Tonight's Practice - 9.18.2008

Tonight was a no-gi night. I've been trying to get a little more no-gi experience before the Marcelo Garcia seminar this weekend (2 day seminar - one day no-gi, one day with the gi). I still don't have much (only a handful of no-gi classes), but at least I have some now. I won't be flopping like a fish now...much haha Tonight we worked a lot from the back, both from the back and having somebody on your back. I've learned a couple chokes from the back during a previous class with the gi, but haven't learned how to escape when somebody had your back. So I was soaking it up like a sponge heh We started off with a basic escape from when somebody has your back...

So your opponent has your back, foot hooks in, and their right arm around your neck. This can work whether you have your hands up and crossed protecting your neck and they wrap their arm, or they have their arm wrapped and youv'e tucked your chin and are pulling down on their forearm with both hands. You're going to want to push and slide up, and put your back on the ground to the left side of your opponent. A good way to remember which way to go is to go the direction their fingers are pointing (of the arm wrapped around your neck), or go toward the opening, not into the bend of their elbow. Once you get your back onto the mat, whizzer with your right around their right arm, post your left hand on their right knee and shrimp out (facing toward them).

From here it depends on what your opponent does. You might get butterfly guard, half butterfly, maybe get full guard. If your opponent is experienced, they'll know to sit back on their bottom to keep from getting sweeped. If you're able to pull butterfly guard and your opponent sits back, you can push your feet out and create space. From here you can get this sweep:

If when you pulled butterfly guard you weren't able to get underhooks, when you push your opponent back with your foot hooks, get those underhooks. From here you'll bring your left hand up to your ear trapping your opponents right arm. Once you do that, stretch your body out as you lay back, and roll your opponent to your left. Sweep successful!

Now, what if you have an opponent that's not as experienced and is really aggressive after you get the butterfly guard and underhooks, and he wants to push into you and get face to face? Then just execute the same sweep. Left hand up to your ear and sweep to your left. The sweep is a lot easier to execute this way since you're able to use their momentum to roll them.

Just a quick note regarding defending the choke when an opponent has your back. The "old school" way of defending it was to pull down on the forearm with both your hands and tuck your chin. But do you really want to allow your opponent to get this in before trying to defend? heh I don't. So a "new school" way is to cross your arms at the wrist, palms facing out, put your face between your hands and tuck your chin. After seeing this I asked Mel, "which arm crosses in the front?" He explained how it's a numbers game. Most people, when they take your back, they're going to wrap their right arm around your neck. Going off that, you're going to want to cross your left arm over your right. It makes it a lot easier to get that whizzer in with your right arm. If you cross your right arm over your left, then when they wrap their right arm around, you'll be blocking it with your right hand/wrist/arm, then try and switch blocking hands so that you can use your right arm to get the whizzer in.

After working from the defense, we moved to the offensive side of things. Now, this move is if you're losing the position, your opponent is getting the leg hooks out and getting away. While your opponent is going to try and slide toward the direction your fingers are pointing, when you the back you're going to want to roll your opponent back in toward the bend of your elbow. So if you have your right arm around your opponents neck and the left arm has an underhook under their left arm, you're going to want to secure your hands together (say with a gable grip) roll them back and toward your right. When you start to lose your leg hooks, remove the left leg hook and move it behind their left leg in a butterfly fashion, then push off with that left leg creating space. Once you've created the space, you want to remove your left arm that's underhooked, secure the gable grip again this time over their left arm, and post your left forearm into their left shoulder. While doing this your right forearm will end up across their throat. Then sprawl your feet out, rolling to your left from your right side to your belly, into a north south position. When rolling you want to make sure that left forearm stays in their shoulder, this will help roll them to their back. And there's the choke.

So let's say you're opponent doesn't allow you to roll to your belly after creating the space? Keeping the gable grip secured, switch your body from their right side to their left by throwing your body over their back. Once you get to the other side, do a sort of baseball slide to get your feet out from under you. And there's that choke.

We did positional rolling, starting with one on the back of another. I was able to successfully execute the escape a majority of the time, but was only able to get the sweep in once. As for the offensive side of things, I need to work on keeping position heh

In between all this, I talked with Mel and another guy named Gino. Gino's been training with Mel for a long time now, and is pretty knowledgeable. I was talking to Mel about how I was trying to get in an armbar from the mount the night before, but the person had their hands locked keeping me from finishing it. One thing I never thought of was which foot to use to put into the far bicep to break the grip. Trying to think back, I just just used whichever without giving it much thought. Last night I was sitting on the left side of my opponent putting the armbar on the left arm. When trying to use my right foot to break the grip, my opponent stopped me and showed me that I should use my left foot instead. Keep my right leg down to keep their head down. While talking to Mel and Gino about this, Gino showed me something. In the situation where your opponent gets their head out from under your right leg, you'll take your left leg and weave your foot between their right shoulder and head. Can you see it yet? Then lock up the triangle! I was really excited to see that haha

Anyways, tomorrow I'm heading up to Olympia for the Marcelo Garcia seminar on Saturday and Sunday. I'll try and remember as much detail as I can to share with the Internet! :-)

Tonight's Practice - 9.17.2008

Tonight was a good practice. I like it when we get to work at least one takedown. Tonight we worked on a takedown I've seen before, but wasn't disappointed in seeing again as I really like it. I checked my previous posts, and it seems the last time we went over this specific takedown was before I started this blog. So here's a description of the takedown.

