, due to wanting to see them, that meant again I didn’t stay for the open mat. Thanks to my sister's mother-in-law, who had flown over from Canada the day before, I was able to test out my new ripstop gi (which I'll review when I've rolled in it a few more times), a birthday present from earlier in the eyar. She had very kindly both taken delivery of the gi in Vancouver, then brought it with her on the flight.

Class today focused on the triangle, beginning with a basic set up from guard. Grab both of their wrists. Push one of their hands into their chest, then putting your foot on their opposite hip (but keeping your leg tight to their torso), kick the other leg to their neck. You need to make sure you raise your hips to get it over their shoulder, as it is important to come on top of the hand you shoved into their chest.

You should still be controlling their other arm. Make sure that is pulled towards you, so they can't initiate their defence by tucking the elbow inside your leg. Grab your shin with your free hand, then lock in the triangle. Raise your hips to isolate their trapped arm, then push it across their body. You can now squeeze to finish for the triangle: it may help to swivel towards the knee of your neck leg to create a better angle.

If they tuck their chin to try and block the choke, it is worth continuing to try for the submission, as it is likely that they'll eventually shift to stop the discomfort. However, be careful they don't manage to wriggle backwards and slip out: this is a particular concern in nogi, where you don't have the friction of the gi to help hold them in place. Also don't forget you can always switch to an armbar or omoplata.

Another set-up for the triangle can come from when they have a strong grip on your collars. Bring your knee over their arm, so that your upper shin is in their bicep. Keeping hold of their other arm and possibly collar, put your free foot on their hip. From there, you can press with your knee and shin into their bicep to break their grip. Swivel that same leg over to go around their neck, then progress with the triangle as before.

To escape the triangle, bring the elbow of your trapped arm towards the leg it is pointing towards. Raise the knee of that leg, moving round so that you can connect your elbow and knee. Keep moving until you can start to drive that knee into their torso. Grab their knee, then posture up, using the knee you have pressing into their torso for additional leverage. That should eventually break open their triangle, after which you can either return to guard or begin to pass.

During specific sparring, I ended up in a three. Originally it was just with Callum, but a blue belt who didn't have a partner asked to join in. I had trouble controlling his speed, coupled with his very attacking style. I don't encounter that approach often, probably because I intentionally avoid that kind of competitive roll. Either way, my super-defensive approach often fails me when I'm sparring somebody willing to push the pace and just keep throwing attack after attack.

This blue belt did a good job of it, too: I only narrowly avoiding being choked on his fourth or fifth attempt during one roll, then later got caught in an armbar as I leaned forward too much when looking to pass. I need to be less complacent with my arms. I had thought I was safe, because I'd stepped over his head, then managed to get both legs locked around his head. However, he still had enough leverage to bend my elbow for the tap: kudos to him for his control, as I was being stubborn due to my leg grip. ;)

So, another obvious point is that I shouldn't stay down in guard all the time fending off attacks: eventually I'll get tapped. Instead, I should be looking to pass straight away. Getting swept is better than getting tapped, after all, as at least after a sweep you can keep working during free sparring.

Underneath, I kept going for a handstand sweep, but without much success. I then switched to a star sweep (when you spin around their leg and pull up, to knock them backwards), but couldn't quite get it. I had their foot, but wasn't able to knock them flat onto the floor. Partially that was because I was a bit worried about tweaking their knee or something, but he said it was fine.

I'll be up again in a bit under a month, as both my father and my second niece have their birthday in early July. I'd assume that will mean my sister will do a joint thing on the 9th or so, but we'll see. Would also be good to train again with Seymour of Meerkatsu fame, who is yet another birthday boy that week. ;)

16/06/2011 - Teaching (Escaping Mount)

Teaching #007
Gracie Barra Bristol, (BJJ), Can Sönmez, Bristol, UK - 16/06/2011

I'm finishing up my series on the mount with escapes. For this lesson, I wanted to cover the two simplest methods of escaping the mount: I'll look into incorporating other options further down the line. There were a few drills I wanted to add, beginning with shrimping in pairs again (one person standing by the others armpits, bottom person shrimps back to guard). I also had them do bridges from side to side, then with a big step.

The first basic escape is the trap and roll. A typical starting point would be when they try to establish their first grip on your collar for a choke. That provides you with a chance to trap their arm. The usual grip would be to grab their wrist with your opposite hand, then their elbow with your other hand. There are various other possibilities, like wrapping the arm, but the essential thing is to stop their ability to post their hand for base.

