Mizblog

After KM96 I changed in the small room and jumped on the mat just after Greggo explained what flow rolling is and they all partnered up and got started, so I got to partner with Greggo! I felt like I was letting him down by not recognizing the opportunities he was leaving open for me, but we wobbled around a bit and he taught me an open guard sweep of a standing opponent. Cool!

Then we switched partners, and everybody switched around, leaving me and Greggo without a partner, so we flowed again. I almost got him with the sweep he taught me! I’ll just say that I went easy on him because he’s doing a tournament on Saturday. Right?

After that, we learned to move our opponent around with grips on lapel and sleeve. Greggo taught me to really lift that sleeve gripped arm when steering wheeling someone.

Our next drill was just taking grips. I felt a little more confident this time than I did last time. Still not good, but I did okay.

We then used standard grips to do a snap down to blast double leg takedown. We practiced just the entry for a bit, and then we tried it on the crash pad, first just getting them down, and then moving on to side control.

That done, we did some take down sparring. I partnered with Matt, Yas, Josh, Jen, and TJ. Yas is a sparring dummy. Matt’s back was tweaked. Josh did a fun flying back take and I dropped him (slowly). Jen practiced her hip toss on me, even though there’s no way she’s ever going to hip toss me with my long legs. Other people tried to hip toss me, but I was able to move my center of gravity back just far enough that they couldn’t lift me.

After that was over, we did rolls from side control. I rolled with Matt, and he tapped me from squeezing my jaw. Hope that doesn’t bother me later. I tried to tap early, but maybe not early enough. He’s really good at getting his legs in, and he uses his arms to push you toward his legs.

Yas is a grappling dummy. I taught him how to make his side control heavy and to control the head with his shoulder.

Andrew was a fun roll. We were pretty evenly matched, though I was able to get into dominant positions with him. I was really careful with his arm because he was severely injured and out for months with a tendon tear.

Last roll was with TJ, who swept me beautifully, and arm barred me before teaching me a good Americana setup. Also fun. :)

Overall I was quite happy with my performance. I’m still terrible, but I was able to put to use some of the stuff that Rick taught me on Saturday. That gave me a lot of confidence, though I did find myself having difficulty finishing passes, especially with Matt. I’ll figure him out though. Eventually…

TJ taught this Tuesday morning class. I felt surprisingly good after my double class on Saturday, so I came prepared for a repeat performance!

We started by running around, then shadow boxing, doing some push ups and sit ups. We paired up and practiced our level 1 pluck chokes. I teamed up with Mustache Matt and helped tune up his stuff. Then we stretched, got water, gloved up, and did focus mitt combinations.

In the middle of the focus mitt combinations, TJ told a story about an unsavory character who came in to the gym looking for training for his girlfriend’s kid. TJ recognized the guy from his work.

After the focus mitts, we did some light boxing sparring. I had good head movement. My footwork was shaky, and I kept noticing it and trying to fix it, only to notice it again a few minutes later. Work in progress. My hands were okay. I was able to see some things coming, but some punches caught me blind. Both kinds still sometimes landed, and sometimes I was just a little off in anticipating the next punch to counter. It’s just right there on the edge of my awareness! So it might come along.

Then Dave knocked Matt out with a punch flush to the temple. Holy shit! I had just sparred with Dave before, and he crossed my eyes with a jab to my forehead, so maybe my head movement frustrated him and he was looking for a better result? Maybe he just doesn’t know his own strength? I don’t know, but Matt dropped hard.

Once we’d done 3 rounds of sparring, we moved on to gun defense from behind, like we did last week. Easy stuff now. Then I had to demo it with TJ, but on the 3rd time, the gun was a knife! He set me up! So we learned the difference between gun defense and knife defense (hint: it’s in the take-away part). We learned two grips (handcuff and hand meat) that you can use to extract the knife. We learned to keep a fighting stance and locked out arms to help us with leverage in a pushing and pulling contest, if such should develop. I kept forgetting to do that last part, dammit! At the end, we did a drill where our partner would come at us with one weapon or the other, either side of the back, and we’d have to do the defense and take-away. Good class!

Coach Greggo taught this Saturday morning class. I came in after KM95 and a C2O coconut water. Sangeeta picked up Saranya and took her home after her class, so I was able to change and keep training. Oh and catch my breath too. I got onto the mat just as Greggo started to teach the scissor sweep.

I partnered with Cosmo to practice the scissor sweep. I kept forgetting to grab the sleeve, and my sleeve grips were very rudimentary, but I was able to do the sweep pretty well.

Next we learned the push sweep, which is like the scissor sweep but it’s more useful when the opponent maintains a more solid base. You use your lower scissoring foot to push the knee back and out from under the top person as you pull his weight forward to allow the angle of the knee to facilitate the push. If it’s too far forward, the angle of the upper leg will just make the knee push jam the knee into the mat, so you have to pull the weight forward to straighten the leg a bit.