So you and your opponent have an equal/equal grip: right hand gripping your opponents left lapel, then your left hand gripping the fabric behind their right elbow with your right foot forward. You'll step forward with your left foot while pushing your opponent backwards, which will cause them to step backwards with their right foot. Their instinct will then be to push back at you, stepping back forward with their right foot. As they're stepping forward, you're going to pull up on their lapel and sleeve fabric throwing off their center of gravity and do a sort of shuffle, placing your left foot where your right foot used to be, then hooking their right ankle with your right foot. When you hook that foot, you're going to put your right foot deep in between their stance, lower your center of gravity, and scoop up that right foot you just hooked. Then you can proceed to sweep that left leg to take them down to the ground.

Then we worked on a choke using the main coat portion of the opponents gi (one of the "flaps" that overlaps" - I'll call it a flap from now on haha). This one will be a little harder to explain, but I'll try my best...

So you're in belly down side control on their right side, and you have a overhook with your left arm that goes under their head, and an underhook with your right arm. As you reach down with your right hand to pull out the left "flap" of their coat from their belt (or say, your 2-3mins into a match and the "flap" is already untucked from the belt), you're going to grab fabric on their left shoulder with your left hand, as to keep their shoulders flat on the mat. Once you get the left "flap" all the way out, you're going to pass it up to your left hand (between their left arm and the mat) getting it up as high as you can past their head. Then sit up and put your right knee into their belly, and pull the caot flap under their head towards you; it should pull all the way across so you can see/grab it on the right side of their head. Then switch your hand grip: right hand switches with the left to grab onto it on the right side of their head. Then reach across your opponents chest with your left hand to grab fabric on their left shoulder. Lean forward into your opponent putting your opponents head into your chest, and "crack a walnut between your shoulder blades" to tighten the choke.

And then there's a variation to this. Say that when your each across your opponents chest with your left hand, they block your hand with their left hand. If this happens, grab onto the fabric on their left sleeve and pull it across their body toward you. Then lean down toward their head, securing that left arm across their throat. Then hook your left arm around the back of their head and squeeze, giving you another choke.

Rolling at the end of class was a lot of fun. I can feel myself starting to relax way more compared to what I used to. I had the chance to roll with blue belt Dave again. He's great to roll with. He has the tall and thin build like I do, so I tend to study his game more than others. Dave's the only person I've rolled with who uses wrist locks. He's gotten me in them the last two times we've rolled, and did it again this time. This time it went down like this: we started on our knees. I reach in and grab his left lapel with my right hand. He reaches out with his left hand and cups my right elbow, then reaches in with his right hand and grabs my right tricep. Then pulls it in while leaning over, bending my wrist against his chest. He observed that I'm not keeping my wrists straight when I secure the lapel, keeping them too limp. I've always had bad wrists though, really weak. He told me that doing push-ups on your fists helps strengthen them. So I'm going to try and fit some push-ups into my daily life to help strengthen them up. He also showed me over and over again that I'm thinking too much and/or not thinking enough while rolling. I tend to get really narrow minded while rolling. Example, when in side mount, submissions I know are arm bar...hah that's all I can think of right now. But aside from that, I'm looking to mount. Quite a few times he'd put his arm up on my back. He stopped me one time and asked if I had noticed; I did not. He showed me how to power down the arm with my head and secure an Americana. One more to my side control submission bank :-)

Anyways, that's all I can remember for now. Until next time... :-)

Tonight's Practice - 8.25.2008

Tonight's practice was a lot of fun. I practiced the new techniques with Rhet (not sure of the spelling heh) tonight and rolled with him also. I really like sparring with him as I feel he's better than me, but doesn't totally dominate me whenever we roll. He's a white belt like me, but been there awhile longer.

Anyways, as for what we learned tonight. It started off with escaping from an armbar using a move called "the hitchhiker." Gets it names from how you point your thumb when you bridge and roll. Sort of hard to explain the whole technique, so I found a video instead! haha



Here him mention the thumb? That's "the hitchhiker" part of it! Then we moved to a whizzer from guard, and branched off into a few submissions from this position.

• Collar Choke - If you have their right arm in a whizzer (using your left), reach through to grab their left lapel. Then use your right hand to grab the fabric on their right shoulder. Put your right forearm across the neck while pulling down on the left lapel.
• Triangle - If they block the collar choke, throw your right leg up over their head and put them into a triangle. You already have control of their right arm...
• Omoplata - If they wrap that right arm back around your thigh to protect against the triangle, then roll them right into an omoplata.

Rhet and I were playing around with these and asked Mel about the defense against the omoplata in this situation. He showed us that if you extend your right leg behind the opponent, then roll them back over your leg, you can escape from it. It works like a charm (as long as he hasn't got it deep enough to put your flat on your face and stomach). Found a video for this too (click here to watch - embedding was disabled by uploader)

Rolling overall was a blast. As I said before, rolling with Rhet is a lot of fun. Lately I've been watching a lot of Eddie Bravo (videos) stuff, so I've been messing around with some rubber guard. It's been a lot of fun to experiment with. I'm really excited to work it into my game as I get more experience. One thing I tried to work on last night was half guard. For some reason, I cannot seem to get that leg locked. It's so easy for my opponents to slip their leg out. I tried Eddie's Lockdown, but couldn't seem to get it to work either. Oh well, I'll play around with it more at the next practice.

Until next time... :-)