27/08/2012 - Gracie Barra Bristol (Basic Pendulum & Triangle)

Class #465
Gracie Barra Bristol, (BJJ), Nicolai 'Geeza' Holt, Bristol, UK - 27/08/2012

Another big class this Monday, though a couple of people short of the biggest ever last week. Self defence was the technical stand-up, blocking their kicking leg (which is normally the one they have back) by putting your elbow to your knee, kicking into their other knee with your free leg. Last time we did this one I forgot which side to kick, which I may have done again this week: Geeza did mention that my partner was doing it wrong, but from what I could tell he seemed to be following the same drill as everyone else. Still, very possibly I could have missed something, as self defence training makes your eyes glaze over. ;p

Next up was the basic pendulum sweep. Grab both their sleeves, just behind the elbow: Geeza recommended gripping the seam to take out slack. They then try to stand up. As soon as they raise a knee, swivel towards that side and underhook that leg with your same side arm. Still on the same side, kick your leg up into their armpit to knock them over while lifting with your arm. As you come up, remember to curl the other leg back so you don't throw them onto it: otherwise, you'll get stuck while trying to shift into mount.

That was followed by the triangle from guard, which Geeza wants us to keep working for the next two weeks. That should prove interesting for me, as my triangles are rubbish: so, good opportunity for me to take another look at them, given it's something I hardly ever use. Given this was the first lesson of triangle fortnight, Geeza kept things very basic. They have one arm in and one arm out. Lock your feet and grab their head to break their posture (Geeza said that this is the only time he laces his fingers together, as he feels that's the strongest grip to use in this situation).

Swivel to their free arm side, adjusting your legs if you need to. To finish the choke, Geeza prefers the Ryan Hall method, where you're kicking into their neck using your quads, rather than squeezing your abductors together. Hall talks about this at length on his DVDs: his perspective is that you should be using the most powerful muscles in your legs, rather than comparatively weedy ones, which makes sense.

There wasn't any time for sparring, but then it is only an hour class, so that's not surprising as self defence etc takes up a good bit of time.

07/05/2012 - Gracie Barra Bristol

Class #456
Gracie Barra Bristol, (BJJ), Nicolai ‘Geeza’ Holt, Bristol, UK - 07/05/2012

I was pretty ineffectual tonight, but then that’s jiu jitsu: some days your game feels great, other days you feel like a white belt. I couldn’t even remember blocking kicks from technical stand up properly, which as much as I find self defence very boring still isn’t something I should be forgetting.

The main technique for tonight was the pendulum sweep. Geeza likes to hook under the leg when they lift it off the mat, which helps set you up to swing your leg and hips out. Keep your head close to the hooking hand, then kick into armpit and tuck your swung leg underneath. From there, you can also switch to an armbar from guard, or indeed use your grip on the leg to finish up in a mounted armbar.

During sparring, I had a chance to play in guard, so there were a couple of basic sweeps I wanted to try. That mainly involved grabbing the knee, which isn’t something I’ve done much in the past. However, I’m looking to expand my guard game from “sit there and wait”, so sweeps seemed a good area to revisit. I did land it once, but that was against a fairly small white belt.

When passing, I tried to follow my own advice and stand up. I also made sure to grab an arm first in order to make their sweep counters more difficult. However, my posture is still far too bent forwards, as I’m tending to linger too long with the grip on the collars, rather than getting upright and thrusting my hips forwards.

I also had the common experience of a big strong beginner, who was going all out with strength. The goal for the person on top was to simply open the person on the bottom’s legs, which he did with relative ease. Now, in that situation I feel a bit silly telling somebody they shouldn’t rely on their strength: after all, from their perspective, it just worked great. Still, I think it is useful to advise people that by using strength you’ll blow your energy quickly and also struggle against anybody as strong or stronger, so I mentioned it anyway.

22/08/2011 - Gracie Barra Fundamentals (Closed Guard)

Class #414
Gracie Barra Bristol, (BJJ), Nicolai 'Geeza' Holt, Bristol, UK - 22/08/2011

I haven't made it to a normal class for a while, so it was good to get back to being the student rather than the instructor. Tonight, Geeza began with lots of breakfalling: he got everybody to stand in a circle, then called out either 'straight', 'left' or 'right', at which point you breakfalled backwards or to either side. That was followed by a technical stand-up, which again was split. It was either the standard one, where you step back a leg and come up, or going forwards, where you thrust your hips to come up on your knee, swivel the leg behind then come up. I'm guessing that was from the self defence bit of Gracie Barra Fundamentals, or Geeza just fancied doing something more self defence oriented to start off the beginner session (like Kev often does at RGA Bucks).

