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! :-)

Practice - 9.8.2008

Didn't get a chance to blog about last night's practice last night, but I'm hoping I can remember everything *crossing fingers*

After finishing a light warm-up, we sat down on the mats with Mel. Mel said that he'd take requests before moving into the curriculum, and proceeded to go around the circle to see if there was anything that anybody wanted to work on or had questions about. One guy asked if we could review or be shown another takedown/sweep. While that was supported a few times, I then asked to be shown a triangle from the mount. We were shown this before, but not in so much detail. We were being shown another technique from the mount (which one I can't think of right now) and the triangle was another option. So I wanted more detail, a better explanation. Another suggestion was what to do after you've taken somebody's back.

So the first takedown was one I haven't seen before, and I don't remember the name. So you start off in the normal "equal/equal" hold - Right foot forward stance, right hand gripping your opponents left lapel, leg hand gripping fabric at about your opponents right elbow. Your opponents grip is the same on you, hence the "equal/equal" name. Step forward with your left foot, placing it even with the opponents right foot, or even slightly past, and not right next to it either. As you do this you're going to pull down on your left hand (the hand that's gripping the elbow fabric) causing them to be a little off balance. As you do this your right shoulder should end up in their right shoulder, and your head should be looking down their back. Then bring your right leg between your left leg and your opponents right leg (that gap you left when you stepped forward with your left foot earlier), and hook your opponents right leg. Then you'll lean foward sweeping that right leg back, think of it as trying to kick up to the ceiling and you'll get a good sweep with good follow through. As you lean forward, you're right shoulder will be pressing against their right shoulder, and at the same time your left hand will be pulling down their right elbow and your right hand will be pushing on the left side of their chest. This is a really cool sweep if you get it down. If done properly, 1) if in a match, this could knock the breath out of your opponent, giving you the upper hand. Or 2) if on the street, could do the same but worse since you'd more than likely be on pavement or something harder than a mat, give you the opportunity to run away from the attack.

Then he reviewed the leg hook takedown he showed us on Saturday. I learned another detail for this one too. When you hook their left ankle with your right ankle and push, make sure you're not pulling/pushing your opponent sideways as if you're trying to lay them down across in front of you. You're actually pushing them backwards, and that ankle hook you have will keep your opponent from being able to step back and regain balance.

One day, I'll remember the actual Japanese names for these haha All the takedowns he's shown that I've seen so far have all been from his Judo training. Mel actually has a poster with the 5 groups of Judo takedowns at the gym, Gokyo No Waza (techniques seen here).

Then we moved onto my choice, the triangle from mount. Triangles work great for me because I have really long legs. So I thought it'd work best for me to find different ways of getting 'em in :-) The rest of the class on the other hand, is made up of shorter people. So really I was the only one who was able to get my legs locked in the triangle while still on top haha Anyways, to the technique. To get this triangle in you'll be basically walking your opponent right into it. This is setup I was taught for it.

So you have the full mount. One thing you'll want for this is an arm under your opponents head. One technique that uses this: an ezekeil choke. So once you have your left arm under your opponents head, you start to bring your right arm in to put in the choke. Instictively your opponent will bring in their left hand to try and block it (they're unable to get their right hand in because it's blocked by the position you have them in). When they bring in that left hand, grab the wrist with your right hand, pin it to the ground, and put their left wrist into your left hand (the one that's underneath their head). Then you'll start to weave your right arm under your opponents left bicep to make them think you're going to put in an Americana (which to do right, you wouldn't want your left arm under your opponents head, but in the heat of the moment your opponent might not realize this detail). To defend against the Americana, they'll try and straight out their arm, and this is the momentum that you'll use. When their left arm starts to straighten, it'll move from a 90-degree angle facing up, to a 180-degree flat line from their shoulder to their fingers. Grab their left wrist with your right hand and keep that momentum going. At the same time you'll weave your right leg under your right arm and over their left arm, picking up their head with your left arm that's already underneath their head, and swing your right leg underneath. Then you'll grab their right arm (fabric, wrist) with your right hand and bring it across their chest, making your right foot available to hook that left leg around.

Now, as I said, I was pretty much the only person who could get a good triangle lock while still in the top position because of my long legs. But if you aren't "blessed" with this, or if you weren't able to get your right leg in as far as you would have liked, then you have another option. This technique can also be used of your opponent decides to oopa and roll you onto your back. If this happens, then you can reach your left hand down to grab your right ankle. Then you'll roll to your right shoulder, rolling onto your back. While doing that roll, you'll take your right foot and place it on the right hip of your opponent. Once you make it onto your back and take the angle (in this case, shifting your upper body right so you're looking into their left ear...this'll make that triangle even smaller), then you can lock up the triangle.

After all this, it was either work stuff after taking the back, or a little time to roll so that we could put into practice what we'd gone over already. We opted to roll. I rolled with a guy smaller than I, but has been at jiu-jitsu for awhile longer (3 stripes). I feel I did really well. Neither one of us got a submission, but we both did well technique wise I think. Sweeps and overall control were good. I watched a Gracie Insider video the other day on taking the back from the guard. I end up in guard a lot while rolling, and my guard is pretty strong. Haven't had a white belt pass my closed guard yet. Most often, the person will then resort to cutting their forearm into my throat. At first I'd try and push their arm back to the side it came from, but found that they'd usually grab my collar and it'd just stop there. Then I found that I could push on their elbow and force their arm to follow their hand. And then I could hug them and catch my breath. But I'd stop there. After watching that video though, I've taken advantage of this technique quite a few times, especially last night. Now I just need to work on rear naked chokes and various collar chokes from the back. I've been shown some in the past, but they've slipped my mind. Next time we get a night to have Mel show us whatever technique we want though, I'm definitely asking about working after taking the back.

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... :-)