Marcelo Garcia Seminar - Day 2 - Gi

Alright, so this post is a little late. I wish I could've done it sooner, like right after the seminar, but I just haven't had time. Had to travel back home after the seminar, then work yesterday, and the 3-hour Heroes season premiere event last night (definitely couldn't miss that). I've been going over the Sunday seminar over and over in my head. Let's see what I can remember...

First off, that seminar was AWESOME! I know I said in the last post how awesome it was, but I just have to say it again. Being such a big fan of Marcelo, it was surreal seeing him in person, let alone meeting him, shaking his hand, and getting my photo with him (photo coming later...I didn't walk to lug my DSLR there, so my friend took a photo of Marcelo and I using his camera). Robert, the instructor over at BJJ Olympia, mentioned how he's hoping to form a lasting relationship with Marcelo to keep him coming back for seminars. I really hope that happens. I'd love to go to a Marcelo seminar twice a year or so :-D

Ok, as mentioned before, Marcelo said he'd work from the top on Saturday (no-gi day), then from the bottom on Sunday (gi day). So let's see what I can remember...

Marcelo started where he did yesterday, with one of us on our butt's while the other is standing. Some of the main point Marcelo pointed out:

• Knowing where your opponents hands/arms are at all times -When you're doing doing "hands fight" (trying to get the upper hand with your hands), you want to have the inside position; have your hands inside your opponents. So when you do get the inside position, if you can you could scoot in underneath them and work some magic.
  
• Knowing where your opponents feet/legs are at all times -Don't let your opponent get to close under their own free will. If they step too closer, use their knee as a post and push off of it. Create space and start working again to get that inside position.
  

X guard - Get the inside position with your hands/arms inside of his, then scoot in. When you scoot in you'll shoot your left leg between their legs and get a butterfly hook with your right foot, and grab their right leg with your left hand, around the outside. Then bring your foot back through and secure a butterfly hook with your left foot hooking around the front side of their left thigh. After you've placed your legs/feet where they need to be, you'll reach across with your right hand and grab the fabric on their right leg, then switch your left arm from wrapping around the outside, to wrapping around the inside. One good thing to do from here, as you push out with your legs, pull the right leg up and over your left shoulder. From here you can secure a gable grip just above their knee. There's a variety of sweeps you can do from the X guard.

Now sometimes you're unable to secure an X guard. Maybe the person's left leg is just too far, or they rotate it back behind them when you scoot in. If this happens, instead of trying to secure both their left and right legs, we'll attack the right leg. So you'll get the same wrap around the outside of their right leg with your left arm. Except this time,

What if you're scooting on your butt and your opponent is on their knees? You won't be able to do the X guard or the alternative I just explained. What you can do is fight for the inside position with your hands again. Once you get the inside position with both, scoot forward into them, securing underhooks with your arms, and placing your feet between their knees. Make sure when you secure the underhooks, you post your elbows out and up, away from your sides. This will keep their arms from wrapping and them securing a grip behind your back. Them securing a grip behind your back is bad news for you as you won't have as much control as you'd like. From here you'll roll back and lift them into their air when your butterfly hooks, then you'll point your left leg and allow them to slide down your shin. While their sliding down, slip your left arm under their leg...yes, just as you would secure it when establishing the X guard as described above. Then again, as described above, slide that left foot back between their legs and secure the X guard completely.

Another option from that lift is instead of attacking the legs to get X guard, you'll attack an arm to secure an armbar. After you've lifted them, pick an arm. I've found that I usually attack their left arm. So you've got the underhooks, scooted in, and lifted them up and into the air. Remove that left underhook and bring it out and over their left arm. As you lower them back to the ground, push out with your legs as to create space between you and your opponent while sitting up. Your right forearm is going to be across their right arm, just above the elbow and you can just secure an overhand grip (back of right hand into your left palm), and put pressure on the elbow.

A common situation to come across, usually when grappling with somebody who isn't as experienced or when rolling with wrestlers, is when you scoot in they'll bull rush you - charge full force with their shoulder into your chest in an attempt to lay you back onto the mat. This is a pretty cool move for that situation. Say when you tried to scoot in, you were able to get your feet in between their knees, but were only able to secure one underhook. When they bull rush you, as you're going to your back, secure the arm that you have overhooked - this is the arm you're going to attack for the submission. Place your feet onto each of their hips and create space, or onto their knees and flatten them out. Then rotate their elbow to have it point to the ground, the bend in their elbow facing the sky. Lay back the rest of the way if you had to sit up a little to rotate their elbow, then bridge your hips to the sky.

Again, this blog is a few days late...way later than I wanted to post it (I've gone to 2 classes at my school this week since the weekend). The seminar is something I'll always remember, and hopefully I have the chance to meet Marcelo again in the near future :-)

Marcelo Garcia Seminar - Day 1 - No-Gi

So about a month ago I came across a post on a BJJ blog I read that said Marcelo Garcia was heading this way. I posted about it a little over here.

Anyways, day 1 was awesome! It's crazy to have actually met Marcelo Garcia, a guy I've idolized in all the online videos I've seen since starting Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. The guy is just so good! And he's an awesome person. Soft spoken, a great sport, loves what he does and loves sharing his knowledge with others. All of this showed all throughout the seminar, too. Day 1 was a no-gi day, tomorrow's going to be a gi day. But Marcelo emphasized at the beginning of the seminar that what he was going to show us wasn't go to be "this is for gi, this is for no-gi." What he would show us can be used for either. Maybe with a few minor changes, but could translate between both.