You could also bring your linked arms over one of theirs, to bend their elbow and trap the arm. That's especially useful when you intentionally set up this escape, bumping them forward to get them to post their hands on the floor. You also need to trap their leg on that same side. Otherwise, they will be able to use that for base as you attempt to roll them. In order to prevent that, step your same side foot over their lower leg, hooking it in tightly. This means they are now like a chair with two of its legs missing.

To finish, you're going to bridge towards that trapped side. As with the side control escape, get your heels close to your bum first for maximum leverage. Bridge up and over your shoulder, turning into their guard. Make sure that you're bridging over your shoulder and turning to your knees, not simply rolling over to your side. If you don't raise your hips properly, you may merely give up your back.

I felt like it didn't take long to go through the basics of the trap and roll: I could have fitted in more details. I ended up teaching some additional points before progressive resistance, but instead should have done it all in one chunk. The addition was how you could still trap and and roll if they brought an arm under your head: simply reach back as if you were combing your hair to trap their arm, then progress as before. I also went through how to remove grapevines, by brining one of your feet back to your bum, then pushing off the hook on that leg with your other foot.

The trap and roll escape does work, but on its own may not be enough against an experienced opponent. Personally, I prefer the elbow escape, which relies more on shrimping than bridging. As a rule of thumb, if you're underneath, you don't want to be flat on your back. So, start your elbow escape by turning to your side and working your elbows inside their knee. Keep defending your neck throughout, so that your elbows form a frame. Create some space by bridging. You can then use your frame to help you shrimp into the space you just created, pushing against their leg.

The idea is to make enough space to pull your leg through: don't just bridge and plop back down. That leg will need to be flat, the other raised, or it will be hard to pull it free. Once it's out, you can then use that leg to wrap around one of theirs. Getting to half guard may be a possibility here, but generally I'd recommend working towards full guard. To do that, keep shrimping and framing until both legs are free.

You can also use a frame against their hips, one arm across, the other bracing against that wrist, elbow in tight. That's also handy for stopping them moving up higher in mount. However, be extra careful with your neck if you do that: as your arms are down by their hips, that could leave you vulnerable to chokes. I'm not sure I was clear enough with my explanation here, so that's something I want to improve next time.

As with any technique, try to combine your escapes rather than obsessing over just one. Also, don't give them your head: that's what the person on top wants for control. Connected to that, make sure you always defend your neck and keep your elbows tight. This is something I mentioned to Ryan afterwards, as he was asking what to do with bigger guys. I'm a small guy, so this is what I tend to do most classes: stay really tight, elbows in, knees curled up, not leaving anything loose for them to attack, or space for them to wedge their hands through.

Finally, I was reminded of a safety point regarding grips, as one of the white belts tweaked their finger. You should never grip inside the sleeve or trouser cuff: not only is that IBJJF competition illegal, it is also dangerous. If they suddenly twist or wrench, you're going to hurt your fingers. A better option is to use your thumb to make a 'pocket' for your four fingers, gripping the outside of the cuff, or a pistol grip (where you grasp the gi material in your fist).

15/06/2011 - Gracie Barra Bristol

Class #404
Gracie Barra Bristol, (BJJ), Nicolai 'Geeza' Holt, Bristol, UK - 15/06/2011

Geeza's class tonight handily focused on a position I've been showing as a drill, since I taught the class on maintaining mount a while ago. He began with that drill, where you switch into technical mount as they roll in either direction. Geeza added in two details I haven't been emphasising: first, point your foot slightly towards their feet for better control, and secondly thrust your hips forward.

That led into two attacks from there, which again is useful: more stuff for people to try during specific sparring tomorrow, when I'll be teaching mount escapes. The first submission is a choke, which you begin by getting your top arm under their top elbow. Grab their top collar, then push that down. With your other hand, reach under their head and grab that same top collar, which you can feed through due to your grip.

Your top arm is now going to swim behind their head. Raise the shoulder of your bottom arm and twist your grip, while simultaneously pressing your top hand into their neck (same kind of motion as in an ezequiel). Finally, thrust your hips forward to apply extra pressure: this can make a significant difference, as otherwise you might find yourself relying on arm strength.

If they manage to block your choking hand, you can instead switch to an armbar. Your top arm will reach through and grab your own gi, while your other arm will post directly in front of their face. This help prevent them escaping the attack: if you want to be mean, you can also dig the elbow of your first arm into their side. Lean towards their feet, step your leg around their head, then drop back for the armbar, squeezing your knees as usual.

