805BJJ Class 167: cross leg shrimping to escape side control, rolling

Mark’s Tuesday morning class. While getting dressed, I showed Jeremy my fading blue belt and told him “Once this fades back to white, I get to put all my stripes back on!” and he thought that was hilarious.

Class started with a normal warm up. I felt good! Better than I’ve felt in the last couple months. Then we got down to the technique, which is using the cross legged shrimp to ratchet away from side control bottom and go for the attack. Works against someone who’s not smashing down on you.

We did a skill builder on the crash pad where we lined up, held the opponent’s hands by the meat, then dropped low to hook behind their knees before coming up with our forehead/face in their solar plexus and dumping them down. It has the benefit of making them hit the ground while you remain standing, and it was helpful in that it’s the approach we should take when we come up to our knees.

Anyway, then we rolled.

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805BJJ Class 166: taking the back from side control

Mark showed us how to take the back from side control. Basically it’s a knee slide under as you pull them on top of you. He also showed us how to yank a turtle over when you can’t push it over. TJ was my drill partner, and I found out that my left side of my back, near my spine, really hurt when I took weight on it. Bad news.

But I rolled anyway. Started with Jose. Let him start on top of my turtle. He did the move of the day and choked me out. It hurt my neck. I didn’t tell him I was injured.

I told everybody else though. TJ, Cosmo, Andrew, and Jose again. I did average. Got tapped. Did some escapes. Didn’t get more injured, as far as I can tell.

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805BJJ Class 165: back control, collar choke from back, rolling

Limped into Tuesday morning class. I’d been dreading it, and sort of yearning for release from suffering through any means at hand. I still went to class.

My 49th year has gone downhill already. The high point was my birthday class. Since then, the Kings have been heavily into a skid, I’ve been crippled physically and emotionally, and nothing is going the way it should. My feet are ruined, my neck felt like there’s a taut guitar string running from behind my left ear down to my lower back next to my spine. My wrists and elbows hurt. My head hurt.

Anyway, coach Mark taught us (again) the collar choke from behind, then back control with the hooks, then racking the arm and slotting the hand behind the neck instead of reaching across to pull the opposite side lapel like a doorbell rope.

Then we rolled. I started with Christian, and he just gets under me and flips me over. I actually can’t remember all my rolls, but we did have 3 white belts in the class today. I taught Mike (works with TJ, 2nd BJJ class today) the very basic concepts of BJJ. I refrained from wrecking Jose’s neck when I took his back. I guillotined Jeremy from guard. I survived Chris’ knee-on-belly. I remembered how to do a half guard pass with Christian. I walked out better than I walked in. Win!

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805BJJ Class 164: elbows to the mat arm defenses, rolling

Birthday class!

Learned to twist and pull my elbow to the mat if anyone tries to lock it up with a kimura or arm bar. Lesson made specifically for Jeremy (according to Jeremy) but useful for all of us to review. I’ve been tapped from an arm bar recently (TJ) where this defense would have let me escape. I used to do it all the time, but it didn’t even occur to me last time. Gettin’ rusty in my old age, I guess.

After class, I got hip tossed by everybody, and they sang me the Happy Birthday song. :)

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805BJJ Class 163: takedowns from the knees – over/under body lock and twist, elbow hook and take the head off, reach under, whizzer twist

Mark taught today’s class. I came in feeling sore and brittle, but I’ve been out a bit and need to get back into regular training while I can.

Mark taught us how to attack takedowns from the knees. Using head pressure to offbalance our opponent, we moved close to get an over/under body lock with an S-grip behind their back. Step in with the underhook hand side’s foot, snug their hips to line up with yours, and twist them down on the trapped arm side (overhook side).

You can also do an osoto gari from the knees by stepping across their body and twisting them over your leg.

If you can’t step across, you can instead reach it under to block the leg as you twist them down.

If they get you in a body lock, you can always switch to the elbow grip on your overhand side, bringing your other arm around to clothesline their head and take them down. Violence helps the move but not the training partner, as with most of Mark’s techniques. It’s kind of surprising that guy still has students, now that I reflect on it.

If they get you in a body lock with their head down, you can whizzer the arm on the opposite side of where their head is, and turn your body away (toward the whizzer), stepping out on that side to twisting them down.

Rolling sucked. I started with Chris, going 50%, and that was all good. Then I went with Dave, and once he escaped my kesa gatame and got on top of me, I was scrambling to survive. Next was Cosmo, who got on top and smashed me into the mat for the entire time, almost tapping me with neck strain. Then Sergio tapped me a couple times, then TJ did the same. I did manage to entertain TJ with my omoplata escape, where I got under his hips and rolled him to the other side of me. Anyway, after that was Jeremy, who had some serious issues with his base in side control top. He noted after the round that his white belt tricks just weren’t working on me today. That’s when I realized I was the junior blue belt, and every roll was with someone better than me (except Jeremy, who got his first white belt stripe at the end of class!)

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805BJJ Class 162: side control top spin, ghost escape, rolling

Christian and Mark couldn’t make it to teach the class, so TJ got us started with something that Rick taught him. When on side control top and your opponent starts to shrimp and get their knee in, you can spin around to the other side. If they stay up on their side, you can gift wrap them, lift them, and take their back. I need to work on that.

Then TJ got called to work. I did the drill with Matt for a bit, then asked if there was anything he wanted to work on. He said he has a hard time getting out from under side control. I asked him what his options were from down there, and he said that all he really does is shrimp to get his knee in and recover guard. So I taught him the roll over reversal, where you’ve shrimped and they’re pushing you down and across really hard, you can turn with their momentum and essentially hip toss them over you.

The other one I taught him was the ghost escape, where you start with your hands out of framing position. Get a strong overhook of their far arm (you can grip the gi material if they’re wearing a gi) and you insert your other arm under their whole body to essentially underhook their ribs. Then you hip bump and walk your legs out while your upper body follows your underhook out. You can then go to your knees or wrap up for the Darce choke, whose details I could not remember properly.

Then Dave and Cosmo wanted to know what we were going over, so I showed them as well. Then Dave talked about leg wrapping to pass the guard. Then we put up some 5 minute rounds and we rolled.

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805BJJ Class 161: Arm bar from guard, rolling

Tuesday morning class. First time back in a couple weeks after being sick. Feeling cold, weak, fat and brittle, but I need to see if that burns off after a good workout. I’m trying some tape around my left foot’s toes to see if that holds them together a bit during training. First try I taped them too tight but by putting weight on the foot between wraps I was able to figure out a good size to make the wraps and it feels more comfortable now.

Got in early. Washed my mouthguard. Light warmup before class. Bowed in. Running warm up. 2 regular shrimp, 2 cross shrimp. Circle up around Christian. Arm bar from guard. Oh man. I paired up with Jeremy, and we’d both been out for 2 weeks. We did the arm bar drills, but we were not very good. I kept letting my opposite side leg go wild when I stepped my same side leg onto the hip, preparing for the pivot. Jeremy kept going the wrong way. Our shortcomings really became obvious when we started doing it at a pace.

Then we rolled. I mostly sucked. Slacked off a lot on the pace. Didn’t go for any submissions except against the coaches, and of course those didn’t work out. I did manage to get on top of Cosmo, Dave, and Matt. Mostly I didn’t let them escape.

When I was too tired to do proper rolling, I taught Matt how to do the hip bump/kimura/guillotine from guard if someone’s trying too hard to posture up. Last roll I took Jeremy out on the mat and showed him how to finish a collar choke even if he gets swept off the mount and ends up in guard.

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