The Fisk Chronicles

New website!

2010-12-28T21:05:00.001-08:00

Sorry blogger.com you've been replaced!

I'm moving to www.fiskbjj.com

Injuries

2010-06-29T20:37:00.000-07:00

I’ve been injured a lot over the last year. It started with shoulder problems, continued with a broken foot, then torn labrum in one hip, then a sports hernia and torn labrum in the other hip.

As I plan out my return, I keep thinking about the concept of picking my battles wisely

While my ego and overall quest to master jiu jitsu would like to say that it’s important for me to learn how to deal with a 240 pound wrestler crushing me in side mount and be able to escape easily, the reality is I’m 36 and 180 pounds. It’s probably a smarter use of my time to learn better ways of preventing that crushing sidemount from ever happening.

And while I agree it’s important to explore all positions, I also think that positions were designed to have one person inflict maximum damage at minimum risk. Which would imply that the other person is getting most of the damage and most of the risk.

So I think one solution is drilling details of the in between “grey area” moments.

What I mean by this is rather than constantly working on my sidemount escapes I want to work on the moments when my opponent is past my legs but hasn’t passed the guard. There is a whole world of the “in between” that I all but ignore in lieu of working my “side mount defense”.

This “in between” is everywhere. I notice it a lot when dealing with D’arces, half nelsons and guillotines. While there are defense to all of these, I’d rather spend my time working on proper underhooking, head position and correct hand fighting so my opponent never has a chance to do these in the first place.

It also means looking at some of my offense from the guard. While I love the triangle, it’s time to really pick my moments on that attack. I see people attempt the triangle all the time while letting themselves get stacked. I’ve done it many times and while many times I would get the tap, it still started to wreak havoc on my neck and upper back.

So I think the golden rule now will be to get my opponent out of position while keeping a strong position myself and then getting the submission. A triangle when they’re falling forward out of base is a good thing. When it’s with your own knees in your face, it’s not.

I guess all of this comes down to wanting my jiu jitsu to age gracefully.

The zero point

2010-04-13T16:09:00.000-07:00

To me, one of the most hindering things that can happen in my jiu jitsu progress is when a technique starts to work too well.

A lot of times it will work because my training partner reacts just the right way for it to be the right moment for that technique to work. And while it’s good to know how to recreate that magic, I think it’s more important to know when that magic isn’t there.

Almost every time I feel myself start to force a technique it’s because I’m focused on a time it did work. I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve held on to a triangle when it was slipping off because I was remembering the times it didn’t slip.

It seems like it becomes more important to remember why things were successful and to be completely honest with myself when they’re not. I’m trying to temper my ego in situation where I know a quick movement or a little more “oomph” would make the technique “work”

I remember a long time ago when Rickson talked about the idea of getting to a neutral or “zero” point where he had no expectations of his opponent and he was “connected with the variations.”

It reminds me of when I took acting classes years ago. Our teacher always told us to do as much preparation for the character as possible and to know our lines backwards and forwards. But when it came time for the cameras to roll, he said we had to throw all the preparation out and see where the moment leads. We couldn’t go into the scene with any preconceived notions as to what we were going to do or the other people in the scene were going to do because that would come across on film as disingenuous. He’d always remind us that, “the camera never lies.”

Jiu jitsu never lies either. There is an answer to every situation. It takes a certain type of discipline to fully acknowledge that verses trying to make a situation something it’s not. This inevitably turns into fear and panic, especially if the situation becomes further complicated.

For me this is the next step in my jiu jitsu. I am most effective when I am relaxed, but right now this is limited to certain situations. I want to adapt this to all situations. It’s a lifetime project so I better get started now!

Position vs Submission vs Control

2010-03-29T14:00:00.000-07:00

When I started jiu jitsu, “position position position” was drilled into my head. Back then they told us good position would allow you to control and dominate your opponent, whether it was jiu jitsu or fighting. And when you got a superior position, you did everything you could to hold it.

But as people were learning jiu jitsu, things were changing. It was no longer a done deal when someone got position on someone. Before that, when a jiu jitsu guy got the mount or the back the fight was over. But once people started learning how to defend and to escape, the idea of just holding position seemed to wane, even with punches.

As my training continued, I started seeing other types of games that were more submission oriented. The goal was to get the tap and if you spent all your time holding position, you were stalling. Now these were mainly in jiu jitsu situations so no punches were being thrown so one could argue position with punches leads to the submission.

Without the punches, and with the influence of leg locks things really started to change in jiu jitsu too. Your legs can do many things to defend the pass but when you’re worried about someone dropping back for an ankle lock or spinning to a knee bar it changes the game.

With no gi, the heelhook further complicates this situation.

So at some point, for me, it seemed like there were two possibilities: be a submission guy or be a control guy. And in my own training, I would go back and forth on that. Usually it depended on what I could do to the opponent: there were people I could tap and there were ones I could only get position on.

I would fall back on controlling people that were hard to tap. And the control always felt like a type of panic. I was exerting a lot of energy and muscle trying to keep them put. When I’d go in submission mode, I’d let them move more, which felt fine as long as they weren’t a threat.

But over the last few weeks I’m beginning to see something different. I’m thinking that the real object is control. And most times control is about not only having position, but putting the opponent out of position.

Position and control are deeply intertwined. But to control someone doesn’t mean just to keep him immobile. I think more than anything it’s about putting them out of position, giving them a series of bad options.

I was watching a wrestling instructional by Cael Sanderson where he talked about not worrying about what takedown he was going to do on his opponent. He simply wanted to put the guy out of position and from there the correct takedown would appear.

From a jiu jitsu point of view, I look at this as modifying the concept of any position.

Take the closed guard. For a long time I’ve worked on breaking posture. I figured as long as the head was down, I had opportunities to attack while the other guy had to work himself back into position.

Against someone with good base or someone big and strong, this quickly would turn into me trying to hold them down and hopefully catch an arm or a choke when they were on their way up. It often felt like a 50/50 moment where they would either posture out completely or I’d catch the submission.

And this always bothered me. I don’t like even odds in a situation like this and it’s certainly not something I’d want to teach to someone either. Jiu jitsu is about stacking the deck in your favor.

For a long time, I felt like maybe the answer was just going for more submissions or sweeps. Maybe going for the pendulum sweep or rolling for the knee bar would keep them on the defensive.

This would work, but only up to a certain point.

A higher-level player is waiting for these submissions and will use it as an opportunity to advance his position or to attack with a counter submission.

So was lost in what to do past a certain point. It felt like controlling was involving too much strength and that submissions had too low odds. Both ideas seemed limited by either physical or skill elements.

But both ideas are also not really jiu jitsu.

Throwing up submissions looks flashy but stops working on people when they get past a certain skill or size or combination of the two.

And simply trying to pin someone or keep them in your guard is not only boring it also does not motivate a calm person to do anything. So if you’re crushing someone who isn’t bothered by being crushed, it’s only a matter of time until you get tired.

I think it’s mainly that the mentality is wrong. The idea of holding someone implies that if they escape, you have failed. You want the person to try to escape. You just want to give him only bad escapes.

So rather than a crush, it becomes collar bone control, neck pressure, far hip control and more combinations of specific pressure. If your opponent has to realign their body first and then escape second, you can always be a step ahead of him.

The importance of wrestling for jiu jitsu

2010-03-06T09:59:00.001-08:00

For a long time I looked at wrestling as a separate entity from jiu jitsu. I figured that yes, the takedowns were important and wrestlers did them best, but the rest of wrestling was essentially useless for jiu jitsu as there was a different goal in the end: the pin vs the tap. So while I would train it from time to time, it was always just from the standup.

But lately, I’ve been seeing how being a jiu jitsu guy who looks at wrestling as just a way to take someone down is as limiting as a wrestler learning just enough jiu jitsu to prevent themselves from being submitted.

While the end goal may be different, what lies in the middle is the same, which is control. Both systems should use leverage, handles and misalignment to force an opponent to react to an increasingly bad set of options. And both systems have follow up moves that are specific to the opponent’s reaction. Interestingly, I notice that most wrestling instruction incorporates this more than jiu jitsu tends to.

I look at takedown defense and defending the guard pass and see how similar those two things are. In both cases, for the most part, the object of the person taking someone down or passing the guard is to control the opponent’s hips.

And the goal of the person defending is to prevent their hips from being controlled. Common counters for both are things like
pushing the opponent’s head away from the hips, controlling their wrist and keeping your hips square to them.

Take downs are often set up by disturbing someone’s posture and when they compensate, that’s when the shot is taken. That’s very similar to most sweeps from the guard.

I learned yesterday about the concept of the spiral ride as a way to pin someone. It’s also as great way to take their back, work a twister or an armlock.

The front headlock set ups in wrestling can quickly take the match down in a D’arce,/anaconda/arm in guillotine position.
There are so many opportunities to use wrestling in the standup to enforce your jiu jitsu on the ground beyond just taking someone down.

And even if you may not be able to take someone down, using wrestling concepts from the stand up can allow you to flow into your jiu jitsu attacks much better than just jumping to guard.

I think this will be my main project in my own training this year.

Doing what you want verses doing what you need

2010-02-05T07:45:00.000-08:00

Everyone knows that doing what you want verses what you need are not always the same thing. I’ve always felt like I had a good grasp of this and, in a way, have been very lucky, as I generally like to do things that I thought were good for me.
Working out, in some form or another, has been a staple of my life for over 18 years now.

When I started it was all about getting big and strong. Like many a young man, I thought muscles were the solutions to my problems.

As that faded and my interest in jiu jitsu increased, I started searching for the ever-elusive “functional” exercises.
This led me to the somewhat bizarre subculture of kettlebells, crossfit etc. where people were obsessed with doing all sorts of crazy exercises, then showing off their physiques and claiming they didn’t care about looking good, it just sort of happened.
It always seemed strange to me to be so obsessed with trying to not care about looking like you worked out and yet constantly talking about working out, then putting down people who actually admitted they worked out.

But I bought into it, and thus dropped my “bodybuilding” routines and started my “functional fitness” routines.

I did just about everything you can think of from combat conditioning, to Crossfit, to kettlebells, Ross training, caveman training, Tabata intervals and a whole bunch of other things I’m forgetting.

Some things seemed to work better than others. I definitely noticed certain types of conditioning seemed to help my endurance on the mat and certain types of weightlifting helped make me bigger and stronger.

I know, good work Sherlock.

But I also noticed something else: Injuries. Lots of them.

Obviously jiu jitsu is a sport that is always going to lead to injuries. But at some point I knew I would have to really examine my attachment to always “working out” in the way that I had and what it was really doing to my body.

I had a friend who had been doing jiu jitsu longer than me who had come to this same revelation and started doing posture exercises and was able to rid himself of many of the chronic and acute injuries he had from doing jiu jitsu.

I started doing these exercises but refused to quit jiu jitsu for even a few weeks and continued to “supplement” my training with lifting, conditioning work and whatever else I felt I wanted to do.

The result was continual jiu jitsu progress and consistent injuries.

But I continued on, thinking that if I just got a little stronger, more conditioned, more flexible or some other answer, my game would keep improving and it would be worth it.

And in a way it was. I wanted to get my black belt and I got it. Life was good. But once I got that goal, I started to think about what my next goal was.

I decided that it was time to really be honest with myself.

All these supplemental activities were helping injuring me as much as they were helping my jiu jitsu. And while that made sense to me before, that simply was no longer the type of math I wanted in my life.

What I want now, at 35, is for supplemental activities that make me healthier and offset the damage that jiu jitsu has done to my body.

Part of this formula is to really give my posture work a real shot. And that means no jiu jitsu at all for a few months.

It’s been four weeks of no training and two and a half of posture work. My program will change every week as my posture coach examines the changes in my posture.

So far it’s been interesting to feel some of the changes. The injuries are still there, although feel like they’re fading. I can feel my weight more in the balls of my feet than my heels. My hips are starting to finally be above my knees rather than behind them.

It took a long time to get this bad so it will take a long time to get better.

And if I can rid myself of these injuries, the next step is to start adding more activities rather than “exercise” into my life.
In my mind this means things like hiking, rock climbing, kayaking, swimming, and even playing on a jungle gym.

All these activities can make me stronger and more conditioned but more than anything they can make me a better athlete.

For so long I wanted to train like the jiu jitsu champions trained when it finally dawned on me that I don’t want to be a jiu jitsu champion. I want to master jiu jitsu as best I can and still be healthy enough to do a lot of other fun stuff.

This revelation has been bizarrely freeing and I’m excited to see where it leads.

Getting healthy

2010-01-15T06:27:00.000-08:00

The goal for the next two months is to work on being healthy. I have golfers elbow in both arms, especially my right one. I have some type of piriformis strain in my left leg that has been there for almost four months. And most significantly I have a labral tear on my right hip.

I had a proltherapy injection for the hip on Dec 7, 2009. I immediately went back to training jiu jitsu and lifting weights. About 9 days later the hip started flaring up so I took a week off. I trained sporadically until last week when I trained on Monday and Tuesday (Jan 5th and 6th). I also lifted weights on Jan 6th and did plyo jumps onto a box.
The next day my hip flared up again. Saw my prolo doc and we both agreed that I needed to get a PRP prolotherapy injection, which I got on Tuesday (Jan 12 2010)

I have a follow up March 9th, which is 8 weeks from now.

The goal between then and now is not to get in the way of healing.
In my mind that means limiting my hip flexion and internal twisting as much as possible. What it really means is no jiu jitsu, or at least no sparring. I’d rather take two months than continue to push myself towards a surgery that I don’t believe is really effective and would put me out for most of the year.

I look at this as an opportunity to address a few things I have been avoiding.

Number one is the other injuries I have. The piriformis issue may just be a matter of ART treatment and rest. The same could be said for the elbow issues. They may also need some prolotherapy injections as well.

Number two is continuing to work on my posture exercises. I have been very inconsistent with this over the past year or so. I’m pretty sure that some of my hip problems are caused by the extensive pelvic tilt I have so now is a good chance to work on correcting that. I’m going to be in contact with Geoff Gluckman once a month to update my programs.
I’m also going to take pictures once a week to monitor my progress much more closely.

The third thing I’m going to focus on is swimming. I tried this last year when I was also doing a lot of weight training. The result was an inflamed rotator cuff in my right shoulder.

I’m confident that if I focus on my posture work and drop the weight training, I can start swimming with less strain on the shoulder. The kicking motions of the freestyle stroke involve minimal hip flexion so I should be able to spare my hip some discomfort.

This is a great chance to really delve into an exercise system which is very practical in terms of real world survival that I have never really worked on before.

For additional cardio work, I’ll hike and jump rope. The goal is to minimize hip flexion and do as many “natural” movements as possible.

The goal is to be pain free by March 15th 2010.

Drilling

2009-12-13T12:17:00.000-08:00

We did a lot of drilling in the last few days. It’s been a long time since I’ve drilled technique after technique like that. Certainly not the most fun way to train, but it definitely has its place, especially in a pressure situation.

One thing I’ve noticed about drilling is the situation that you drill magically seems to appear more often in sparring.

I’ve fallen out of the habit of drilling as I’ve been much more interested in the situation by situation moment. Subconsciously I think I’ve told myself that drilling creates a false reality and I need to react to the moment as it’s happening.

But after listening to Rigan talk, I’m thinking I’ve been ignoring the fuller picture. Yes the moment by moment situation is important, but part of what creates proper reaction is having seen the moment before. There are many times I’ve been able to anticipate where a match is going to go simply because I’ve been in the situation before. Drilling allows that to happen in a controlled environment.

So this week begins drilling things over and over again. Since guard passing is on my mind, that’s what I’m going to drill first.

I’m going to structure my drilling in two parts:
1) Doing the technique on demand, i.e. when the moment is right, I’m doing it immediately.
2) Chaining techniques together.

For various reasons my passing game is still more one of force rather than flow. I want to make sure I drill the moment to do the correct technique. But I want to make sure I also drill the follow up moments of what to do when that moment is gone.

Working guard passing details

2009-11-19T15:46:00.000-08:00

I’m continuing to work on the details of simplicity. I’ve been reanalyzing my guard passing over the last few days as I realized how lacking it was while working with JS on Monday. Where I normally feel like my hips are heavy, I felt like a kite in the wind and kept getting swept over effortlessly by him.

I keep thinking of the Roger Gracie quote, “The basics work. You just have to do them right.”

And I realized that I am doing the right moves incorrectly and sometimes at the wrong time.

First thing I’m going to work on is committing to being a tight guard passer. I’m not a jumping around, flipping over guy and I find being methodical with my whole game works best for me.

The second thing is to commit my hips more. I’m realizing in hindsight that I was light because my hips were light.

Third, using my head. Just like in takedowns, and open guard, I want my head below his. I’ve used my forehead under the chin from time to time and I need to start that up again.

Fourth is tying the passes in together. The idea is to gain slow steady control and decrease his options, just like in every other position.

Fifth and I think most important, is securing control after the pass. JS is excellent and sweeping right after I’m past his legs or getting to his knees. I think looking at keep his legs crossed, working the crossface, knee on stomach and taking the back may be a few of the options to look at.

But more importantly, I have to realize that a certain level of player is always going to accept the next position and start reacting to it. He accepts the pass so that he can set up the sweep. I have to anticipate the potential sweep I’m giving him and start reacting to that when the pass is finishing.

Kevin Bacon, Organic Chemistry and Jiu Jitsu

2009-11-09T20:56:00.000-08:00

Last week in training, I caught my training partner in a toehold. It came from a failed reverse triangle underneath. Which came from a failed arm bar from up top. Which came from a failed choke from sidemount.

For some reason this sequence made me think of organic chemistry exams.

In those tests, you were given a starting compound and a final compound. It was up to you to show the path of chemical reactions that would transform your starting compound into your final one.

And for some other reason this made me think about Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. This was a game that started in the early 90’s where the object was to connect any actor to Kevin Bacon in as few steps as possible.

And this leads back to jiu jitsu where each reaction can lead to the final goal if you just know how to order the subsequent steps. The defenses are predictable and lead to predictable offensive opportunities.

Kron Gracie said his father Rickson was the master at finding the easiest route to the submission.

In college, we got a better score for getting to the final compound in the fewest steps.

And in Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, the fewer films you needed to connect to Kevin Bacon, the higher score you got.

Revisting the basics part 6: Keeping it simple

2009-10-30T20:22:00.001-07:00

Lately I’ve been working on the idea of making your life simple and your opponent’s life difficult.

What I mean by this is always having two attacks working together. He has two bad choices to make and you have one easy one: whichever one is given.

It reminds me of a quote I once heard, “A man can do anything he wants but he can’t do everything.”

An aspect of keeping things simple is to always give your opponent motivation to move.

My dad told me many years ago that in judo, the way to get someone to push you was to push him first. I think about this all the time in my attacks. I always want to get the other guy to want move rather than force him. Forcing involves energy and can allow tunnel vision to take over.

For instance, if someone postures up in my closed guard, rather than pull the opponent down, I prefer to hip bump them, which forces them to push me back.

All these concepts have been floating in my head as my instructor’s been telling me lately to simplify everything. Quite frankly, it’s been a relief.

For so long I’ve had so many techniques and options floating in my head that I often would freeze up with analysis paralysis. Now by just focusing on a few basic attacks I simply need to figure out what the two threats are in a situation, then take whatever one is given to me. It’s that simple.

Revisiting the basics part 5: getting your hips underneath their hips

2009-10-21T06:41:00.000-07:00

I started working some of the deep half guard over the last week. Yesterday with JS I was messing around with some of the entries from far away. I could definitely feel that my arms and my neck were vulnerable. It felt like trying to sprint off the trail in the woods and had to dodge branches coming from all directions.