If you keep the grips on collar and sleeve, then when you come up into S-mount you can immediately go for the arm bar, or any of the chokes we learned last week.

We started rolling after a speed drill of that that got me tired. Luckily, I rolled with Carlos first. He’s a teen yellow belt, and he’s very skinny. I was able to use my weight on him to keep him from destroying me, but he was able to retain guard pretty consistently.

I rolled with Ray next. He got a triangle set up on me, but I was able to stack him and slip right out of it into side control. He stopped the roll and asked me to show him that move, so I did. It was a competitive roll even though he ended up mounting me.

Next I rolled with Jen, and she did some open guard magic on me. I was able to keep her down and stuffed, but she controlled my arm and was able to shut me down at the same time.

Next I rolled with Shabbar, and he used the very last of my reserves of energy, submitting me 4x and leaving me gasping on the mat.

I sat out the next round, but the “last round” Rick came over and said “Let’s go 25% and I’ll show you stuff.” Okay! He showed me how to do a standing guard break with hands in the arm pits. Stand up, switch both hands to one knee, push it down, and pin it with your knee. At the same time, get your underhook on the other side, and get head control. Then you can finish the pass by moving the legs into side control position. He also told me how to transition to knee on belly from side control. Then he showed me a way to take down a kneeling opponent (grab the front foot and push their shoulder).

Brandon took on this Saturday morning class, and it was a sizeable one. 9 participants including myself, so we were an odd bunch. Susan, Brian, Ray, Me, Jeff, Ronnie, Victor, Ul, and Dave. We started the warm up with a circuit of shadow boxing, jumping jacks, push ups and sit ups. Then we did shoulder tag for a bit before stretching.

We did very basic focus mitt combos, and I ended up teaching Ul how to hold mitts. It took me ages to get decent at it, so I was very patient with his crazy first attempts (holding the mitts very wide or low, for example). Dave was in our group too, since there were an odd number of students. The drill was not a very good one for me. I don’t feel I sharpened my skills at all.

After that, we put away the pads and mitts and gloves. Time for the self defense part: bear hugs! First we did from behind, with arms trapped. I paired up with Victor on this one, and he WOULD NOT LET GO! I had to work really hard, and it spiked my adrenaline when I realized I was not getting out of this one easily. It was a GREAT lesson for me. I even stomped his foot for real once or twice but it didn’t work. The only thing that loosened his grip was when I started throwing real elbows to his chest. After that, I was able to get out without such a serious struggle, but the adrenaline effects continued. I had a really hard time catching my breath!

Next we did bear hug from the front, arms trapped. The sprawl and hands to the hips make this one so much easier. I had no problems.

We finished the class with a drill where half the class stood on a line with their eyes closed, and the other half applied either a bear hug from the front or from the back. I started in the group that was delivering the bear hugs, and it was pretty easy. I finished as the group that was receiving and defending the bear hugs, and I was really struggling to catch my breath after each defense. After the class, I was spent. There was only a tiny spot at the bottom of my t-shirt that was not drenched with sweat.

Christian sent us to the back room to start warming up while KM was finishing up on the big mat. We did some standing warm ups and stretching, then started scooting across the mat on fists and knees (transition to high S-mount practice) before going into drop step drills, then into double leg entries on the wall dummies. My toes were not immediately painful but they did feel odd and I’m scared that they’ll be a problem later.

Once we’d done that a bit, we moved to the big mat and started practicing snap down to double leg entry with partners. I started with big Victor, and then paired up with Em. Christian and Em both liked my “Periodic Table of BJJ” rash guard. Anyway, Em’s takedowns were smooth and were smooth and efficient, while Victor’s were clumsy and awkward. Mine were somewhere in between.

Then we did some work on attacks from mount, starting with collar choke. Starting with a high collar grip, use that to slide up into high S-mount. Get the other hand onto the other side of the collar, flex your wrists to press your bones into the neck, and lean over the top hand to get the tap.

The next variation was where you can’t get your hand into the collar, so you instead grip the slack of the gi behind the shoulder and do the same movement. Easy peasy.

Finally, if the collar was too well guarded, we learned how to transition to the arm bar. I drilled them with Aaron.

Then we rolled. I started with Victor, and was able to get the collar choke. From the bottom, I was able to sweep him consistently. He was baffled, so I told him I took away his base.

I rolled with Chad next. He was easing into it so he just did defense and I tried to land the attacks from mount, as we drilled. I finally got a grip on his collar and then gave it up, and he stopped me to tell me not to ever give up that hold once I obtained it. Anyway, I tried for an arm bar and failed, falling to guard. He let me sweep him back to mount and try some more. I eventually secured the arm bar and finished it!

Then I rolled with little Matt, who has a mustache now. He was a wiggly animal, and I was unable to secure side control against him. We basically stalemated and I burned myself out.

Last roll was with Victor again, and I again swept him off the top of me easily. Then I spent the rest of the roll teaching him how to maintain balance in the mount.

