BJJ No-Gi Class - 10.9.2008

Another night of *ding* light bulb moments. I'm very happy with the way my mind has been working lately while training. I'm starting to become more aware of what techniques to use when, and starting to be able to read my opponents. It's very exciting. It makes me smile everytime I think about it :-) Especially since the light bulb moments continued onto a no-gi night. I'm finally starting to get the hang of the underhooks and overhooks, and starting to smartly use my weight while in side control and what not. All this is happening without thought too, so I don't have the delays of "ok, so here we are...I have these options...nope, that won't work...ok, how about this" - then by that time I'm too late. Anyways, more about rolling after this...

Warm-ups were a bit different than usual. Greg led them while Mel took a phone call. We did the usual jogging, side skips, stretches, etc, then moved onto ones I haven't done before. One I can't remember the name, and will probably have a hard time explaining, but here goes nothing... So you lay down, back on the mat, next to a partner who's also laying the same way, but your feet are by their head while your head is by their head...that make sense? Then bend your knees to create a triangle between the back of your legs and the mat. If your partner is laying to your left, then reach your left hand under their legs and lock grip with their right hand, while your partner does the same. Then you'll shoot your legs straight up into the air going up onto your shoulder blades and pivot to the left before bringing your hips back down to the mat. Repeat this process for about 30 seconds or so. It really gets your core burning. Then we did the widely known armbar drill, so you're just pivoting back and forth putting in armbars on each of your opponents arm. This definitely gave my abs a workout. The we moved on to the armbar-to-triangle-to-omoplata from guard drill. I'm not even going to try to explain this, just watch the video below...



I've seen that drill quite a few times online before, but have never done it myself. It's a great drill for warming up, but also practicing the application of the submissions. Mel noticed a few things on the armbar that people could work on, so he stopped us and went over the armbar from guard. I was one of the ones having trouble being that I've never learned an armbar from guard with no gi on...I didn't have any sleeves to hold on to haha Here's what I remember...

Armbar from guard - We're going to attack the right arm... First thing you want to break your opponent's posture. Securing an armbar while their postured up is going to prove very difficult. You can do this by grabbing around their neck or the back of their head and pulling them down. You'll then grab their right wrist with your left hand, then shoot your right arm under their left wrapping your right hand over their right elbow, then suck the right arm into the middle of your chest. With the left foot on their hip, push off while putting your lower right leg across their upper back. This will help keep them from posturing up, and help keep their right arm straight and laying up the middle of your chest. Then swing the left leg over their head, squeeze the heels as if you're trying to bring them to your butt, squeeze your knees together, and lift your hips making sure their thumb is on top. One thing to keep in mind for us beginners is to not cross our legs once we get the armbar secured. Crossing our legs, our knees will have the tendency of opening up giving our opponent an escape option.

Then we moved on to passing the guard. A few things to remember:

• Never put your hands down on the mat beside your opponent. You can't really do anything with your hands there anyways, and you also open yourself up to kimuras and various other arm and shoulder locks.
  
• This sort of plays off of the last one, but don't keep your elbows flared outward. It plays off the last one seeing as how if you have your hands on the mat, your elbows are exposed. This is how they're able to pull off the kimura. But the same goes if you have your hands on the chest or stomach, you don't want your elbows flared. This will take away some of their options when it comes to the various arm and shoulder locks.
  
• Your posturing up makes it more difficult for your opponent to submit or sweep you. Looking at it from your opponents point of view, from the bottom one of the first things you want to do is break your opponents posture.
  

Passing the guard - You want to get your hands on your opponents chest or stomach with your elbows in; doing this your elbows should be either on or inside of your opponents thighs. If you're unable to get this, one way to create space is to put your hands into your opponents armpits and push back. Be sure not to put your hands on their biceps as your opponent can easily swim his arms under and up in between your arms to slide your hold off of their biceps. One way of securing that hold in their armpits is to hold your hand out 4 fingers together and thumb out. Turn your hand so your thumb is pointing toward the sky, and put the 4 fingers under their arm while the thumb is over their arm, crossing right over the armpit. Once you're able to create enough space, get your hands on their lower chest and shift your elbows in. Then shift your lower body a little to the left and get the right knee under their butt. Then the right hand will move down right below their rib cage, giving you something to push off on. Then move the left hand to the same position and push off again. Once you get your elbows into the inside of their thighs, you can start pushing down on your left elbow to break their closed guard. Make sure you keep that pressure on your hands. This will help keep their hips pinned to the mat. Once you get the closed guard broken, continue pushing on the left thigh until it lays on the mat, then move the left knee over the thigh. At the same time you want to "windshield wiper" the lower portion of your right leg underneath you. This will keep your opponent from hooking your right leg with their left leg. Reach out with your left arm and either hook it over your opponents head or over their shoulder. Then pulling with your left arm, slide into side control.

