As I was approaching the date of my surgery I started having second thoughts about Jiu Jitsu. It wasn't that I didn't like it, quite the opposite but I was starting to not enjoy my training sessions. I was turning up, getting dominated by almost everyone I sparred with and then going home extremely frustrated. Now I'm not the sort of person who gets annoyed at being tapped out, my ego isn't quite that out of control, but I will admit to feeling that pang of satisfaction when I land a sub on someone at my own level. I think anyone who says they don't feel at least a little pleased with themselves is either lying or slightly deluded. However much you 'get' sparring and understand that it's not win or lose but practice and a chance to experiment, everyone is pleased when they catch someone with something they've been practising for a while and I don't see anything wrong with this. If you're training and training to get better, it's totally natural to be pleased when your skills over come someone else's.
Anyway, I digress; I was experiencing the tell tale signs of a BJJ rut. Everyone else was progressing apart from me. I'd turn up and get put into some crazy choke I'd never seen before or reversed so fast I didn't know up from down. Everything being shown to me was going in one ear and out the other. I don't care about getting tapped out but I was finding it hard to not be bothered by being completely dominated to the point of literally being someone else's grappling dummy. Anyone who does BJJ will tell you they've been in ruts before but I'd never seriously considered giving up before. I started imagining what I'd be able to do with all the time I'd suddenly have; going out in the evenings with friends, hitting the weights several times a week and actually getting that body I always wanted, being able to study and finally finish off my PT qualification and all of a sudden, a life without BJJ seemed so attractive.
As anyone who knows me will tell you, I have ideas that turn into obsessions that then devolve into annoyances. My PT qualification is a perfect example. I worked my arse off to get my level 2 Gym Instructor but my interested waned as I was working for level 3 and I still have much of it outstanding over a year past the date I was supposed to be finished. The same concept can be applied to my Martial Arts history; chopping and changing as novelty wears off. It's no small thing then that I've been at BJJ for three years solidly now and suggests to me that I've found the sport that I will be able to stick at through the highs and lows. I was very cognisant of this as I was considering giving up and was acutely aware that all I needed to rediscover my love of the sport was to feel myself making some kind of progress again or, as it turned out, to have an extended amount of time off the mat.
Usually when I can't train, my brain has a defence mechanism it engages that basically stops me thinking about BJJ at all. This had surely been the case for most of my convalescence as I was busy working out when I'd quit, how much money I'd save etc. I even got so far as to memorise the TSG timetable and work out which days I'd be training with them. I wanted to just train a couple of times a week in whatever Martial Art was convenient and forget about the constant drive to train and improve that seems to exist more within BJJ than any other sport.
Then yesterday, as I was idly flicking through Facebook I came across some friend's training and competition photos. The only way I can describe how I felt is to imagine a small spark kindling that soon becomes a roaring fire. I wanted to get back on the mat there and then, how could I have ever considered quitting? This sport was the thing I'd been most passionate about in my entire life! I wanted to win the lottery so I could train BJJ all day every day. Who was this crazy person that was ready to throw it all away so casually?
When I get back it'll take a while to return to the level I was at after 6 weeks off but who knows, this lay off could have done me good. I may have a new outlook on things, I may be able to retain more of what I'm taught. I'll certainly be blogging a lot more and I'll actually watch the instructionals I've had on my PC for the last six months. I've been a quitter all my life and I'm determined not to let it happen again. My competition record's only wins are from interclubs against people smaller than me but this is going to change. I love fighting on the mat and this feeling of never being good enough to compete isn't going to hold me back. I'm going to keep training and keep fighting and be the best I can be. The only person I have to compete with is myself, or rather, my own self doubt and that motherfucker is getting armbarred the next time I see him.
Friday 28 May 2010
Surgery and the inevitable recovery period
As I write this I am coming up to my fifth week of recovery after having what I thought was going to be simple surgery. Having a Cyst and Abcess removed seems like pretty standard every day stuff right? Apparently not when the afore mentioned nasties are in hard to reach and rather embarrassing places. The Cyst itself was just at the bottom of my spine inside the crack of my backside but the abcess was deeper and ran down to my Coccyx. They also cut out 'potental Cysts'; leaving me with a 10 inches of stitches and the inability to sit down for several weeks.
Just when I was on the mend we discovered a cavity behind the main w
ound that hadn't healed and was filling up with fluid. This led to my backside swelling up like a Raspberry on the day after I could finally sit down again and being too tender to even touch. After several days of having the wound packed and dressed every day it was decided that I needed to have this machine plugged into my back to constantly drain the fluid out of the hole, giving it a chance to heal. The idea is that they attach a tube to some sponge that is used to pack the wound. But the sponge is a good couple of inches shorter than the cavity. As the fluid is draining, the cavity heals up to the sponge and when I got back to the Hospital, they'll repack it with another slightly smaller piece of sponge. Today's visit showed that there has been a good 2-3 inches of healing in what appears to be an 8 inch cavity so I'm hopeful that I'll finally be fully recovered by next week and can finally get back to some kind of training.
Just when I was on the mend we discovered a cavity behind the main w
ound that hadn't healed and was filling up with fluid. This led to my backside swelling up like a Raspberry on the day after I could finally sit down again and being too tender to even touch. After several days of having the wound packed and dressed every day it was decided that I needed to have this machine plugged into my back to constantly drain the fluid out of the hole, giving it a chance to heal. The idea is that they attach a tube to some sponge that is used to pack the wound. But the sponge is a good couple of inches shorter than the cavity. As the fluid is draining, the cavity heals up to the sponge and when I got back to the Hospital, they'll repack it with another slightly smaller piece of sponge. Today's visit showed that there has been a good 2-3 inches of healing in what appears to be an 8 inch cavity so I'm hopeful that I'll finally be fully recovered by next week and can finally get back to some kind of training.
Monday 22 March 2010
Kicking myself in the backside and SENI
I'm determined not to let this blog go the same way as my Bullshido.net training log but I have a worse memory than a senile Goldfish. Normally, I remember the next day that I need to update my blog and then can't really remember the class or (and this is probably more common) I just can't be bothered. Well now this has to stop. I had to take last week off Jiu Jitsu after having my drink spiked in a local pub but from today I am 'in training' for the Gracie Invitational at SENI. I'm going to be attending at least 4 classes per week with 2 conditioning sessions on top.
I started off yesterday with hill running on Southend cliffs (Photos coming). I feel really lucky to have a place like this to run not too far from home. There are several paths and stairways on the cliffs that go from the seafront right to the top and I've made myself a fantastic little route that alternates between running up the stairs and sprinting up hills. I first got the idea back in my muay Thai days when I started joining the fighters on their pre-class runs. Back in those days I could hardly jog from the class to the seafront, so you can imagine what it was like sprinting up the hills. I remember one time specifically it felt like I was actually rolling back down the hill, like I'd run out of momentum on a push bike. My legs were on fire and I almost vomited. Yesterday, I got to the top of the hill and the endorphines were hitting me like some kind of drug high. I felt so good that I went straight back down and did it again. The second time wasn't quite so Rocky-esque. I got to the top still moving at a decent pace but I was covered in snot and flem and was dry heaving.... But I did it. I was screaming and grunting and hardly made it home... But I did it. Later on I had to go up my stairs on all fours and lower myself into the bath using my upper body for support... But I did it.
Most people see pushing yourself to the point of being sick or even collapse to be a completely ridiculous thing to do, remarking that it couldn't possibly be good for you or asking what the point of it all is. These are the same people who laugh at our diets and boggle at our training schedules. But why do we do it? We want to be the best we can be and we of course, want to be better than our opponent but that's not the full story. Why do we deprive ourselves of the food we love? Why do we cripple our social lives and most of all, why do we put ourselves through physical and mental torture?
Why? Because we love it.
SENI is coming and I'm going to be ready. If I go out onto that mat and lose my first fight because the other person was better than me, that's BJJ. If I am ready and do the absolute best I can, there's absolutely no shame in losing but if fatigue and lack of conditioning are to blame, that's my fault and I will have beaten myself before the fight has even begun.
I started off yesterday with hill running on Southend cliffs (Photos coming). I feel really lucky to have a place like this to run not too far from home. There are several paths and stairways on the cliffs that go from the seafront right to the top and I've made myself a fantastic little route that alternates between running up the stairs and sprinting up hills. I first got the idea back in my muay Thai days when I started joining the fighters on their pre-class runs. Back in those days I could hardly jog from the class to the seafront, so you can imagine what it was like sprinting up the hills. I remember one time specifically it felt like I was actually rolling back down the hill, like I'd run out of momentum on a push bike. My legs were on fire and I almost vomited. Yesterday, I got to the top of the hill and the endorphines were hitting me like some kind of drug high. I felt so good that I went straight back down and did it again. The second time wasn't quite so Rocky-esque. I got to the top still moving at a decent pace but I was covered in snot and flem and was dry heaving.... But I did it. I was screaming and grunting and hardly made it home... But I did it. Later on I had to go up my stairs on all fours and lower myself into the bath using my upper body for support... But I did it.
Most people see pushing yourself to the point of being sick or even collapse to be a completely ridiculous thing to do, remarking that it couldn't possibly be good for you or asking what the point of it all is. These are the same people who laugh at our diets and boggle at our training schedules. But why do we do it? We want to be the best we can be and we of course, want to be better than our opponent but that's not the full story. Why do we deprive ourselves of the food we love? Why do we cripple our social lives and most of all, why do we put ourselves through physical and mental torture?
Why? Because we love it.
SENI is coming and I'm going to be ready. If I go out onto that mat and lose my first fight because the other person was better than me, that's BJJ. If I am ready and do the absolute best I can, there's absolutely no shame in losing but if fatigue and lack of conditioning are to blame, that's my fault and I will have beaten myself before the fight has even begun.
Tuesday 2 March 2010
BJJ - RGA VIE Farringdon 02/03/10
I've been pretty bad at updating this blog recently, due to a massive change in personal circumstances but this post marks a re-dedication to my training and blogging. I won't be going into so much detail though and simply marking important points that I've taken away from each class.