Getting on to the more enjoyable side of things, Geeza went through a couple of options from the pendulum sweep position, when they raise one knee. At first, I thought he was doing the usual flower sweep set-up: grab their elbow, swivel, kick up into their armpit on the raised knee side, then chop their other leg to come up in mount. However, this technique was slightly different.

The first part was much the same, as you swivel and get up high into their armpit with your leg. Where it differs is that you're almost entirely relying on the momentum you generate with that kick. Instead of using your other leg to chop low into their knee, you just curl your heel back to touch your own leg and sit up.

That was followed by a simple armbar option, where instead of curling the leg and sitting up, bring it over their head and go for the submission. As ever, make sure their thumb is pointing up, don't cross your legs and keep pressing down with your feet to lock them.

Two final points worth noting are firstly a general principle, which is to always sweep away from their raised knee. Otherwise they have too much base, so will be able to easily resist. The second point is that if you hook underneath their raised knee with your arm, be careful: they can put their knee down, trapping your arm and making it vulnerable to an armbar of their own. Therefore make sure you do something with that hooking arm, moving right into a sweep or submission attempt.

Specific sparring was from that same position: they have raised a knee in your closed guard, so you are hooking under their leg and also gripping their elbow on the other side with your other arm. I was as usual terrible on top. initially getting swept pretty quickly by one of the blue belts, who used a nice hip switch and grip change. The second time round I concentrated on keeping my elbows in and maintaining good posture, which helped, but as I've said to myself a bazillion times in the past, that's just delaying the inevitable. Stand up!

Underneath, I wanted to move into half guard, as I'm teaching that again this week. I think I've said this before, but teaching has been very useful for upping my commitment to coming into sparring with a plan. It is something I've always done, but now I've got the added motivation of wanting to better understand techniques I'm intending to teach.

The difficulty working from half guard, or at least the basic version I want to teach, is getting up on your side. If they can block your underhook and get a solid cross-face, it is tough to recover. I tried playing around with the lockdown to move Clayton's base, which meant a few times I was able to get my knee in and create some space. However, I didn't establish a sufficiently strong underhook.

What I should have done is taken note of what Caio Terra shows in his DVD, getting your shoulder right into their armpit. He doesn't block the cross-face, interestingly, instead having his free elbow right back and his underhooking shoulder driving towards the mat. Still, I was pleased that Clayton basically used exactly what I taught last week about passing the guard to shut me down. :)

Against another blue, I ended up in closed guard, and worked on moving my legs up. I have fallen out of the habit of doing that a bit, because I would get punished for doing it when rolling with Howard at RGA Bucks. Every time I tried it on him, he'd just take the opportunity to put a knee in the middle and open my guard. Still, I do find it helpful to bring their upper body down. From there, I need to work some kind of submission series, preferably chokes. Something I want to work on the next time I teach closed guard, a few months down the line.

As I have a teaching plan laid out that covers the major positions (or at least the ones I think are major), this should hopefully mean that I'll be able to not only build up a series of lessons I can keep refining, but also build up my own game into something more complete. Fun stuff.

18/03/10 - BJJ (Beginner)

Class #296
RGA High Wycombe, (BJJ), Kev Capel, High Wycombe, UK - 18/03/2010

I've already mentioned this at length on my Facebook, but for those of you not on there yet, I recommend you check out Georgette's thought-provoking post on the reasons why people blog, here. It has resulted in an intriguing discussion, also taking in the reasons why people compete.

To babble a bit about non-BJJ topics (if you don't care, skip straight to the training), I also wanted to mention three BBC series I've really enjoyed recently. First is Last Woman Standing, the third in the series (the first two, which I talked about early last year and back in 2007, featured all-male casts). Not as much wrestling as before, unfortunately, but still great stuff, augmented by the fact it was women, so less stupid machismo.

Second, BBC4 has been discussing the history of feminism in a program simply called Women. The first one was about the second wave, which inspired me to bolster my rather limited feminist library. While I've always referred to myself as a feminist, it's based on conviction rather than a grounding in the critical theory.

I've been meaning to delve into the main texts of feminism for a long time, as previously I'd only read The Female Eunuch (though I guess I've studied a bunch of relevant novels during my English BA, by authors like Angela Carter, Jeanette Winterson and Virginia Woolf. Possibly could put Marion Zimmer Bradley in there too, as we did The Mists of Avalon for my favourite undergrad module, 'Arthurian Literature and its Legacy').

So, I've started reading The Second Sex, and also picked up some books by two of the people featured in the first program, Susan Brownmiller and Kate Millett. If anyone has further recommendations (e.g., Ann Oakley looked interesting, but I wasn't sure which of her books to get, and I liked the sound of Judith Butler from a seminar I attended a few years back, as it sounded like she had some stimulating ideas on gender identity), let me know.