But I did notice if I was able to get there, some sweeps were possible. Afterward we were discussing this type of half guard vs the Bear half guard which is more shifting the hips, trapping a side, then bridging. I feel that both are good sweeping systems with quite a lot in common.

In my efforts to tie things together, I started thinking that these sweeps are not just unique to half guard, as X guard, scissor sweeps, ankle sweeps and really almost all sweeps involve getting your hips underneath your opponent.

I thought about this more as I started trying to work more of an open guard against JS. I was putting up some barriers to his pass, but since he tends to keep his hips low and back, my barriers are ultimately ineffective.

The smarter gameplan would be either to disengage completely or to use a strategy that would cause him to want to move his hips forward. A good example of that might be the rolling knee bar. My instructor often mentions how he started to use the rolling knee bar when people became wary of his armlock from the guard.

One of the best defenses for the arm lock is to keep the hips back. However, when the hips are back, the legs are exposed to a degree. And when one starts to counter the legs, usually this involves moving their hips forward and inevitably up. The next move is to attack their base while still looking for submissions. And furthermore, you can get underneath their hips now, in order to do this.

While this might be a little more complicated example, a simpler version is the scissor sweep. Regardless of the variation that is taught, there is always the idea of pulling the opponent on top of you, i.e. getting his hips over yours, in order to do the sweep.

And looking back at times when a sweep works verses when it doesn’t, I’m seeing this hip principle is present much of the time. There are other factors of course, but it’s hard to get any sweep without this floating hip idea.

Revisting the basics part 4: Bumping the butt with the knee

2009-10-15T14:23:00.001-07:00

As a tall lanky fella, there are a lot of moments where I had a lot of difficulty using the hip escape, as I could never seem to get my knee in tight enough. I saw guys with shorter legs slide right in, but for me, my knee would always bump against the top player’s knee.

I noticed this initially from mount escapes, but soon saw it from side mount escapes or even guard pass defense when the opponent would, slice his knee through and baseball slide in. I saw shorter legged guys who could get their knees in to block the hips and I’d suffer from reverse Napoleon syndrome.

Well my instructor showed me something a few years ago that I didn’t really think much about at the time. The basic principal is when you bump the back of someone’s thigh or their butt with your it brings their hips forward and makes them base out with their hands. It also makes their legs light, which means it’s easier to push them back or lift them up.

My instructor later showed this same concept from the umpa escape from the mount, where he’d first bump the butt to get the hands to base. This makes it easier to grab the arm and start the move.
I’ve noticed this in some of the competition footage I’ve seen where Jeff Glover uses this a lot to get hooks in with his deep half guard game. And I’ve noticed this helps me in situations that previously felt impossible to get out of.

It’s a movement I’ve seen a lot of people do, but outside of my instructor and the Bear half guard dvd, I’ve never really seen anyone talk about it. Once I started thinking about it and putting it back in my consciousness, I see it everywhere.

Worked on it with JS early this week and while it’s not enough to stop the crushing freight train, it is enough to get some hooks and attempt some other attacks. With lighter guys it seems even more effective.

Revisting the basics part 3: The Bigger Picture

2009-10-12T20:43:00.000-07:00

For a long time now I’ve gotten caught up in minutia. I’ve become so obsessed with jiu jitsu that I started to forget what the point was. Last week was a frustrating one of training for the most part. I was trying to find the exact answer to the exact moment of an isolated situation. And I was annoyed when I couldn’t reproduce the situation exactly so I could keep practicing this one scenario.

I think this is where the idea of being a scientist breaks down. Jiu jitsu is too much like life. No two scenarios are ever the same. I was searching for order when there is only a controlled form of chaos. I was trying to find details when I was missing the bigger picture. The reason I’m doing all of this is to get better at jiu jitsu. Knowing all the nuances and details in a frame by frame manner is all well and good, but if I don’t make a good movie out of it, then what’s the point?

I think what all this means is more sparring, less thinking. I remember Rickson talking about the true purpose of training is to reach a point of neutrality. This is what I need to work on now. I have so many techniques and questions in my mind, but it’s time to throw that all away and just see what happens.

Revisiting the basics part 2: The X Guard

2009-10-07T06:03:00.000-07:00

I remember getting exposed to this guard 10 plus years ago by Ethan Milius. Back then it was a follow up to a failed butterfly sweep. I wasn’t ready for that technique and even though I could drill it, I rarely ever hit it.

I pretty much ignored it for the next few years but rediscovered it when I came out to Texas. My instructor here had a different version with one foot controlling the instep of the opponent instead of the upper thigh.

I started playing around with this new version and liked some of the dexterity it brought to the picture to set up leg locks and sweeps that were more balling up oriented rather than stretching out.

I used this game a lot as a purple belt against some of the bigger guys. It was especially effective against wrestlers, as I don’t think there are too many situations in a wrestling match where competitors would find themselves in this position.

Then for some reason I stopped playing this game completely. It might have been that I wanted to develop more submissions from the bottom and ventured into other things. I don’t remember it being any conscious decision, but I look back at the last few years of training and can only think of a handful of times that I’ve used x-guard to any degree.

All of this information has been flooding in my head over the last few hours as I think about my training session with JS yesterday. His game has gotten so good that I can’t decide if starting on the bottom of half guard is a brave gesture, an exercise in stupidity or some sadistic urge I have to make myself seem chumpy.

I wanted to focus on the omoplata battle but his head was in a different position. He was moving more to a reverse kesa type pass. I kept flailing trying to force the situation that we'd been working on the previous day rather than truly accepting the reality of what was happening. With a guy like him, this becomes a punishing and humbling experience as indecision makes surviving a freight train unlikely.

I had no real strategy because I had no real idea of attack. One of the main flaws in my thinking was not coordinating my upper body and lower body.

My instructor suggested I think about x guard from this position and at first I felt even more lost. It had been so long I didn’t even see how I could get there. He showed me some sweep variations that weren’t X in the strictest sense but had the same principles.

I was annoyed with myself after training. I felt like I’d just been a flailing spazz for an hour and that belt was just staring me in the face, disappointed. But I realized the lesson had been learned. I needed to delve back into the X guard.

After looking at my book and a ton of videos, I realized that the half guard position does have an x guard set up to it. I’d just never really drilled it. In fact, x guard has always worked well for me, once I got there. But I haven’t practiced getting there enough. This is why it came and went for me as without drilling sequences, I'll never go to them when the chips are down.

I'll need to work on the timing and sensitivity down the road, but for now I don’t even have enough reps in to warrant that. For now, I need simple repetition. After working on entries over and over, I'll start to recognize them in live training. In fact, I can already think of at least four times in yesterday's session where I could have transitioned to X guard.

As long as frustration ends in a lesson, I'll always take it.

A revision of the revisiting

2009-10-05T15:28:00.000-07:00

I think about new variations and applications of techniques all the time. I’m definitely not at the point where I can be sure if these things will work. Luckily for my JS was training today and he’s my best litmus test for almost everything.

I thought the idea of planting my foot in the omoplata battle and hipping away would be good. The problem is, it’s too easy for the top player to hold you down from there and keep your hip flat.

I also experimented with straightening my leg if my shin was across his belt. This actually made his pass even easier.

It was frustrating for a good half hour and I felt myself being tense and holding onto positions, trying to change angles and getting passed repeatedly. We started isolating the positions over and over and I still was not getting any better structure or attacks.

It really helped the drill that this is one of JS’s favorite passes as I want to learn how to deal with people’s best moves.

Finally after all this searching on how to change position to get the best leverage, I realized the simple truth: I needed to reexamine the advantages of the position I was in, rather than trying to change the situation to fit a predetermined outcome and series I had in my head.

I was on my right hip, not wanting to force the omoplata when I realized, simply bracing off him so that my arms were in line with my shoulders, hipping out and getting my shin in was the least path of resistance. Obviously it’s just a moment in the dance, but it felt like a big step to a situation I’ve encountered many times and seen my training partners in as well.

As always the answers are simple and right in front of me, but it took an hour of sweat, panic and looking bad in front of everyone to figure that out.

I’ll take that price every day.

Rethinking the basics part 1:the omoplata battle

2009-10-04T15:39:00.000-07:00

I’ve often found myself in the omoplata battle and I thought about something the other day that might be an alternative to it.

Let’s say the opponent is passing to your right. His right hand is on the mat and you’re trying to set up an omoplata by getting your left foot underneath his head. A lot of guys on top will step over the right leg, almost putting themselves in a butterfly hook and drive their head into you.

The battle becomes me pushing the top players head away or trying to yank my left leg under their chin or a combination of both. The top player pushes him hard to prevent this and for a long time I’ve either yanked extra hard on my leg or tried to push even harder on his head. Sometimes I’d get my foot in position and sometimes I’d get passed.
I’ve never liked this battle for a few reasons.

First, against big strong guys, I’ve always felt like my knee was in danger of getting hurt. Even times that I got the foot in successfully, it still felt like I was playing Russion roulette with my knee. It makes me squirm watching other people do this as well as I’m always terrified to hear that “POP!”

And the other thing is it never felt like jiu jitsu to be pushing directly against someone pushing against me. It seemed like the finesse had been taking away and now it was a battle of wills and strength.

So I was watching Rener show a basic side mount escape and realized that he would end up in the same position, but with a different goal: to get back to full guard.
Once he ended up in this position, he was basing off his butterfly foot (right), scooting his hips out to the right, then getting back into full guard.

So I’m wondering if, rather than meeting the top players head with direct force, maybe the goal could be to redirect that force and concentrate on keep weight on the butterfly foot. If I push the head away enough to get him to really push in hard, then if I take away my pressure and shift my hips so I’m slightly on my left side, his passing will be somewhat nullified.

From here, I’m thinking right forearm under the chin, grabbing the right shoulder and looking at my watch to prevent a follow up pass.

It also seems to me that once I get this space, my left foot could get on his right hip and my right foot would be free. I almost think that I could attack his left arm now with an omoplata, and be able to use my feet on the hips, so I could move my body away and into position while destroying his base and structure.

In my mind this might be a better way of getting this attack and more in line with my current training philosophy. I just had never put together the idea of using the basic hip escape in that position before until now.

dealing with the 10%

2009-09-28T12:48:00.000-07:00

Had a good training session today with TO. His defense and calmness is at such a level, that it shuts down submissions. I wrote about the 10% concept a while back and he definitely personifies that. It takes a lot of discipline to not reach out and try to grab what seems right in front of you. Many times I’ve thought I had a triangle or some other submission and burned myself out trying to finish it.

Today I found myself working on two ideas that I’ve been thinking about quite a bit lately. The first idea is the tug of war. It’s basically where you pull the rope just enough to get the other guy to give a mighty tug then you let go just as he’s pulling his hardest and he falls on his butt.

I’ve found this idea works well with bigger and stronger guys. I am not going to be able to stop their movement, but with barriers that are solid enough, I can usually tell where they are going to go. I give enough resistance to make them really push, then suddenly no resistance. The important thing here is to have a follow up in mind that you can start working on right as they’re moving into the position they were just fighting for. The cool thing is it can make you seem much faster than you actually are because you’re timing their movement.

The second idea has a subtler element to it. Let’s say I get a triangle on someone that appears to be on pretty well. The legs are figure foured but maybe their elbow is glued to my hip and I can’t spin to a more perpendicular angle for whatever reason. The temptation has always been to power through this and just crunch down, pull the head and squeeze. Sometimes this works and other times it doesn’t. Many times I can’t really tell why it does and why it doesn’t.

What I’m realizing though is that submission attempt is leaving other submissions open. The arm with the elbow planted on the hip is strong in preventing itself from being pushed across his body. Even if you bridge up and push, a good player is expecting and waiting for this. But it you bridge and scoop under the wrist instead, he now has a new problem. That firmly planted elbow is now an anchor for me to move his wrist towards that direction and start working a kimura type lock. Now if he releases his pin on the hips I now have a much easier time pushing it across the body.

I like the idea of steadily making my opponent’s options worse and their life more complicated. Good defense can shut down one attack, but it almost invariably opens up another one. My goal is to start seeing what those other attacks are and start working them. It may leave the original attack open or it may make yet another attack option appear. This may only be something I can do against people closer to my own size but it’s like a smaller chain of subission attempts.

Setting up the foot on hip guard

2009-09-28T06:58:00.000-07:00

We’ve been working on the foot on hip to elbow lock and omoplata combos. This is something I’ve been thinking about lately and a part of my game that needs a lot of work. I feel like I’ve set the stage a little by working on getting an angle on my side as well as constantly looking to base out on my elbow and slide back.

The biggest hurdle I’m finding right now is how to actually get the overhook. Once I get that position, my training partners are wary of the overhook. But after watching some video footage today, I think I need to tie in the butterfly guard and sword guard to lead into this position. In those two positions, I find it much easier to get the over hook so I think it makes sense to start trying to feel those transitions.

The cool thing about this sit out guard is it’s constantly messing with my opponent’s posture. And every time you’re messing with the posture, you’re also threatening submissions. And furthermore, I think every time they become wary of a submission, there is a sweep right there. For whatever reason, this guard has never been something I’ve exploited very much, but right now it seems to fit in perfectly with everything else I’m doing.

Got to work on some wrestling drills on Friday with MB. By the end, he had the timing down perfectly and I realized how limited my knowledge of wrestling really is. I’m going to keep at working on timing and set ups as I think it’s the best formula for me.

His guard pass defense has gotten really good as well. I still have the conflict within myself as far as how much do I force the pass through verses learning to flow from pass to pass. I think I need to set up the next pass better if I’m going to move from side to side. I get myself stuck in one pass that I may be able to force through but I may not and either way I really have no choice from there.

Some mount escape ideas and other things

2009-09-22T17:52:00.000-07:00

Have had some good training sessions with JS, MB and TO over the last few days. Really working on my conditioning hard in the gym, then making my jiu jitsu more of a calm flow.

Have mainly been working mount and mount escapes. Trying to look at this as just another area where it is a combination of techniques and reactions to reactions. One thing that is coming to mind is the idea of taking things step by step.

One issue I’ve noticed with JS that certainly applies to me as well is that of the Mickey Mantle idea. That ball's going out of the park, or he’s striking out. At times, my mount escapes have been like this. For a long time it was only elbow escaping to my left side. At other times, I had a decent bridge, but if that didn’t work, I was right back where I started.

With my mount escapes (and side mount for that matter) I want to make sure that every move is making progress and chaining with the last one. I think this is a little different concept that trying a lot of moves.

Before I would try one move after another, but I would be coming back to a neutral point of being on my back in between efforts. What I’m attempting to do now is have each move be a natural continuation of the move before it.

So if the opponent has a tight mount with good head control, I could control the arm holding the head or just press down with my head to trap their arm and trap their foot. I’d bridge up and over at a 45 degree angle over the shoulder.

But this usually won’t be enough to get them over, but it should be enough to get to my side. I’d look to continue with the framing, maybe moving to an elbow escape, or maybe moving onto my elbow and pulling my hips back from here with my legs straight. There are a lot of options, but the main thing I’m thinking about is to not bridge, then just end up right back on my back.

I'm really liking the concept of getting up on my elbow, not only for mount escapes, but also side mount escapes and open guard. I feel like there’s suddenly another dimension of movement, which gives me better offensive angles.

I need to start working the full game again soon. I like many of the side control aspects, along with some really cool collar chokes my instructor showed me today. Again the concept of circular motion and moving out of the tidal wave’s way is something I keep considering.

Tomorrow is my rest day but I look forward to continuing these ideas and also to start working on my wrestling but with the same sense of flow and sensitivity.

No gi back control, passing and guard work

2009-09-19T16:31:00.000-07:00

9/19/09
Had a great time training today.

The flow on guard passing is not there yet, but I am stopping short of forcing what is not there. There where a few chances, looking back, where I could have switched sides but the sensitivity isn’t there yet.

Did see some good possibilities on getting the back. Ended up in an interesting situation from the back where my right lower leg was on the crook of both his arms towards his hips. I found that rotating my hips to my left made it easier to get that leg straight. From there could get the left hook in as well.

Also from the back, when the opponent want to shuck you off and you have your right hook in I found that my hooking the inside of his left leg with my left hand while basing out with my right and pulling to rotate my hips clockwise, I had some pretty decent hip control.

Additionally when opponent rolls, I’m working on rolling with him while keeping my hips underneath his on the bottom. With each roll there is a moment in time that you can get the forearm under the chin.

For open guard seeing how getting up on my forearm, after getting on my side is a great offensive weapon as it inherently make it harder for him to control my hips. Really noticed it opening up a lot of possibilities.

Little details but felt like some big changes.

Getting back to it

2009-09-18T15:24:00.000-07:00

I haven’t trained at all since the seminar, so it was almost two weeks before I finally got to take the new belt out for a spin. I was a little self-conscious for a moment but soon it was back to work as usual.

Working on guard passing. I realize how stale this part of my game has gotten. And also how much it’s become a power game. Now there are times when a good crush is probably necessary, but I think it has some downsides as well. Most notably, I tend to get tired when I’m driving my weight into someone.

So working with JS today, I wanted to have a more flowing pace. I tried to make a conscious effort to feel where I could mix up some passes and most importantly switch up from side to side.

I also am trying to work on rotating all the way around the head after passing. One key thing I was shown is when the opponent is on his side, to put your weight on his shoulder. You’re not trying to drive into him and flatten him out, you’re just inhibiting his movement.

I really want to get more precise with this aspect of control. I’m not looking to switch into a looser style of playing, I merely want my control to be on the essentials of what stops someone from moving where they want to go, rather than just crushing them completely.

Another aspect of passing that I’m going to really work on is going to my right. Sometimes I feel like the reverse of Zoolander as I can only go left. Going to my right confuses people as most don’t pass that way. And I find that doing things on the opposite side often make you aware of opportunities you just don’t see when you’re on autopilot doing things on your strong side.

Case in point today was there were some moments when I was standing and getting ready to try a slice through Judo Marc style pass. I realized I could just lift and kick my foot out instead as JS was anticipating my foot coming up since my knee would go down so he wasn’t clasping my foot tightly with his legs.

I think slowing the pass, but not going at a slow pace, but more a true flow, will help me see these opportunities. My guard passing has had a lot of tunnel vision to it over the last year or so. I need to look at it, like I try to with open guard, where different attacks appear and work well in combination. With passing a lot of times, I force the issue. I really want to work on doing what they give me rather than forcing something.

My Journey to the Black Belt

2009-09-16T08:19:00.000-07:00

My attitude and reasons for training have changed quite a bit over the years. Each belt level was a very distinct phase for me in terms of attitude and training habits.

White Belt

I was actually a white belt longer than any other belt. It was the most frustrating and depressing belt for me as well.

At first, my reasons for training were I wanted to “learn how to fight”. This wasn’t particularly motivating, as I really didn’t want to fight anyone. I just didn’t want them to want to fight me.

I’d start training then stop over and over again. I went just enough to get frustrated. I’d see maybe a little skill start to develop, but with the first mishap, injury or frustration, I’d quit for months then have to start the process over again.

My thoughts about my skill went up and down depending on my tapping verses getting tapped ratio. Since I wasn’t showing up consistently, I had to relearn things and was frustrated to watch people pass me by.

And since I got depressed about always being tapped out, once I missed class and knew coming back would be even harder, I’d show up even less.

This happened for years at two different schools.

But I started to make some good friends at my second school, which motivated me to want to show up more.

Although it’s debatable whether I was there more to hang out than to actually train, I started getting reasonably proficient at a few techniques.

I was embarrassed to be a white belt for as long as I was, mainly because telling people I was a white belt felt chumpy. Again, I was still trying to impress on people that I was well on my way to becoming a fighting machine, so “white belt” made them reply, “Oh, you’re just a beginner”.

So for me, getting the blue belt was a huge deal.