There was a surprising amount of sparring for an hour long lesson, so I'm guessing we either ran over or Geeza just managed the time well. That started off with specific from mount, in weight groups. I was looking to practice the escapes I plan to teach tomorrow, playing around with different frames. It also reminded me I'm not trying the trap and roll enough from underneath: I continue to rely much too heavily on the foot drag, my favoured escape.

On top, I feel relatively comfortable getting good control with low mount and grapevines, but I'm still having trouble finishing the ezequiel. However, during my research for teaching attacks recently, I rewatched the Saulo video from Jiu Jitsu Revolution, which has been useful. Trapping that blocking arm by their side is a good goal to aim for, as that should make everything else easier to put in place.

I was also looking to practice the other technique I taught during that earlier lesson, the Roger choke. You have to move up into high mount for that (or at least you do if you lack Roger's height), where I was getting rolled relatively often. What I should have done is switch to technical mount, as per Geeza's drill and indeed my own drill that I've incorporated in my last few lessons. At the moment, I still find myself leaving too much space, getting rolled and attempting to shift to an armbar mid-roll, losing it as I flop into guard.

My back control isn't good enough either. With one of the white belts, they basically gave me their back, but had a tight grip on my sleeves. I couldn't free my arms, and ended up back in guard. Maintaining back mount should be another interesting lesson to teach, given my own lack of success there.

Free sparring was with Tony, a blue belt roughly my size, which is always refreshing. Lots of running escape as always, which in contrast to back control or guard passing is a lesson I'm looking forward to teaching. It will be good to see how other people work through its flaws and strengths: I'll be keeping a particularly close eye during specific sparring on that day.

12/06/2011 - Teaching (Open Mat)

Teaching #006
Gracie Barra Bristol, (BJJ), Can Sönmez, Bristol, UK - 12/06/2011

I headed off to London on Saturday for a friend's birthday party, getting up at 5am in order to wander over to the Megabus stop for about 06:45 (Colston Hall is about a 40 or 50 minute walk, which isn't too bad. I could have cycled, but I didn't trust that the bike would still be there when I got back at 9pm!). The party was at midday, so I went to my favourite place in London to kill time, the glorious National Gallery. I was surprised to get a call from Geeza while enjoying the section on the Italian sixteenth century.

After hastily speed-walking out into the hallway, it turned out Geeza was going to be away on Sunday and Miles was also busy (I think), meaning he wanted to check if I'd be ok to run the class. Sunday sessions are open mat, so that didn't involve too much on my part: just going through the warm-up, then organising sparring. Still, it meant I could play with a few more drills after we'd finished the Gracie Barra warm-up of star jumps and sit-ups.

In my Thursday classes, I've been adding in BJJ-specific drills, which I'm also trying to use as a recap of previous lessons. So far, that's been continuous side control escapes to knees, then one from mount, turning from side to side into technical mount as they try to roll free. Today I put in a third, a simple stand-up in guard. I had everyone do each one for about a minute each: I'll play around with timings to see what works best in future.

I also changed the shrimping slightly, to emphasise the application: rather than just shrimping down the mat, I put everyone into pairs. One person stands with their feet by their partner's armpits, while the other shrimps, then their partner walks back up into their armpits. That means you have to shrimp further and more accurately, as well as make more use of your arms against their legs.

There are two hours to play with on Sundays, as that is normally an hour of gi, followed by another hour no-gi. As I was taking the class, it was all gi (I don't have the Gracie Barra no-gi kit, given that I don't plan on attending the Wednesday evening no-gi class), so I used the first hour for specific sparring. There were only five people there, one of whom had to head off later. I could have two people down, everyone else lined up against the wall, including me when an extra person was needed. We went through side control, mount and guard.

At first I tried counting people off into two groups, of 1s and 2s, but that doesn't work so well with five (unless the fifth person is me, so it worked ok once there were only four). When the 2s are down, that's fine because there are three partners to cycle. However, that leaves three 1s, so even if I join in (as I did at points), there still aren't any spare partners to cycle. So, in that situation, better to just pick a pair, then perhaps have two people take it in turns to be in the pair that is down.