Finally, I love music documentaries (and comparing musical taste: as ever, mine is fully laid out over at last.fm), and BBC4 has been showcasing some brilliant examples of the genre. First was Heavy Metal Britannia, which gave me some insight into a genre I've never been able to engage with, despite numerous efforts. I'm looking forward to the second, Prog Rock Britania, and especially the third, Synth Britannia (as that covers my favourites period of music, from the mid-70s through to the mid-80s).
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Tonight's class started off with the companion technique to Tuesday, a pendulum sweep. This is much simpler than the flower sweep, because your opponent has already done much of the work for you by stepping up their knee. Secure their opposite arm, then hook your same side hand underneath their raised knee.

Kick your leg on that side right up into their armpit, driving through, so that they get knocked off balance. Continue the motion by lifting up behind their knee with your underhook, then finally use your other leg to chop low (as you don't want them to land on it). This should result in you ending up on top in mount, still with a hold of that leg.

You can also do this off the armbar, as Roy Dean demonstrates on Blue Belt Requirements. If they tuck their head, that's when you go for the sweep. Alternatively, you can still land that armbar, by not completing the sweep. Instead, you knock them off balance as before, but this time, sit up and get them into position for an armbar from the mount. It should be easier to finish from here than the guard, because they can't stack you (though make sure you stay tight, or they might be able to escape).

Last technique was a cross-guard sweep Kev first showed us back in January. I didn't say much about the follow-up guard pass in my previous post, so I'll do that now. Once you've knocked them down, you need to use the momentum to come up and move forward, still pulling on their sleeve. You also want to slide your inside knee over their leg, leaning your body towards them.

Having reached that position, switch their sleeve to your other hand, still pulling up. That leaves your first arm free to underhook their far armpit, further dropping your bodyweight on top of them, as well as immobilising their torso. From here, you can slide through into modified scarf hold (i.e., under the armpit rather than the head), and/or into side control.

One random thing to be aware of is that I kept getting my knee entangled inside Callum's gi when I did this, which made it difficult to pull up on his arm properly. If that happens, switch to grabbing their elbow, drop your bodyweight down, then move into side control. Shouldn't cause too many problems, but it caused me a bit of confusion during drilling.

Sparring was interesting, as it wasn't just guard passage, but guard passage without submissions. That meant I could concentrate fully on passing guard without having to worry about triangles, armbars and chokes, and then underneath just think about sweeps. On top, I jumped right to my feet the first few times, to have a play around, but that generally just resulted in getting swept quicker. Callum and I had a few scrambles, where I was trying to drive my hips forward and stack him (at one point, I ended up spinning him right round, but because he kept his knees in, it didn't help me pass).

I was still looking to pull their arm under their back, and still failing to secure a grip. I couldn't isolate the sleeve for a cross-grip either: perhaps I need to be more forceful with that, or put my hips into it? A couple of times I had the sleeve and started to stand, but Callum easily freed his arm.

Generally, I'm still being too reactive when trying to pass guard, especially on top. That means I'm chasing after them, rather than imposing some kind of strategy they have to defend. My only successful passing tactic remains forcing half guard, locking in a gable grip, then using shoulder pressure to pass. Unfortunately, that doesn't often work against the blues, as unlike white belts, they aren't going to let me slide my knee through that easily.

Underneath, I wanted to go to butterfly and try to sweep, as I'd been watching a video which emphasised pressing into their chest with your forehead, something I don't tend to do enough. However, my attempt to switch to butterfly from closed was rather sloppy, so Callum took advantage and passed. I did find myself with a belt grip over his back, but wasn't sure what to do with it. I thought I'd seen a choke after you grab their belt before, but checking back through my notes, I can only see a half guard sweep and a stack pass defence, so maybe not.

I also messed up a basic principle, which is pushing their head on the side they want to pass. Instead, I was shoving Callum's head on the other side, which simply helped him to pass. I need to remember that wherever their legs are going, that's the side of the head my hands need to be.

The other thing I kept trying was the flower sweep, as I had Callum in tight a few times (like on Tuesday). However, while I could grab the trouser leg, that was about as far as I got. I couldn't isolate his arm, or get in place to kick up into the armpit properly. Still, it is good to at least get into the habit of threatening something, rather than just lying there wondering what to do.

That's me done for this week, and I'll also miss all of next week, yet again due to a girlfriend visit. There are things more important to me than BJJ, despite what the sheer nerdy obsession of this blog might lead you to believe. ;p

As usual when I know I won't be training, I plan to put up a review/article or two in the meantime.