Blue Belt

I felt the most competitive with my classmates at this belt . There are white belts that have a lot of skill coming in and can quickly challenge you. At the same time you have purple belts in your sights as well.

The focus continued to be “winning and losing” rather than working towards getting better. I frankly didn’t know the difference between the two.

At this point, I liked talking about jiu jitsu much more than actually training it. I had friends that were really good, which made it tough for my ego to take. It was easier for me to just hang out with them socially than to train with them.

As a result, I really lost focus on jiu jitsu. I just trained in various garages with my friends. Without real guidance, I was just always looking for new techniques and secrets rather than being honest about the cause of why I wasn’t any good.

This lack of responsibility led to me quitting altogether for well over a year. I still had a competitive mindset but wasn’t willing to do the work necessary to progress.

Purple Belt

But in the back of my mind, jiu jitsu continued to irritate me. Part of me wanted to believe that the problem was what I’d been taught. Secretly I thought maybe my former instructors’ style of jiu jitsu just didn’t work anymore.

I found a new teacher who espoused this idea that traditional jiu jitsu was outdated . He had all these techniques that people were calling “cutting edge”. Because of this, I decided to give jiu jitsu another shot. I figured with my newfound knowledge, I’d finally be able to hang with my old friends as a jiu jitsu equal.

Of course, I was repeating another variation of the same mistake, and my old friends would crush me every time. I was trying to get better by using tricks and things they hadn’t seen rather than really dealing with problems.

Strangely enough I really couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t very good. I really blamed things like not being athletic or “natural” rather than really asking myself if I had ever really worked on jiu jitsu.

Sure I had trained with some good people and watched videos and learned the motions of some techniques. But I had never worked on patterns, thought about principals or worked on developing combinations of attacks. In short, I had never studied the game.

It was at this point that I was lucky enough to move to Austin, Texas where two important things happened in my training: I met William Vandry and I hurt my knee.

Meeting William was important as I finally had a teacher in the true sense of the word. It’s not to say I hadn’t learned a lot from other people, but William was the first person to be able to analyze my game better than anyone ever will and tell me step by step what to work on.

Hurting my knee was important as it forced me to spend three months watching every class. I quickly realized how little jiu jitsu I knew. I could roll with people and pull some moves off, but when I sat back and watched people train, I couldn’t tell what they should do half the time, or what their options were or what I would do.

So I started to mentally spar. It was almost like a video game where I would choose one person and try to figure out what they should be doing at every moment. Then I’d switch to the other person. Sometimes I’d just take what was happening as a whole and predict what I thought was going to happen. And other times, I’d mentally put myself in there and see what I’d do.

I did this day after day. I still do this now and I still don’t think I’m good at it, but it’s a little better than it was.

So the purple belt started off thinking I’d found the secrets and ended up truly admitting how little I knew but finally being okay with that.

I was also able to stop worrying about looking good. The danger of being a purple belt is worrying about people’s opinions of your skills. In my mind, if your instructor knows what you’re doing, that’s all that matters.

Brown Belt

I was really happy to get this belt. It was the first one I really felt like I had earned and more importantly, I felt like I was beginning to learn how to learn.

Two new training partners came into the fold who were and are vital to my progress. I think it’s always important to have people that serve as litmus tests. In order to develop new angles and variations of techniques, I’d first try to get them on beginning students. After meddling around with that for a while, I’d start working up the ranks. If I could start pulling the technique off consistently, I knew there was something there.

But they were never officially part of my arsenal until I could work them on the two litmus tests. They helped me really deal with problems in my game, rather than just scrambling through them. I was able to hit the rewind button over and over until I was satisfied that we’d come up with some answers.

I had taken notes sporadically through the years but starting this year (2009) I did them consistently. Doing this really helped me keep my head in the game regardless of whether I was out of town or injured. In fact, I knew as long as I stayed in decent shape and kept reviewing my notes, I could make progress even with breaks in my training.

I also started blogging, which kept me accountable to other people to continue with my thought processes. Plus when people had questions I couldn’t answer, it made me reevaluate my conclusions.

There was definitely a bullseye on my back with this belt. But this was also the first belt that I felt responsibility. I could see people listening in when I’d explain a technique to someone. And having someone really listen to your advice and then take it is a great motivation for making sure you know what you’re talking about!

Black Belt

September 5, 2009 is a day I will never forget. While I cringe at much of the time wasted, I am confident that I can teach someone to learn much faster and better than I did. And in many ways I think that is the point of life: to make your mistakes and pass on what you’ve learned to the next generation.

I’ve said before, that feeling like I understand jiu jitsu is like seeing a mirage in the desert. At some point I had to learn to enjoy the walk fully knowing that the mirage will always be in the far off distance.

I have so much more of my game to work on. There are many principals of structure and movement that I want to explore. I have toyed with the idea of one day opening up my own school but for now my energies are on making myself a better martial artist and doing everything I can to make the people around me better.

I never want to protect this belt, but I will always honor it.

Some Saulo thoughts and other things...

2009-09-03T19:18:00.000-07:00

Had an exhaustive training session with TO on Monday and needed a few days off to deal with some injuries and just general overtraining.

Still thinking about the concepts of staying off my back. I’ve been watching some Saulo footage and thinking about the concepts of his running escape. It seems like many of those moves are predicated by a bridge then whipping the far leg over in the direction you want to go. There’s a lot of power in that structure and it makes it hard to pin someone.

It’s interesting as a few months ago I was working on a lot of offense from being flat on my back. I still like those half guard sweeps and the finesse involved. But it’s still ultimately a passive game. And while it’s good to be calm when crushed and flat on your back, it’s probably a better idea to develop systems for rarely getting to that point to begin with.

I like the structured use of the shin and knee from the shin guard. From the sword guard it’s my forehead underneath the guy’s chin along with my arm pushing his collar bone. From the transition from almost getting past, it’s elbow to knee, looking at my watch and extending up. More and more I’m seeing how the far arm when the opponent is passing is the one to focus on. If I can get a shin or even a hand on that I can start to get space.

If I’m head and arm side controlled, I’m going to start exploring the running pass. I feel confident in my back control defense and think it’s a better option than being pinned.

This style is a little more tiring than some of the other methods I’ve been using but it also tires out my opponent much more. I’m using more methods to make the other person uncomfortable and motivated to move. It’s then a matter of figuring out where he will move and what I will do when he gets there. If I time this right I’ll be reacting to his reaction which should always give me the jump.

All of this advice was given to me many times by my instructor and as always it takes time to really listen.

Knee on stomach from the bottom?

2009-08-24T17:49:00.000-07:00

Worked with TO and MB today and continued to explore this idea of structure. My real mentality right now is preventing the pass while putting up uncomfortable barriers that cause my opponent to have to adjust with a limited number of options. I’m going to start flow charting out what I think these options would be and how I could beat them to the punch on this.

Also thinking about how I can integrate the “93” guard (shin on bicep half guard) and how I could get to it from half guard. One thing I’m taking from Friday’s session with JS is not “getting passed” is not enough. Being crushed in half guard for 10 minutes at a time is not an acceptable solution. Will work on ways of getting the far half guard with knee controlling hip then transitioning to foot on hip/shin on bicep.

In a way this makes me think of the knee on stomach work I’ve been doing lately. Except now I want to have the same control, attacks and discomfort coming from the bottom rather than the top.

It seems to have the same effect as it makes my opponent move and as long as I can figure out what I’ll do when they move, it may have the same positive results.

Combining structure and attacks from the open guard

2009-08-22T09:51:00.001-07:00

I’ve been thinking a lot about the open guard lately. My instructor has always emphasized the need for structure from the open guard. In his sword guard, his main point has always been get structure first, so your opponent can’t put his weight on you and has few options to move safetly. Once the structure is intact, then you can initiate your sweep and submission combos. If you don't have structure to slow your opponent down and limit his attacks, you have to rely on attributes.

For a long time, I’ve experimented with different types of guards, which have used speed, flexibility and strength. I never realized that I was doing that until I ran into someone who either had more of those attributes or was able to shut one of them down.

So I started to divide things up and worked on guards that had good structure. What I mean by that is I had my control of their head and arms and my knees were in positions so that I couldn’t be crushed down. Often times it would be hard for my opponent to put weight on me or to move from that position. But the problem was, there was no threat. Once they were able to move, then I was behind the game again. Usually they could pass, as I didn’t have structural answers to the next step they placed and there was no submission threat either.

I’d then go back to more of an attacking guard where I’d be working for sweeps and submissions. With this I’d either get the sweep or the submission or I’d get passed. It always felt like a tradeoff and depending on the level of my opponent, the ratios would change. If they could get passed the submissions, there was no structure to prevent them from crushing and passing or pinning and passing.

So yesterday I started experimenting with the spider guard and the shin guard. The object was to see how to set them both up at first. I was working with JS so it was going to be quick feedback if the position wasn’t working. After about 30 minutes, the structure started to seem to work. That was the first step.

The shin guard seemed more versatile to me, and I noticed that the shin across the middle line made it very difficult for him to put his weight on me.

But again, only having the structure made it simply a matter of him adjusting, moving and restarting his pass.

So the next step would be to use what the structure gives you. And that means sweeps and submissions.

The shin guard has a fairly basic sweep in the direction that you have your shin on their bicep. For some reason this was all I tried at first, before realizing I needed to try to sweep the other direction as well. Once I started combing those it opened things up. I could try rock from side to side and if that didn't work, pull into closed guard and go for a pendulum sweep from there.

The combinations seemed more effective since I felt I wasn't exhausting myself to unbalance him or initiate attacks. The structure of the guard makes him move and then it's a matter of figuring out where he'll move and reacting as he does that.

I need more practice with this as I don't have the mental Rolodex yet to know what reactions people will do so that's just a matter of mat time.

Also worked with MB and he worked on popping his hips forward and having his head straight up. It took me a while to realize that maybe holding on to a wrist or a sleeve and moving backwards would have an "ab wheel" type of effect. Still need more work on that though as I'm not happy with the options I was coming up with.

But I think this idea of structure and getting handles on the person is a good concept.

I look at it this way: proper structure protects you and slows your opponent down. If they’re slowed down, it makes it much easier to catch them with submissions and sweeps. If there’s only structure with no follow through or just submissions and sweeps being thrown at them, they just have to avoid them and they’ve passed. But if the two concepts are combined, it becomes much more difficult for the opponent to survive as they can’t start an attack and are always being attacked.

Side mount work

2009-08-17T16:09:00.000-07:00

Worked with JS and CW today. With JS it was first side mount escapes and secondly side mount control and attack. With the escapes, I’m just reminding myself constantly of rule #1 Stay Safe. I’m trying to anticipate his attacks so I can move in that direction right when he moves. It is difficult to even try standard reversals as his hips are so low and his base so good, that it feels like it’s a waste of energy.
Felt this with CW as well. He has a more patient and methodical game, but starting with his sidemount sunk in, it felt damn near impossible to get out. Again, I stuck with rule #1 and kept trying to predict his next move.

Now part of me is not a big fan of this approach. It feels very passive and is dependent upon the other guy moving. But on the otherhand, I want to conserve energy to a degree in a position like this. I definitely felt calm, lucid and safe. But I guess I’m wondering is this enough or is this at least the step for now?
I know this wouldn’t be a good tournament mentality, but that’s not really what I’m doing this for in the first place.

I guess another mentality is that getting stuck in those positions is a worst-case scenario. But it happens and I want to keep making sure I strike a balance of safety while still making things happen or at least acknowledging the reality of the situation.

JS and I also worked on my top game side control. This is still not a strong point and he is an extremely difficult person to keep pinned down. Need to write out a flow chart or the story of side mount as I see it right now. Still finding the times to pin verses the times for attacks.
See some interesting possibilities of combing the Rigan twister with the arm in guillotine, the anaconda and the D’arce. Need to really focus on far hip control with all of these.

He was excellent at getting to his side and facing me. Felt that both reverse kesa and kazuri leave me vulnerable to getting swept. Also wondering whether the idea is to prevent someone like that from getting to their side or just attack the position they’re in.

Again it comes down to efficiency and taking the situation right where it is, rather than deciding it “needs” to be a certain way. Really like the triple attack and setting up from knee on stomach. Makes me realize I need to map out this position even more as I don’t have nearly enough chains.

I'm going to keep picking the guys who I think are best at this and work my escapes while at the same time continuing to practice my top attacks. This is still my weakest top position and it's time to change that.

Training notes 8/11/09

2009-08-11T15:07:00.001-07:00

Had some good training yesterday with TO. Felt like I was using way too much strength and that my flow was not where it should be. Probably over training a little and am probably taking today off fully. Always feel the need to push at times like this, but maybe pulling back is the smarter move.

Seeing the grapevine grip in closed guard situations. I still like the clamp when I get the hand to the mat, but thinking that if I can keep the same principals from the overhook halfguard triangle and sweep setups,

Felt like the clamp and pulling the foot over to omoplata is still a dangerous position to put my knee in. May try to work the overhook, get on my side and maybe even bait them to push my leg down to get the grip.
From half guard could put other foot on hip to work triangle. Or put hook in to work butterfly sweep.

I need to experiment with this more but again feels more and more like each position is an extension of another and they are all just transitions. I still find myself getting into trouble when I look at something as “half guard” or “full guard” etc. rather than just seeing the principals and just letting the flow take it where it should.

From top position, still working knee on stomach, elbow and wrong knee. Want to start working in some toe holds and bat chokes to help set up arm locks and triple attacks.
For open guard, trying to make sure that all my appendages are accounted for. Want everything to be a handle or controlling point. Using my head, hands, knees, elbows, shoulders, hips and feet. Notice that at times when I’m going for omoplatas, triangles etc. that one leg is simply there to go over the shoulder rather than messing with the base etc. When there is separation, I’m in trouble, especially with someone fast, strong or explosive.

Controling to motivate mistakes

2009-07-29T20:56:00.001-07:00

Worked with the Mighty JH last night and MB this afternoon. Again doing the knee on stomach, wrong knee, elbow combo. With JH was definitely forcing the pin and see how exhausting that can be.

Felt better this afternoon with MB seeing how things can transition to the triple attack, to back control, one cheek sneak armlock, bat chokes etc. The pin is merely a motivating factor. I’m working on the balance for that.

One the bottom game, I’m mainly working on making sure everything is occupied with doing something productive. If the upper body is working a submission, the lower body is pushing out his base. If my legs are tying his legs up, I want to make sure my arms are pulling him off balance. And if my legs are working on his upper body, I want to make sure my arms are checking his base, moving my body etc.

Knee on stomach and invisible knee.

2009-07-27T14:44:00.000-07:00

Got some good training with the ever Zen TO today. Again the concepts of needing to coordinate my upper and lower half came into play when I felt the blinders go on as I went for a guillotine from butterfly guard. I forgot about my feet for just a second and he immediately passed.

In that particular situation, I think using the guillotine to hook sweep, or maybe pushing his knees out or even just keeping my feet at his hips would be some effective options. This is going to take some time to drill into my head as I am definitely consistently making this mistake in many areas.

Worked on knee on stomach and invisible knee for a little bit as well. I still really like this technique but need to get more precise on my knee and elbow placement.

He used the defense of turning away and bringing knee to elbow. Normally I use this as a chance to take the back, but realized I could and probably should jump to the other side and do knee on stomach on that side.

Felt a little more tired than I wanted to be after the roll. Conditioning is still coming back but for some reason the knee on stomach seems to tire me out as much as my opponent and I’m not quite sure why that is.

Definitely see how that position can lead to the Rigan twister as well as people want to turn in, especially once the knee is on the ground. I’m liking this better than the D’arce right now as I feel like I have better control and a submission, while the D’arce can be hit or miss.

Half guard angles and more 10%

2009-07-25T14:27:00.000-07:00

Been working on the next phase of half guard, which involves overhooking attacks. Worked with TG yesterday and the mighty JH today. Both presented some interesting problems and were good at nullifying my lazy, get pinned and bridge half guard. While I still think the techniques on that one are effective, they are not the first line of attack so it’s time to put them in the proper order.

I really enjoy playing the triangle/omoplata game from the half guard overhook but one thing I am not doing well is getting the proper angle. I’m getting better at getting on my side, but I’m still too close which lets the person on top posture up too easily at they have a perpendicular angle to push again.

What I need to work on is that extra hip out motion which will flatten the opponent out more. I should also get my outside hook in from here to prevent the slice through pass and to also give me the option of the hook sweep.

In a way, it’s similar to using 45-degree angles in other positions. It seems like it’s always better to have this angle because then the guy on first needs to get back to his centerline first before he can posture up.

Felt that the knee across the hip guard is a little limiting in certain positions. The Roger sweep seems to work sometimes and not at all at others. I haven’t developed the sensitivity yet to figure out when that is and when it’s not.

Also still trying to figure out when to get underneath for that type of half guard. I’m not sold on it yet as the Mighty JH was cradling me when I tried that and I had to get wrist control and pry him away. There was no moving and I’m just not sure if that’s a great guard for someone my height to be using. The jury’s still out on that one.

I also need to work on framing off the bicep or the far hip to get on my side and also to have pressure on their shoulder to keep their head down. If they start to get their arm out of the overhook I should then swim in for the underhook and get ready to clamp down and shotput sweep towards that arm.
Also had plenty of practice working on the vital 10% again. It’s still scary to get that close to the flame but I need to keep doing it. I feel very calm but not taking a moment for granted either. It’s necessary and I’m enjoying it even though it scares me.

The upper/lower connection and the 10%.

2009-07-22T08:52:00.001-07:00

Rolling with GC last night made me realize that my upper and lower body are not moving together the way they should be. My instructor had told me this last week in regards to my half guard, but I realized last night, this is an overall problem for me.

I kept looking for half guard when it wasn’t there as GC tends to pass standing and that makes it tough to get a half guard. The De La Riva was there but I’m normally not a big fan of it.

After sparring, he and I were drilling De La Riva and coming up with some interesting variations. One of which, I think I’ll call the De La Vandry as it uses Will’s X-guard technique of instep to instep control but from a de la Riva rather than x-guard. It seems to eliminate the knee bar threat but still keeps the opponent tripped up and stretched out.

But while we were drilling GC kept emphasizing for me to grab the collar or the sleeve and I realized I never do that properly. My legs are in decent position but I’m not pulling the opponent down.

And I started to think about my half guard and realized while I’m emphasizing leg and hip movement, I’m not controlling, attacking and defending properly with my upper body. I’m actually giving up those elements and relying on my legs to save me.

GC made me quickly aware of the danger of that by never letting me comfortably set up half guard in the first place. I relied on people “accepting” half guard and a skilled player won’t do that. Again it’s coordinating the upper and the lower together.

Thinking about it a little more I realize the opposite is also true. When my upper body movement is decent my lower body is off. This is especially true with arm drags where my timing is decent but my lower body control is not there. If someone has a feel for my timing, the can just go with the momentum of the drag into an easy pass.

The solution for all this is probably straight up drilling, positional drilling and more than anything being aware of this problem. I had never really thought about it before last week.

The 10%

Another thing that came up in training was the concept of 10%

One of my good training partners, MB, is really good at shutting down the last 10% of someone’s submission. Against someone who’s inexperienced or panics, 90% is usually all you need to get the tap. But when someone knows how to shut down the vital 10%, the attacker, even with 90%, will not be able to get the tap.

What’s most important about that 10% is that most attackers will think they have the tap if they only push a little more or squeeze a little harder. If you can continue to shut down the 10%, control your breathing and your mindset, you should be able to wait out the fire. Meanwhile the 90 percenter will most likely burn himself out.

I’ve been on the 90% side of things many times. I’ve felt myself squeeze the hell out of a triangle or strain for that armlock and have someone just…barely….get out. It’s extremely frustrating and tiring to be on that end of things. You just gave them your best shot and they’re still standing. Often times I couldn’t even tell what I was doing wrong.

