807BJJ Class 138: Rick warm-up, x-guard defenses, rolling

Rick warmed us up in this Saturday morning class. Six students attended. We did the run around and some side squat stretches before doing a couple of BJJ warm-up drills. One was entering headquarters, which involves tipping a seated opponent back by lifting a leg, then stepping in deep on their free leg so your shin pushes the back of their knee up. You tuck their lifted leg into your crotch, lower your same-side elbow to your forward knee and grip their lapel. Yeah, or something like that. I’m still hazy on the details, and I’ve never been able to properly pull it off in free sparring. The next drill was a guard pass where you trap one of their arms at the belt line with your same side arm, step up on the side of the trapped arm (they can’t underhook your leg with that arm if it’s pinned to their belt) and step your other leg back, keeping their leg trapped between your forward leg and the trapping arm. Grip the trapped leg as you dart back to clear it, then you have grips on the same-side arm and leg and you can move into knee-on-belly.

After that, Mark taught us some counters to slinky guards. The De La Riva guard pass he taught us was to just step back around and essentially fall across their body. Your hip goes to their hip. Your armpit goes to their face. Your other arm hooks their top leg as you sit on their bottom leg. Easy pass after that.

Then there was the X-guard pass, which was basically “immediately fall down and scramble out as soon as they start to do it to you”.

Rolling was progressively exhausting. I mean, I started okay against Jose, who I mounted at will and choked out with Mark’s side control paper cutter choke. Next was Dave, who I couldn’t submit but who I maintained mount or 3/4 mount for most of the 8 minute roll. Then was Shabbar, who smashed me for about 8 solid minutes. Then Cowboy slowed it down and taught me some fine details that I’m doing wrong, like not taking angles or leaving way too much space.

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805BJJ Class 137: Iranian takedown from knees/scramble, Iranian counter, brutal head removal, pendulum sweep, hybrid scissor/pendulum sweep, arm bar, rolling

Mark started us off on this class (I got in halfway through the warmup) showing us how to do the “Iranian” which is where your opponent gets up on one foot and sits back on his knee. You get low and torpedo his raised knee, at the same time sliding your same-side hand/arm along the mat to grip the planted heel (even if they pull back, shooting past it to grab it will still get it for you) and use your head to drive them down with their trapped leg. You use your free hand to chop down their hips and move them along. To finish the pass, bring your ankle-gripping-elbow up over their lowered thigh, lean your upper body on their chest to press them down, and then slide your knee in to secure the side control.

The wrestling counter to this takedown is to sprawl, reach over, and grab the feet of the shooting combatant. To get past this defense, you post your free hand on the mat and use it to lift your opponent’s feet into the air and dump them. You have to protect yourself from them twisting their body and using their calf to take your head off, though. It’s seriously brutal.

Then Christian taught some techniques to do from a foot-posted-forward posture, this time from the full guard. He showed the pendulum sweep, which involves you underhooking the posted leg as you raise your same-side knee pit to your opponent’s arm pit, and wave your free leg around to get momentum to tip them over and mount them.

Next sweep was the hybrid, so going from an open guard, they put their foot forward, you hook under it with one foot as the other foot does the scissor sweep motion. Grips are far sleeve and near lapel. Resulting position requires effort to avoid 3/4 mount (because your hooking foot can get trapped in there) so you can either slide it through or go for knee-on-belly.

Finally, the threat! You can fake the pendulum sweep and instead shoot your hips up for the arm bar. You can finish it there or you can take them down, scoot your butt into their shoulder, collect their arms, and peel their wrist off for the finish.

Then we rolled. 8 minute rounds. I started with Jeremy, who I had to keep reminding to chill out. I taught him a mount escape and I taught him a back escape.

Next in line was Phil. I did the takedown of the day on him and got on top, then he tried to kimura me for the rest of the time.

After that it was Mark, who got on top of me and held me down with his belly. He toyed with me for about 7 minutes before choking me, but said I was moving well.

Next and last was Cowboy, but for only 5 minutes. I did the blunder of fiddling with his lapels before passing his guard, and he schooled me for it. Coach Mark was yelling instructions to me about how to get out of his attacks. I did, and I might have hurt his ear given the way he moved away. He finished me, and in the last 30 seconds he did it again.

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805BJJ Class 136: collar choke, scissor sweep, rolling

Greggo taught this Tuesday morning class. We had a couple of Kyokushin champions on the mat for an intro to BJJ today.

We did the lesson on cross collar choke from the guard, where you get that deep cross-collar grip on the gi, then reach UNDER that hand to get the second collar grip, hang your weight off them with your legs and arms as you row them into your belly button, scissoring your hands to pull the gi fabric tight behind their neck, and digging your wrists into their neck to tighten the choke.

Next method was to counter the situation where your opponent blocked that hand from coming underneath to get the second grip. In this case, you pull them down to you and reach over their back to get an overhand grip on their gi, on the other side of your existing cross-grip. Then you use your legs and arm to shuck them across as you bring that arm around tight and cross your forearms in front of them to finish the choke same as before.