Something that a few of us have been discussing recently is the subject of conditioning in BJJ and how much is too much. The general consensus is that it is certainly important, but it should be more BJJ specific exercises rather than just doing star jumps and press ups til people drop. Max and Dmetri are known purveyors of savage warm ups that tend to lean more towards the standard circuits format but Eddie, who was taking the class tonight puts us through much more specific exercises. For example, our warm up tonight consisted of a brief, 5 minute Aerobic session with running and jumping etc before we moved on to open guard exercises with one person trying to pass the legs of the other and put their knee down on their partners stomach. Neither person was allowed to grip and as soon as it went to the floor, we had to restart to keep things moving.
We then drilled how to regain open guard using the opposite side leg and ended with specific sparring from open guard that restarted whenever someone passed. Specific sparring was ok, I know a few passes that I was trying and had success with:
Sparring went pretty well, I'm now attacking a lot more rather than waiting for my partner to make a move that I can counter. I've started using the Triangle to Omoplata setup quite a lot, though I'm finding it hard to finish the Omoplata. I'm also getting in the mounted triangle position a lot these days but when I roll over to put it on, my leg seems to be over the back rather than the neck and I can hardly ever finish it. I try to make an angle by cupping their leg but something's not quite right.
I've also found that I'm able to keep moving now instead of just laying in positions and waiting for an opening, Lawrence commented to me the other day that I'm not just laying still any more. I really do need to start going straight to open guard when I can though. This is a major sticking point in my game and probably the biggest hurdle for me to progress.
My last roll of the night was with George and was one of the funnest I've ever had. There was constant movement, sweeps, reversals and submission attempts. He impressed me with his movement but it wasn't quite tight enough for him to land things like rolling armbars that he was trying. He put me in a couple of bad positions with possible armbars but I always managed to keep my cool and get my arm out just enough to prevent the lock and then start passing.
All in all it was a good session and I plan to really get my head down and train as much as possible over the next few months. I'm feeling the urge to get on the competition mat again but I'd like to feel a little more confident in my abilities first.
Something that a few of us have been discussing recently is the subject of conditioning in BJJ and how much is too much. The general consensus is that it is certainly important, but it should be more BJJ specific exercises rather than just doing star jumps and press ups til people drop. Max and Dmetri are known purveyors of savage warm ups that tend to lean more towards the standard circuits format but Eddie, who was taking the class tonight puts us through much more specific exercises. For example, our warm up tonight consisted of a brief, 5 minute Aerobic session with running and jumping etc before we moved on to open guard exercises with one person trying to pass the legs of the other and put their knee down on their partners stomach. Neither person was allowed to grip and as soon as it went to the floor, we had to restart to keep things moving.
We then drilled how to regain open guard using the opposite side leg and ended with specific sparring from open guard that restarted whenever someone passed. Specific sparring was ok, I know a few passes that I was trying and had success with:
- Pushing the person's legs towards them and sitting on their backside almost like riding them and passing to one side
- Pushing the legs to one side and sliding your leg alongside them so you basically sit down on your side and then turn into side control
- Leapfrogging the legs into mount
Sparring went pretty well, I'm now attacking a lot more rather than waiting for my partner to make a move that I can counter. I've started using the Triangle to Omoplata setup quite a lot, though I'm finding it hard to finish the Omoplata. I'm also getting in the mounted triangle position a lot these days but when I roll over to put it on, my leg seems to be over the back rather than the neck and I can hardly ever finish it. I try to make an angle by cupping their leg but something's not quite right.
I've also found that I'm able to keep moving now instead of just laying in positions and waiting for an opening, Lawrence commented to me the other day that I'm not just laying still any more. I really do need to start going straight to open guard when I can though. This is a major sticking point in my game and probably the biggest hurdle for me to progress.
My last roll of the night was with George and was one of the funnest I've ever had. There was constant movement, sweeps, reversals and submission attempts. He impressed me with his movement but it wasn't quite tight enough for him to land things like rolling armbars that he was trying. He put me in a couple of bad positions with possible armbars but I always managed to keep my cool and get my arm out just enough to prevent the lock and then start passing.
All in all it was a good session and I plan to really get my head down and train as much as possible over the next few months. I'm feeling the urge to get on the competition mat again but I'd like to feel a little more confident in my abilities first.
Thursday 18 February 2010
BJJ - RGA VIE Farringdon 16/02/10
I've been a little lax of late, both in training and writing in this blog due to personal problems but I'm now getting back into gear and will also be writing up my gym sessions and any other thoughts, articles I find or just stuff that makes me laugh.
I wanted to train four days in a row this week so I thought it would be good to do four early classes and have a beginner / advanced / beginner / advanced pattern. The idea being that the beginner classes will be more drilling and specific sparring that won't fatigue me too much and therefore enable me to train four days in a row.
I think; falling at the first hurdle is the best way of phrasing what happened. Max is currently teaching while Cesar is away and he is very well known for his love of beasting the students. He decided to warm us up with a seemingly innocent football game. Imagine twenty guys all running after a tiny size ball with bare feet - it wasn't pretty. Whenever one team scored a goal, the other team had to do some sort of physical forfeit. This was all fun and games while my team were winning...
After having scored two or three goals, we finally let one in. The glee on the faces of the other team could hardly be hidden as they decided we had to do forty jump n' sprawls (cue evil laughter)
Much complaining later and it was reduced to thirty (thanks...) All I could hear while pushing myself through this punishment was Cornell's distinct laugh and his faux encouragement with gems like "Your jumps aren't as springy Ben!" No fucking shit mate, I feel like my lungs are about to make a hasty exit from my backside!
That was it, we were too tired to really play and ended up letting two more in. Fifty pressups and god only knows how many single leg squat thrusts later half of us collapsing while the other half were soldiering on with shaking limbs and bursting chests.
With half an hour left of the class, Max set about getting us sparring. The guys who are competing at an upcoming comp were to be constantly sparring with the rest of us changing in and out. The first guy I sparred was a White belt giving away a fair bit of weight so I took it easy. I noticed that I encountered an ongoing problem of mine with him; that is, when I clasp the legs and sprawl back to break out of the guard, my partner seems to find it quite easy to block me as I try to pass to one side. I've got round this before by literally rolling down their body to end up in Side Control but this seems to be pretty low percentage at the moment. At some point I got to mount and into what is fast becoming my trademark move - the mounted triangle. Rather than apply the triangle I decided to try the simple armbar from this position which worked well.
After this I sparred with a tall Aussie guy, I think his name is Matt. He's a very strong guy but his base can sometimes be weak. We were in half guard for some time when I decided to let him pass and try my escape from scarf hold that I learned in my rather short and painful Judo career. I'm not quite sure what happened but he ended up trying to pass and I could feel he had no pass and simply bridged over to get back to his guard. I've been trying standing passes a lot recently and have cottoned on to the idea of holding their lapels when they attempt the standard ankle grabbing sweep. This seems to work remarkably well if you also push your hips forward at the same time.
I'm not sure whether I sparred Cornell before or after Matt but I remember being so fatigued at this point that I couldn't really do anything. Because Cornell is more technical and stronger than me, I have to be on top form to keep up. I've found that constantly moving rather than standing my ground and fighting works better with him but I didn't have the energy to keep the pace up. I'm also getting a leg trapped every time I try to pull guard with him. I've also been trying armless triangles when getting stacked that have worked well on most people but he seems to know what I'm thinking and tucks his chin right in. Come to think of it, it's probably not a good idea to write about my cheap tricks in a blog that I know he reads...
I was pretty pleased with tonight's session but I really MUST open my guard. At the moment, the thought to go to Open Guard just isn't there. I've got to drill this in to my simple brain if I'm going to progress further.
I wanted to train four days in a row this week so I thought it would be good to do four early classes and have a beginner / advanced / beginner / advanced pattern. The idea being that the beginner classes will be more drilling and specific sparring that won't fatigue me too much and therefore enable me to train four days in a row.
I think; falling at the first hurdle is the best way of phrasing what happened. Max is currently teaching while Cesar is away and he is very well known for his love of beasting the students. He decided to warm us up with a seemingly innocent football game. Imagine twenty guys all running after a tiny size ball with bare feet - it wasn't pretty. Whenever one team scored a goal, the other team had to do some sort of physical forfeit. This was all fun and games while my team were winning...
After having scored two or three goals, we finally let one in. The glee on the faces of the other team could hardly be hidden as they decided we had to do forty jump n' sprawls (cue evil laughter)
Much complaining later and it was reduced to thirty (thanks...) All I could hear while pushing myself through this punishment was Cornell's distinct laugh and his faux encouragement with gems like "Your jumps aren't as springy Ben!" No fucking shit mate, I feel like my lungs are about to make a hasty exit from my backside!That was it, we were too tired to really play and ended up letting two more in. Fifty pressups and god only knows how many single leg squat thrusts later half of us collapsing while the other half were soldiering on with shaking limbs and bursting chests.
With half an hour left of the class, Max set about getting us sparring. The guys who are competing at an upcoming comp were to be constantly sparring with the rest of us changing in and out. The first guy I sparred was a White belt giving away a fair bit of weight so I took it easy. I noticed that I encountered an ongoing problem of mine with him; that is, when I clasp the legs and sprawl back to break out of the guard, my partner seems to find it quite easy to block me as I try to pass to one side. I've got round this before by literally rolling down their body to end up in Side Control but this seems to be pretty low percentage at the moment. At some point I got to mount and into what is fast becoming my trademark move - the mounted triangle. Rather than apply the triangle I decided to try the simple armbar from this position which worked well.
After this I sparred with a tall Aussie guy, I think his name is Matt. He's a very strong guy but his base can sometimes be weak. We were in half guard for some time when I decided to let him pass and try my escape from scarf hold that I learned in my rather short and painful Judo career. I'm not quite sure what happened but he ended up trying to pass and I could feel he had no pass and simply bridged over to get back to his guard. I've been trying standing passes a lot recently and have cottoned on to the idea of holding their lapels when they attempt the standard ankle grabbing sweep. This seems to work remarkably well if you also push your hips forward at the same time.