So now I’m starting to focus on figuring out the 10%. My instinct is to scramble in these situations rather than really assess what needs to be done for the lock or choke to work. Often times it becomes a game of inches. If you can figure out tiny roadblocks to put up, most people won’t be able to feel them. If you can give someone false confidence that they’re almost there, that if they push just a little bit harder, I think that’s entering the realm of the 10%.

Now I expect this will lead to me getting tapped a lot and having to deal with a certain amount of fear. These are positions that have always made me panic. But if I learn where those roadblocks are, I force the opponent to make an adjustment. And adjustments almost always mean making space for a moment to move. And if I can furthermore start to anticipate what direction they’ll need to move and can work on the timing, I can start turning the 10% into 15% and so on.

Stay safe first, get out second

2009-06-16T15:55:00.001-07:00

My instructor has said to me for a long time that the first key to defense when you’re caught in a hold is not getting out, but rather staying safe. Just because someone has you in a hold, doesn’t mean they can finish the hold.

While many people panic when they’re caught, which usually can make it easier to get the submission, in ways the opposite is true as well. If a person gets you in a hold and can’t finish it, then you may have won the mental battle right then and there.

Rolled with T today and thought of this as I was caught in his triangle. I worked the thigh squeeze counter to which he swept me over. I hug his thigh omo plata style with my trapped arm and got back on top. I tried the thigh squeeze again, but have not practiced this enough to know the intricacies and had to tap.

I realize this is the next step in my game. I need to learn calmness in positions like this, then slowly work my way out of danger. The recent half guard work and building a game plan/ flow chart with this has made me more aware of what’s most effective for my mind to work under a pressure situation.

I can already feel a difference in certain positions of half guard, especially underneath a twister pass attempt where I am now setting up sweeps rather than power bridging and mentally accepting that I’m going to be in twister side mount in a moment. The idea of also seeing that as one half guard door closes, the other side usually opens has also been very apparent and I’ve been taking advantage of that as well

So I need to also explore this area when I get caught in things, especially triangle chokes. I’m starting to get a system for ankle and armlock defenses and feel confident in my knee bar defense as well, but getting caught in triangles makes me panic at times. I need to drill this position and learn some real calmness here. The irony is that triangles have probably always been my best attack and I know that it’s tough to deal with someone who’s not phased by my triangle.

I felt good today though. It’s time to continually challenge myself to be calm and effective. I will still get caught, but as long as I’m calm and working out deliberately, it is a step in the right direction. It seems to be working in the offense already and I’m looking forward to drilling the defense as well.

Half Guard Outline

2009-06-12T09:38:00.001-07:00

The idea behind this is to come up with a flow chart. I know Eddie Bravo has done this already, but I wanted to do something that fits my particular style a little bit more inclusively. This is a long mess of a read at the moment, but it's a fun activity to work on in the middle of a thunderstorm ;)

Possible solutions (assuming his right leg is trapped)
We'll start with the "scissor half guard" where the guy has his head down and his weight is neutral.

1) Get his head up
a. If head is to left of my center, can bridge and salute slightly to get it into position.
b. Kung fu move to get forearm under neck or to push his chin up and back
c. Push on shoulder with other arm, hip out and get knee onto his hip.

2) If he pushes in slightly, rotate on elbow to get underhook and dive in.
a. Keep looking at watch to prevent an effective whizzer or D’arce.
b. Can v-check other bicep to prevent this also.
c. First work to take the back by ratcheting and keeping head down to prevent cross face. Taking back is the best option!!!

3) If he starts to whizzer effectively from here:
a. Clamp your elbow.
b. Roll to that side over that shoulder while grabbing the opposite side leg for a sweep.
c. If he lets go of the whizzer and bases….
d. Take his back again!

4) Now if he doesn’t lean in and stays neutral when you have your forearm under his neck…
a. Go for the ezekial or cross choke if you have a gi on.
b. He’ll need to defend with his arms and drive in
c. From here you can either… GO TO 2C or…
d. Secure an overhook and or…
e. Get wrist control

5) If you just get an overhook…
a. Try to keep knuckle side up
b. Keep on your side.
c. You can grab far lapel is there’s a gi.
d. Start checking his base to side you have overhook on.
i. If he’s leaning in slightly, a sweep to the back 45 is possible by moving whole body flat.
e. If he’s not pushing in, you should be able to get your bottom leg out or at least threaten it.
f. Most people will take the bait and try to push the leg.
g. You should be able to get wrist control from there.
h. If you get wrist control, you should be able to also get the master blaster grip.
i. If he tries to back away, the triangle should be there.
j. If he drives in, your knee should be able to block him.
k. If he hangs tight, you can hip out and get your hook in and start working for the hook sweep.
i. But if he starts to back up, try to get the hook out and have the foot on the hip.
l. If he bases up on the whizzer side arm and whips it out, you can attempt to sweep back to that hip 45
i. Also it seems like he’d be in a position where you could get the underhook and pull him down.
ii. Might also be a time to work on the far side knee bar.

6) if he slumps over into a twister type pass, you can cross your feet to prevent him from hooking instep with crook of arm.
a. Also look into bridging to teeter totter his weight. If his head’s down, his legs are light.
b. Another option is to look for the lockdown here, although it may not be there.
c. The twister position seems to lead to more leg lacing and bridging type of sweeps.
d. The Roger roll back sweep is there as well if I can change the angle to form a “T” between us.

7) But what if he goes back to head and arm and drives forward?
a. First off, this is probably the best time to do the lockdown.
i. This can create some space to work the forearm under the throat/ jaws of life.
ii. From here whip up, get on side, start to work dog fight etc.
iii. Can also lead to electric chair.
b. Can also work over hook to triangle Jeremy Williams style.
i. If this is the case, remember to hip out and create space to get hook
ii. Once you get the hook, press in or bait with knee to get wrist control then get master blaster control
c. Also seems like a simple trap, bridge and roll can be a good way of getting movement for this as well.

8) Or what if he has head and arm control with his head across my body and has good shoulder pressure making me look to my left?
a. Get the lockdown
b. Pendulum legs out to your left, in direction he’s forcing your chin anyway.
c. You should be able to transition into an electric chair type scenario from here.

9) But what if he isolates your arm like the seminar technique?
a. Seems like you’d want to switch half guards to the other side leg and try to push his elbow out.
b. Wondering if bridging into the direction he’s leaning could start the off balance chain as well.

10) Hanging back, slumping and pinning the legs.
a. Look to sit up and attack the neck
b. He needs to control my hips, so constantly shifting from one side up, to flat to the other side up is important.
c. But ultimately, what do I need to do to pass from there?
i. Keep his far hip pinned to the ground through hugging or belt control.
d. So maybe doing the Jen hip turn to shoulder push technique is a good start.
e. Not letting their head put weight on the far hip by bridging and pushing it down and to the ground.
f. Look at v-checking and kimura sweeping with the far arm.

more half guard work

2009-06-04T06:04:00.001-07:00

Worked with CW and MB on half guard again. CW kept working for more of a twister pass, which was interesting, as most people would try to stack and drive in while he would twist away. Feeling some interesting sweeps although I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing. A lot of it just seems to involve basic principals of trapping one side and bridging or using a leg as a pendulum.

Worked more on the triangle concept that RR and I have been studying from a Jeremy Williams video. Seems like the key it to really work on whizzer control from the bottom. Actually the more your opponent is trying to stack and pass, the better, as his posture is already broken down for a triangle.

Once the whizzer is established, then it’s a matter of hipping out onto my side and getting the hook with the foot on the whizzer side. This prevents them from being able to pass and also gives the option of butterfly sweeping or even popping out all the way onto your knees.

The next step is to get the wrist control. It seems like as long as the pass is baited, the guy will try to push down the non-hooking knee. That’s the moment to grab his wrist with your free hand and pin to his stomach. You can back up that grip with your other hand grabbing your wrist.

From here, you need to switch your hips so you’re closer to being flat on your back. The hooked leg comes out first, then the second leg comes out.

From here you can loose lock triangle or do a regular one.

I used to cringe at half guard and now I'm seeing it as the center of my universe. It's my favorite position and so easy to get. Really excited about it and it's been fun to see all the different reactions my training partners give me. Each one is unique and challenging in its own way.

Half guard work

2009-05-28T18:21:00.000-07:00

More half guard work today with TO. Was seeing a hip bump type of sweep from far half guard that I hadn’t seen before. If I’ve got his right leg locked up with my left knee against his right hip, I need to simply switch my hip to perpendicular while getting some type of wrist/sleeve control on his right had. Can also cup the left foot as well to get some more leverage.

Played some closed guard as well. Went for an armlock on right arm with sweep as a threat.
Wanted him to get arm out so I could switch to triangle which I did, but then spent the next four minutes trying to finish from that position.

Really think that I should just hold more loosely and work on the correct angle or see about armlocks, kimuras or sweeps from there. This has happened to me a few times and I get total tunnel vision. There may have been an angle that I just couldn’t feel or see but my legs were completely toast at the end and that’s not how I want my jiu jitsu to be.

Felt a little bummed out after that, feeling like I wasn’t learning the lessons presented to me.

Wanted to get back in tonight, but can feel all the signs of overtraining right now, so I’m going to get some extra food and some rest.
But all that will pass.

The lessons on the far half guard I’m feeling so far are as follows.
1) Constantly check his base.
2) Stay on your side.
3) Create space with forearm under chin in order to get knee onto his hip.
4) If he leans in to grab your far side wrist, switch hips into a triangle.
5) If he leans back you can switch hips into the Roger sweep variation.
6) If you can get control of his crossfacing arm you can sweep that over your far shoulder to sweep him
7) If he backs off too far, your outside foot can go on his hip to control him.
8) Constantly look for collar chokes.
9) If he tries to pry his leg out, grab his ankle and bridge and roll to that side
10) The pendulum sweep can still work from half guard.
11) Foot on the hip can lead to a far leg knee bar as well.
12) Inverted Roleta type sweeps are always a possibility as they come around on the non trapped side.

What I am liking about the half guard as I’m finally bridging together sweeps and submissions and feel like it slows down my opponents.

What I’m not liking is that I’m f’ing exhausted after drilling the positions. Now granted my training partners are the best guys in the school, so it’s no surprise. But I think the newness of this attack mindset is still making me not see the path of least resistance at every moment.

Worked with my instructor as well. Similar to the lesson we worked on before, it seems like attacks from the top can be as simple as isolating an arm and waiting for the opponent to react.

Even from top of half guard I can pin the bicep with my free leg and head and arm control.
From there it’s a matter of keeping pressure on the far shoulder and keeping his chin turned. Eventually the leg pinning the bicep can go over the head as keeping him stretched out in the shoulder will prevent him from balling up.

From here, there is a loose lock reverse triangle.

5/18/09 training thoughts

2009-05-18T18:42:00.000-07:00

Rolled with BE and C today. Didn’t like the way I felt with either one. Could feel excess muscle tension and kept giving into the temptation to force moves that weren’t there. Really didn’t feel like there was any flow.

Felt myself backtrack in terms of my open guard. Strange that all the stuff I liked last month on preventing them from basing, is now just a small asterisk. It still works to a degree, but it also means that I’m out of position and not really presenting a viable attack. I felt the need to test the system but it felt wrong. It felt as if it was a joke that I used to find funny or a girl I used to like. It simply didn’t resonate at all as it was still not at the core of the problem I had before, which is reacting rather than being proactive.

I was also making the mistake of being in mid range with essentially no handles in open guard.

Feel a little overtrained, but there’s still no reason or excuse for this. I was lucky to not have it completely blow up in my face today, but it should have.

I felt really tired afterward, which I think is a combination of conditioning weakness and this forcing mentality that I felt. I’m still looking for mental exercises to do when I feel this way as it always frustrating when that sense of flow and purpose just isn’t there.

Tomorrow may take day off due to conditioning workout scheduled but will see how I feel that night.

The Heavy Leg

2009-05-18T06:40:00.000-07:00

I’ve been working on some standup wrestling with DS over the last few weeks. His takedown philosophy is geared around the inside single. And the timing of this takedown is based on an idea of the “heavy leg”. Basically he looks for, or really at this point just senses, when the opponent gets most of his weight on one leg. The moment that happens is the moment he’s shooting. I’m guessing he actually starts shooting before this happens and actually makes impact the moment the leg is heavy.

It reminds me of some of the concepts I was working on a month back like the ab wheel, where the opponent is stumbling to get back in position while I’m moving in that position already. This is almost the same idea but from a standing position.

One concept that DS showed me was something he said he saw John Smith do. The idea is to shoot when he saw the heavy leg, but anticipate that the opponent is going to sprawl. So the initial shot needs to be well timed, but you actually don’t want to fully commit so you’re underneath the guy when he sprawls out. What you’re waiting for is the guy to stand up and back away. So when the initial shot is made, you stay in there. The moment the guy starts to pick himself up, boom, that’s when you do your “real” shot. When most people stand up, they put all their weight on one leg.

What I really like about DS’s approach to takedowns and to how he’s teaching me, is the simplicity. There’s one takedown: the inside single and one time to do it: when the opponent’s leg is heavy.

Of course there are an infinite number of ways to get there, but having simple goals makes it much easier for me to keep my head in the moment rather than being overwhelmed by information.

Now I have no illusions about becoming a great wrestler or even a great takedown guy, but I think this training is really important for several reasons.

First off, it helps me know what a good takedown guy is looking for in his attacks. The better I can get at these attacks, the better I can get at defending them. While I may have a decent sprawl already, that is only going to help me against a very unsophisticated line of attack.

Secondly, while I may still not be able to get the opponent down even with a perfectly timed shot, getting that clinch can allow me to transition to an open guard position or a leg lock attack. I won’t be able to outwrestle a good wrestler, but by learning this timing and sensitivity I can bring my attacks to them.

It always makes me cringe seeing a jiu jitsu guy do a telegraphed shot from way outside that is stuffed, then they try to pull guard and the opponent just walks away. While the jiu jitsu guy may have initiated the action, he still gave his opponent the option of walking away. I want to eliminate that option whenever possible.

I want to know how to get the match to the ground, regardless of whether that means I’m on top or not, and to also ensure that I’m the one dictating the action.

Additionally I want to be able to coach my teammates better from the standing position. While they may still need to pull guard if they’re not practicing their standup, I can at least give them better advice on how and when to do that.

The training is very fast paced and really fun. DS is an awesome teacher and I can tell he enjoys doing this type of training as do I. In the past, the wrestling I’ve done has been very discouraging as I was taught what to do but not when.

And even if I was taught when, I was never taught how to make the “when” happen. DS is showing me this in terms of concepts so I can begin to recognize this in the heat of the moment, which is especially important in takedowns, as the pace is much faster.
As always I’m amazed at how little I know and happy that there are people willing to teach me more.

not jiu jitsu related

2009-05-07T19:21:00.000-07:00

but I just started another blog

http://fisktales.blogspot.com/

The first one is about a man named T'ai Merion, who I would like the world to know, sadly, if only in hindsight.

Touch and patience

2009-05-06T20:40:00.000-07:00

Noticing rolling with GC and DS that there are two things that are becoming increasingly important to me: touch and patience.

With GC, especially in no gi, realized that there is a world of difference being in sword guard on my side and having as many handles in place as possible, verses not. By handles, I mean grabbing, holding or even lightly touching with my feet, knees, shoulders, elbows, hands and head in as many places as possible. I’m never going to be fast enough to react to someone moving before I do and someone as fast and skilled as GC drills that into my head.

But if I can be clinched up with as many handles as possible, the sensation of touch leads to many things. I can first feel his movement. I can feel where his weight is shifting. At times, it almost seems like you can sense a man’s intentions. This is part of the solution that I’m looking for in developing a game that can overcome speed, size, strength and conditioning. I realized that to not be in some type of clinch, even a loose one, will invariably lead to me trying to use those attributes I’m trying to battle against just to catch up. And in my mind this is something that cannot be sustained and will get worse with time.

The second lesson that’s starting to come into focus is patience. I’m seeing this in some of the more customary control positions like closed guard on bottom and side mount on top, but I think it can be applied almost anywhere.

I’m realizing how impatient I’ve been in my jiu jitsu. At times it feels like I’ve been a nervous teenager who won’t stop talking because he’s afraid of silence. While forcing the action can be good in certain circumstances, it can also quickly hurt you against the wrong opponent.

DS is the perfect example of this as given his intelligence for the game along with his wrestling, size and strength forcing a game against him will simply not work. If I do try to force it, I"m not being honest with myself on the reality of that moment. It's like I'm talking rather than enjoying the silence.

So lately I’ve been trying to catch myself forcing anything, especially in closed guard. While this may be looked at as stalling, I’m beginning to realize I need to explore the concept of stalling and how that can lead to frustrating people. I’m never going to be the strongest, biggest, most athletic or youngest guy out there so I need strategy. And part of strategy is the mental battle. And part of the mental battle is learning how to frustrate the opponent.

The importance of arm control in leglocks.

2009-04-27T16:20:00.000-07:00

One of the most important things I”ve learned with straight armlocks in the cross body position, is the importance of far shoulder control. For a long time I believed it was strictly close side leg control. And while I still think that’s useful, especially for control someone wild, I think control of the far shoulder and bicep is essential to actually breaking the grip and straightening the arm.

I’ve been focusing on my leglock attacks over the last few training sessions. I want to get better at leglocks themselves, but I also want to see how they’ll lead into other attacks. I’m beginning to already see more sweeps, armlock and triangle opportunities simply by going for the knee bar. But I’m also seeing how the knee bar and the ankle lock need the element of arm control.

One of the things my training partner MS did very well on me was controlling the same arm that he was knee barring. Not only did this make it harder to grab my own leg in defense, but also it made it easy for him to sweep me back and for me to not be able to base out and come up on top.
He and I talked about this as well as pushing the opponent’s armpit or his elbow in a kimura type position. This seems to give the right amount of distance to straighten their leg out and the arm control position makes it very difficult for them to get on top again.

I’m curious to mess around with this tomorrow and see where it leads.

The Great Equalizer

2009-04-24T15:54:00.001-07:00

A long time ago my instructor told me I should start incorporating more leglocks into my game but as always, it takes me entirely too long to listen to good advice. I’ve gone through phases where I’ve done that but for the most part I would do them in isolation then go back to my normal game. I felt like they interrupted the flow and took away from my attacks. But after Wednesday’s session, I realized that if I’m going to only attack the upper body, especially no gi, I’m going to have to either work inverted guard or rubber guard.

I like both of these guards, but my body doesn’t, especially when dealing with much bigger training partners. So in my mind to really round out the no gi game, and actually to improve my armbars and triangles, I need to attack the legs.

Today was day one of really incorporating leglocks into my whole game. Now granted I was actively looking for kneebars and ankle locks, but I was also looking to see how they could enhance, rather than distract from my whole game. One of the mistakes I’ve made in the past is to “over isolate” a particular move to the point where I ignore what going for that move gives me. It is always hard to incorporate the rest of my game from that, so now I’m always trying to have “black dot focus” rather than “white dot focus”.

I had some great training partners today who gave me a good energy and chance to work some of my new attacks. I really like what I’m seeing and feeling so far even though some of my knee bars are at a bad” boy band” level right now. One thing that I noticed, is the best way to set up kneebars from the guard is to attack the arms and neck. This leads to posture and posture leads to leaving the legs out there.

Of course the opposite quickly becomes apparent as well, when once you attack the legs, they lean in and grab. I realized this might be one of the best ways to get wrist control to work for a triangle as most people aren’t thinking triangle defense when they’re dealing with a knee bar. They’re reaching out.

The flip bar is another project that will take some work but definitely made me like being sprawl passed better. The threat is there and I always do much better when I have an attack to focus on rather than the idea of “not getting passed”.