One thing to take note of for that guard pass, when you push off their armpits to create space, some people's torsos are just too long for this to work. In that case, you just have to work to get your hands on them and your elbows in to push off.

Rolling was a whole lot of fun. The technique learning portion took awhile, so I only got one session in, but I was glad to have been able to roll with my instructor, Mel. One huge thing that I'm sure most beginners struggle with is passing the guard. The break down of passing the guard tonight helped me a lot. I definitely needed this. I was so much more confident just after the 15mins of working on it then, and it showed while rolling with Mel. I executed it successfully several times (given that he was taking it "easy" on me, I executed each step successfully). One huge thing that sticks out in my head that everytime I think about makes me smile, is that I've finally successfully executed a guard pass underneath the leg! Everytime I've tried to do this before, I find myself getting stuck in a triangle. Mel was starting to give me a little more challenge while passing over his leg, so I decided to attempt going below. As soon as his leg came up, I knew what was coming. And without a thought, I shot my left arm across his body and over his left should, stacked, and passed! I'm sure Mel saw the huge smile on my face as I landed in side control haha Overall I felt I did very well from the top. Not only am I more confident in my guard pass, but I was able to secure side control better than usual. Time on the mat is definitely helping with that.

Umm, well, that's all I can think of right now. Until next time... :-)

Tonight's Practice - 9.11.2008

So I strayed a little from my normal Monday/Wednesday jiu-jitsu schedule, instead going on Monday/Thursday this week. At my school, Monday and Wednesday are gi nights, Thursday's are no-gi, while Saturday switches back and forth. September 20-21 I'll be attending a 2 day Marcelo Garcia seminar at a school up north; one day is gi, the other is no-gi. So I thought it best I get a little more no-gi under my belt. I'm really stoked for that seminar. If you don't know who Marcelo Garcia is, I highly recommend you head on over to YouTube and start searching for videos. I'll post a few of my faves here for starters :)

Marcelo Garcia highlight video - The title speaks for itself....
Marcelo Garcia vs Mike Van Arsdale @ ADCC 2003 - I love this video. It perfectly illustrates what Marcelo re-iterates in his training DVDs: Your opponent may be pushing your head back, shoving your head side to side, pulling your legs out from under you, it doesn't matter. You must stick to your game. And that's exactly what he did...
Marcelo Garcia vs Vitor "Shaolin" Ribiero @ ADCC 2003 - Shows how lightning quick Marcelo is, and another great example of how he's able to get an awesome choke in from pretty much any position heh

Then the next weekend, September 28, I'll be attending a Rylan Lizares seminar at my own school. Rylan is a Pedro Sauer black belt, and there's a few videos of him on YouTube as well.

Anyways, on to tonight's practice. As I said, it was a no-gi practice. It was only my 2nd no-gi class, and wow is it different haha As I predicted before I went, I was lost without any fabric to grab on to. Trying to learn the overhooks and underhooks, I realized just how often that I do in fact grab on to fabric to assist me with various techniques, or simply to gain a more dominant position. We started off with basics warm-ups (jogging, stretching, shrimp drills, etc), then went into drills.

First drill was the pummeling drill, where you're fighting for underhooks (as soon at the beginning of this video). It was my first time doing the drill, so it was a little difficult at first, but I caught on heh One thing we did different than that drill was whichever arm had the underhook, that same side foot was forward. So we were constantly switching stances while pummeling.

Then we moved onto a self defense technique from that same position: blocking attempted knee strikes to your stomach/groin. This was done with each of us having an underhook and an overhook. A proper knee would come from the side of your body that has the overhook. This way, when you're kneeing, you can pull on the underhook you have on the opposite side of of your opponent to pull them into you and into your knee. Also, you'll have better balance. So you each have a right underhook and a left overhook. This means your opponent will be kneeing with his left knee. When the strike comes up, you'll move your left hand (the overhooked arm/hand) from their elbow/tricep down between you to block the knee. And that's it! haha Remember that after you block that knee strike to bring that left hand back up onto their elbow/tricep as to not allow them to get a quick fist/elbow strike in.

