Mizblog

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.