I'm not sure whether I sparred Cornell before or after Matt but I remember being so fatigued at this point that I couldn't really do anything. Because Cornell is more technical and stronger than me, I have to be on top form to keep up. I've found that constantly moving rather than standing my ground and fighting works better with him but I didn't have the energy to keep the pace up. I'm also getting a leg trapped every time I try to pull guard with him. I've also been trying armless triangles when getting stacked that have worked well on most people but he seems to know what I'm thinking and tucks his chin right in. Come to think of it, it's probably not a good idea to write about my cheap tricks in a blog that I know he reads...
I was pretty pleased with tonight's session but I really MUST open my guard. At the moment, the thought to go to Open Guard just isn't there. I've got to drill this in to my simple brain if I'm going to progress further.
Tuesday 2 February 2010
BJJ - RGA VIE Farringdon 01/02/10
Because Cesar and some of the guys are at the Euros, Max has been taking the classes. Cesar won Gold in his category, Brown belt (not sure what weight) and that's some achievement seeing that he's been out of action with Knee injuries and surgery for most of the time I've known him.
Max is known for his beasting sessions so I was expecting to be worked pretty hard today. Having started lifting weights again the day before, I was really feeling some fatigue in my muscles and was half expecting to be dropping half way through the warm up. Luckily for me, it wasn't too bad.
In typical Max fashion, the warm up consisted of a lot of circuit training; Squats to Lunges to Press ups to Crunches, that sort of thing. I was feeling the burn in my already fatigued muscles quite early and found myself pining over the Creatine that I stopped taking just before Christmas. Having heard a lot of bad *opinions* of Creatine I decided to stay off it for a while when I was due to cylce off. I certainly feel the difference if I'm training several days in a row but I'm on the fence about the whole thing. Some people advocate taking what is seen as a totally safe supplement that is proven to increase muscular output, while others don't see the point of taking something that you lose the benefits of the moment you stop taking it. I tend to sway more to the side of 'if it's not harmful or illegal then pour it down my throat' and although I no longer take Creatine supplements, it IS in my post workout recovery shake in smaller doses anyway.
Back on topic, we only went through one technique in today's class and that was a nice but fairly simple (in comparison to other things I've been shown) De La Riva Sweep. From the De La Riva guard position, you sit up and switch your legs so that the foot that was on the hip is now wrapped around the near side leg (think Omoplata leg position). While keeping your arm tight around their leg, you get hold of the bottom of their gi and switch it to the hand of the arm around their leg. You then start to move your body round a couple of times to begin to unbalance your partner who will start to follow you round. You then reach around his other knee with your free arm, bring him down on top of you and keep rolling so you end up on top with Side Control easily obtainable. Max did show us an easier sweep from the same switched leg position where you simply sweep the leg with the scissoring motion and push them back with your body, similar to a Single Leg Takedown. In practice I found both sweeps nice and easy to pull off.
Specific sparring was of course, from the De La Riva guard. I started on top and didn't have too many problems getting to a safer position. I find that always push the leg on my hips off and step back slightly to cut off their leverage. It's then possible to put some weight on the knee that they will be hugging and to either go to half guard/mount or start to pass. From the bottom however it's a totally different ball game. I find it extremely hard to even keep control of my partners long enough to think about sweeping before they've pulled my leg off and have started passing. I would like to practice this position more in sparring but it's hard enough to get to anyway and most people that I roll with don't try to stand and pass.
I only managed to free spar with two people after this. The first was Leo; the man with only one gear. I love Leo but he always seems to be fighting for his life whenever we roll and he's injured me (not seriously) a few times from submissions that I wasn't given any time to tap out of. He caught me in a Triangle at one point, I can't quite remember the order of events but I tried stacking and moving round the side to pass and ended up feeling my neck crunch. After that though Leo's energy started running low thanks to his holiday in Thailand for a few weeks. I found that if I pushed the pace, I was able to regain guard and escape from positions that he would normally have nailed me in. A lot of this comes from my training with the Beast and the constant steamrolling I get from him. If I try to always be moving and never stop with him, I find it much easier to push the pace with other people. A few times Leo was trying to push me away and regain guard but I had hold of his collar and was pushing my hips into him to keep close to him and my weight down. There came a point where I was in top position almost in Side Control but one of my legs was trapped, kind of like Half Guard but more to the side. I could stop him from rolling into me by controlling his head but I had no idea how to get my leg out from this position and we pretty much stayed like this for most of the roll.
The other person to roll with me was a White Belt no stripes who I later found out had been training for 3 years and was in fact a Blue belt. He slapped a Triangle on straight out but I managed to pass to the side and escape. He proved very hard to hold down and escaped my Side Control pretty quickly. He also did something that totally nullified me; pushing me as far away as possible with feet on my hips while keeping hold of the opposite arm meant I was totally unbalanced and couldn't even begin to pass. It felt like I was also pretty vulnerable to sweeps from here but I did finally get past the leg and back into Open Guard. This guy was excellent at escaping position and I'm looking forward to rolling with him (stealing all his moves) again next class. He was also taller than me which doesn't happen very often so it's good to get a feeling for what it's like training with someone who has longer legs than you.
Max is known for his beasting sessions so I was expecting to be worked pretty hard today. Having started lifting weights again the day before, I was really feeling some fatigue in my muscles and was half expecting to be dropping half way through the warm up. Luckily for me, it wasn't too bad.
In typical Max fashion, the warm up consisted of a lot of circuit training; Squats to Lunges to Press ups to Crunches, that sort of thing. I was feeling the burn in my already fatigued muscles quite early and found myself pining over the Creatine that I stopped taking just before Christmas. Having heard a lot of bad *opinions* of Creatine I decided to stay off it for a while when I was due to cylce off. I certainly feel the difference if I'm training several days in a row but I'm on the fence about the whole thing. Some people advocate taking what is seen as a totally safe supplement that is proven to increase muscular output, while others don't see the point of taking something that you lose the benefits of the moment you stop taking it. I tend to sway more to the side of 'if it's not harmful or illegal then pour it down my throat' and although I no longer take Creatine supplements, it IS in my post workout recovery shake in smaller doses anyway.
Back on topic, we only went through one technique in today's class and that was a nice but fairly simple (in comparison to other things I've been shown) De La Riva Sweep. From the De La Riva guard position, you sit up and switch your legs so that the foot that was on the hip is now wrapped around the near side leg (think Omoplata leg position). While keeping your arm tight around their leg, you get hold of the bottom of their gi and switch it to the hand of the arm around their leg. You then start to move your body round a couple of times to begin to unbalance your partner who will start to follow you round. You then reach around his other knee with your free arm, bring him down on top of you and keep rolling so you end up on top with Side Control easily obtainable. Max did show us an easier sweep from the same switched leg position where you simply sweep the leg with the scissoring motion and push them back with your body, similar to a Single Leg Takedown. In practice I found both sweeps nice and easy to pull off.
Specific sparring was of course, from the De La Riva guard. I started on top and didn't have too many problems getting to a safer position. I find that always push the leg on my hips off and step back slightly to cut off their leverage. It's then possible to put some weight on the knee that they will be hugging and to either go to half guard/mount or start to pass. From the bottom however it's a totally different ball game. I find it extremely hard to even keep control of my partners long enough to think about sweeping before they've pulled my leg off and have started passing. I would like to practice this position more in sparring but it's hard enough to get to anyway and most people that I roll with don't try to stand and pass.
I only managed to free spar with two people after this. The first was Leo; the man with only one gear. I love Leo but he always seems to be fighting for his life whenever we roll and he's injured me (not seriously) a few times from submissions that I wasn't given any time to tap out of. He caught me in a Triangle at one point, I can't quite remember the order of events but I tried stacking and moving round the side to pass and ended up feeling my neck crunch. After that though Leo's energy started running low thanks to his holiday in Thailand for a few weeks. I found that if I pushed the pace, I was able to regain guard and escape from positions that he would normally have nailed me in. A lot of this comes from my training with the Beast and the constant steamrolling I get from him. If I try to always be moving and never stop with him, I find it much easier to push the pace with other people. A few times Leo was trying to push me away and regain guard but I had hold of his collar and was pushing my hips into him to keep close to him and my weight down. There came a point where I was in top position almost in Side Control but one of my legs was trapped, kind of like Half Guard but more to the side. I could stop him from rolling into me by controlling his head but I had no idea how to get my leg out from this position and we pretty much stayed like this for most of the roll.
The other person to roll with me was a White Belt no stripes who I later found out had been training for 3 years and was in fact a Blue belt. He slapped a Triangle on straight out but I managed to pass to the side and escape. He proved very hard to hold down and escaped my Side Control pretty quickly. He also did something that totally nullified me; pushing me as far away as possible with feet on my hips while keeping hold of the opposite arm meant I was totally unbalanced and couldn't even begin to pass. It felt like I was also pretty vulnerable to sweeps from here but I did finally get past the leg and back into Open Guard. This guy was excellent at escaping position and I'm looking forward to rolling with him (stealing all his moves) again next class. He was also taller than me which doesn't happen very often so it's good to get a feeling for what it's like training with someone who has longer legs than you.
Tuesday 26 January 2010
BJJ - RGA VIE Farringdon 25/01/10
We had a very short warmup today, consisting of the usual circuit based stuff - Press ups, Sit ups etc etc.
Today's class was all about the De La Riva Guard. This entry is going to be pretty short compared to the others for the simple reason that I didn't really understand what we were doing. It started off simple enough with Cesar showing us the control position, the best grips to get and what to do if the guy pulls his leg out. However, because a lot of us were struggling with the intricacies, he went over it again but then showed us several different things we could try. In my mind they all merged into one big, clumsy sweep. I was pushing legs, pulling lapels, gripping arms but all in either the wrong direction or wrong order it seemed. I managed to get one or two sweeps off but it was more luck than judgment.