At the end, we took a picture, and then mustache Matt got his first belt stripe. I’m pretty sure he’s better than I am already. Not sure if I’m getting better or not.

Saranya just went running to the bathroom, saying “Gotta go now! It’s a turtle.”

Cracked me up!

Brandon was teaching this Saturday morning class. I warned him ahead of time that I’d been out for over a week, and that I was on gout medication that might make me have to go to the bathroom suddenly.

We started with shadow boxing, shoulder tag, kick shield ground and pound, and various aerobics. I ended up being paired with Victor when we went to the partner drills, for which we used thai pads and gloves. Basic combinations 1-4 followed by a round kick. Then we did bursting elbows.

At the end, we did a stress drill of just burning out on front kicks, punches, and elbows while being surrounded by pad holders.

After a rough night of increasing pain in my foot, I had to seek medical attention. I tried to contact my doctor but it didn’t work, so I went to urgent care. They gave me x-rays and they looked normal. The doctor took one look at my foot and said “That looks like gout.”

I’ve had gout before. It’s not at all fun.

Followup: I took the medicine for basically 1 1/2 days, and now my feet are good enough for Krav Maga again!

What is happening to my feet? When I wake up, they’re very painful. It feels like the big toe joint. I had to sit out from training today.

When I had plantar fascitis, the pain was more in the ball of the foot and the arch. This feels a little different, and it’s probably sprains in the tendons from bending my big toes too far backwards in BJJ.

I talked with Christian briefly about the no-gi seminar, and he said it’s been delayed. That gives me more time to recover from overuse of my feet, and build strength and endurance everywhere else, before I put Krav Maga on hold and focus on the no-gi BJJ after the seminar.

After coach Greggo warmed us up with some light jogging and a shrimping drill, we quickly got into the technique of the day – triangle defenses. The first step of teaching triangle defenses is to teach the triangle technique itself, so people know how to do it while others defend it. This was probably the second time I’ve seen a class lesson on triangles (the first one being no-gi intermediate class at UCLA) so it was good stuff. I was in a group of 3 with Victor and Dave until Emily came after Krav Maga finished and paired with me. Keys for the triangle are 1) foot on the arm-in hip to keep them low, 2) lift the hips to put the leg over as you punch their other arm under, 3) grab the head to keep their upper body down, 4) grab your own shin to cinch the calf across the back of their neck, 5) use your hip foot to push your angle perpendicular to your opponent, so you can get your calf directly across the back of the neck, 6) keep your overhooked foot pulled back, 7) use the overhooked leg as the choking surface, along with their trapped arm crossing in front of their neck. We also learned that if you can’t get your leg over all the way, you can still choke them by scissoring your legs and pull their head into your crotch. It still works!

For the triangle defenses, the first one was to reach your outside arm around their head as you stack their knees over their head. This makes them open their legs and you can smash pass to side control. It’s quite powerful. Emily was impressed with my control when I pulled off the move without crushing her ribs into her spine.

The second triangle defense was to sit back and pull their hips up onto your leg. Look up (pull your head back) to put pressure on their ankles, and push their bicep with your other foot to get more leverage. Then dump them over and scramble for a good position.

Rolling started very early. I went with Diego first, and he demanded to know what my injuries were before we started with me in his guard. He ended up sweeping me and mounting me and crushing me, and that was it.

I rolled with Victor, starting in bottom side control. I rolled him over twice. I caught him in an arm bar twice. It was not too hard, and I felt sorry for him.

I rolled with Dave, and he tapped me with a baseball bat choke from the bottom. Nice!

I rolled with Brandon and he taught me the bow and arrow choke. Then he guillotined me across the ears and jaw, and I didn’t tap for a long time until I started snorting and realized he wasn’t going to let go. I got the feeling he was not too friendly toward me. Oh well. I still like him.

I rolled with Victor again, and was able to sweep him off me from mount. I was leading him through a guard sweep, and he was going for some chokes and giving up his base. I taught him the A-frame basis of mount, and to maintain his base with his arms once he starts to put in a collar choke. I felt better showing him stuff than I did from dominating him.

I rolled with Jen and her new blue belt. She has a rib injury and a knee injury, so I told her I wanted to work on side control bottom. She taught me some of the finer details on shrimping to guard retention.

I rolled with Aaron and again worked on side control bottom. He kept sticking me in north-south. I was able to push him over my head, but I was not able to sweep my legs around and escape because he was very good at scrambling back to side control. I did roll him over once, and then let him get back into my side control.

I rolled with Chris and his not-as-new blue belt, and he further refined my side control escaping technique. Then we rolled regular and he quickly took my back and tapped me. After that I was able to almost pass his open guard before the round ended, and he told me that soon we’d all be blue belts.

Good camaraderie after the class. Greggo told the class that he was impressed with our toughness. Jen said our gym has a reputation as a takedown gym. I did a full hour of rolling (though a lot of it was doing bottom side control drills) and I didn’t get injured. I’m so thrilled! I even forgot my elbow was tweaked!