I’m going to write about this idea more later, but for now, it seems to me that trying to make something as big and broad as a pass “not happen” is overwhelming. There are so many ways to pass that trying to stop everything feels impossible and for me personally always makes me panic a little.

But if I focus on an attack and feeling what attack is there, I don’t worry about the pass as preventing the pass, miss aligning them and off basing or submitting them is all part of the attack.

So today was very exciting to me in that regard because I am seeing leg attacks in positions where normally I get a “scramble” or even “don’t let him pass” feeling. A lot of these locks rely on them pushing the pass and even the concept of getting that clinch and the handles from open guard is inherently taken care of.

One thing I need to be careful is not to slip into inverting too much as my neck doesn’t forgive me for that position. Although thinking about it, I really should be shifting from my shoulder to my forehead to my other shoulder anyway.

The leg attacks are also leading to another type of guard that I’m experimenting with. I’m not sure what it’s really called but it really is normally just a guard recovering technique where one shin is across their belt line and the other leg is over their head. Let’s say it’s my right leg across their belt and my left leg over their head.

I’m finding that if I control their right arm with my left hand and hook their left leg with my right arm I have a decent amount of control. This position also works, maybe even better, if my right leg is in between theirs in a half guard position.

I see some knee bar attacks on their left leg if they move to their left. If they force the pass to my right there is a good reverse triangle as well. It needs more practice, of course, but I see some definite potential with that.

Also I’m realizing how much the knee bar and cross ankle lock/inside heelhook tie in. I saw that when I was working on controlling the knee bar where we’re both essentially on our backs and I have my instep in the crook of their knee. I’m thinking that grabbing their heel may be a way of preventing them from spinning , but even if they do, the inside heelhook/footlock is there. I also need to adjust my body position and have my back towards them as well.

Overall I’m really excited about this next step and look forward to seeing how these setups work in a no gi situation. Additionally I want to see how I can implement leglock entries starting from standing. I think this may be a good way to initiate an attack on good wrestlers.

4/23/09 notes

2009-04-24T06:14:00.000-07:00

It’s been an interesting week. Felt pretty sharp on Tuesday and then in a total fog yesterday. It was like I had no clue what I should be doing at any moment. I had to start focusing on the smallest of goals as my mind kept racing to everything other than jiu jitsu in the middle of the roll.

It was no gi and any moment my training partner would come close to passing I just kept thinking I wanted to be anywhere but there. I started from closed guard over and over. My goal was to control from there and I was having a really tough time.

For quite a while I’ve felt a little limited in closed guard. At some point I realized traditional rubber guard/mission control is not for me. My knees can’t take it and one surgery is enough for me.

But I admire the control that it gives and there are moments like yesterday with a good scrambling wrestler where I miss it a little bit. Now the Shawn Williams guard is still a big part of the game and something I need to used more often. And I’m starting to come up with some decent neck attacks that lead to wrist control.

When they posture back, my hip bump/close line works well some of the time. But I knew something was missing. Yesterday was about surviving and accumulating evidence for me to study at a later time.

And now looking back, I’m realizing the closed guard hole is an extension of the open guard one: I need to attack the legs. I keep coming to this conclusion over and over again but just was not able to see the opportunity or really even think about it yesterday. I wanted to get the back, control and choke as everything else just felt impossible.

I was really annoyed with my lack of ability to adapt at the moment. I’m glad I didn’t quit and there’s something to be said for using the money moves at times, but it’s going to be a continuing problem as long as I limit my attacks. Those same attacks won’t work once those guys make a few adjustments.

So I think the only solution is to force myself to only attack the legs from the bottom for the next few weeks and see what happens.

the open guard clinch

2009-04-17T08:21:00.000-07:00

Got a couple of fun training sessions in on Wednesday and one on Thursday. Some of the new base control tactics are working well to disrupt any type of pin and pass, but this has all been work on the first step and against good players, this is not enough. They quickly catch up and move on if that’s all that I do.

The next step if for me to take advantage of the pause it gives them. Right now arm drags, hook sweeps and guillotines have been somewhat effective but still limited. I think this has been mainly because they only have to worry about their base and their upper body.

Thus it’s time to become a leg locking fool. My instructor’s always emphasized that leg locks are the great equalizer. The thing that I’ve noticed is they are a great attack on wrestlers, not just for the leg-locking component, but also for the sweeping component.

I remember Nick Diaz fighting Sean Sherk and getting him on his butt after attempting a knee bar. It’s the only time I can remember someone sweeping Sherk and it was because Sherk was worried enough about his leg to sacrifice position.

So my next step to get there is to take advantage of the disrupt and get some type of handle that I can turn into a leglock. I realized that this is another huge hole in my game. I let there be separation in open guard situation rather than grabbing handles immediately.

Handles allow me to stick with the person, like an anchor slowly weighing down a motorboat. I’ve learned some tactics to slow down the game in closed guard and on top, but now it’s time to really slow things down from open guard. Ethan told me this a long time ago and now I"m finally beginning to see what he meant.

So while I definitely think leg locks are the next step in my open guard game, I first need to get that clinch and get those handles from open guard. Much like the early days when Royce would always talk about timing the clinch I’m going to work on ways to enter into and establish those clinches. This is the only way that I know to really control someone. Otherwise it becomes a scramble and a battle of speed which I will lose more and more as time goes on.

The Axl Rose

2009-04-15T07:49:00.001-07:00

So I finally got a chance to work on some of these new theories with DS. As it went with GC I realized that there’s more work to be done. The stationary bike techniques didn’t seem to work mainly because he pinned my feet to the ground instead of pinning my knees.

Now normally when someone pins my ankles, the reaction is to arm drag them. But as he always does DS makes me painfully aware of the holes in my theories. I’m seeing two mistakes I’m making with this.

One is that I’m attempting to arm drag first and move my ankle second. The problem with this is it may work once or twice but a good wrestler will soon figure this out and simply let the arm drag pull them around and flop right into side mount.

Thinking about it, the second problem ties into the first. The second problem is that trying to move in a linear motion doesn’t work in this angle because his pin position is like a decline bench press with his arms locked out and hands in line with his chest or slightly lower. Even if I could move my legs, it’s not going to change his ability to pin much, if at all because it doesn’t get his hands above his shoulders (in line with his head).

Now if it’s the knees that are pinned down it’s a different story as his hands are probably in line with his shoulder, so if I move back his hands are in line with his head or higher, which is the “ab wheel” concept I’ve been writing about lately. But again, DS was pinning my feet firmly into the mat, so this was not the case here.

It took a while to make progress, as DS was nice enough to let me hit the “rewind button” over and over. I tried various things but everything I worked on felt like a gimmick that might work occasionally but once he caught on, it was back to step one.

After about 10 minutes, DS figured out what I think is the best answer. It started with the idea of opening my knees, which made his pin unstable. It made his elbows flare out a little and prevented him from being able to focus his weight down. This was a good first step and I think this could be a way to work in the arm drag, but we wanted some other options as well.

Again DS had the idea that if I opened my knees, then “swam” my legs side to side this would throw the whole pin out of whack. We realized that this looked like the leg movement of a certain 80’s powerhouse lead singer and thus we will now call this “The Axl Rose”.

It took about half an hour for us to reach this conclusion and after doing some “Sweet Child O’ Mine”ing for a few more minutes, we concluded it works in that situation. I could reestablish some handles and work my open guard from there.

There’s still a lot more to figure out and I’m anxious to work on the arm drag components, keeping in mind destabilizing his base, having my head on the side that I want to drag to, timing the pull of the arms, the push of the legs and shifting my hips out and towards him. It’s a move I’ve worked on a lot and got fairly effective with to a certain point but now it’s time to take that to the next level.

DS is an amazing asset and continues to be my kryptonite in every way on the mat. But since he’s so eager to learn (and somehow fooled into thinking I know something ;)) he’s a great training partner because we can figure out why one particular step doesn’t work and isolate it out until we find an answer.

For a long time I would have just worked on a scramble or just told myself not to get there in the first place, but now I want real answers that I can duplicate and more importantly, that I can teach to people that don’t involve the answer of just “moving quickly.”

New blog site soon

2009-04-14T19:32:00.000-07:00

I'm going to keep this blog as mainly jiu jitsu stuff but I feel compelled to write more about other subjects. Being a big Bukowski fan I'm looking to do my own version of "Women" so be ready... ;)
more to come and I'll finish up on the latest stuff I'm working on in training: "The Axl Rose"

Coaching thoughts from the weekend's tournament

2009-04-12T19:23:00.000-07:00

There was a jiu jitsu tournament here in Austin this weekend. I went with the goal of coaching as many of my teammates as I could and to lose my voice. I guess I achieved both goals.

Watching those matches reminded me of when I first moved here almost three years ago. The second day I started training with my instructor, I tore the meniscus in my left knee. I couldn’t train for three months and I ended up needing surgery on it, but I can firmly say it was the best thing to ever happen to my jiu jitsu.

The injury forced me to watch and to study the game really for the first time. I’d been in jiu jitsu for a long time already at that point. I was a purple belt and thought I knew some things. Usually when I’d gotten hurt before I just wouldn’t go until I was better.

This time was different. I went to almost every class, usually twice a day, six days a week. I was finding a home in a new city and starting to study and try to really learn something I’d been vaguely familiar with for a long time.

I started to realize how little I knew about jiu jitsu. I might be able to do a certain amount, but if I saw two people grappling, half the time I couldn’t tell you what they were going to do next, or what they were trying to do or what they should do.

So I started to try to figure this out. I started trying to predict what one guy would do next. Then I’d switch people. Other times I’d try to figure out what I would do and see if it was the same thing.

By the time I came back I felt I knew more but more importantly I realized how much there was to learn. It wasn’t going to become a matter of “getting it” one day, it was simply going to be a slow steady walk towards a mirage in the desert. And once I was okay with that, the walk became a lot more enjoyable.

So lately I’ve started to vocalize some of these observations and patterns by working on becoming an effective coach. I want to be able to say the right thing at the right time and to be as specific but simple as possible. What’s been good about this is there’s immediate feedback when my training partner tries what I say and I can see if it actually works.

I still have a lifetime to go as a practitioner and teacher but this weekend was a good test for me as I helped coach at least 25 matches. I know some of our guys’ games pretty well, but others I realized still how little I know and understand about their habits, patterns, strengths and weaknesses. I’m still a long way from being someone who really sees what everyone else just watches. There are still definitely a lot of situations that I don’t have answers for. I still have just a small fraction of understanding of this game.

I realize that I’m also going to really need to start studying wrestling and judo more as I really don’t have much advice to give standing up other than “pull guard”. I know most people I train with don’t practice their standup grappling much and I’m not sure if that’s going to change, but I feel incomplete in my own knowledge when I don’t know at least some basic grip fighting as well as wrestling tie ups and how they lead into takedowns.

I was proud of my teammates, but feel I need to study other people more carefully than I’ve been doing so far. Lately it’s been all about what I need to do to get better but I’m shortchanging everyone and probably myself by not really observing my teammates.

Overall I thought the tournament was run fairly smoothly and while there were some officiating calls I didn’t agree with, I don’t think any of them affected the outcome of the matches I saw. I'm never going to love jiu jitsu tournaments, but I learned a lot and am glad I went.

more tweaking

2009-04-07T14:40:00.001-07:00

Rolled with JC today. He’s always tough and is always working on new things. Today he was doing a lot of sitting up guard grabbing a single. I worked a few guillotines for control, but forgot about driving my knee into his sternum the way Ethan did long ago. That’s a really good control point and it seems to work almost like knee on stomach from the side except it’s on top. But I remembered all of that afterwards so I kept getting swept ;)

I’m noticing that the “bike” technique seems to work even if they hug the legs. It’s almost like someone trying not to slide down a cliff and running with their butt on the ground. For so long I used to try to get both legs out at once but this doesn’t really make sense to me now. If my legs were stuck in the mud would I try to run out or jump out with both?

Even if I don’t get the legs out at once I just keeping peddling the bike and it seems very difficult for the person to hold. I’m almost worried my knee is going to smack them in the chin.

Still need more tweaking on the sitting up guard. Definitely like having the down leg for them to push on as I can shift my hips and start to work the arm drag. But realized today once I get the drag I need to shift my hips again and work the hook sweep assuming my hooks are still in and with everything being this close and controlled they usually are. Otherwise, I’m running into the same problem I did last week where I have no structure behind me and now am using strength to hold or advance the position which tires me out quickly.

Starting to see that knee on stomach could become a real weapon for me. Cupping the elbow and switching to elbow on stomach is a good back and forth as well. This may start really baiting them into getting their arms across their body

Again I need to search for ways to continue the concept of using position to limit their options and make them want to move. Knee on stomach, especially up to their sternum seems like a good option on top but the should be options on position from every position to make that scenario happen. I haven’t figured them out in as much depth yet but I think the principle is sound.

45 degree angles, ab wheels and recumbent bikes

2009-04-06T21:03:00.000-07:00

4/5/09
Took a few more days off and got some much needed rest. Worked with my buddy T today on more of the recumbent bike/ ab wheel concept. Definitely like where it’s headed but he presented some new challenges that I’ll need to address.

The first area is when he crosses my legs over my centerline. At times it felt like I should just go in that direction and roll all the way through. At other times it felt like I should use his pushing momentum to plant my other foot and change the angle of my hips. And other times I thought I should use the momentum to stiff arm him and change the angle with my upper body rather than my lower.

In any case, the principal is the same with each situation: keep my hips lined up with him and my whole body lined up with itself.
All this stuff is still in the lab stage but what I like about the feedback so far is when it doesn’t work, it feels wrong. And it usually feels that way first. This is a nice feedback mechanism as it really makes me realize every time I tense up, I’m taking the wrong path.

While the “bike” techniques work well, the other thing I’m noticing that it makes my opponent open up his neck as he instinctually wants to keep his head up to try to regain his base. This makes the guillotine a good option for attacks or as a distraction to get him to grab your arm and thus making it easier to get a sweep.

The one thing I’m going to really need to worry about is him trapping my straight leg in half guard and working towards a knee bar. However at the same time having the other knee bent and ready to straighten it seems like it may be hard for him to get the necessary control. Still I could feel that it might be there at times.

The next thing I noticed is that once people become wise to the fact that it is hard for them to pin the legs they tend to hold the legs but not put weight on them. It might be a good time to break the grip and sit up. But at the same time they might use that as bait and when I start to reach for their hand they could pull my leg out to the side and spin me. I’m not entirely sure if that would work but sitting here thinking about it, it seems like a possibility.

DS should be healthy soon and will bring a whole new painful level of learning to what I’m doing. I’m confident in the principals of this but still when the angles become more 45 degrees and the opponent going from side to side that could be a problem.

That being said I’m convinced if his base is disrupted right from the beginning, he shouldn’t be able to push off to move to the next side.

More and more I’m seeing both the opportunities and importance of always changing angles before someone really establishes a base, pin and control. And I’m seeing this quite a bit from half guard as well. I’m starting to picture that position to be mainly transitional in nature when it becomes disrupting his base, then going for a sweep, triangle, taking the back etc.

I’m also interested in the idea of trying to get as many arm lock attacks as possible on 45 degree angles over the opponent’s shoulder.

I’m finding that from closed guard the regular pendulum sweep works much better if I focus on going over their far shoulder rather than to their side. But also I’m seeing that going over the shoulder makes the person naturally want to put that shoulder side hand out to prevent themselves from falling over.

It’s like trying to fall or roll onto your chest from your knees without using your hands. Very few people can do it at first as you just want and feel like you have to put that hand out.

So taking that reaction into account if I really secure the arm and keep the angle over their shoulder, they naturally want to post to prevent their head from smacking into the ground. But when they post, that hand can’t be used to help defend the armbar on the trapped arm.

And I’m also finding that once I get that position it’s a matter of focusing on my alignment, so I keep the arm secure and get my knees and hips in line. Usually it means almost backing my body away. This puts me at a stronger angle as my legs are lined up and a little straighter.
For the opponent it pushes his head into the mat. If he rolls to relieve the pressure, it straightens his arm even more. If he tries to roll in he’s using rotational power against my leg press so the odds are probably in my favor on that.

This is making me really want to explore the concept more of getting a good 45 degree angle myself then line up my body from there and see what offense results.

One of my training partners did this last week when he had my arm across from his closed guard. My hand was clamped in his armpit and the control was really impressive. I think if he’d have kept that control and lined his body up with my arms some really interesting attacks would have resulted.

Much to learn and much to mess with as always.

Tunnel Vision

2009-04-02T16:08:00.001-07:00

Felt like today I zoomed in too much on getting my head position and not enough about feeling where my training partners weight was etc. The result was a lot of energy and forced techniques.
I failed to really look at the whole picture. It’s not just where my head is in relation to his, it’s also about lining up the rest of my body and acknowledging where his weight is.

As a result I was pushing almost across my body instead of through my centerline. And I had no support from my legs as the leg “behind” my head had its outside on the ground. I had no base behind the direction I was pushing. I should have shifted my hips over to my head would be “supported” by a foot on the ground.

The result was I had to really strain to hold position and set up a guard, as I needed to use muscular force since I had no structure backing it.

Now my training partner is a super tough and talented guy, but I knew something way wrong. I was tired in the wrong way. I discussed this with M as I always like to pick his brain on these things and we figured that in this situation I need to either “head drag” the opponent to get his head on the other side.

Or I could readjust my posture so that it makes him want to move.

I guess this brings the different schools of thought where some argue you should figure out a bunch of different setups for a few techniques or whether you should have techniques for whatever the situation presents itself.

In this case I think setting myself up in proper alignment right from the beginning is optimal.

Granted the head drag or maybe popping to a guillotine has its place but the more I can get to the root of problems rather than chasing the symptoms, the better.

What if the submission and position are really the same thing?

2009-04-01T19:15:00.001-07:00

I was taught years ago that you should always get position first and then work on the submission. And while I think I understood and somewhat understand the philosophy behind that, I always had difficulty making it work. It seemed like it became a battle to hold mount or sidemount while not daring to go for a submission for fear of losing position and having to “start over again”.

Well a while back I began to think that maybe the opposite was true. Maybe if you went for the submission then that could lead to the position. Maybe going for the Americana in half guard would make the pass that much easier.

But lately I’m wondering if they’re both right and really maybe the same thing. I was thinking about this today when I was working a triangle against a really talented student. My goal was to hold the figure four with my legs while slowly increasing the pressure and limiting his options for moving.

Any time he tried to stack I walked back on my shoulders. When he tried to pass I kept his outside elbow up. So I’m thinking that this philosophy doesn’t just apply to submissions, at least not how I’ve been looking at things lately.

I’ve been working on my sitting guard quite a bit these days. Through leg position, head placement and just the overall concept of structure I’m trying to put my body in a strong and versatile position. What I’m noticing is that by doing this I’m limiting the directions they can comfortably move.

Knowing this I can start to feel where they’re vulnerable as they’re moving in those now limited directions. The movement sets up new opportunities for attack. And in my mind, that’s really what a submission is. It controls the opponent and limits his mobility and more importantly, his options. And as these options become more and more dangerous (i.e. a chain of submissions) eventually the tap is the inevitable outcome.

I think that if I can find ways to apply this to almost every position where I limit the opponents’ movement options and then begin my attacks, somewhat knowing which ways he can and will go, then it simply becomes a matter of figuring out how to set up this structure concept to begin with.

So this then becomes both the goal of the position and the submission and in many ways the two are interchangeable.

Now it could be that I’m just truly beginning to understand what is meant by position first, but to me if the idea is to continually limit the opponent’s options, this is a more amorphous idea that can and should be constantly adjusted. The idea of “holding position” to me feels like a fear inducing idea where if you “lose position” then you’ve backtracked.