Specific sparring from this position didn't go too well. From bottom I was literally just clinging to people and trying to drag them down without any luck. Most of the time, my partner would put pressure on me with his knee to flatten me out. From top I had a lot more success and was passing with relative ease. The De La Riva Guard seems like a pretty tricky position to get used to.
I only sparred with a couple of people tonight, the first, of course being 'The Beast'. I have to spar with Cornell first or I don't have the energy to keep up. It was the typical scenario of me trying to pull guard but getting a leg trapped with him passing into Side Control. Getting a leg trapped is a massive sticking point for me, I can't work out what's causing it. Two things were different about our roll today that made it so much easier for me to put up a fight. Firstly, I was very vigilant about not letting him get head control when in Side Control. Normally he gets it quite quickly, forces my head to the side with his 'strength of the Bear' and i spend the rest of the roll not being able to move. Secondly and possibly much more importantly, I never stopped moving. It's not uncommon for me to just resign myself to having been passed and almost letting them get the position but today I never stopped moving and trying to escape and this made it much more difficult for him to control me. I even managed to escape and get to top half guard. I was so elated at actually getting to a semi-dominant position on The BEAST that I was considering the fact that I may need to put my knee on his face to stop him from escaping. Though with hindsight he probably would have just head butted my knee...
Second roll was with another Blue Belt who's name I never manage to catch. Maybe I should be a little politer and ask next time. The last time I sparred with him I managed to put an armless Triangle across his jaw - not something I like doing at all - so this time when he tried to stack me again and still didn't put his weight on me, I decided to nail the technique again. My arm wasn't quite in under his chin so I resisted the urge to tighten up, let the triangle go, quickly re-adjusted and re-applied for a good Triangle. The rest of the roll was good for me, he seemed to be letting me work, I don't know if he was tired or just taking it easy but I brought the pace down. There's nothing worse than taking it easy with someone who then smashes you like they're in a UFC championship bout.
Overall it was a pretty good class. I felt like I was certainly making progress in sparring but De La Riva Guard still leaves me scratching my head. I'll be trying it when I find myself in that position but I don't know how often that'll be.
Today's class was all about the De La Riva Guard. This entry is going to be pretty short compared to the others for the simple reason that I didn't really understand what we were doing. It started off simple enough with Cesar showing us the control position, the best grips to get and what to do if the guy pulls his leg out. However, because a lot of us were struggling with the intricacies, he went over it again but then showed us several different things we could try. In my mind they all merged into one big, clumsy sweep. I was pushing legs, pulling lapels, gripping arms but all in either the wrong direction or wrong order it seemed. I managed to get one or two sweeps off but it was more luck than judgment.
Specific sparring from this position didn't go too well. From bottom I was literally just clinging to people and trying to drag them down without any luck. Most of the time, my partner would put pressure on me with his knee to flatten me out. From top I had a lot more success and was passing with relative ease. The De La Riva Guard seems like a pretty tricky position to get used to.
I only sparred with a couple of people tonight, the first, of course being 'The Beast'. I have to spar with Cornell first or I don't have the energy to keep up. It was the typical scenario of me trying to pull guard but getting a leg trapped with him passing into Side Control. Getting a leg trapped is a massive sticking point for me, I can't work out what's causing it. Two things were different about our roll today that made it so much easier for me to put up a fight. Firstly, I was very vigilant about not letting him get head control when in Side Control. Normally he gets it quite quickly, forces my head to the side with his 'strength of the Bear' and i spend the rest of the roll not being able to move. Secondly and possibly much more importantly, I never stopped moving. It's not uncommon for me to just resign myself to having been passed and almost letting them get the position but today I never stopped moving and trying to escape and this made it much more difficult for him to control me. I even managed to escape and get to top half guard. I was so elated at actually getting to a semi-dominant position on The BEAST that I was considering the fact that I may need to put my knee on his face to stop him from escaping. Though with hindsight he probably would have just head butted my knee...
Second roll was with another Blue Belt who's name I never manage to catch. Maybe I should be a little politer and ask next time. The last time I sparred with him I managed to put an armless Triangle across his jaw - not something I like doing at all - so this time when he tried to stack me again and still didn't put his weight on me, I decided to nail the technique again. My arm wasn't quite in under his chin so I resisted the urge to tighten up, let the triangle go, quickly re-adjusted and re-applied for a good Triangle. The rest of the roll was good for me, he seemed to be letting me work, I don't know if he was tired or just taking it easy but I brought the pace down. There's nothing worse than taking it easy with someone who then smashes you like they're in a UFC championship bout.
Overall it was a pretty good class. I felt like I was certainly making progress in sparring but De La Riva Guard still leaves me scratching my head. I'll be trying it when I find myself in that position but I don't know how often that'll be.
Thursday 21 January 2010
BJJ - RGA VIE Farringdon 21/01/10
As usual class started with the regular warm up of jogging, forward rolls etc but wasn't as long as normal. Instead we drilled an arm drag. You start in Butterfly guard, grip the opposite arm at the wrist and elbow and drag across you, while at the same time freeing your leg. You then wrap an arm around the back and move to their back. The grip then changes to under/over - rinse & repeat.
Then it was time to drill a Butterfly sweep that I've been shown once before. From Butterfly guard it is vital to get double underhooks to be able to control your partner. You then fall onto one side - falling flat on your back is the big no no here and leaves you with no leverage what so ever. It seems obvious but I just love falling to my back as soon as the pressure's on. From your side it's important to grasp the base arm at the Bicep in order to pull it towards you and either destroy their base or increase the leverage of the sweep if they're already going over. You then need to move your leg that is on the floor back and past the leg that is currently hooking theirs. Finally, you move onto your shoulder and push against them to sweep them over.
Next up was the defence for this sweep. I found the overall movement a little tricky but what you could call the defence's survival posture was very handy to know. Basically, when the person goes to their side to sweep, you base out behind them with your hands and kick your legs out wide so that your hands and feet are on the mat. If need be, you then move round to their non-sweeping side slightly and switch your legs so that your leg is crossing your body. The important thing to remember here is that when your leg crosses your body, it needs to be under your partners legs so that when it finishes moving and your weight is down on them, your leg is is trapping theirs and their body is twisted, making it very difficult for them to move. To complete the movement, you then bring your other leg over into side control. It's a simple concept but I don't think I've explained it too well. The movement is the same as if you were to move from Side Control to Scarf Hold and back.
We then started specific sparring from this position. I had a lot more success passing than I did from the Butterfly guard. I never feel particularly secure in that guard and it feels like my legs can be passed at any moment. Keeping the underhooks seems a must and keeping my head as close to their body as possible helps stop them breaking my grip but I find that I too often end up flat on my back instead of a side. A couple of times I managed to get one of my legs free and went for the half Butterfly sweep where you scissor with the other leg. It didn't work but I feel a lot more comfortable with one leg out.
I can't remember all of the specific details about the free sparring but several things stood out:
Then it was time to drill a Butterfly sweep that I've been shown once before. From Butterfly guard it is vital to get double underhooks to be able to control your partner. You then fall onto one side - falling flat on your back is the big no no here and leaves you with no leverage what so ever. It seems obvious but I just love falling to my back as soon as the pressure's on. From your side it's important to grasp the base arm at the Bicep in order to pull it towards you and either destroy their base or increase the leverage of the sweep if they're already going over. You then need to move your leg that is on the floor back and past the leg that is currently hooking theirs. Finally, you move onto your shoulder and push against them to sweep them over.
Next up was the defence for this sweep. I found the overall movement a little tricky but what you could call the defence's survival posture was very handy to know. Basically, when the person goes to their side to sweep, you base out behind them with your hands and kick your legs out wide so that your hands and feet are on the mat. If need be, you then move round to their non-sweeping side slightly and switch your legs so that your leg is crossing your body. The important thing to remember here is that when your leg crosses your body, it needs to be under your partners legs so that when it finishes moving and your weight is down on them, your leg is is trapping theirs and their body is twisted, making it very difficult for them to move. To complete the movement, you then bring your other leg over into side control. It's a simple concept but I don't think I've explained it too well. The movement is the same as if you were to move from Side Control to Scarf Hold and back.
We then started specific sparring from this position. I had a lot more success passing than I did from the Butterfly guard. I never feel particularly secure in that guard and it feels like my legs can be passed at any moment. Keeping the underhooks seems a must and keeping my head as close to their body as possible helps stop them breaking my grip but I find that I too often end up flat on my back instead of a side. A couple of times I managed to get one of my legs free and went for the half Butterfly sweep where you scissor with the other leg. It didn't work but I feel a lot more comfortable with one leg out.
I can't remember all of the specific details about the free sparring but several things stood out:
- I was totally and utterly controlled by Lawrence. His ability to use his weight is superb and I felt totally pinned the whole time he was working to mount. Being the leader in our cult of Saulo, he was showing me the final details of the mount survial posture. Things like keeping the elbows tucked to the body and ensuring my arm wasn't out straight.
- I managed to Omoplata Andy from guard after finally remembering to get hold of my partner's body to stop them from jumping over me or rolling out of it.
- I attempted an Armless Triangle as a counter to being stacked but his chin was down. I remembered a video I had seen of the arm simply being put in between the legs and neck and tried that. My partner tapped but told me after that the choke was across his jaw rather than his neck.
- While sparring with Axel I got to some poor impression of what could have been De La Riva guard but had absolutely no idea what so ever what to do from there.
- Lukas is extremely strong and really goes for it so I end up just being in survival mode rather than attacking.
- Remembering something I'd read in Jiu Jitsu University, when Axel went for Knee on Belly, rather than push them Knee and shrimp away, I exploded and ran my body in the other direction to come to my knees.