Alternatively I could have paired people up, but I'm keen to make sure people get a range of partners when working specific sparring, as that way they can deal with different pressures, intensity, body types etc. Having said that, pairing up for free sparring makes sense. Unless there is a considerable disparity in size or skill, there isn't normally that clearly defined and regularly occurring end point you get when doing specific sparring.

Free sparring took up the second half, where I think everybody ended up sparring everybody else, as there were only a handful of us. I divided it up into five minute rounds, then finished with the usual stretch out at the end. It was good to get in a few rolls myself: I've not quite worked out how to record my teaching on the training spreadsheet, as so far I haven't been counting it amongst my total training hours. I probably will eventually, perhaps with a separate teaching column or something. I can geek out about it later. :)

09/06/2011 - Teaching (Attacking Mount)

Teaching #005
Gracie Barra Bristol, (BJJ), Can Sönmez, Bristol, UK - 02/06/2011

Now that we have an idea how to maintain mount, I wanted to show some attacks from there, in high and low mount respectively. The material I'm going to cover owes a lot to a training partner of mine at RGA Bucks, who was promoted to purple alongside me: Sahid Khamlichi. A little over a month ago, he taught a fantastic lesson on Roger Gracie's version of the cross choke from mount. Many of the details I'm about to cover come from Sahid's lesson, so the wording will be very similar to my earlier write up.

I have seen this choke taught a few times over the years, including by Roger himself, but it's always useful to go over the details again. As has been said many times before, it may be the first submission you learn, but it's one of the toughest to master.

I'll put up the same bunch of pictures showing Roger choking out Lovato Jr in 2009, though like I noted last time, I'm going to cheat and put them out of order: Roger also didn't set it up exactly the way I'm about to describe, but hopefully the photos will still help. You could also take a look at Trumpet Dan's videos, and here's Roger teaching a slightly different variation of the cross choke ( turn on the subtitles by clicking 'CC' at the bottom right).

Start in that high mount I showed last week, keeping low, your arm based out, putting your head on the same side to concentrate your weight. Remember to keep your feet tucked under them bum for control.

Your other arm goes under their head, cross-facing, also using your shoulder to turn their head towards your basing side. It will now be tough to bridge you off. It is also important that you are really tight with your chest, so that there is no space for them to slip an arm inside to defend their neck.

Grab their same side collar with your basing arm, or just the material by their shoulder. This isn't going to be involved in the choke, as at this stage, you are simply looking to yank the gi material to your basing side. That should take out any slack. The grip comes next, as you pull your arm out from behind their head, instead reaching through (raising up as little as possible) for that collar you've carefully prepared. Grasp with your four fingers, palm facing up. Your free hand can continue to cinch up their collar if it still isn't tight enough.

If they are blocking with their arms, as is likely, you'll need to drive your hand past their hands. Pull open their collar before their elbows (rather than trying to yank it out from directly underneath their tightly crossed arms), then slide your arm through. Good advice I remember from Roger is that if you need extra leverage, brace your own elbow against your hip. You can then wriggle forwards, driving your arm in front of you. Also form your hand into a wedge, as this will help cut past their blocking arms.

Either way, once you have the grip, lift them up towards you slightly, twisting your hand so that you clear a small gap between their neck and collar. Into that gap, insert the thumb of your free hand, to establish your second grip. I forgot to mention here that you can drop your elbow to the other side, so that you're pressuring into their neck.

Slide that thumb behind their head to the other side of their neck. As you do, also move your head to the other side of their head. Next, bring the arm of your thumb grip to the other side of their head, 'shaving' close to their face. This is to set up the choke, putting your wrists on both sides of their neck.

Once you've got the thumb arm into position, so that both carotid arteries are blocked off, move your forehead to the floor directly above their head. Twist your wrists and drop your weight into them to finish the choke. Roy Dean provides a handy tip here, which is to shift your hips forward slightly, still basing on your head. That will give you a little extra leverage, should you need it.

From low mount, I mentioned last week that this position isn't well suited to submissions, but there is at least one reliable option. For the Ezequiel choke, you again need to get one arm under their head. Many people will just give you that space as they try to escape, but if not, you can press into their neck to get them to raise their head.

You have one arm in place. To get the choke, you need to block off both sides of their neck. For the first side, you're going to use your gi. With the hand you have under their head, grab your free sleeve. Pull it tight to the nearest side of their neck.

To block the other side of their neck, make a chopping motion with your free hand, as if you're trying to decapitate them. Make sure you're pressing into the side of their neck, not the throat (although crushing the windpipe may still get a tap, it isn't as efficient).