For me that just feels too linear and ultimately limited. I need to focus on steps to take rather than things to avoid.

So I’m excited to see whether this thought process can be fully applied. As I wrote earlier, I think my side mount could be a great position to try this out with as my attacks are pretty non-existent there so I can build from the ground up.

Offhand I’m thinking that chin control and baiting them into pushing their arm across their centerline might be a good start. I look forward to experimenting with this and having my training partners’ and instructor’s input as well.

Opening up a new can of worms

2009-03-28T18:36:00.000-07:00

It was a mixed bag today as I feel I made some good progress this week but realized I’ve only begun to reexamine everything that needs reexamining and frankly have only examined things from the bottom in general lately.

It was one of those days that I felt like I shouldn’t train and ended up doing it anyway. Went against E and KT both of whom are super tough and very difficult to control in any position. This was a good test for some of the new theories I’m working on.

My conclusion so far is the new stuff works but reveals how much I need to analyze the rest of my game. My side control, especially from no gi is rudimentary at best. There are no real attacks and I’m always looking to mount or bait them onto their knees. With both of those guys and many others, this is definitely not a smart and energy conserving style on my part.

I was very tired after the training and really feel it was only the new open guard stuff I’ve been working on that allowed me to survive at all. Part of this may be my need to try to pass guard quickly. Sometimes I’m most likely rushing and they’re waiting until right when I pass then boom! they scramble. I may need to hang out in half guard a little bit more and cook them.

The other thing I’m thinking is to continue to apply the concept of making them constantly react and be catching up. I probably need to add more knee on stomach then switching to wrong knee to exhaust them a little.

The next idea is to keep them twisted in side control. I wasn’t using enough shoulder pressure on the chin to really prevent them from turning in. I think if I continue to focus on head/chin control and hip control I can become more effective in these positions. I’m just realizing how much of my game is predicated on them coming to their side, be it to D’Arce them or spin to their back.

Another idea is the triple attack or Hughes/Newton position. This is a great attack that I’ve all but ignored.

With all of this I want to start getting the feeling from side mount that I do when I have them in certain sitting guard positions where they have few options to move to and none of them are good. Right now I’m simply not doing that and it’s leaving me exhausted to get to the back or the mount where I do have that control.

I need to put together some drills and sequences to address this weakness. Thinking about it, I’m actually much better with the gi in this position, whereas almost everywhere else I still think I’m better no gi. I normally don't buy into the argument that the no gi game is faster etc. but it felt that way today and not in a good way to me.

I also think things like the Rigan twister and anything going around north/south would be good option to deal with the bucking bull syndrome.

Definitely an eye opening experience today as there’s a lot of work to be done.

Taking years to learn the obvious ;)

2009-03-27T19:15:00.000-07:00

This week has really solidified a lot of principals that have been floating around in my head for a long time. Some injuries have kept me from rolling that much, but I’ve been doing some drills and light training and just really feel like I see a more complete picture on a lot of things I have always struggled with.

I trained with my instructor last night and today and was literally doing almost everything wrong. Now it might not be wrong in the sense that they were the wrong attacks or the wrong ideas, but they weren’t being executed well enough to work on a high level opponent. He was nice enough to hit the rewind button and fix the little details.

Looking back I realize some of these flaws have been with me for as long as I’ve been training and I never realized it. I saw the symptoms, which were me losing position or having to scramble, but never saw the real root of the problem. At this point most of my energies are devoted to dealing with real problem roots rather than the endless variations of the symptoms that they present.

Let’s take dealing with the x-pass from the bottom as an example:

I’d never really analyzed the root problem, which is me not controlling them in the first place. I’d tried speed and timing with things like arm drags which work sometimes until people got wise to them. This was completely reliant on the surprise factor and I had no structure backing up if the arm drag didn’t work or if I dragged them but they flopped over. It was all or nothing.
I also started working some d’Arce chokes from the bottom, which again were effective at times but also failed half the time. Sometimes there was a sweep from that position as well, but once again it was a sniper shot and I only had one bullet.

So for a long time the pin and pass has been the bane of my existence. While my long legs really help with certain attacks, many times once someone pinned them down I was essentially done for.

Once they got past my arm drag and D’Arce gimmicks, I’d simply have to scramble and not let them set in the pin. With guys bigger and stronger, this was always a painful process as the inevitable tree falling on my head was never pleasant and the more tired I was, the more this would just make me want to quit.

These past few weeks, common sense finally reared its head and I started thinking about how the x-pass is described: pin and pass. And I had the profound revelation of maybe if:

A) I prevent or disrupt their pin

And

B) I prevent or stop the actual motion of the pass

They won’t be able to pin and pass.

So for the pin part, I’m working on them having nothing stable to base on. It’s hard to do pushups on a stability ball. If they push on two bent knees what would happen if I straightened one leg? Or if I changed the angle of my knees so they go from their wrists lined up with their shoulder to wrists over their shoulder? (I’m calling this the ab wheel concept)

Even if they do get the pin they still need to pass. With their hands pinning my knees their head is within reach. If my head starts driving into their chin, their motivation to keep moving in that direction decreases. If at the same time I’m pulling their far elbow out they’ve lost their structure. I can also use this to help pivot myself around so now they’re dragging me as the attempt to pass.

From here, they will most likely switch directions, and that’s the time for the arm drag as now the timing is correct and I have the structure to back it up as well. They are closer and my head is on the same side of the arm I’m dragging which gives me much more control of their body as they’re not going to collapse far away and I’m halfway to their back or a takedown. This is what I mean by structure: my body’s in the right place to take advantage of them being off balance so I’m advancing while they’re adjusting.

Before I had timing and sensitivity but no structure. It took just a moment of my opponent breaking one of them and I’d have to use speed or flexibility, neither of which I have enough to compensate against someone big enough and strong enough.

Now this system is using structure to limit and inhibit their motion. This allows the timing and sensitivity to really be utilized because I have control over them as well.
I’m not sure if this makes sense to anyone at this point. I’m still experimenting and keeping this in the lab for now, but I see the light on this one.

BJJ 3/24/09

2009-03-24T15:58:00.000-07:00

Rolled with a new student and my instructor today. With the new student wanted to work some different controls. One was from the closed guard keeping his right arm across his body and blocking it with my hip. I wanted to feel exactly where my hip needs to be in order to control the position. It felt like as long as my left foot was pushing against his right hip and my right hip blocked his elbow, it would be difficult for him to get his arm out.

The next position I wanted to work on was cross body armlock control. Years ago I believed that grabbing the guys leg was the key to controlling him. So if I’m armlocking his right arm, I’d want to grab his right leg with my right arm. While this does make it hard for him to sit up or bridge over his shoulder and roll out, it’s also pretty tough to break the grip. The bicep crush has always been tough with my long legs and unless I can get a foot on his bicep, I used to spend a lot of energy trying to break the grip.

These days I’m much more about pulling his arm aboive his head and twisting it as basically it’s my whole body against his internal rotator cuff. But the dilemma is how to control the guy. More and more I’m thinking it’s his far arm and shoulder that’s the key. So today I was alternately cupping and pressing his left elbow. This really seems to limit his mobility and weaken his grip at the same time. I’ll need to play around more with that.

Working with my instructor is always very helpful and humbling. I’m still really enjoying the sitting guard with proper head placement. Got an underhook with my left arm and he immediately started to armpit Americana it. Foolishly I persisted with the sweep anyway. Really in that case I should acknowledge and defend the attack first, which in this case would be headlocking his wrist. That leads to a sweep in the other direction.

I also had a hint that the pin escapes I learned could really work as I did see some space when I rolled my hips away and punched, but I didn’t base properly with my far arm and even if I did, I won’t be able to pull off that move on him. I do really need to drill those more or put myself in that situation with someone a little smaller to start getting the proper feel and timing.
I still have little ideas on how to maintain standing posture without risking my arms. Once he gets a grip I’m done for. It makes me see that I need to start doing that attack myself in open guard but maybe I should try to slide my knee through to half guard.

Also realized the importance of rolling to my stomach on straight ankle locks and also trying to control the same side arm that you’re ankle locking. This makes it much easier to get them over as now they have nothing to base on.

Things done well

1) Closed guard control
a. I felt like the arm across the stomach, taking their back option is really something that could work for me. I think the set up is coming along pretty well and today was about the mid point control. The next step is to work on shift around the corner.
b. Did bait him into stepping over my leg which made getting the back even easier. Learned that by watching Renner teach it.

2) Ab wheel
a. The drilling on this is paying off as I’m scooting out and changing my hip angle as soon as they grab my knees.

3) Changing hip angle from sitting.
a. If they start trying to go around my hook side I can switch hip angles and work and armdrag. It’s much more controlled than they type I was doing before and my leg can go to the inside or it can transfer to x guard pretty easily.

Things to work on
1) Pin escape drills
a. I see the light but I need to practice more.

2) Straight ankle locks
a. I want to develop the same sense of control that I have with the cross body arm lock. Have some decent set ups but the finish, especially rotating to my stomach, needs work

3) Taking the blinders off
a. Still catching myself going for the attack I intended rather than acknowledging what’s there.

3/23/09 bjj training notes

2009-03-23T14:44:00.000-07:00

Had a good session with T and M today. Both are super tough and present some very interesting challenges. With T it’s constantly looking out for his knee bars from the bottom of half guard as well as his reverse triangle. M just has such an innovative game and any moment I feel aggressive it ends up with me flailing around, burning energy and getting nowhere.

Really finding a home with the sword guard with my head next to theirs. It really limits their passing options and gives me many opportunities to sweep and arm drag.

Having some troubles finishing triangles as they are almost falling on their back and using that to create some space and escape. I may need to get back to basics with grabbing my own shin and having my other foot on their hip.

Also still getting stacked in triangles and that would be a solution as well to keep that control and spare my neck.

Only went inverted once on what ended up being a transitional move. I think that’s okay as it’s when I sit there that I get stacked or dragged and that is just no longer worth it.

Things done well
1) Sitting guard. Head position and keeping in ball make hook sweeps, x guard and arm drags very accessible. The head position also makes any sort of pin and pass very difficult as my head’s in the way and it makes them want to back up.

2) Triangle set ups. Got some wrist control from closed guard as well as a simple popping the hips up from open. Was not able to finish which needs to be broken down and analyzed.

3) Ezekiel choke. This is turning into a good distraction from bottom and finish/ armbar setup from the top. Also good in closed guard when they have a hand on the mat.

4) Feet on hips. Not as much today but this control, awareness and mobility is allowing me to get omoplatas without pulling on my foot at all which is a big plus

Things to work on

1) Getting an angle on mount attacks.
a. I’m too straight on when going for collar chokes, armlocks etc. and this is allowing them better defense. Really need to remember the fundamental of sliding into “S mount” with knee by head on opposite side of where I’m initially grabbing the collar. Much harder to get rolled that way and it also misaligns their body and allows me to work chokes sliding into armlocks.

2) Getting the over under too quickly in back attacks.
a. I didn’t break down T’s hips at a 45 degree angle and instead held the over/under with no hip control. It limited my control and allowed him to roll underneath. Wrestlers would most likely use it to throw me over their shoulders as well. Either way there’s no control. Hip controls first, then torso, especially if they’re bigger.

3) Triangle finishes
a. It feels like all the principles I’ve been thinking about in open guard suddenly go out the window with the triangle. As a result they’re throwing their legs over, falling over and stacking me while I just desperately hold onto the figure four for dear life. I need to continue the mindset of off balancing and attacking. The arm that’s outside can be elbow locked, kimura’d or Segaled. I can hook the leg and work the sweep. Or shoulder shimmy back causing them to ab wheel.

4) Armlock from triangle
a. First off I need to remember that I can use this finish as many of the times when the triangle isn’t there, this is.
b. Second when it ends up being a cross body armlock position, I need to secure the arm and grab my collar, but I also need to either push away their far leg or hook the near leg and grab the far foot. M was able to throw his leg over my head and counter my triangle with one of his own. My own arm that was trapping his felt like it was going to break if I moved the wrong way, which made me panic. This leads to…

5) Composure.
a. This always comes and goes but while today was decent, there was still moments of panic. I actually feel that this more structure oriented game I’m working on helps as it’s more efficient and doesn’t rely on me moving faster than the opponent. If I can move faster than a bigger opponent in the past I would be discouraged.
b. I still felt, even when mounted on T that I was rushing my attacks. The pace was fast but not as precise as it needed to be. Working on angling off might be a good step to keep my head clear.

training to be sensitive

2009-03-21T16:41:00.000-07:00

3/19/09-3/21/09

I’ve been reading about Rickson’s seminars that he’s been giving where he shows concepts and details from every position that help make every move as efficient as possible. I am always looking to do that in all of my jiu jitsu and by extension, all of my life.

As I get older, this idea that I am taking the straightest smartest path becomes more and more important. So with that said, how do I go about doing that?

One thing that feels increasingly important is drilling. Now when I say drilling I mean it in several ways.

First off, I’m seeing that just doing straight reps on a technique is important. As boring and annoying as it can be, things like doing perfect armlocks, wrist control from triangles are important as the more I drill them, the more I see the opportunity when rolling live.

The other type I really think is effective is positional training. Often times this is done by starting from a position like the guard and working through attacks or various things. Now sometimes this works well to just start from a position and basically just go wherever the match takes you. I think this can be good as it keeps the sense of realism.

What I mean by this is it’s important to keep the flow of the game as a whole in mind. If I only drill side mount escapes and don’t realize that my escapes lead to giving up my back, or to a submission then I haven’t looked at the bigger picture.

But on the other hand, if the whole picture is only looked at then the finer details are missing also. So sometimes it’s good to just work on a sidemount escape and once you escape, go back to that position and work out of there again.

But lately I’m working on fine-tuning that as well. It’s almost as if I’m working on the idea of having a remote control. I want to put things on “pause” or even “rewind” when certain things happen. I want to slow things down and see what my best option is at each moment.

I’ve been able to feel things like this for the first time with certain training partners that I’ve never noticed before. Many times I would cover moving in the wrong way with scrambling, strength, flexibility or simply lose the advantage. It’s a painstaking approach but I remember long ago when I used to play music if I got to a difficult spot, I’d slow it down over and over until I got it. For me getting it really involves feeling it.

Sometimes it will take an entire training session to just get the right sensitivity for a move. But I’ve found it’s well worth it as even if I haven’t trained for a while I find the sensitivity remains there.

For me not training for a while really shows me how good my technique is. If I find myself scrambling and out of breathe, it often means that the gaps in my techniques are being covered up by my scrambling or other attributes. I can also tell when I feel myself tensing up too hard and/or holding my breathe.

While I still think sparring is the best litmus test to tell about progress, a lot of this training, especially the remote control sensitivity type is the best way to make that progress. The sparring is a way to check on it and figure out what else needs to be worked on.

techniques between techniques

2009-03-17T16:07:00.001-07:00

Rolled with DS in the afternoon session. We went slow and he was being nice;) We mainly drilled open guard work where I was working on the “ab wheel” concept of never giving him a steady platform to pin and pass with. My legs getting pinned and passed is definitely the weakest part of my game and this was the beginning of some answers.

Today (3/17) went over some of the ideas from yesterday with my instructor. He showed me some similar ideas that were more based on the idea that they can’t pin down both legs at once and pass so you can always bend one or circle it around and realign your hips with theirs.

In addition to this he showed me that it’s important to find the 90 degree angle with my close arm on his shoulder or whatever is there. The back arm should be working on breaking his grip or pulling his elbow out.

The techniques I’d been working on I think still have some effectiveness but he pointed out that they also involve being quicker than the other guy rather than beating him by structure and alignment.

Seeing that little things like Americanas from the bottom are a great distraction and possibly even a sweep. It seems like the key is to just know when to hold em and when to fold em on that as if you hold too long, he can counter with a better submission, but the initial submission attempt from the bottom of side mount etc. does get them to react.

My instructor also showed me how positioning my head next to theirs on the side that they want to go prevents them from being able to complete the pass and gives me a chance to attack.

I feel like these little details are going to help me stay ahead of the game and give me the confidence to constantly dictate the pace and attack.

Coffee- Part One

2009-03-15T21:42:00.000-07:00

Like all good drug stories this one begins with a girl. She was tall, blond and beautiful but bridged the gap between prom queen and indie rock goddess. The place was Delaware and the year was 1992.

I was 17 and despite a pretty shaky start in high school in terms of height, coolness and fashion sense I had somehow pulled it together well enough to get this girl, at least for a little while.
Graduation was looming in the near horizon and I had already determined I was going to go as far away from Delaware as possible to the biggest city I could find. But there was still one thing Delaware would introduce me to before we parted ways: coffee.

Now I grew up in a coffee-drinking household. My Mom still faithfully has two cups a day and I remember trying it when I was a kid. It was beyond my comprehension how anyone could drink this fowl, dark bitter madness. But a pretty girl can make a young man reconsider a lot of things
So on one cool spring morning the girl and I ditched school and found ourselves in one of the only options to get a quick hit of coffee at the time: 7/11.

While I was first resistant, she assured me that with enough creamers and sugar it tasted great. I think I must have put in 5 or 6 creamers and just as many sugars until the whole substance was a light beige color. I brought it towards my lips and hoped it was at least palatable enough for me to pretend to enjoy it. I didn’t want to disappoint this girl.
I took a sip.

From that Styrofoam cup I first tasted the silky smooth and sweet flavor mixed in with a strong full burst of hot liquid that I would come to know so well. I drank it up eagerly, savoring the taste and breathing in the smell. I couldn’t believe this was the same glorious liquid that I had rejected so many years. My Mom had an insight that I was only beginning to discover.
But it wasn’t just the taste of the coffee that intrigued me. Soon I noticed another effect. There was suddenly a wave of flushed energy in my face as I felt the source of coffee’s power fully kick in.

This was my first experience with caffeine. I remember having this nervous, excited and hopeful feeling, but didn’t think much of it at the time, figuring the girl, ditching school and heading to Los Angeles would make any young man feel this way.
It was only when all those things changed that I realized it was the coffee, not where I was that mattered.

Part two:
Coffee and the lonely college years

Garage training days – rerevisited

2009-03-15T21:41:00.000-07:00

Trained in a garage today for the first time since the days with Sean and Judo Marc years ago. Had a few things I wanted to work on, most of which came together eventually but I struggled with at first.

Was happy that even though, in my mind, I only wanted to work on mainly arm bar from the closed guard and combining that with getting the arm and taking the back along with sweeps that appear when the resist.

At first really have having problems getting the proper control in closed guard. While some of that is indeed related to keeping their head down, but if I grab the wrist and elbow, pop my hips up and shift the arm over my center line then I’m off to the right start. What I kept missing was getting that same side foot on the hip. My leg was tight and it might have even appeared that it was touching the hip but I was actually a little too close. Towards the end of the training I would actually push with my hand for a moment just to move back a tiny bit. It felt pretty tight once I could get that far in the game.

Feet on the hips is great control and I need to continue to incorporate but I’m glad that I could actually identify a problem and make an adjustment from there. Would like to start taking the back more from the basic armlock position but seems like they usually lean in which makes the sweep to the side they’re pushing in the best option.

Don’t feel I did well in terms of working distractions and position advantage. Not seeing what the distractions are in certain moments, but at the same time that just may mean the technique is already there for me to just take. It needs work though but I definitely think I’m still on the right track with that.

R also came by and showed some really interesting control positions within the guard and explained the concept of controlling the hips from inside the guard. It was very subtle and interesting what he was doing to really pin the hips down to prevent triangles and other things from happening even though it looked like he’d be vulnerable to that.

I’m looking to add more details to my game like that as it really enhances overall calmness to have those specific details to shoot for rather be in a spot between positions where the only mindset is scrambling.