Tuesday 19 January 2010
BJJ - RGA VIE Farringdon 20/01/10
I don't normally make the late classes so it was good to train with a different group of people for a change. The Beast will be upset that he's not mentioned in today's entry so here's a mention just for you dude. Class started with the usual warm ups, running, circuits, rolls etc. During the warm up my muscles were feeling fatigued, a pretty bad sign when you've got at least forty minutes of sparring ahead of you. Despite the aching I was actually feeling good and up for a hard session so I decided to employ the typical male technique of ignoring it and pretending it's not there.
Cesar them mentioned that some people seem to be forgetting basic escapes so we'd be drilling them today instead of anything advanced. Personally I couldn't be happier drilling basic escapes, I'm not interested in learning advanced flashy sweeps or inverse fucking upside triangles until I can escape properly every time. A lot of people, more so at White belt level seem to want to jump straight to the impressive stuff without building a good foundation of basics first. I tried to do a flying armbar once, I thought I was Sakuraba but I ended up seeing stars on my back with all the wind knocked out of me.
The first escape was in Turtle position with someone on your back. They have both hooks in and pass an arm around your neck for the choke. You need to grab the choking arm at the elbow and stretch your opposite leg as far back as possible to release the hook and starting to make the attacker off balance. The leg that just released the hook them comes up beside your other leg and in doing so, pushes the foot that was hooking forward so that it is across your thighs/top the knees. It's then an easy matter to pull the person over your shoulder and end up in Side Control.
The second escape was a totally new way (to me at least) of passing Half Guard. You start with an arm behind the head and underhook on the other side. Firstly, you move your far side leg up to their body for base. You then push their arm up the mat to their head and then duck your head under so that you're in the arm triangle position. next, feed their lapel through to the hand behind their head and pull while at the same time keeping shoulder pressure. This is very tight and uncomfortable as it is but to help the pass further you then lean over them, moving your base to the other side. This is really quite painful for the other person and it's almost impossible to stop the leg from being passed through.
We then moved onto specific sparring for the positions we'd been drilling. I was with Adam for the rear mount escape and he's a big boy. I tried to use an escape that I'd seen in Jiu Jitsu University that enables you to roll them over and land in an advantageous position. I couldn't remember exactly how to do it but did roll him over posting on one leg. I also found Saulo's advice of having both hands on one side of your neck when on your knees to be very useful when defending against chokes. Once we had rolled over I went straight to the survival posture, again from Saulo's coveted book of awesomeness, fought off a hook and turned towards Adam to get half guard. After swapping position, on his back, I managed to get my hooks deep enough to make it very hard for him to get me off. After having a hard time getting a choke in, I chose to roll to my side and go for a lapel choke which I had position for but his chin was firmly stuck to his body. We somehow got back to him being in turtle and I tried to flatten him out but we had to stop as there was too much pressure on his lower spine.
Half Guard specific sparring was with Andy, who must be giving away 20-30kg. We started with me on top and I manged to get to the control position. I tried for an arm triangle here but couldn't make it work from half guard. Andy was moving very well and managed to escape his head. His arm was out so I pretended be trying for an Americana to take his attention from my leg which enabled me to pass. After switching positions, I tried to go for the sweep where you reach through their legs, hold onto their far side foot and sweep them over to that side which worked but only because of the weight disparity. I'm doing something wrong and I suspect it's with my legs. Andy caught me in a couple of guillotines during this, the first of which was on tight. But for some reason he didn't put the choke on and I eventually got my head out. If he'd have just put the choke on a little, it would have been game over.
We then moved onto free sparring. My first partner was my old buddy Steve. He's very strong and solid and is training at another club on Sundays so it's always fun to see what new tricks he comes out with. He stood in my guard and lifted me up with him, stopping me from being able to sweep him over. I really don't know what to do when put in this position other than release my legs and go to standing. He managed to pass and get to Mount. I remembered Saulo's survival posture and wanted to try it but Steve was almost laying flat on me and I couldn't get my arms in. When he moved up for the armbar, I got hold of his lapel and rolled him over his head. This is a pretty way of giving your back but it worked for me this time. Must try not to do it though if I can help it. I managed to take Steve's back and flattened him out. I lifted his head to sink my arm in for a choke and he verbally stopped. We restarted and I attempted to kick one of his legs out and flip him over but he didn't roll enough and ended up in my guard.
I then rolled with Dave who I've not seen in quite some time. Dave has been playing a lot of Open Guard over the last few months and today wasn't an exception. I managed to use Eddie's tip of thrusting my hips forward when standing to remove their foot from my Bicep to much success today. The only problem is, I don't know what to do after. My Open Guard passes are pretty non existent and although I found that I could control the legs, I didn't really know what to do with them. I eventually managed to pass by giving up the standing passing, keeping my hips close to him and moving around the legs. His Side Control defence is very good and he managed to stop me from getting my arm round the back of his head. I also managed to get into the mounted triangle position with Dave but something wasn't right because he managed to push me forward and escape out the back door (fnar fnar).
I was going to rest after this but remembered my own advice to Can about training even when exhausted and partnered up with Adam. His size makes him a veritable smashing machine and I pulled guard as quickly as possible. I tried to open my guard several times as open guard is still something I constantly forget to do. I had moderate success in setting up triangles using wrist control but every time my leg would go around his neck, he would stack and I had to give it up or be passed. This seems to happen with most of the triangles I try nowadays. Adam passed from a triangle and I found myself in Side Control, however as he attempted to pass to mount, his weight came off me and I managed to get to my knees and drive him backwards. I also managed to attack for an Omoplata but he jumped over me. Again, something that keeps happening to me.
My last roll was with Basil, the Side Control > Kimura man. No matter what position you have on the guy, somehow you'll find your self in Side Control and being kimura'd and won't quite know how it happened. This is exactly what happened the first roll. After that I concentrated on trying to keep him in my guard but when pulling guard I keep on getting on of my legs trapped. It happens almost every single time I pull guard and makes it much easier for my partners to pass. I did manage to take Basil's back once but again found myself under Side Control before I could even mentally pat myself on the back.
I practiced Saulo's survival posture of Mount with Steve after I finished sparring as I hadn't had a chance to apply it during sparring. I'm pleased that I'm moving more now rather than just laying there like a corpse when my partners manage to pass. It's much easier to escape if you've already started moving as opposed to having to escape once you're already flattened out. This seems pretty obvious but not moving seems to be something I'm really guilty of. Overall it was a good class and I'll definitely be trying to add the back mount escape to my game.
Cesar them mentioned that some people seem to be forgetting basic escapes so we'd be drilling them today instead of anything advanced. Personally I couldn't be happier drilling basic escapes, I'm not interested in learning advanced flashy sweeps or inverse fucking upside triangles until I can escape properly every time. A lot of people, more so at White belt level seem to want to jump straight to the impressive stuff without building a good foundation of basics first. I tried to do a flying armbar once, I thought I was Sakuraba but I ended up seeing stars on my back with all the wind knocked out of me.
The first escape was in Turtle position with someone on your back. They have both hooks in and pass an arm around your neck for the choke. You need to grab the choking arm at the elbow and stretch your opposite leg as far back as possible to release the hook and starting to make the attacker off balance. The leg that just released the hook them comes up beside your other leg and in doing so, pushes the foot that was hooking forward so that it is across your thighs/top the knees. It's then an easy matter to pull the person over your shoulder and end up in Side Control.
The second escape was a totally new way (to me at least) of passing Half Guard. You start with an arm behind the head and underhook on the other side. Firstly, you move your far side leg up to their body for base. You then push their arm up the mat to their head and then duck your head under so that you're in the arm triangle position. next, feed their lapel through to the hand behind their head and pull while at the same time keeping shoulder pressure. This is very tight and uncomfortable as it is but to help the pass further you then lean over them, moving your base to the other side. This is really quite painful for the other person and it's almost impossible to stop the leg from being passed through.
We then moved onto specific sparring for the positions we'd been drilling. I was with Adam for the rear mount escape and he's a big boy. I tried to use an escape that I'd seen in Jiu Jitsu University that enables you to roll them over and land in an advantageous position. I couldn't remember exactly how to do it but did roll him over posting on one leg. I also found Saulo's advice of having both hands on one side of your neck when on your knees to be very useful when defending against chokes. Once we had rolled over I went straight to the survival posture, again from Saulo's coveted book of awesomeness, fought off a hook and turned towards Adam to get half guard. After swapping position, on his back, I managed to get my hooks deep enough to make it very hard for him to get me off. After having a hard time getting a choke in, I chose to roll to my side and go for a lapel choke which I had position for but his chin was firmly stuck to his body. We somehow got back to him being in turtle and I tried to flatten him out but we had to stop as there was too much pressure on his lower spine.
Half Guard specific sparring was with Andy, who must be giving away 20-30kg. We started with me on top and I manged to get to the control position. I tried for an arm triangle here but couldn't make it work from half guard. Andy was moving very well and managed to escape his head. His arm was out so I pretended be trying for an Americana to take his attention from my leg which enabled me to pass. After switching positions, I tried to go for the sweep where you reach through their legs, hold onto their far side foot and sweep them over to that side which worked but only because of the weight disparity. I'm doing something wrong and I suspect it's with my legs. Andy caught me in a couple of guillotines during this, the first of which was on tight. But for some reason he didn't put the choke on and I eventually got my head out. If he'd have just put the choke on a little, it would have been game over.
We then moved onto free sparring. My first partner was my old buddy Steve. He's very strong and solid and is training at another club on Sundays so it's always fun to see what new tricks he comes out with. He stood in my guard and lifted me up with him, stopping me from being able to sweep him over. I really don't know what to do when put in this position other than release my legs and go to standing. He managed to pass and get to Mount. I remembered Saulo's survival posture and wanted to try it but Steve was almost laying flat on me and I couldn't get my arms in. When he moved up for the armbar, I got hold of his lapel and rolled him over his head. This is a pretty way of giving your back but it worked for me this time. Must try not to do it though if I can help it. I managed to take Steve's back and flattened him out. I lifted his head to sink my arm in for a choke and he verbally stopped. We restarted and I attempted to kick one of his legs out and flip him over but he didn't roll enough and ended up in my guard.