Obviously it isn't going to be that easy in sparring. They're going to be blocking you with their hand, trying to buck you off, disrupting your attack any way they can. To avoid that, there are a couple of options. One is to slip your arm inside their defending arm until your elbow gets to the mat. Alternatively, they may give you the opportunity by pushing on your knee.

Either way, slide their arm out of the way and clamp it to their side with your elbow. Fill up the space by sticking your head right next to theirs. Use this as both a means of control and a barrier against their efforts to get a hand back inside. Stay low, then gradually slip in your second hand.

Again, they may give you the opportunity by bridging. If they are staying really tight, use your head to push into their skull, aiming to get them to turn. Follow your head with your hand, then slip through for the choke.

You can also try bringing a leg to their shoulder for leverage, chopping into their neck with your hand as before, raising up to generate even more pressure. However, that does give them more space for defence.

Finally, I showed a nastier variation, which I was in two minds about demonstrating. It is a bit unpleasant after all, and that isn't the kind of jiu jitsu I generally want to be teaching. Then again, it combines fairly well with the Ezequiel, so can be used as a way of opening them up to other attacks, rather than a finish in itself.

I'm referring to what Roy Dean calls the 'fist choke'. The set-up is similar to the Ezequiel, as again it involves having an arm under their head and grabbing the sleeve of your free arm. This time, you don't pull that sleeve in tight to their neck. Instead, you simply drive your fist into their neck instead. That closes off one side.

To block the other artery, cross-face them. The bicep of the arm you have under their head should be as close to their neck as possible, after which you can just roll your shoulder to apply pressure. Pull on the gi sleeve, and that combination should result in either the tap, or loosen them up for an Ezequiel, an armbar or some other attack.

I did emphasise that this isn't something you should regularly be attempting during training, as it is probably going to annoy your training partners. Best to stick with smooth technique if possible, and save more crude applications like the fist choke for competition. I'd be interested to know what anyone reading this thinks: is the fist choke a 'dirty' technique, or something legitimate you regularly use in class?

A few people had problems getting the Ezequiel right, as their sleeves were a little short. The fist choke still works in that situation, but it did make me wonder if I could make some adjustment of angle or pressure that would mean a shorter sleeve wouldn't be a problem.

08/06/2011 - Q & A at Gracie Barra Bristol

Class #403
Gracie Barra Bristol, (BJJ), Nicolai 'Geeza' Holt, Bristol, UK - 08/06/2011

For those of you who read the main site but find the design annoying or cluttered, there is now another option. Blogger have recently launched a mobile format (which as ever with blogger is easy to use: you just tick a box), which also works as a kind of 'plain version' of the site. So, if you want to use that, I've put the link in the top left, or you can click here.

Class tonight was a bit different, as this time, Geeza did something I haven't seen at many other schools (though I know Kev has done something like this in the past, along with Roy Dean at last year's seminar). Rather than presenting us with a technique, Geeza treated this lesson as a question and answer session, giving everybody present the chance to investigate some of the problems they've been having in their game.

As Geeza always sends out a text summarising the content of the class, I made sure to text my question in advance: I wanted to get some input on the ideal posture, pressure, distancing etc when you're facing somebody's open guard and looking to pass. Geeza had already gone through some good technique in terms of opening and passing closed guard earlier, so I was interested to hear his thoughts on dealing with open guard.

They are in open guard, perhaps with a grip on your sleeve, their legs keeping you at bay. This is a position where I frequently end up just staring at people, breathing a sigh of relief when I get passed and can start working my guard. As I've said so many times in the past, that needs to change. I've been given the tools by Kev, during a private lesson: the techniques Geeza taught acted as a very helpful reminder, with some additional emphases.

First, get your grips. Geeza mentioned he likes to grab a collar and a leg. As Kev advises, push down on their leg and do a big step over the top. From here, you then need to get an underhook on whichever side you aren't passing. Don't drop down immediately: they will often have an arm up to grab your collar, so swim under that. Once you've got the underhook, you can then drive forward, put your head on the passing side by their neck, then slide your knee over to pass.

Most likely they'll try to catch you in half-guard: if that happens, you're in a strong position, so just kick their top leg to pry your foot free (or as Saulo demonstrates, their bottom). If you aren't able to get that initial underhook, you can also underhook the other side instead, then switch your knees to that side (bringing your second knee under the leading knee). Finally, Geeza also mentioned how you can turn their hips away from the side your passing, which hinders their attempts to recover guard.