3/14/09 - the lightbulb just went "bing"

2009-03-14T16:27:00.000-07:00

Rolled with M today the whole time. On the drive over I was dreading the training. My mindset was simply whoever grabbed a hold of me would only have a countdown until they crushed me. I kept trying to think of anything I could do and nothing was coming to mind. All I could think of was defense I knew wouldn’t work. It was as if everything I knew had disappeared from my mind. I knew my new strategy had to be centered around attacking but what that meant had stopped making sense to me after I’d overanalyzed it to death.

But then I started thinking about my sessions with M and how whenever I tried to just plow through his defenses I felt a combination of annoyed, tired and frustrated. I started realizing I need to make other people, especially the more athletic, faster, bigger younger ones, feel that way as well. And thinking about that further the frustration came from his unique defenses, often involving shielding his arms from kimuras and Americanas by grabbing his own thigh. This often throws off the attackers angle enough for it to be ineffective but not so much that most people realize it. They think that if they just put a little extra squeeze on it, then they’ll get it.

The other element was unique attacks from positions where you’re not technically supposed to attack. I’m talking about ezekial chokes from the bottom of sidemount or kimura variations when you have his back. They can annoy the attacker because they shouldn’t work but if you sit there, they will. So now rather than attacking in a dominant position you’re defending and even more importantly: you have to move.

Despite these strong pluses for incorporating these things into my game I’ve been hesitant. I started working things like this maybe 8 months ago and while it was very effective, I got so carried away in always looking for submissions, that I would let my self get swept or passed and never really advanced position.

But today after our session I realized that there is definitely a way to combine the two mentalities because when the training partner is annoyed and having to move either another submission becomes available or you can advance position. Once I started seeing this, the light really went off in my head.

It’s very similar to what Robert Drysdale explained in his no gi series about how once he started going for a submission the position became there. I think this can work for gi and no gi.

The most important thing for me in this is how it changes my mentality. Rather than worrying about someone passing, I’m now working on attacks and putting my body in the position to make that happen. Them not being able to pass is a nice side effect rather than the goal in my head. I find that having a goal to do rather than something to avoid. Negativity is not specific. Attacks are specific even more so than a position at times. Not sure if this makes sense to anyone but it’s making sense to me at the moment.

Hopefully the story will be the same tomorrow ;)

3/10/09 - class thoughts

2009-03-11T21:20:00.001-07:00

Taught class and did some ideas and brainstorming on dealing with the x-pass. J, one of the really good blue belts I know had a great tactic he showed me where he lifts his butt up to get hip mobility even if they’re pinning the legs. This worked really well to change my hip angle or just to push myself back. M also had some really cool distractions and innovations that turned my mind back into the mode of reacting first and attacking first.

In addition, I’m working on the time of moving my legs away from them right when they’re putting they’re full weight to pin the legs. It’s a very similar feel and timing to a regular arm drag and make the guy on top feel like he’s getting to the hard part of an “ab wheel” exercise.

I’m going to need to work on this over and over but I think just getting that initial jump on the other guy can lead to arm dragging them, popping out into a front head lock or going to inverted guard.

Speaking of which, I’m beginning to think inverted guard is doing me more harm than good. No matter how much posture work I’m doing my neck constantly feels jacked and my mid back is so tight my chiropractor can’t even adjust it now. Thinking down the road it may be time to let this go the way of rubber guard and other things that my body just isn’t compatible with.

I think the more I drill sensitivity things like the x pass disruption and the more I focus on aligning my body by using the timing that sensitivity will develop, the better. I was never very fast or very strong and the flexibility I have is starting to hurt me.

I think another piece of the puzzle is it’s time to bear down and gain some weight. I’m pretty much outweighed by 80% of my training partners and the wear and tear is starting to get to me. I’ve hired the secret weapon at our school to change that though ;)

video analysis

2009-03-10T20:44:00.000-07:00

these are for the following two videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0yXyYcA8wo
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HChn8u9IdY

After watching two videos of my instructor and me rolling, I’m going to put down my thoughts as my memory fairly blurred about what happened. At first the video made me cringe as I think I look super goofy and really sloppy but I’ll try to move past that and at least figure out what I was attempting to do and should have done. I’ll also try to figure out what he was doing and why.

I have to preface this with the fact that even when I’m doing something “right” it is only because he’s letting me. There is no illusion in my head that he could not finish me at any moment. The difference in technical skill and his insight into my thought process alone is enough for him to win every time.

We start off in butterfly guard. William has right collar control with his right hand and right sleeve control with his left hand. He’s on his left side with a right hook in. I’m trying to keep his hook down with my left hand and whip my left leg out and over to pass.

I raise up to get better balance which is probably a mistake. Will starts pulling my collar more and checking my base. I probably should have sunk my hips down here as I’ve already tipped my hand and by trying to go for the pass when my left leg is light will most likely just get me swept….

Which is what happens next but Will decdides to pivort his body and immediately attack the legs or so I think but really it looks like he just makes me want to think that so I immediately start to worry about the leg lock which means I’m now on my butt.

He puts his right knee up in combat base. I get right collar control with my right hand and right heel control with my left. My left leg is weaving into De La Riva position. My right foot at first is in a butterfly position which I probably doesn’t make any sense but he was controlling it pretty well. I transition to pushing his right shoulder back as a sloppy sweep which he decides to let me have so he can immediately start a leg attack when I’m coming up.

My right leg is too high and I’m not controlling his hips as I come up. Also he already has his right hook in. Since my weight is on my left leg he can easily hook my right and set me up for an x-guard sweep or Zapruder leg lock.

He gets the Zapruder position and partly gets the sweep as well but we’re at a weird angle and my right hip is on the ground. My defense here is to push his knees together which he lets me do as I could have and should have been tapped here.

As I push the knees together my right leg slides out and somehow ends up under his arm. Again, I’ll bet dollars to donuts that he did this intentionally knowing that the triangle is probably my best move but still has flaws in my finishes.

I try to secure the triangle and keep shin control to keep his head down. He shrugs his shoulder, which makes it very difficult to lock the triangle in. I could have straightened my left and gripped my right foot to get it more into place but knew I wasn’t going to get the triangle even if I did that.

Now technically when he started passing I could stiff arm his left shoulder with my right hand. Or try to push his left elbow out and “Steven Seagal” him over. But after really looking at the tape, he gets his left arm straight pretty quickly. Still I should have at least tried that and not sure why I didn’t. The other option would be to give up on the triangle a little sooner, push away with my legs the roll over my shoulder.

Once he passes I want to prevent him from controlling my head. I keep holding his other arm hoping I can either spring back to a triangle or get a shin or foot on bicep and either go to inverted guard or create space and go back to regular guard. I guess there’s also the option of turning away from him and trying the Saulo “running escape” but I feel like he’d easily get my back from there.

His hips are over mine so I’m essentially just flailing like a fish and wasting energy there. He switches to modified scarf hold here.

I try to create some space and point his head away by grabbing his right collar and pushing it under his neck to misalign his posture. But my left arm doesn’t get straight so I have little power from here. Really I should push his chin up and back but I doubt that would have worked and that’s somewhat bad grappling etiquette and in my mind when someone’s kicking your ass, you should be nice to them, because it could always be worse.

Will ends up switching to regular side mount and again I’m focused on not letting my head be controlled. I’m trying to bridge all the way onto my knees controlling his left sleeve with my left hand then quickly reverse if he pushes in.

I’m doing several things wrong. My left foot is not aligned with my knee or hip so I’m losing power in my bridge. My right foot is in the air, which also robs me of power. Also this move is probably done better by switching my hips first rather than trying to bridge first. But he was nice and left his right leg out for me to get in half guard.

Will’s basing on both hand and his head so his hips are in the air. I decide to invert underneath in that space. I probably could have tried to pull in for a single or do an electric chair sweep but the invert is what seemed to feel right. Problem is I’m not sure even looking at it what I’d be inverting too. I might be able to spin around his leg into a cross ankle lock/inside heel hook position. I must have realized I had nothing halfway through and started to just try to work a regular inverted guard.

Will was too far back for it to be effective so I went back to sitting guard. I make the mistake of having no real attack here. I’m not controlling his head or trying to push his shoulder back or anything. I’m somewhat thinking armdrag but knowing that he knows that and will blow through my guard if I do that so I’m hesitating. Well what did Patrick Swayze say about hesitation? He blows right by my guard.

I accept this and let him put his weight on me which is a big mistake but it still would have happened whether I accepted it or not ;) Again I’m trying to prevent head control and walking back so his weight is over my hips rather than my chest. My hips and legs are not doing enough here. I wonder if I need to walk in or walk away at times to change that angle. Bridging and shrimping don’t feel like they’d work.

Again I make the same mistake of not getting an angle to straighten out my left arm in modified scarfhold. I should be walking my legs out here as well. Back in side mount again I’m trying to get him on my hips. His left hand is underneath my collar so it’s almost impossible to face him. Not sure what I should do to make him want to let go of that either.

I try some witty comic relief but it does not work.

He goes to knee on stomach and I’m trying to push his right foot out so I can over hook it with my left foot. I could have tried to pull it in and push him in that direction but that’s a good way for him to trap my arm as well. Again he’s nice and lets me get half guard.

I start to invert and looking at it now miss the ankle lock and kneebar that he’s feeding me here. Maybe I just wanted to get out but I’m pretty sure I didn’t see the opportunity. I have to capitalize on attacks like that as a scramble is always 50/50 but an attack at least means I’m dictating the pace….except with him…

He starts to pass to my right and I don’t push his head down to the mat and to my right. Or I could try to invert immediately but I think I’d be behind on that. He keeps his hips forward and sets up the cross footlock which I’m not even thinking of until I’m tapping to it.

Part 2
We start we with me flapping my leg into a triangle position. He started putting his weight to his left to do a thigh crush. So I decided to use this to pivot around his back. Now of course the whole time it’s a set up. He’s probably just thinking about armbaring my right arm but I think I’m being slick with my combo.

I get the back and right when my left hook goes in I grab his shoulder. I start to work my ratchet sequence. It looks to me like he shrugs on his left side while pushing up and creating space with his right arm. I feel him move out of position and let go of my Gable grip to reposition the over under grip. He knows I’m going to do this so he times it perfectly and grabs my arm. Once he grabs my arm, I know I’m done for because nothing I can do will make him let go. I know this from prior experience.

I’m not sure what I should do instead there. Maybe go to mount? Again it’s probably a matter of bailing on the choke once he’s repositioned himself like that. I don’t have a good answer yet.

Once he get’s my arm, I try a crappy collar choke but don’t give him any motivation to let go of my arm. He secures a funky Americana derivation.

On the next roll I again make the mistake of not securing handles ie head control, collar control etc. so I’m already behind. But my thick skull realizes this so I go inverted and secure sleeve control and foot on bicep. I try to whip back but my aim wasn’t so great so my left leg landed on top of his head rather than around it. Again I need to drill this more.

I let go of the triangle but see that he’s posturing back so I go to hip bump to try to get his hand on the mat which is yet another sequence I have. His arm was underneath so the hip bump inadvertently became a “hopping” triangle (can’t really call it flying)

This time he framed his hand on the inside of my thigh and shrugged. Again he stacked through and this time I let go sooner in order to not get passed. Once again I am too slow to react to the x pass and he blows through it. I need to drill this more as well.

I tried to invert but he put knee on stomach before I could react. Again I’m concerning myself with not getting my head controlled but not doing enough with my hips or walking away or much of anything.

I give him no real resistance to the mount and should have at least tried to get half guard on his left leg. Once mounted I’m trying to use little bumps to get space. It looks like a crappy spazzy dance move but that’s what I’m doing. I’m lying way too flat on my back the whole time as well.

He then pops to side mount, distracts my arms a little, pulls his own gi skirt out and does the rolling choke he just showed us half an hour before.

I learned a lot by watching these videos and so far have just focused on what I did (mainly wrong). I'll watch them in the future focusing on my instructors movements.

I'm going to keep videotaping myself even though my goofy skinny ass and voice that I swear is not mine makes me cringe, it's helping me learn and that's the bottom line.

3/9/09 jiu jitsu notes - doubling down

2009-03-09T21:02:00.000-07:00

Doubled down today. Drilled and rolled with E tonight who is super tough and has some attacks I’m not used to. Realize that I need to really work on my guard if they’re moving to my left because most people move to my right. Again making the same mistake of not starting an initial attack and having to react.

Could actually feel the MBF sidemount escape’s potential but I’m going to need to add it to my list of drills. There was a bump that I noticed which could be capitalized on but I wasn’t basing out with my arm properly and I just haven’t practiced it enough yet.

Could not keep up the pace either. Need to find ways to slow down the game a little. Inverted guard was ineffective due to me not getting wrist handles, leg control and bicep control. The angle he used to press my feet down was different than I’m used to as well.

Also he passed on my left side, which I’m not used to. I supposedly know the correct sequence to do but really never drill it, so that also needs to be added to my list as well.

Overall disappointed in my ability to adapt. Some of the sequences I have ingrained in me worked well but made me realize how many more I need to drill as moments where I’m mentally slow, the creativity that’s there when I’m feeling quick, like Saturday are replaced by cloudiness.

Was having a conversation with someone today about how I do better when I don’t think. Sometimes that seems to work and sometimes I catch myself thinking about how I’m not thinking or thinking that I don’t know what to think.

The point is the sequences are automatic and if more of the game becomes automatic then my headspace doesn’t matter as much. I’ve got a lot of shit to drill.

3/9/09 jiu jitsu notes - drills

2009-03-09T14:38:00.001-07:00

Today was just drilling and the first day that I’ll count the rep totals.

First up was the wrist control to triangle from the closed guard. I learned this a long time ago and having watched a lot of competition footage lately of Ryan Hall and some other triangle masters, this still seems to be one of the most effective and basic setups there is. As I mentioned before, when I drill this move, it seems to just start happening when I spar. And when I stopped drilling it, it was as if the opportunity for the move disappeared as well. Strange

Next up was inverted guard to triangle setup. I’m working on springing my hips up to the sky. I’m finding the visual image of reaching out and snatching their head down works best for me. I did 10 on each side.

I also worked a few of these without using grips so no foot on the bicep or anything. The advantage to doing it this way is you can actually spring from further out. The disadvantage is it’s a little harder to nail down the timing and I’m a little worried I’m going to accidentally kick people in the face!

Finally I’m working on entering into inverted guard from the x pass. This particular pass has always given me trouble as I’m still fighting for position when it’s too late. Once the legs are pinned down, it’s damn near impossible to pull into the direction of their push.

But what I’m finding is that if I straighten my legs and rotate in the direction of their push it almost “ab wheels” their arms. From here I can pop my hips out and go to a front headlock. Or I can continue the rotation and go to inverted guard.

So total rep count so far:
Wrist control triangle – 10
Inverted triangle with grips – 10
Inverted without grips – 5
X pass counter to inverted – 10

I’m really curious to see how the fluidity and timing feels in sparring when I’m up to 200 reps or so. As always I should have done this a long time ago but hindsight is 20/20 as they say.

My Tribute to Gary Claxton

2009-03-07T23:02:00.000-08:00

Not to sound John Wayne about it, but you learn a lot about a guy when you bleed and sweat together as you try to beat the shit out of each other. When I moved out to Austin in July of 2006 one of the first things I looked for was a good jiu jitsu school. I had dabbled for a long time in it while I lived in LA but I made a deal with myself when I moved out here that I was going to fully dedicate myself to the art for the rest of my life.

Once I found William Vandry’s school and started training there I started hearing rumblings about this guy named Gary Claxton. Tough skilled men simply nodded their head as they all had the same tale of a 145-pound whirlwind of destruction. I was around the school quite a bit and never saw Gary as he had sustained a pretty serious neck injury and had just had surgery for it to fuse two disks together.

I also had some injuries but by October was training almost every day when I finally caught sight of the man. Frankly he’s the farthest thing you would ever think about when the word “fighter” is thrown out there. He’s slight framed, late 40’s and has a relaxed rockabilly look to him which makes sense as he’s also an awesome musician who plays at The Continental Club amongst other places.

I really didn’t get to train with Gary much at that point as he soon found out his vertebrae had not fused properly and he had to have surgery again.

I remember the day when he came in to class to tell everyone. His hair was slicked back and I’m sure he had a gig to play that night, but his face was solemn. Six months may not seem like a lot in the course of a lifetime but to someone who wants to be on the mats more than anything, it’s an eternity.

While Gary didn’t look happy, I noticed something: there was not an ounce of self-pity on his face. He took the whole thing like a man. As much as people may say they don’t make them that way anymore, it’s important to remember that they were made and some of them are still out there. Gary is one of them.

This time the surgery was a success and the months went by and Gary was back on the mats again. As with the last time, it was only a matter of weeks before he was terrorizing everyone. It’s not often that you meet someone with that fast of a pace who also backs it up with precision. Many have one or the other but I’ve only met a handful that have both.

As time went on Gary and I trained together more and more. It became an unspoken rule that we’d drill together and spar every time we both were in class. There were many times that I’d try to keep up with him but tornadoes are hard to chase. We’d exchange techniques and talk about new ideas we were working on all the time. He always impressed me with his open mindedness and constant pursuit of more knowledge. He still had the same wide-eyed wonder that many mistakenly lose thinking that they’ve “got it” or “understand” jiu jitsu. That is a lifetime pursuit that will never be fully realized.

He’d been training pretty consistently over the last few months so when the seminar came around today, I had a feeling it might finally be his day. There was something in the air that just made me so happy to be alive, to be around my friends and to have the opportunity to be training.

Will, my instructor, likes to have some of the assistant instructors sneak up behind people and slap them with belts. Usually he has a code word or phrase that they’re to listen for, then “Whack!” the person gets hit with their new belt.

Today Will started talking about fortitude and I felt a lump in my throat. I wanted it to be Gary so badly and when I looked up, I saw Jeremy, an assistant instructor behind Gary I had to look away because tears were in my eyes.

This can be a frustrating, mind boggling sport even without injuries.

This man in his late 40’s had been out almost two years with two major surgeries but there he was wearing the belt that he deserved. Gary gave a typically modest speech about not feeling ready for the belt but doing whatever he could to honor it.

I had to keep looking away because the tears were still in my eyes.

Some days everything is right in the world. Good people get what they deserve if they stick around long enough. Gary’s one of those people and I’m a better man for knowing him.

3/5/09 jiu jitsu notes

2009-03-05T20:31:00.001-08:00

3/5/09

Didn’t even suit up but watched class and ended up drilling the wrist control triangle set up from closed guard and inverted guard entries from when they start to pass as well as some inverted triangles.

Really see some good possibilities of either transitioning to inverted guard or just getting back to guard from the x pass where I just push my legs in the direction that he’s pushing. Should have the effect of almost a double armdrag and is very easy to spin into inverted.

Also just from the drilling seeing how I could spin around his leg to either the 50/50 heel hook or a cross body ankle lock. Having some hip issues right now so the training will be touch and go but the mind feels like I’m getting out of my fog a little bit.

3/4/09 jiu jitsu training notes

2009-03-04T21:07:00.000-08:00

3/4/09
Had a good training session tonight. Wanted to really work my passing and top game pressure but still take the submissions when they’re there. Rolled with RS and wanted to make sure I stayed on top and prevented x-guard attacks and Zapruder sweeps. So I kept my hips low and really tried to use shoulder pressure on his chin. Grabbing the skirt whenever possible to increase this as much as I can. This seems to make it easier to whip legs out. Also I’m working on being very conscious about not accepting the sweep. This is a bad habit I got in a while back since I wanted to work on my guard. I took every sweep as a gift to continue doing that, which is a big mistake. Pace felt pretty good but I was definitely tired at the end.