I then rolled with Dave who I've not seen in quite some time. Dave has been playing a lot of Open Guard over the last few months and today wasn't an exception. I managed to use Eddie's tip of thrusting my hips forward when standing to remove their foot from my Bicep to much success today. The only problem is, I don't know what to do after. My Open Guard passes are pretty non existent and although I found that I could control the legs, I didn't really know what to do with them. I eventually managed to pass by giving up the standing passing, keeping my hips close to him and moving around the legs. His Side Control defence is very good and he managed to stop me from getting my arm round the back of his head. I also managed to get into the mounted triangle position with Dave but something wasn't right because he managed to push me forward and escape out the back door (fnar fnar).
I was going to rest after this but remembered my own advice to Can about training even when exhausted and partnered up with Adam. His size makes him a veritable smashing machine and I pulled guard as quickly as possible. I tried to open my guard several times as open guard is still something I constantly forget to do. I had moderate success in setting up triangles using wrist control but every time my leg would go around his neck, he would stack and I had to give it up or be passed. This seems to happen with most of the triangles I try nowadays. Adam passed from a triangle and I found myself in Side Control, however as he attempted to pass to mount, his weight came off me and I managed to get to my knees and drive him backwards. I also managed to attack for an Omoplata but he jumped over me. Again, something that keeps happening to me.
My last roll was with Basil, the Side Control > Kimura man. No matter what position you have on the guy, somehow you'll find your self in Side Control and being kimura'd and won't quite know how it happened. This is exactly what happened the first roll. After that I concentrated on trying to keep him in my guard but when pulling guard I keep on getting on of my legs trapped. It happens almost every single time I pull guard and makes it much easier for my partners to pass. I did manage to take Basil's back once but again found myself under Side Control before I could even mentally pat myself on the back.
I practiced Saulo's survival posture of Mount with Steve after I finished sparring as I hadn't had a chance to apply it during sparring. I'm pleased that I'm moving more now rather than just laying there like a corpse when my partners manage to pass. It's much easier to escape if you've already started moving as opposed to having to escape once you're already flattened out. This seems pretty obvious but not moving seems to be something I'm really guilty of. Overall it was a good class and I'll definitely be trying to add the back mount escape to my game.
Friday 15 January 2010
BJJ - RGA VIE Farringdon 15/01/10
Rather than sit about at work killing time for an hour, I decided to get to class for 6 and join in the beginners class. I'm a little wary of doing this as we often have very busy classes and I don't want to take up space on the mat that could be used by someone who should actually be there. To that end I'm always ready to step off if there are too many people but today wasn't too bad.
After the standard warm up of jogging, forward and back rolls and other such exercises, the Blue belts were asked to pair up with and assist the newer guys. I grabbed the biggest guy I could find who went by the rather unusual name of Silvan.
The first exercise to practice was a follow up to a counter to a standard collar choke. The attacker would start by putting one hand in the collar to begin the choke but the defender put his hands on the attacker's chest and posture up, making the choke difficult to apply if at all. The attacker, leaving his hand in the collar, pushes their arm across their body with the other arm, moves his hips out and brings his legs up in the same way that you would for an armbar. But instead of the armbar, the attacker pushes down on the head with his leg while pulling up with his arm in the collar to apply a choke. If this doesn't work out, the arm is there for the armbar. I saw this move in Ed Beneville's Passing the Guard book a couple of years back and have been trying it sporadically in training with very little success. Indeed, Silvan only tapped two or three times while we were drilling it and at least one of those was a crank rather than a choke. Silvan pointed out that if they tap then it worked but I don't agree. I am a big advocate of not hurting your partners during training. More than that, I believe it's my responsibility to look after my training partner and cranking someone's neck to get a submission in a classroom that means absolutely nothing is ego stroking at best.
The second exercise was an open guard sweep. It started from closed guard, you get a good grip on their sleeves - Cesar demonstrated some kind of grip where you get hold and then kind of half circle your wrists to tighten it up. You then put a foot on the hip, push off and bring the other foot to the other hip. Now Cesar mentioned a detail that he either missed out or I somehow didn't hear when we did this last time but when you put a foot on the bicep, you need to get your hips out and be kind of laying on your side rather than flat on your back. This made the rest of the move SO MUCH easier. With the foot on the bicep and your leg straight, you then bring the person towards you and over your opposite shoulder while scissoring their base leg. With the new found detail of getting on your side, I found this sweep a lot less cumbersome and will definitely be attempting to add it to my rather small repertoire of moves that I would feel embarrassed calling 'my game'.
We then moved on to the basic Side Control Escape
And a flow drill that went from Side Control > Knee on Belly > Mount > Half Guad > Pass back to Side Control. I found my partner to be rather unwilling to allow me to drill this. He was putting up a decent amount of resistance and correcting my positions before I'd even settled into them. He seems like a nice guy though and wasn't doing anything any other new guy does so I didn't say anything.
Advanced Class was, as is normal for a Friday evening, an open mat session. The first person I sparred with was my good friend Andy who, after several months off was a lot better in certain aspects than I would have expected. We were taking it fairly easy, letting him work and I was giving pointers here and there as we rolled. He seems to process advice quickly and only needs to be shown things once so I think he could really progress were he able to regularly make class without gaps of weeks or even months in his training. The only advice I really felt qualified to give him is to not spazz out when he sees an opportunity and to try to relax more.
My second roll was with Cornell, or 'The Beast' as he's been so affectionately named. He is one of the strongest people I've ever met and sparring with him tends to be more of an exercise in survival for me. Starting from the knees he will always try to get on top so I frequently try to pull guard to try and land in a position that suits me. I seem to have major problems with this though, as one of my legs always gets trapped in what I can only describe as half Butterfly. It's very rare for me to be able to regain guard or sweep from here before he starts to pass. Fighting against Cornell's strength seems absolutely futile and Cesar told me that I have to be faster than him so I was trying to be constantly moving and I seemed to hold guard for longer than normal, even attempting a mediocre collar choke on the way. Eventually, he underhooked both my legs and began to stack pass. I tried to roll back out of it but his strength and ability to use his weight and make himself heavy meant that I was totally squashed as he passed. In Side Control and then Mount I didn't fair an awful lot better. Recently I've been rolling when he moves up for an armbar and either ending up with him on my back or turning him over and ending up in his guard. It seems like a pretty bad habit to start forming so I must stop doing this. I also tend to bait the armbar when caught under Mount because my escape of sitting up with them has worked pretty well so far. Cornell however, has cottoned on to this and now puts pressure on my face when applying the armbar so I can't move. Overall, I got bulldozed but I seem to be surviving longer and I was before.
The last roll was with Lukas. He'd had a few weeks off over Christmas too so he wasn't at 100% but he sure is tough. I can't remember the ins and outs of our rolling but one thing he did keep doing that I've never seen before is opening his guard and using his feet to hook my shins. This made my base feel extremely wobbly and it was extremely hard to free my legs. This of course meant that it was a lot easier for him to over balance me and set up sweeps and submissions at will. He caught me in several armbars which I managed to use the stack escape on to get my arm free. I also got caught in a Triangle but in escaping, left myself open for the Omoplata. I tried to roll out of it but he had a firm grip and my arm was tangled so he put it on slowly and I tapped. One thing that I do remember trying for the first time was pulling my foot up his body while he was trying to pass close to me, like Rubber Guard position and pulled my foot over his head for the Omoplata. He rolled out of it easy enough but I was amazed and quite pleased that my legs would actually do that. I also tried to sit up out of an armbar and felt my neck click against the granite legs in front of me (Obvious note to self: Don't attempt to use neck strength against leg strength).
Almost every aspect of my game needs work, but I'm particularly concerned about the fundamentals that I'm missing. Sometimes, when someones passes my legs, I'll wait there for the Side Control, almost like mentally giving up the position. I need to move a lot more and begin my escapes as soon as I feel my legs being passed. Side Control, or more specifically, being under it is a huge hole for me at the moment that needs some serious filling. I'm going to give up the position in class on Monday and keep working my escapes.
After the standard warm up of jogging, forward and back rolls and other such exercises, the Blue belts were asked to pair up with and assist the newer guys. I grabbed the biggest guy I could find who went by the rather unusual name of Silvan.
The first exercise to practice was a follow up to a counter to a standard collar choke. The attacker would start by putting one hand in the collar to begin the choke but the defender put his hands on the attacker's chest and posture up, making the choke difficult to apply if at all. The attacker, leaving his hand in the collar, pushes their arm across their body with the other arm, moves his hips out and brings his legs up in the same way that you would for an armbar. But instead of the armbar, the attacker pushes down on the head with his leg while pulling up with his arm in the collar to apply a choke. If this doesn't work out, the arm is there for the armbar. I saw this move in Ed Beneville's Passing the Guard book a couple of years back and have been trying it sporadically in training with very little success. Indeed, Silvan only tapped two or three times while we were drilling it and at least one of those was a crank rather than a choke. Silvan pointed out that if they tap then it worked but I don't agree. I am a big advocate of not hurting your partners during training. More than that, I believe it's my responsibility to look after my training partner and cranking someone's neck to get a submission in a classroom that means absolutely nothing is ego stroking at best.
The second exercise was an open guard sweep. It started from closed guard, you get a good grip on their sleeves - Cesar demonstrated some kind of grip where you get hold and then kind of half circle your wrists to tighten it up. You then put a foot on the hip, push off and bring the other foot to the other hip. Now Cesar mentioned a detail that he either missed out or I somehow didn't hear when we did this last time but when you put a foot on the bicep, you need to get your hips out and be kind of laying on your side rather than flat on your back. This made the rest of the move SO MUCH easier. With the foot on the bicep and your leg straight, you then bring the person towards you and over your opposite shoulder while scissoring their base leg. With the new found detail of getting on your side, I found this sweep a lot less cumbersome and will definitely be attempting to add it to my rather small repertoire of moves that I would feel embarrassed calling 'my game'.