It started off with Robert Owens, the head instructor at BJJ Olympia, introducing Marcelo and talking about him a bit. Then Marcelo thanked everyone for coming out and we got started! Marcelo said that Saturday he'd concentrate on working from the top, while on Sunday he'd concentrate on working from the bottom. So he started out by explaining that from working from the top, you want your opponents back on the ground. You don't have as much control over an opponent when they're on their edge or even sitting up. And so this is where we started out: you're standing and your opponent is scooting around on their butt. He showed us one technique he uses to get the opponent on their back, then stemmed from there.

Alright... So you're standing and you're opponent is scooting around on their butt. You're going to grab their right ankle with your left hand, and your right hand is going to push on their right shoulder. Once they have their back to the ground, you'll more than likely have your right leg between their legs and your left leg outside of their left leg. Then you'll re-position your right hand to their sternum and put most of your weight on that right hand. This'll 1) help hold the opponent down, 2) make it very uncomfortable for your opponent and make it a little harder to breath, and 3) with most of your weight on your hand, this'll help keep you light on your feet so that you can manuvuer left/right around your opponents guard. If your opponent was able to get their right leg outside of your left? Then simply step over their right leg with your left. Once here, you'll move your right hand from their ankle up to the knee. As you pull on the knee to straighten their right leg, swing your right leg back and around toward you, then put the right knee on their belly. If they try to move away, shrimp out, you'll follow them until you find the right time to move into belly down side control (making sure you get that underhook on the far side).

But what happens if they lock your right leg up with their legs? From there you can use that same swing around kick from before, escape to pass guard, you're creating space in the leg lock. After you create the space, drive your right knee up your opponents right side, freeing your foot and sliding into side control.

What if you're unable to drive your knee up to free your leg because you're opponent is blocking your knee with his hands. In this situation you can push your opponents right knee with your left hand, shifting his hips to his left. This'll cause you to drop to your knees and lay across your opponents outter right thigh. If you act quick enough, you can kick/straighten your right leg to escape the lock. Then swing your legs around and secure belly down side control. If you weren't able to act quick enough and kick that leg back to break the lock though, then you can just straighten the leg as much as possible, then reach up with your left foot and peel the lock off. Then move into belly down side control.

Now, let's take a couple steps back... What if when your opponent gets your right leg locked, they start turning their body to grab your left leg with their right hand? It depends really on which way they attempt to grab it. If they just and grab your ankle, then you'll lift your foot and spin the bottom portion of your leg in a counter-clockwise motion, breaking the grip. It uses the same principle as break a grip around your wrist: follow the path of least resistence, the thumb. Now what if they get in little deeper and wrap around the outside of your left leg? Pick up the foot, and pull it out of their attempted wrap. But what if they try to wrap your leg by going in between your legs and hooking toward the outside? Pick up that left leg and "baseball slide" across their chest to their left side. As you slide in, your right foot should slide out of the lock. Make sure you secure that underhook with your left arm as you slide in, too.

Now taking it back all the way to the beginning: you're on your feet, your opponent is scooting around on their butt. What if when you push their back to the floor, your right hand post didn't have enough weight on it to hold them down? Or you never got a chance to get their back to the floor and they scoot in and try to hug your right leg? This is where the guillotine choke comes in handy. Put your right wrist into their neck and cup your left hand around the back of their head. When doing this, you want to put that wrist straight up into their neck, don't slide it in. You want to make sure you get it in there below the chin. Trying to slide it in, you'll be telegraphing the move. The left hand on the back of the head is to make sure they don't back their head out. Then lean over and replace that left hand with your right shoulder. Reach down and put the back of your right hand into the palm of your left, and lift up.

But, someone who's every grappled before is not going to get close enough to just let somebody put that in. So he showed us another way, if the person is just close enough to reach to put it in. Reach out with your left hand to cup the back of the head and put the right wrist into their neck, then do a judo shoulder roll over them. Doing this, you'll both end up on your back, but you'll have the choke in. Then simply bridge up to tighten the choke.

From there we did some free rolling. Now, I'm normally a very shy person, and this was my first BJJ seminar. So I wasn't just walking up to people asking them to roll. But one guy came over and asked if I wanted to roll, so I accepted. On our way to finding an open area on the very crowded mat (seemed there was at least 50 people there), I asked him where he was from and how long he had been rolling. He said he had been rolling for about 2 years, then asked how long I had been rolling. "3 months," I said haha So we kneeled down and began to roll. You could tell he had way more experience than man, but I held my own for a bit. I got a few sweeps in, but could never get a submission. He ended up getting me in a triangle. I was hoping to roll somemore, but you could tell he was there for a "real challange" and he ended up saying thanks and walked away to find somebody else. That sort of killed it for me, so I went and watched Marcelo roll for the rest of the time. It's one thing to see him in the videos on YouTube, but wow...in real life it's a whole 'nother thing. The guy is just so relaxed and so smooth with his game.

Marcelo closed out with some words of wisdom. Talked about how he would've never gotten where he was today without the great people doing BJJ also. He travelled a lot to learn from various people who were more skilled than he was. And told us not to get frustrated or discouraged if something doesn't come to us right away. He's been training for a very long time, and he's put a lot of hours into getting where he's at today. And don't be hesitant in trying new things while rolling. That's the whole point of it - to try these new techniques on a resisting partner.

In all, the seminar ran about 3 hours. It was an amazing day and I'm TOTALLY stoked for day 2 of the seminar tomorrow. Tomorrow, as I said, will be a gi day. I have more experience with a gi, so hopefully when we free roll at the end I won't have people walking away because I wasn't enough of a challenge. Also, Mel said that there was supposed to be another guy from my school up here. Hopefully he's here today so I can practice all the techniques with him. Yesterday I had to roll with a guy who I didn't know. Which I didn't mind, but the dude wouldn't stop farting...