Also rolled with JC. Again wanted to keep that chin pressure going. Found it worked fairly well on the bottom as well to prevent the pass. I sometimes worry about pushing someone’s chin as it’s not the nicest thing to do, but it’s very effective in limiting the directions they want to go. Got to work a little inverted and saw some triangle opportunities but I wasn’t able to capitalize as well as I’d have like to. Felt very tired at the end and his pressure on side mount made me want to quit.

Almost got caught in a shin across the stomach arm lock from the bottom but was able to bump his “shin” knee with my knee to loosen it up.

Things done well
1) Top pressure. I still don’t feel like passes are flowing together as well as they should but limiting their upper body, especially head, movement is allowing me to get around the legs easier.
2) Inverted guard feels like it’s starting to make a comeback. Was able to get to it as I was being passed from a tornado roll which I’ve seen before and probably done but usually at that point I’d feel like I was passed so nice to still feel in the game.
3) Pushing the pace. I felt like I got the first move off and was able to dictate the pace

Things to work on
1) Keeping that pace without forcing moves and positions. For the most part things felt good but I did feel like I forced a few things.
2) Facing the reality that pushing the pace will make me tired. I may need to continue to work on my conditioning but it really may just me a matter of rolling with that pace and mindset more importantly that I need to get used to.
3) Drilling. I’m going to write about this in the next paragraph.

I had a long talk with my instructor yesterday and he mentioned that some of my finishes and triangles looked pretty good a few months ago. At first my inner George Costanza kicked in and I kept feeling like “I peaked. It’s all downhill from now!” And I kept scratching my head all day hoping that wasn’t true but wondering if it was.

But then I remembered what I was doing a few months ago. I was drilling reps of inverted triangles and just basic triangle from the guard when I got wrist control. And I saw a direct correlation to the number of triangles I’d get from both positions. I wasn’t even looking for them; the opportunities just seemed to appear.

So now it’s time to start drilling those two things along with pulling guard and my armlock sequence. I’ll do a minimum of 10 of each class each day I train and pick another day where I just do the drills rather than roll. I’d like to see where these moves are when I’ve logged 500 reps of each.

more 3/3/09 jiu jitsu notes

2009-03-03T21:12:00.001-08:00

Had to double down today as I wanted to drill just pulling guard as basic as that may sound. I just like the idea of becoming proactive in my attack rather than reacting and trying to get ahead of the game. This is a good first move for me to make that immediately puts them on the defensive. Many times there hands will hit the mat and I can clamp down for Williams guard or rubber guard stuff right away.

Passing felt a little better tonight as well. Starting to utilize grabbing the skirt to increase the torque when I push my shoulder into their chin. Helps the pass even when I feel loose on the hips.

Need to keep working on the simple armlock sequence but to me , just getting the guard pull down a few times was a good first step.

Also was able to do a move that my instructor did on me today where I go for one armlock and as they get their elbow to the ground I jam my hips in to get the triangle on the other side.

Things done well
1) Getting to closed guard and starting the attack
2) Chin pressure on the pass.
3) Rear naked squeeze.

Things to work on
1) Need to drill armlock from guard sequence more.
2) Once I get that better, throw in wrist control to triangles
3) Have one day a week of only drilling and add 10 minutes after each sparring session.
4) Passing still has good moments in a base, but times where I find myself watching their attack rather than moving forward with my pass. Want them to be defending the pass the whole time
5) Still need to remember my defense is my offense at this point. May make me uncomfortable and may need to push my conditioning more, but this is the only way for me to progress.

3/3/09 jiu jitsu notes

2009-03-03T15:41:00.001-08:00

3/3/09
Rolled with DS and my instructor. DS crushed me. I had absolutely no answer. I couldn’t even figure out what I’d done wrong at first other than spar with the wrong guy ;) He was passing my guard at will, crushing me then collar choking me over and over. I was a beating, pure and simple. I had no offense what so ever and by the end I just decided he’s better and that’s the bottom line.

Rolled my instructor afterwards, which was of course, even more of a mauling, but a very precise one as it always is. He explained to me afterwards that at my size, I will never be able to deal with guys 60 plus pounds bigger if I’m just playing defensive like I’ve been playing. He said I was doing it well in January so hopefully I haven’t peaked already!

So it’s time to really attack again. I seem to come to that realization every few months then somehow forget again. My defense can only get so good but if they’re defending the whole time, maybe then it becomes a matter of time for them. I guess I’ll find out.
He gave me a good sequence about pulling guard from the knees which sounds dumb since I should already know such things but I don’t’.

Basically it involves controlling the collars high up the neck, stepping between his knees, then sitting down while snapping the collar hard down.

From there, we worked on collar and sleeve control then transitioned
1) to basic arm lock
2) if they keep their head in a little, lock over shoulder and armlock again
3) if the get their arm slightly out, leg over head and collar choke with one arm
4) if they try to block that with their other arm push their elbow
5) and if they get past your guard, keep sleeve control and you can end up getting a type of kimura/ umo plata (hard to explain)

he also talked about my half guard game being where I lose confidence. This is definitely true when people get past a certain weight as I can decide to try to whip up and single leg, electric chair, go back to full guard and by the time I done debating that, they’ve long since passed.

Things done well
1) Attitude. I really don’t think I did much of anything right physically, but I’m still inspired and will put these lessons to use in my next training sessions.

Things to work on
1) Half guard. Just need to make a choice, some choice…any choice, other than sitting there.
2) Inverted guard. Where oh where art though?
3) Getting to closed guard.
4) Patience in closed guard.
5) Attacks immediately after closed guard.
6) Actively attacking rather than “defending the pass”

3/1/09 - today's workout

2009-03-01T11:39:00.000-08:00

Today’s workout:

Really getting into kettelbells again. My gym has several sets along with a climbing rope and many other cool toys to play with. Modeled workout on Team Quest barbell circuit,

Used two 36lbers for the workout

3 rounds of 6 reps of:
bent over rows
power cleans
military press
squat press (thrusters)
staggered squats
swings (with one dumbbell)
1 rope climb with no legs

rested a minute between rounds. Shoulders felt pretty tired by the end and I want to ease into this. Long term goal is 6 sets with 1 minute rest.

After this did two rounds of
Close grip pushups on medicine ball x 15
Turkish getups with 26lb kettlebell – 3/arm

And finally 1 set of leg blasters (first learned about these from JC Santana’s website). All exercises back to back with no rest.
Free squats – 24
Lungers – 24
Jumping lunges – 24
Jump squats – 12
Would like to build up to 3 rounds non stop on this.

Overall goals are to increase metabolic conditioning capabilities as to really get my jiu jitsu to the next level, I need to not be afraid of getting tired. I don’t have the size to really be lazy. Feel good and energized like I could do more, but like the idea of leaving some gas in the tank for next time.

2/28/09 jiu jitsu notes

2009-02-28T22:08:00.000-08:00

2/28/09
Two months of the year done already. Goes faster as I get older, that’s for sure. Rolled with SP, M and JC.

Felt good today. Energized by watching Demian Maia clips and realizing I continually set myself up in a bad part of a scramble by starting my rolling sitting on my butt. Agreed that the on the knees world doesn’t exist, but from now on I’m going to start on my knees and if I’m pulling guard, I’ll fully pull it with handles and everything, rather than starting in an open guard where I have nothing and am already behind in the game.

SP’s game continues to get better and his physicality impresses as well. We drilled single leg takedowns, which I look at as extensions of the half guard game, so with this mentality it was much easier for me to focus. Pure takedowns don’t particularly interest me at this point as I have little desire to compete and the injury potential is much higher with them then ground grappling. But in my mind if I can pull half guard and then do the technique, it immediately becomes more interesting.

Was able to stand up in half guard and reestablish that position as well. The wrestling shoes make me want to avoid a lock down as it's much hard to get out of.

Felt my passing was better today but still not where it needs to be. Used a lot of standing up posture that Rener showed on youtube. Really focusing on jamming my shin into their hip to negate their hips and set up the slice through pass. Kept picturing them being able to kick me in the face which made it easier to get the correct posture.

Found some new angels on getting the back. Other subs didn’t feel as available but remembering that half guard is also half way to his back from a different angle.

Focusing also on moving when it’s important then resting when it’s available. Resting in mount, closed guard, top of half guard and other positions where that’s doable. Conditioning feels decent as long as I focus on my breathing and again work on relaxed movement. Thinking about smiling always seems to help the movements feel light.

Things done well
1) Open guard posture. Can also set up the flop guard pass. Time to start bringing back and integrating weapons from before
2) Rear naked choke. Got one with my left arm. Patience in timing when to grab the shoulder and initiate the attack.
3) Top half guard to back. Feeling their window of strongest movement and slipping around while baiting them into it.
4) Seeing the move a moment before it happens. Need to still get better at actually predicting this along with other backup scenarios but today was decent.

Things to work on
1) If I start slice passing to their right and they get a hook on my right leg, I should slice through the other side with my left leg.
a. Really a note for all my guard passing, need to see the other side and maybe over top possibilities rather than forcing through on one side.
2) Sidemount attacks. Not using enough shoulder pressure on their chin. Need to rotate around to north/south and get their arms crossed and them onto their knees more.
3) Leglocks. Still lacking real goto setups. Half guard kneebars from top and bottom can help with the pass and the sweep. Need to start getting in more reps with them. 100/week at least.

That time I almost got that kid killed in the desert…

2009-02-28T16:17:00.000-08:00

So about 8 years ago my buddy Sean came up with the grand idea of going to Death Valley for a little weekend vacation. I quickly agreed as I enjoy an outdoor adventure from time to time. So I headed off with him, some other jiu jitsu buddies and three kids around 12.

We got to our campsite in the late afternoon when things were starting to cool down. There was a quick bout of “snipe hunting” that night where we convinced the 3 boys that:

A) Snipes exist
and
B) you can catch them and knock them out by swiping them with a bag then swinging them overhead.

One of the kids got so enthusiastic he even set up a trap with a Snickers bar as bait before he went to sleep. For those of you who haven’t fooled kids with this time-honored tradition, I highly recommend it. I could barely stop laughing the whole time and almost blew the whole story.

The night ended up around the campfire with the adults drinking beer and talking while the kids kept on the lookout for more snipes before they fell asleep.

The next day was dune hiking. Armed with a powerful breakfast of an ice cream sandwich and a cup of black coffee, I was ready to conquer the desert!

We gathered the crew together and drove out in my buddy Dr Rob’s SUV. He led the way as we stared walking out to the vast dunes of the Death Valley desert.

At first it wasn’t too hot. We brought a few liters of water as almost an afterthought as I first figured we’d hike up a dune or two then call it a day. But Rob had different ideas as he started leading us further into the sea of dunes.

I had jokingly pointed to the farthest and highest dune at one point saying we should hike up that one. And at some point I realized Rob might be taking me up on this.
Then I got an impulse.

Now sometimes I just get these compulsions to do things. Usually they involve something physically painful that normal rational people would say, “Why would you want to do that? You’re an idiot.” Somehow hearing this feels me with glee and makes me want to do the “it” even more.

So I pointed to that farthest, highest slope, said “let’s climb that one!” and started racing off. The rest of the group, being rational, sensible people merely shook their heads and kept walking at a normal pace. I kept running up one dune and down the next.

I finally got to the bottom of the big dune and decided I would sprint up it and have a glorious “Rocky” moment at the top.

I got about half way up then all of the sudden, the lack of water, 118 degree temperature and the fact that sprinting up a nearly vertical incline of sand is stupid hit me all at once.

I tried to tough it out but the thought of Rob and Sean explaining to my parents how I died of heat exhaustion while trying to show off in front of a group of 12 year olds just didn’t seem worth it. So I hobbled and crawled the rest of the way up.

The view was awesome. It was worth it. There was an ocean of dunes as far as the eye could see.
The rest of them made it to the top and we all took in the view for a few moments. It was really starting to get hot now. As I strained my eyes in the distance I could barely make out Rob’s car. I caught Sean looking at it too and I think we realized the same thing at the same time:

that car was far away…really far. And we had to walk all the way back through the scorching sun with less than a liter of water between all of us

Rob didn’t seem to mind as he handed his 12-year-old son his keys and wallet then dived down the dune rolling over and over in the blazing hot sand. Sean and the others shrugged and we all started heading back down.

Again, I don’t know if it’s just a sad need to show off or the fact that I just enjoy such things but I started running up and down the dunes again having a good ol’ time. I looked back and noticed,

Mike, one of the 12 year olds, seemed to be staggering.
I yelled out that he was being wimpy and losing a race to an old man and he just mumbled something about “passing out”.

I wanted to ignore him but thought the only thing worse than Sean and Rob talking telling my parents how I died, is me having to tell Mike’s parents that I accidentally let him die of heat exhaustion by challenging him to a race when he was about to fall over.

So I did the only rational thing. I ran back to him, squatted down and had him climb on my back.

Now Mike was probably only 110 lbs or so which may not seem like a lot but those pounds start to add up when your carrying them up and down sand dunes in what’s rapidly approaching 118 degrees.

Of course he wasn’t making it any easier as he kept saying he was going to pass out and we had to make it back to the car.

So I started running, up and down, dune after dune. It seemed like Rob’s car was getting further and further away with each step. Mike continued to complain. I was really starting to worry and realized that this is how idiots die in the desert…because of people like me!
I figured I should try and keep him calm and make him laugh.

So I started to sing. Brittany Spears.

Why? I really have no idea, that’s just what popped in my head as at that point, I was starting to feel woozy too.

Apparently either my incredible vocal abilities or my meshing together of all the song lyrics of hers I knew into sometime of inane mashup worked because Mike started to laugh and I sighed in relief as I knew he was going to be alright.

We got back to the car and I got Mike some water. The others slowly trickled in, shaking their heads and laughing at me. It probably looked ridiculous and really was. But every time I see that picture, I think of that story.

I ran into Mike a few years later when he was close to 16. He was already taller than me and probably out weighed me. So next time he’s carrying me! But I’ll still do the singing.

Jiu jitsu notes 2/27/09

2009-02-27T15:37:00.000-08:00

2/27/09

Rolled with J and M (two talented blue belts) today. Things were better than on Tuesday but there’s still much work to be done. Guard passing is effective especially with J in getting him to his knees. That’s probably a better idea if they’re no gi (which he was) but I felt like I wasn’t seeing the path of least resistance and was forcing him into passes that weren’t there. But sometimes I wonder if it’s better to just have a set number of passes and a lot of ways to get to them rather than just trying to use what’s right in front of you. Sometimes going with the flow works and sometimes the flow works me. Didn’t feel I was doing well against J so much as he was just playing into my strengths. Did not feel particularly effective on bottom, but was able to reverse or get the back so maybe sometimes that’s good enough. Would like more submission threats though.

As always impressed with M’s inventiveness. If I’m not calm about the position being something I need to figure out, I’ll find myself rushing and forcing things. His submissions are getting better and better so it’s hard to find that balance of moving quickly and yet calmly. Was able to get an interesting triangle from inverted guard but not sure how I did it. Again is it better to just run with that flow? Hard to say it is as when it’s gone then my head’s just fogged and I freeze up.

Things done well
1) Forcing them to their knees off the pass.
2) Back control with trapping an arm as well.
3) Inverted guard triangle.
4) D’Arce from transition. Recognized it a split second before it happened.

Things to work on
1) Guard passing. I’m getting past their guards but couldn’t teach or really say what I’m doing. Things do not feel precise and tight except with over/under pass.
a. Need to start drilling leg over shoulder pass with cupping the back of their head. Always rush through on this one and while I get them to their knees at times, it leaves me open to them scrambling out.
2) Inverted guard activity. Need to see what other threats are there, especially if I start to use momentum from rotating. Might look more into going from inverted back to sitting especially with some arm drags thrown in.
3) Back threats. Want to work on keeping my body aligned while twisting and stretching them more. Should be easier to get the choke that way. But also need to look more into the armlocks, reverse triangles, coller chokes, twisters and everything else that’s available there too.

2/24/09 Jiu jitsu notes

2009-02-26T10:09:00.000-08:00

Rolled with J and M yesterday. One of those days where I question why I do any of this shit. Just felt like I suck and will always suck and how could someone suck as bad as I do? How is it possible to put so much time and thought into something and just suck? Why do I bother?
I know these thoughts are temporary but consistent. I know the self-doubt will always be there. But I also know that somehow I’m just not quitting. I know that I’m getting better. But every once in a while I want my due.

Anyway main mistake yesterday was having the urge to drill the escapes from the seminar. Letting my guard get passed too easily as always. Was able to pass theirs fairly easily but need to work on side mount pressure and control next. J is very good at timing the pass to quickly reverse. I was letting him and M get up on my chest and it’s very hard to reverse from there keeping with the principals I learned last weekend. But still why do I always feel the need to abandon everything I've learned through the years at moments like that? Probably still need to work on some chokes and distractions from underneath to get some space.

Inverted guard has become a useless crutch at the moment. I ‘m simply going there and not making it an attack. I’m just sitting there waiting to get beat.

Things done well
1) Getting MBF posture from the bottom.
2) Getting to half guard
3) Passing half guard
4) Decent wind

Things to work on
1) Inverted needs to be an attack or get out of it. Hanging out there will just hurt your neck and do nothing. Sweep, triangle and kneebar.
2) Still getting passed too easily. Start from the knees and jump to closed guard.
3) Forced the triangle on J. Not getting real wrist control
4) Not attacking. Just waiting to get beat. I was just hoping at one point that M would crank what he had so it would be over. Some days I’m just a coward.

MBF principals applied to BJJ

2009-02-22T19:31:00.000-08:00

Being the obsessed dork I am, this weekend brought me to San Jose, California in search of more knowledge and principles that can add to my jiu jitsu game. I want to be looked at one day as someone who really has mastered jiu jitsu and I also hope that I never feel that way personally.

So the seminar was put on by my friend Mike Jen who introduced me to Muscle Balance and Function (MBF) over two years ago. MBF is basically the idea that your load bearing joints: the shoulders, hips, knees and ankles should be aligned on top of each other from the front and the side. If things are out of whack, which they are on almost everything, the MBF system has a series of exercises designed to put the body back in its natural alignment where it is strongest and functions at its best level. The exercises themselves and the sequences they're done in depends on what the indivual needs. This idea of "it depends on the situation" fit in nicely with the weekends events.

So Mike has taken the principles of alignment and plugged them into Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ). The basic mindset is have your body in as much alignment as possible (again shoulders, hips, knee and ankles) while misaligning your opponent as much as possible.

What's especially interested about this series is that it's all about being on the bottom in the side mount position, yet through keeping your body aligned, you are able to misalign your oppenent so much that it is too painful to want to do anything other than fall over.

But what's even more exciting to me (again obsessed nerd about such things) is that these principles can be applied to every aspect of jiu jitsu. An armlock from the guard becomes the bottom player misaligning the top guys neck to the side and up with his forearm, then his shoulders are misaligned with one leg and finally the neck is misaligned even further with the leg over the head. The armlock itself is almost secondary to the fact that he's so out of alignment that all he can really do to relieve the pressure is to fall over.

It's a very interesting way of looking at all of jiu jitsu and I see how I can plug in all the techniques I already know but have an overall concept (get in alignment and get the other guy out of alignment) that guides my every move. In addition it makes me look at all escapes, pins and submissions in this same way which should makes subltle adjustments that make everything much more effecient, effective and painful!

I'm really excited to try all this stuff and really continue to develop the sensitivity to make these techniques work as everything depends on the situation. Much like MBF exercises and order depends on what is misaligned, then MBF/BJJ combo is also very dependent on where the opponent's weight is and where your body needs to go in order to be in alignment.

Oh and I feel sorry for anyone not involved in either BJJ or MBF who had the misfortune to run into this blog. I promise future ones will be more interesting to normal people ;)