We then moved on to the basic Side Control Escape
And a flow drill that went from Side Control > Knee on Belly > Mount > Half Guad > Pass back to Side Control. I found my partner to be rather unwilling to allow me to drill this. He was putting up a decent amount of resistance and correcting my positions before I'd even settled into them. He seems like a nice guy though and wasn't doing anything any other new guy does so I didn't say anything.
Advanced Class was, as is normal for a Friday evening, an open mat session. The first person I sparred with was my good friend Andy who, after several months off was a lot better in certain aspects than I would have expected. We were taking it fairly easy, letting him work and I was giving pointers here and there as we rolled. He seems to process advice quickly and only needs to be shown things once so I think he could really progress were he able to regularly make class without gaps of weeks or even months in his training. The only advice I really felt qualified to give him is to not spazz out when he sees an opportunity and to try to relax more.
My second roll was with Cornell, or 'The Beast' as he's been so affectionately named. He is one of the strongest people I've ever met and sparring with him tends to be more of an exercise in survival for me. Starting from the knees he will always try to get on top so I frequently try to pull guard to try and land in a position that suits me. I seem to have major problems with this though, as one of my legs always gets trapped in what I can only describe as half Butterfly. It's very rare for me to be able to regain guard or sweep from here before he starts to pass. Fighting against Cornell's strength seems absolutely futile and Cesar told me that I have to be faster than him so I was trying to be constantly moving and I seemed to hold guard for longer than normal, even attempting a mediocre collar choke on the way. Eventually, he underhooked both my legs and began to stack pass. I tried to roll back out of it but his strength and ability to use his weight and make himself heavy meant that I was totally squashed as he passed. In Side Control and then Mount I didn't fair an awful lot better. Recently I've been rolling when he moves up for an armbar and either ending up with him on my back or turning him over and ending up in his guard. It seems like a pretty bad habit to start forming so I must stop doing this. I also tend to bait the armbar when caught under Mount because my escape of sitting up with them has worked pretty well so far. Cornell however, has cottoned on to this and now puts pressure on my face when applying the armbar so I can't move. Overall, I got bulldozed but I seem to be surviving longer and I was before.
The last roll was with Lukas. He'd had a few weeks off over Christmas too so he wasn't at 100% but he sure is tough. I can't remember the ins and outs of our rolling but one thing he did keep doing that I've never seen before is opening his guard and using his feet to hook my shins. This made my base feel extremely wobbly and it was extremely hard to free my legs. This of course meant that it was a lot easier for him to over balance me and set up sweeps and submissions at will. He caught me in several armbars which I managed to use the stack escape on to get my arm free. I also got caught in a Triangle but in escaping, left myself open for the Omoplata. I tried to roll out of it but he had a firm grip and my arm was tangled so he put it on slowly and I tapped. One thing that I do remember trying for the first time was pulling my foot up his body while he was trying to pass close to me, like Rubber Guard position and pulled my foot over his head for the Omoplata. He rolled out of it easy enough but I was amazed and quite pleased that my legs would actually do that. I also tried to sit up out of an armbar and felt my neck click against the granite legs in front of me (Obvious note to self: Don't attempt to use neck strength against leg strength).
Almost every aspect of my game needs work, but I'm particularly concerned about the fundamentals that I'm missing. Sometimes, when someones passes my legs, I'll wait there for the Side Control, almost like mentally giving up the position. I need to move a lot more and begin my escapes as soon as I feel my legs being passed. Side Control, or more specifically, being under it is a huge hole for me at the moment that needs some serious filling. I'm going to give up the position in class on Monday and keep working my escapes.
Martial Arts and me - A not so brief history
My earliest memory of fighting goes all the way back to when I was 5 or 6 and had begged my Mum to let me take Karate lessons, wanting of course, to kick and punch like the guys in the movies. My parents were very wary of anything that resembled fighting and as a compromise, sent me to a local Judo class. I'm not sure how long I was in that class for but I remember not being very good at it. At that age we weren't taught submission moves, with Newaza consisting of just pins and escapes. My friend and I never really paid any attention and it was my weight (being a fat kid) that got me through most of it. My memory is a little vague but I don't remember doing any specific techniques apart from Osoto Gari and Kesa Gatame, which I used to partial success in the only grading I ever went to.
My interested started to wane and I was soon bored of the 'wrestling' and longed to kick and punch like the guys in the movies. People like Van-Damme and Dolph Lundgren were the playground heroes of the 80's. Bruce Lee had been moved aside for the Blonde haired, Blue eyed, musclebound, not-gay-at-all stars of movies like Bloodsport and Rocky 4 and we wanted to be like them. Hollywood wouldn't lie to us surely! We wanted to palm strike a stack of bricks and only break the bottom one. We wanted to be able to fight blinded using some kind of sixth sense that only Karate would teach us.
So it was that my Mum finally relented and took me down to a nearby Shotokahn Karate class. I instantly loved it. People in different coloured belts, walking up and down in lines punching, kicking and standing in silly stances while screaming at the top of their voices at the end of each set. Yes! This was for me! I joined up, got a gi and set about learning my lunge punches, rising, inside and outside blocks and the never-can-fail knife defence of the X-block. I memorised the ever useful Japanese terminology that would allow me to ramble meaninglessly if I ever met a native. Imagine how you'd feel if a foreigner came up to you and started saying "Hello! left inside block, right reverse punch in forward stance! Thank you Sensie OSU! This didn't strike me as being the useless Asian sycophancy that it was at all, I could speak Japanese!
I was even told that I might be able to skip grades, I was learning that fast. It turned out that I didn't skip any grades, after telling everyone I knew, what an obvious Karate bad-ass I was. I got to Orange Belt before leaving and it would be a 2 years before I came back a much leaner young man with even more of an obsession with bad-assery. It turns out that I was actually a complete pussy and learning a Martial Art that contained next to no sparring at all was quite possibly the worst thing for me but more about that later. One of my Karate friends lent me the first few UFC's on VHS. I couldn't believe what I was hearing, it was like The Kumite from Bloodsport but real! Not understanding that movie fighting and real fighting were about as far removed as movie sex and real sex, we didn't understand what was going on. Why were they all falling over? Where were all the jumping spinning kicks and people falling into the splits to punch someone else in the nuts? What a load of crap! And that was that. I could have had an epiphany then about real fighting and not wasted several years of my life but I was too young to understand and goddam did Van-Damme look cool in Kickboxer.
The false sense of security I had got from learning almost twenty Katas and being able to execute a super fast side snap kick in Horse stance, led me to receive a good kicking from a gang of teenagers after we responded to their shouted abuse. I was totally unprepared for any attack that didn't start with the perpetrator either shouting (in Japanese of course) what level they're attacking or stopping inches before my face. Aggressiveness, Adrenaline, resisting opponents; Karate had prepared me for none of these. to put it bluntly, I was fucked. They punched me to the ground and set about kicking until their feet ached. I got away with minimal injuries thanks to my patented Fetal position stance, made famous by Fred Ettish - another Karate-ka who found out the hard way that using Karate in a fight will get you in serious trouble.I realised that what I'd suspected for a while now was true. I didn't know how to deal with conflict. I hadn't been prepared for the adrenaline, contact and unpredictable nature of a real fight. My Brown and White belt was a lie and my pretty certificates with the emblem of a tiger all over them weren't worth the card they were printed on. Being able to do advanced Katas like Bassai Dai and Canku Sho didn't help in the slightest. Well, bye bye Karate and thanks for nothing.
It was then several years until I started to yet again dabble in Martial Arts. Chasing girls, drinking, recreational drugs and heavy metal were now my preferred pastimes but it was during an unusually sober party that I began talking to my friend Russ about Wing Chun. Apparently, there were very old men who were Wing Chun masters that could use their chi to root themselves to the spot so strongly that several body builders couldn't move them. Then of course there was Bruce Lee's one inch punch tricks to salivate over. Oh we were sold man! We turned up to the class and met the instructor, a very nice guy who took us through the basic guard, movements and explained about the centre line theory: The shortest path to a target is a straight line. Of course it is! Why didn't we realise before that a straight punch using just the arm and no body torque would be preferable because it travels in a straight line, rather than those silly looping boxing punches? We spent what ended up being two years of two man drills, silly sticking hands exercises and occasional pad work with the odd bit of sparring thrown in before I decided Wing Chun was too boring. Up to this point we had all the books, were looking into how to make a wooden dummy and thought Bong Sau was the be all and end all of fighting. Vertical punches using the bottom two knuckles seemed perfectly logical, as did attacking vital areas whenever you strike. Why incapacitate someone when you can maim them? Right.....?
Everything changed when I discovered that my Sifu also taught Preying Mantis style. I checked out a class and this what I wanted. The class was full of over stylized movements, jumping spinning kicks and lots of weapons. This was finally it! After all the years of searching I'd finally found the style that would make me look like my favourite movie stars. Out was Van-Damme and in were the likes of Jackie Chan and Jet Li. There were 83 forms to learn but I was never intimidated by this ridiculous number because every form we learned made us look cooler than the last. There were really low stances, one legged stances, everything you could want to make yourself look like a Kung Fu movie badass. My training frequency went from once a week to twice, to three times and then four after I joined the advanced instructors classes. We spent an awful lot of time learning forms as you would imagine but there were also whole classes dedicated to conditioning and we sparred more than I'd ever sparred before. We never used any sorts of protective gear, gloves and gum shields were for wimps. I was a convert. In fact, I was a zealot. I would tell anyone that would listen to me that Preying Mantis had everything you could need and was so tough that it would harden anyone up. Now I'm sure this is true for physical conditioning but have you ever tried to punch someone while standing on one leg and leaning over? Or turned your front foot out to the side and leaned your back knee all the way down to the Achilles heel and tried to hit someone in the groin? It's not particularly easy. But none of that seemed to occur to me at the time, I looked like something straight out a Kung Fu movie and that was much more important. I spent years learning my forms, learning Sword, Spear, Three Section-Staff; the list of weapons is endless. The Three Section Staff was by far the stupidest thing I ever tried, having managed to hit myself in the head and groin simultaneously several times. I went on training holidays, performed demos for Chinese New Year, I was a true believer and I would have lived and breathed Kung Fu if I could. It should also be noted that at this point, I thought groundwork was unnecessary because I would just knee anyone who tried to take me down in the head. Having had no experience of double leg take downs, I must have believed that had my knee connected, my attacker's momentum would just stop dead.
