Mizblog

Mark’s Saturday morning class. TJ warmed us up, and I had a little bit of panic when I started breathing heavy, but I focused on my breathing technique and was able to calm down. The calming down lasted all through the stretching, actually.

So we got down to the meat of the class, but not before a little bit of gym drama. Mark told everyone that Skyler’s dad had been calling parents of other kids. Also, he was trying to sign Skyler up at Kings MMA and asking them to not tell Mark. Also, Skyler’s dad once shot and killed a guy. The message Mark tried to hammer home was “don’t get lured into this guy’s garage.”

Anyway, the techniques covered were things you can attack from side control. Paper cutter choke involves you reaching under an arm and gripping the collar at the label, then leaning back to trap the arm down. From there, you grip with an overhand, thumb-in grip the far side of the front collar and lock back into your full side control while getting as heavy on that arm as you can for the tap.

Next technique was the north-south choke. For this, you get your arm around the head, then reach your other hand under their far arm and behind their neck to “put the saucer under the cup” which means put your hand under the fist of your choking arm. From there, it’s just scooting your hips back to pull their chin up. You can get a quick and dirty north-south choke without the cup and saucer, just using your choking arm, but then you need to stop them turning toward you so you block their hip.

After that, Greggo taught us the baseball bat choke, which Mark called a cross choke. It starts from knee-on-belly, which you get by gripping the collar at the label while also grabbing the belt knot. From there, you put the knee on their belly and let them push on it, meanwhile you use that deep collar grip to lift their head off the mat and open their lapel so you can slide your belt knot hand (after you let the knot go, of course) into a palm-up grip of the far collar. You put your elbows together and drop them down low as you slide your knee off their belly into a sort of neck-grip kesa gatame position. You should be using your shoulder on their belly to keep them down. From there, you do a hip heist to get yourself into a tripod position. Step your top leg over their head, then move your own head to the mat on the side you started side control from. With that tripod, you can pull your elbows skyward and push your wrists in (cross choke) to finish the submission.

Then we rolled. Started with Dave, and we had a competitive roll. Next was TJ who’s on day 6 in a row of BJJ training. He got me in the paper cutter choke after exhibiting patience. Then I got on top of him north-south but wasn’t able to do anything before time ran out. Next I rolled with Greggo, and got him in a side control kimura, which he walked me through. Then he choked me at the buzzer. Next I rolled with the deaf guy, whose name I can’t remember. I had a great performance against that guy. He started on side control, I recovered guard, he attacked my arm and I took out his leg and took his back, he turned that into a mount, I got his arm and finished an Americana after jumping off to side control. Next was Colt, and he was gassed from rolling with Greggo. I caught him in the dirty north-south choke. Last round was going to be with Jose but Greggo stole him from me so I rolled with Desi and she kept me trapped in her half guard for most of the time. I passed to side control once but she recovered, and I got to mount once but she recovered from that too. Great defense. Reminds me of Jen.

And that was the class.

Mark and Greg taught this Thursday evening class. I hadn’t made it to the morning class but I snuck out of work early to do this one. It was chock full of techniques. I partnered with Ray for the drills. We started with a straight ankle lock.

You get the ankle lock when you’re tangling with an open guard. Overhook a leg, put your opposite side leg under their butt on the side of the caught leg, wrap your other leg around and put it on top of their abdomen, fall to your shoulder on the side of the trapped ankle, slide your overhook down to the heel, use a gable grip on your own hands and hip into it to finish the lock.

The knee bar is done from a knee slice, only you slice the knee all the way around their leg (like sliding down a fireman’s pole) until your leg is under their leg and your foot is in their crotch to control their hip. You then hip into the knee for the tap. If you don’t have enough play, you can tuck it behind your shoulder for more.

The triangle we went over very briefly. The key points were that you have to lift your hips off the mat to lock them behind your opponent’s head, and you need to get your head off line so that your choking leg crosses along their shoulder line behind their neck. Perpendicular to their spine, if you can. The choking surface is the crook of that leg.

If you can’t get their arm across because they’re hiding it on the same side, you can rotate around and hit the omoplata. Get your leg in front of their face, pivot around until you’re 180 degrees rotated and your feet are pointing toward their head, parallel to their spine, with their arm tucked into your belt line. Bend your knees outward and sit forward on that shoulder to get the tap.

No-gi rolling was a lot easier for me. I was slipperier and able to escape a lot easier than with the damn gi on. I had an easier time controlling guys in my guard too, because they couldn’t hold me down by my gi.

Greg taught this Tuesday morning class. It was my first class back in a week. We warmed up and then got into a warm up flow roll. I rolled with Scott, who’s a 2nd degree black belt after 22 years of BJJ training. He was surprisingly not that smooth at flow rolling, but maybe that’s just because I suck so bad.

Greggo taught us how to escape mount and defend against the collar choke. When the first hand comes into the collar, your cross hand blocks it out while your near hand reaches inside and does answering-the-phone. At the same time, you turn on your side and scoot their legs apart so you can escape the mount with one leg. With one leg out, you establish half guard by turning into them. From the half guard, you can get an underhook, and use that to pull them up high, then also underhook their far leg and use these two to roll them over. Step out of their half guard in the process to establish yourself on top of side control.

We also learned the collar choke and the arm bar from mount. Arm bar involved getting the collar grip deep, then pushing the opponent’s grip-side arm across their body, sliding up into S-mount, and sitting over to finish the arm bar. The collar choke was for when you couldn’t get the arm across, so that meant they weren’t using it to defend the other side of their neck, so you slide your own hand over and rake it elbow-to-wrist across their jaw to turn their head, and so you can situate it against their neck as you grip their collar bone/shoulder area. You go head down to finish the choke, and even if they roll you over, you can finish it easily from closed guard.

Then we rolled. My first roll was with Randall, and Cowboy (who was out injured) kept coaching us. I did okay but he’s crafty and strong and good at controlling hands by gripping fingers. I did okay. We ended up rolling about 3x and I only pulled off one good sweep on him – a scissor with kicking his leg out from his base.