Then we moved onto a takedown from this position: the sacrafice throw. This one uses your opponents momentum against them. So you're back into the clinch, each of you have a right underhook. Start to push forward and let your opponent react by pushing back into you. When they push back, sit back over your right foot and extend your left leg out forward and to the left. As you fall backwards, use that underhooked right arm to pull your opponent over your body, and you should end up in side control. A variation of this that works for those of use with long legs, is instead of just extending that left leg out to have your opponent roll over, stick your left right into his right ankle. That way when they try to catch their balance by posting their right leg out, it'll get stuck under your left foot.

Then we worked a butterfly guard pass. So your opponent has you in butterfly guard. You'll reach down with your right hand and cup your opponents heel underneath. So when you extend your right leg to swing it into their guard, they won't be able to extend their leg to keep the left foot hook in. When you bring your right leg in, bring your leg all the way around their right foot hook also, so that instead of their right foot hook being on the inside of your left leg, it'll be on the outside of your right leg. And you'll put your weight down into their right leg to put it flat on the floor. Then you'll reach down between you and your opponent with your left hand and grab his right ankle. Now you're going to roll your body up towards their chest, bringing your right leg over your left. You should end up in a rear facing side mount. Then slide your right knee up under their left knee to get their knee out of your side and get "regular" side control. That one was sort of hard to explain. I hope that makes sense to others who read this...and me when I come back to read this for review later haha

And since this was my first class, I asked Mel about the principles behind no-gi jiu-jitsu. One of the main things being differences in technique since there isn't a gi to grab on to. He elaborated a lot more on what I had heard before: use the underhooks and overhooks. He concentrated most of his explanation from the bottom (guard, half guard, etc). Utilizing the underhook, whizzer, wrapping the back of the head to break down your opponents posture. There were some other things too, but I'm having a hard time remembering at the moment. I'll come back and add more to this post as I remember...

Rolling was a lot of fun (as always). I rolled with Rhet, and another guy who's name escapes me; it's been awhile since I've seen him at the school. Rhet pretty much dominated me the whole time. I had a really hard time trying to switch my mind from trying to grab fabric to getting underhooks or overhooks. By the time I remembered, Rhet was already on his way to submitting me. I was able to successfully execute the butterfly guard pass we had just learned though, so that was good. Then I rolled with the other guy. The other guy has a history of wrestling 4 years in high school, going to state, etc. I've rolled with him once before, and really like his style. Going slow, working on technique, etc. He's been training jiu-jitsu for awhile too, he's one of the more experience white belts. I felt more confident rolling with him as I actually had time to think about technique heh As we went along, he'd stop me if I passed up a submissions, too. For example, after slipping into side control, I was able to get his near side arm between my legs. From there I'd always keep the arm trapped there while reaching over and trying to work a Kimura or Americana. He showed me how I was able to sit back and put stress on the elbow with it trapped between my legs still. Another was when he had an underhook with his near side arm. I was able to get a modified armbar from there. I guess I'll go ahead and explain those while I'm typing hehe

So you have side control, facing forward, on their right side, and you get their right arm in between your legs (over your right leg, under your left leg). Reach down with your left hand and keep their arm posted between your legs. While keeping it posted down between your legs, bring your right foot up and over their arm. From here you can push your foot towards the floor, putting pressure on their elbow. In addition, you can bring your left leg over your right ankle and lock it up much like a triangle.

As for the "modified" armbar as I called it... So you have "regular" side control on their right side: overhook with your left arm (arm under their head) and underhook with your right. Hmm, now that I think about it, I can't remember the setup exactly that I was doing while rolling, but off the top of my head... Pull your left arm out from underneath his head and put in a whizzer on his right arm. Then sit up making sure your left forearm stays above his elbow, up on his bicep, and plant your right foot flat on the ground, right up against his right side (shin in his side). Then as you lay back, throw your left leg over his head as you would a regular armbar. But this way, instead of holding his wrist with both your hands, his lower arm (hand, wrist) will be trapped underneath your left armpit.

I'm gonna go ahead and post this. I hope I didn't forget anything. This took me a couple days to put together as things were pretty busy since Thursday night.

Until next time... :-)