We drilled that for thirty seconds each, which was useful: progressive resistance is an enormously productive tool. This was the case with all the techniques tonight, rather than spending a long time drilling each one. That meant Geeza packed plenty into the class, but it was all stripped down to key principles, making it much easier to remember. Also, the remaining techniques were a lot simpler than the first.

Donal was up next in terms of asking questions, which turned out to be immediately beneficial to my efforts to focus on guard passing. It wasn't exactly a guard pass, but sort of, in a competition specific setting. The scenario was that both you and your opponent want to play a bottom game, so both pull guard. That leaves you playing footsie, so Donal wanted to know a good way to make sure you're the one who comes out on top.

Geeza's answer was very simple, but effective: grab the bottom of their trouser leg and stand up. With their leg in the air, they can't stand up, and you should get the advantage. It should also be a good place from which to begin a pass, netting you even more points. From my perspective, this was a handy starting point when sparring in class from the knees. Instead of pulling guard like normal, I could grab a trouser leg and try to work from on top.

The progressive resistance was again useful in testing that out, seeing what worked and what didn't. It did at points become a matter of reaction speed, but I'm sure there are technical nuances that can get involved with more experience. Luke also had a nifty defence, which was to instantly move into either spider or x-guard as soon as I stood with the leg. That's probably what I would try too, as it makes it hard for the person trying to passing to continue driving forward.

Lee, one of the white belts, asked the final two questions, about defending chokes and sweeps. Simple answer: for choke, first grip, look away to hide neck with hand on chest, then pull hand down and off. If they have both, wrap arm, and do a 'dog' motion, raising head and driving forward.

In terms of defending against a sweep, they are trying to turn your hips over, so that they can roll to the top position. To prevent them achieving their goal, simply turn your hips in the other direction, switching your base and sprawling. You can then keep moving around, in order to either take side control or the back, depending on what they do.

There was enough time for some free sparring: I started off with Oli. Instead of pulling guard like I normally do, I grabbed his leg instead and stood up. I sort of flopped into half guard, at some point getting into position for a bent armlock. Rather than trying to finish that, Geeza suggested I use it to pass, which is sensible advice. I'm not sure how I got there, but later I was in north south, looking for a kimura.

However, Oli was wise to that, so hid his arm by putting it between his legs and grabbing onto his gi. Instead of trying to wrench that free, I tried wriggling the foot I had on the far side into his armpit. My intention was to then kick through to establish the step over triangle, which would hopefully enable me to catch an arm somewhere.

Afterwards, both Geeza and Oli advised that I could have pulled on the trapped arm and made an attempt at the triangle. Good reminder, as I almost always don't bother trying to finish the triangle, as I assume I'm highly unlikely to finish it. Nevertheless, it is well worth at least giving it a go, rather than completely ignoring the opportunity and only using it for control.

Last spar was with Kirsty, which as I'd expected proved to be a good roll (given that she's my size and also has plenty of judo experience, with a couple of years doing MMA too). I wanted to test out some of the attacks I planned to teach tomorrow, particularly to isolate the difficulties: I'll go through that on Thursday. I also again tried to work the pass, getting to Geeza's recommended starting position, though I think Kirsty swept me at some point in the middle.

Geeza mentioned something interesting to me during class, which is that I'm now technically eligible for a red strip on my purple belt, given that I'm teaching. That sounds tempting, although I'm not sure I'd want to replace the belt I got from Roger. Then again, I could have a second belt for teaching. Something to think about, I guess: I suppose I could try unstitching the black strip and replacing it with a red one, but that sounds way beyond my sewing abilities. ;)

06/06/2011 - Gracie Barra Fundamentals

Class #402
Gracie Barra Bristol, (BJJ), Nicolai 'Geeza' Holt, Bristol, UK - 06/06/2011

First off, I wanted to mention the awesome achievement by a training partner of mine up at RGA Bucks. Yas Wilson won the silver medal in her purple belt weight category at the Mundials, facing heavy favourite Mackenzie Dern in the final. Very cool news, so many congratulations to Yas, and of course her instructor, Kev Capel. In case you missed the vids of Yas teaching, Kev has recently put up a number of posts on the RGA Bucks blog: Yas teaching here, Kev teaching here, along with a note on Yas' historic accomplishment here.