But what if they block that second hand preemptively, like at the elbow? In that case, you open your guard (keeping knees pinched) to put the foot on the floor on the other side of your blocked hand, and move your hips away from that free hand, then slip that knee up across their chest so that it touches the wrist of your cross-gripped hand. The other leg blocks their far knee on the mat as you pull them toward you, then twist them over on their side using both arms and legs to do the scissor sweep. If they counter this with a wide base, then instead of blocking that far knee, you can use your foot to push it out from under them as you pull them over.

After finishing the sweep, you end up in the mount with a cross collar grip. To finish this, you reach your free hand over and slide your elbow/forearm across their jaw to turn their head away, leaving you with a clean grip on their gi shoulder material. You ground your head on the mat on the same side as that second grip, establish a wide base with your knees, and use your toes to push your hips forward for the finish. I think the forward hips gives your hands a better choking angle.

Then we rolled. My rolling partners were Jen, Jeremy, Aiden, Greggo, and lastly coach Mark asked me to roll easy with the karate black belt guy. That was an ego boost, that Mark can count on me to kind of know what I’m doing and not risk injuring someone who’s vulnerable. Anyway, I felt I did kind of okay in every roll. I managed to avoid all of Greggo’s submission attempts, and nobody else really threatened me. The inexperienced people kept trying to do the cross collar choke from inside my guard, and I kept teaching them why that was both useless and dangerous, because I can use my legs to keep them from the finish, and I can tip them over and take their back.

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805BJJ Class 135: no-gi guard passing, kimura finishing and defenses, recovering from almost-guardpass, rolling

I brought Christian a big kukhri tonight before 6pm nogi class. He was happy.

Class started with a normal warm up. I was fast and ignored the small pains in my foot.

Next we did guard passing drills as a warm up. I slotted in well, dominating the smaller white belts or orange belts and getting chewed up by the more advanced, athletic students.

Then it was Q&A time. I asked how to react when I realized my guard was getting passed. Greggo used the knee slice pass as an example, and showed how you can use your underhook and knee to push them past you and take their back. Christian showed that they’re fighting for the space next to your hip, so you can block them with your head, hip escape to a tactical temporary turtle, and use that to re-establish your guard further back. Greggo also showed putting the top knee across, or using the bottom leg as a distraction as you attack their arm or back during the pass.

Another question was on finishing the D’Arce by switching to the anaconda. Neither instructor liked that option, preferring to get a shallow forearm grip, pressing the head forward, and using that space to force your arm farther through.

Then we rolled.

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805BJJ Class 134: Koshi Guruma, Kesa Gatame, arm bar, americana, top-bottom-out drill, left early

Mark and Christian taught this Saturday morning class. I’d been out for about a month because of my stupid toes, but I’d had much reduced pain for 2 days and saw an opportunity to come back and train.

I was scared of the warm up, but for some reason I don’t feel as much pain when I’m on the mat. The side shuffle on my left foot was pretty painful but I angled my toes away so that instead of tugging my big toe sideways, it pulled it away from the foot. That was much less painful.

We started with Christian teaching the Koshi Guruma technique, which is where you wrap up a headlock as you’re turning to do a hip toss. Starting from a shoulder and sleeve grip, you pull up the sleeve as they’re pushing into you, and you slip your shoulder gripping hand over their shoulder and around their neck as you step in and get your hips under theirs. Load them up on your hip and squat lift them, then dump them off the side. As you go down, maintain the headlock and assume kesa gatame position.

From kesa gatame, you reach your free hand back and peel their trapped arm off your waist with a C-grip, keeping their thumb pointing up. You then force it out straight and trip it with your lower knee. Scissor your legs to get the tap.

If they bend and turn their arm upwards, you can tuck it under your top leg and just push your calf down to the mat for the tap, raising your hips if you need a little extra travel to finish it.

We did top-bottom-out then. Me, Jose, and the deaf fellow. Jose started on top of me, and I was able to roll him over me and get on top.

I then went out, then got on top of deaf fellow, who I just pressured for the full round because he had his arm bent over across his face. I didn’t feel confident in switching to regular side control or flipping it about to go for an arm triangle or a kimura, so I just sat there. Great.

Jose started on top of me again, and this time I snuck out behind him and took him down, eventually sliding my ears out of his headlock with a little bit of pain. Jose needs to work on his basic kesa gatame position.

Then I started on top of deaf guy again, but this time I mounted him and collar choked him hard until he tapped. The high point of my day. Mark then switched Jose to another group and brought Sean in, so I got to have Sean on top of me. Great. He’s smooth, but he just about took my head off in transition before he lost his grips. I remember that sucked a lot, but I did prevent him from getting his mounted triangle on me again, which frustrated him.

I bowed out early before the stand-up round.

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