I wasn't able to watch any of the Mundials at the weekend, as I was at the Hay Festival on the Saturday, then working on the house on the Sunday. However, I was able to read a few excellent write-ups today, most notably Jen Flannery's sterling work on the Grappling Girls Guild. That has become the place to go if you want some analysis of the women's results, so I hope Jen can maintain it over the coming years. Discussion about the men seems to be readily available on the forums, but there is far too little talk of the women.

Class at Gracie Barra Bristol tonight was fundamentals, meaning it is from the Gracie Barra syllabus again. The self defence bit was a takedown from a headlock, where you turn your head towards them, grabbing their hip and pushing your other hand into the back of their knee. Take them down into side control, basing out with your hands immediately. Shift a knee up to their head, stepping the other leg over and bringing it tight to their hip. Make a frame on their neck to push up and free your head, finishing with an armbar.

The main technique followed on from last Monday, as it was another guard break, but this time from standing. As before, you start in their guard, where they've trapped your head. Put one knee in the middle of their bum, the other back. On the side of the leg you have back, slide your head out sideways and return to a good upright posture.

Grab their same side collar with each of your hands, then swinging your head like a pendulum, use the momentum to come to your feet. You stay in a sort of horse stance or crouch, your elbows resting on your knees, head slightly forward, pulling on their collars. This is a very stable position: it is difficult for them to sweep you from here, which we tested thoroughly during drilling.

To actually get the guard open, if they don't open it already in order to go for a sweep, release one collar and raise up, tucking the elbow of the other arm inside their leg (to avoid offering them a triangle). Reach back with your free hand, inserting it by their locked feet. Turn your body and bring your arm under their leg, aiming to pop their legs open. As soon as the guard is open, sink down and bring up one knee, so they can't re-establish their closed guard.

To finish, Geeza had everyone drill this for thirty seconds each again, just trying to open the guard. I was able to free my head and get to the crouching position, but to achieve the next stage was tough. Although the crouch is very stable, as soon as you try to raise up, it feels much more vulnerable. The closest I got was simply having my arm stuck. Nevertheless, looks like an excellent position to work on, as that stable base should prove useful.

Underneath, I was generally looking to either get an arm-wrap or see if I could disrupt their base by pulling them forward. I also tried the option of shifting my bum over their knee every time they tried to move it in order to initiate a guard break. I'm particularly keen to practice that side of things, as it's something I'll be teaching when I get to the maintaining lesson in the closed guard series later this month (next week is attacking mount, then escaping, then it will be on to closed guard).

I'm not sure if I'll get in another class before Thursday, so we'll see how the house is progressing. The floor is getting closer to being back down, which will be great as then we can finally move in the furniture and live in the house. That should immediately result in more training, as I'll be permanently round the corner.

I was also very pleased, once again, to hear two white belts tell me that they'd had been able to use what I taught them in the maintaining mount lesson last week. Most interesting was that the Saulo method, where you 'ride' the mount, was included in that: one of the taller white belts said he's been finding it particularly helpful. Cool stuff, as it means I managed to teach something I don't use myself in a sufficiently comprehensible manner that somebody else could apply it to their own game. :)

02/06/2011 - Teaching (Maintaining Mount)

Teaching #004
Gracie Barra Bristol, (BJJ), Can Sönmez, Bristol, UK - 02/06/2011

Having shown a transition to mount last week, tonight my intention was to help people maintain the position once they got there. There are two basic types of mount to choose from, which I'll call low and high. In future lessons, I'll be looking in more detail at various sub positions like technical mount and s-mount, but for now we'll stick with basics. Once you've achieved mount, I find that low mount provides the most control. First off, you want to immobilise their hips, as their main method of making space is to bridge up forcefully.

Bring your feet right back, threading them around their legs to establish two hooks: this is known as a grapevine. Alternatively, you can also cross your feet underneath, which has the advantage of making it much harder for them to push your hooks off. Your knees are barely touching the ground, to generate maximum pressure.

Also be sure to thrust your own hips down into them. Use your hands for base, where again you have a couple of options. Either have both arms out, or put one under the head while the other goes out wide for base. Keep your head on the basing arm side, loading up your weight there. If they're bridging hard, you can switch from side to side.

As usual, I then had everyone drill this for four minutes each. Before moving on to the three minutes each of progressive resistance, there were a couple of points I wanted to make, having observed what people were doing. These were also points I was intending to make anyway: upon reflection, it would have been better to do them earlier during the main technique demonstration, as that felt a bit brief anyway.

First point was that a basic escape, which I'll be showing in a couple of weeks, is to trap an arm, bridge and roll. So, don't let them grab your arm and crush it to your side. Instead, swim it through, like Ryron and Rener demonstrate in the third slice of the third lesson in Gracie Combatives. Be sure to do it one at a time, or you may get both arms squashed to your sides.

Worth noting here that when I demonstrated this, I started with Clayton, then called up Miles to make sure Clayton could see it too. However, Miles' method of trapping my arm was different to what I'm used to, which confused me for a moment. It felt a bit like the classic "you attacked me wrong!" moment from the old Jim Carrey In Living Colour sketch, but hopefully people still got the idea. Something for me to be aware of next time. ;)



Second point was that you can also turn to what’s called technical mount if they roll to either side. I didn’t go into much detail here, but I think next time, I’ll go through it in full, as I ended up doing that later anyway. It is possibly good to introduce the basic version then explain more fully later on (which I know is what some instructors like to do), but I felt like I could have saved some precious rolling time by just going through it the once.

The drawback to the low mount is that there aren't many submissions from there: I'll be showing the main option next week. They are mostly going to be trying to unhook your feet, so you'll be battling to keep those in place.

To attack, you're better off climbing further up, into high mount. Again, you need to worry about their hips. To control them, put your feet by their bum, tucking your toes underneath: Roger Gracie points this out as of particular importance. In what you might call 'middle' mount where you're still over their hips, Saulo suggests that you 'ride' their bridges, like you were on a horse. Lean back, then as they bridge, lift up: you’re aiming to move with their hips, rather than just leaving a big space. So, this takes a good understanding of timing.

He also recommends against leaning forward, as he feels that gives them more space and leverage to escape. Hence why he leans back instead. Experiment, seeing how holding the head works for you versus leaning back. I think Saulo’s method requires more experience, and personally I feel unstable there, but as ever, I want to offer students choice whenever possible.

The danger of leaning back is when you're facing somebody with flexibility and/or long limbs. They might be able reach their legs over to kick into your armpits, either sliding out through your legs or pushing your over. You must control their hips with your feet, to prevent them from bending their body. Swimming the arms through might help you out here, this time against their legs, depending on how they attack.

Miles (cool to have him there) raised a good question while I was demonstrating on him, which was what do you do if they get the feet into your armpits, then start slipping out through your legs and looking to take your back. This has happened to me in the past: I normally just grab on the back of their collar, stay really low, then attempt to gradually work my hips back to flatten them out. However, something I’ll ask Geeza next time I get a chance, to see what his thoughts are.

Another option is to move off their hips, shifting into a higher mount. Gradually walk your knees into their armpits (pulling on the top of their head may help) being careful of the elbows. If they start to work an elbow into your thigh, twist to one side and raise that knee. Pull their arm up with whatever you can grab, then reinsert your knee.

You could also go to technical mount from here, as that's a position in itself with submission opportunities (though I wasn't covering that today). There is a good drill, turning to technical mount from side to side as they push, but I didn’t have time for that: however, something I’d like to incorporate into the warm up. Also, remember to use your arms for base against their bridge, posting out if you need to.

A final thing I wanted to mention, from Demian Maia, is that you can also use the cross-face. If they turn on their side to get their elbow back in, you can use the cross face to bring their head out of alignment: moving them with their head is easier than trying to move their shoulders or arms or whatever. Also, the body follows the head, so they are going to have trouble bridging or turning if you've got a solid cross face.

I had a question from one of the blue belts just after drilling, regarding removing that arm when they push into your knee. If they've got a tight grip, then how do you get it off? I suggested that if they've locked out their arm, you could move your foot back slightly to create some leeway, in order to then yank up on the arm and re-establish mount, or you could try cross-facing. However, I felt like I could have given a more conclusive answer, so that's something else I'll ask Geeza when I get the chance.

Again I didn't include as much sparring time as I wanted, with only about nine minutes or so of king of the hill, split into two groups by weight. So, I need to shave a bit of time from somewhere. Possibly the warm-up, or I could cut progressive resistance to two minutes each rather than three.

Classes have been getting bigger each week, which is nice: first class was barely a handful, this week it was around twelve students. That will also help when it comes to sparring, as I should eventually be able to institute my preferred 1-2-3 grouping, but we'll see how things go. Could be that class size will fluctuate depending on what I'm teaching.