About Three years into my training, I realised that I couldn't kick terribly well and this was a major crisis. How would I ever be a true Martial Artist if I couldn't kick properly? It was this need and also a life long curiosity that led me to a nearby Muay Thai School. My inability to kick soon became more apparent when I had more than just the air to hit, but now that I was kicking more and more, I soon noticed a progression and this encouraged me to train at the Muay Thai School as much as possible. At Kung Fu, people started noticing the change in my style. Pad work now result in a lot more knees than usual and my roundhouse kicks no longer just tapped the pads but rather powered through and made my partner's arms ache. In sparring I would go for more low kicks and started checking other peoples kicks with my legs rather than the traditional (and totally preposterous) double forearm leg block. Eventually I became quite friendly with the guys at Muay Thai and went on two trips to Thailand. The training was intense but I was prepared to train until I dropped (which happened more than once).
It was around this time that my Sifu asked me to teach a San Da class at the Kung Fu School. As San Da, like MMA is a ruleset rather than a style, the idea was to teach a Preying Mantis influenced style according to the rules. I relished the idea and set to work training the guys who started turning up on Sunday mornings. The class was tough, I mean real tough. I was training these guys as I want to be trained myself, that is, until they were collapsing. The guys loved it and I was very proud that they were standing out in the Kung Fu classes as being sharper in their techniques and fitter than their class mates. There was, of course a heavy Thai influence in the San Da that I was teaching but I did my best to keep a Chinese flavour to it. The problem I had was that I was discovering most of the Kung Fu techniques didn't work either against a resisting opponent or with gloves on. I also had a responsibility to teach these guys effective technique so out went the spinning double hammer fists, the Mantis style grabs, hitting with the back of the hand in a wrist breaking way and in came everything you'd expect. Jab, Cross, Uppercut, Hook. Exactly the same happened with the kicks, jumping spinning hook kicks were gone and in were roundhouses, front kicks and side kicks. I taught jumping crosses, I don't refer to them as the cringe inducing 'Superman punches', jumping back kicks and several throws. I kept some of the spinning back fist-like Chinese techniques but emphasized their low percentage nature. We started sparring and I was very happy with the team that I was building.
Then I discovered the UFC
Rather than the usual epiphany, my realisation came slowly. I started having doubts about the effectiveness of the Kung Fu. I was getting sick of turning up for class, only to be told to sit down and go through theory. Yes, you read that right, theory work. I needed to know the terminology for countless techniques, the founder of the style and his students etc etc and valuable training time was taken up with this nonsense. I remember very vividly having been in a seminar, learning how to use the Gim (straight sword) and thinking to myself 'What the hell am I doing jumping about with a sword? How practical actually is what I'm doing?'. It was a steep down hill journey after that. I owe a lot of the change in my mentality to bullshido.net - a website dedicated to exposing frauds in Martial Arts and their advocating of alive training. The nagging in the back of my head that had been there since the Karate years was building to a crescendo. "How can I know these techniques work if the person I'm practicing them with isn't resisting?" became the recurring thought running around my head in every class. Due to a change in my working situation, it was a huge struggle for me to get to Kung Fu on time and I eventually stopped going and concentrated on Muay Thai for which I now had a fight lined up.
The fight training was good. I was getting fitter than I'd ever been and my body shape was changing dramatically. I'd agreed to fight at 85kg, a whole 10kg below my normal weight. I took to the training with a vengeance, sprinting up hills before training with my coach, running every day, extra sparring after class. My diet was awful, I was hardly eating and drinking less than a litre of water a day but I somehow still had the energy for training. Fight day came and one thing was clear, I was up for it. I wanted to smash the guys face in. Then the fight started and he hit me... It was all over from then on. Even though I had been training for this fight, I had never done any full contact full-on sparring. The fight or flight response kicked in and it was set to flight. I have been told to watch the video and that I won every time we were in the clinch but that's not how it felt. I felt like I ran the whole time and let the guy go to town. On reflection this couldn't have been true as I made it to the end but I felt like I'd been on the receiving end of a sound beating. I didn't have the mentality to fight, the aggression wasn't there and there was no way I was going to be someone's punchbag. My whole world collapsed around my ears. I had a few weeks off training to recover from my injuries from the fight: a perforated ear drum, black leg and hurt ribs and came back determined to train as hard as I was previously but my heart just wasn't in it. I'd been cross training at the local MMA club Team Sure Grip for a while and was feeling a passion for grappling, my whole purpose for training Muay Thai was destroyed and I wanted to be able to compete in something that didn't leave my body in ruins. Now I have to point out here that TSG is a gym full of amazing fighters with a top level coach in Dan Burotta but they were only doing one Gi class per week. As much as I loved MMA, I wanted to concentrate on Jiu Jitsu. I was also still feeling the sting of the realisation that I couldn't handle being punched in the face and I think this may have also been a contributory factor for not wanting to join the MMA classes.
In August of 2006 I took myself down to the BJJ class taught in the Budokwai. I loved it but felt way out of my depth as a beginner in a class of Blue belt. This then led me to make the journey from Southend to Ladbroke Grove on a hot, sunny Saturday afternoon to attend an introductory class at the famous Roger Gracie Academy. It was comprised of basic drilling, a choke and a sweep. It felt amazing wearing the Gi and practising the moves I'd seen Royce defeating people with in the early UFC's. The gym was huge with a large mat and large pictures of BJJ legends on the walls. It was obvious that if I wanted Jiu Jitsu, this was the only place to train.
I was then presented with the sales pitch; an irresistible offer of my first month's training, a gi and an RGA t-shirt for £100. I signed up on the spot and was hooked. I felt like I was making progress over the months as I obtained my first three stripes for my White belt and I started obsessing over Jiu Jitsu; watching DVD's, Youtube videos, websites, pretty much anything I could get my hands on. I was a convert but never a zealot. I would walk away cringing when listening to over zealous newbies crowing on about how BJJ could destroy just about any other Martial Art and let's not even go into how many new guys were trying to master Rubber Guard before they could even do an armbar from guard properly!
Sadly though, the journey from West London to Southend after training was taking far too long in the evening and attending a Saturday class meant a 5 hour round trip, so I eventually stopped training at RGA. I then spent a few months just weight training with not a lot of success other than increasing my waist by 6 inches and my weight to 110kg. It's true what they say about a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. I knew that Protein was important for muscular growth so I was stuff my face with as much Protein as I could find, safe in the knowledge that any excess over my body's needs would be excreted through my urine. Was I correct? Kind of, but I wasn't thinking about the amount of calories that I was taking in or knew anything about the potential damage on my body by having such a high level of acidity in my blood.
After a while the Jiu Jitsu bug had got hold of me again and I spent a couple of months looking for a place to train. Someone suggested the RGA school in Farringdon taught by Nic Gregoriades. After a few phone calls it was clear that Nic no longer taught there but the class was still in full swing so I phoned VIE (the gym that the class is in) and spoke to a lovely young lady called Kelly about joining, times and fees etc. The reason I'd dismissed Farringdon before is because some of the classes start at six and I thought there was no way I'd ever get there in time but Kelly assured me it would be possible from where I worked so I tried and I could indeed make it. My friend Andy and I went down, signed up, got a free Gi and that's where my Martial Arts history becomes my Martial Arts present.
Other than a long layoff due to surgery that I am currently in my fifth week of, I have been training at VIE ever since. Always wanting to be humble I took the stripes off my belt and allowed my new coach Cesar Lima to evaluate me himself. I got my three stripes back after a few weeks, my fourth some time later and eventually by Blue belt. It's hard to describe what an anti climax getting my Blue belt was. When I was a White belt, the Blue seemed this mythical far off level of grappling awesomeness and imagined myself glowing with pride but when I eventually got there I didn't really feel any different. In fact, and this is quite common it would seem, I didn't actually want my belt. I didn't feel ready for it and I hadn't yet competed at White belt. The idea of competing at the bottom of the skill tree of Blues wasn't terribly appealing. Since then I've certainly felt like I've grown into my Blue belt but have recently got myself into a training rut. I'm hoping that the time off will help me re-evaluate things and maybe even help with my retention. I think I was burning out as I was was approaching my surgery date so I'll be interested to see how I approach my Jiu Jitsu when I get back.
During my BJJ training I have attempted to supplement with Judo but received a serious shoulder injury in my first ever competition which led to me being out of action for a few weeks and gave me a serious phobia when it comes to being thrown. I tend to cling onto my partner like a Koala Bear rather than letting them throw me when we're drilling or worse, I put my hand(s) out to stop myself rather than break falling properly. I know this is a serious issue I need to overcome and I do need to work on my stand up grappling A LOT. To that end I'm going to train at TSG in Southend at their Wrestling class. As good as Judo is, I don't think it's necessary for someone who only wants to know a few takedowns for BJJ competition and I'm not particularly taken with some of the habits that Judoka pick up; falling flat on your face, turtling and giving up your back for some throws to name but a few. All I want is a good double and single leg which I think a freestyle Wrestling club will be a lot better for than learning the intricacies of Ippon Seo Nage.
As of May 2010, I've accrued the following grades (for what they're worth)
My interested started to wane and I was soon bored of the 'wrestling' and longed to kick and punch like the guys in the movies. People like Van-Damme and Dolph Lundgren were the playground heroes of the 80's. Bruce Lee had been moved aside for the Blonde haired, Blue eyed, musclebound, not-gay-at-all stars of movies like Bloodsport and Rocky 4 and we wanted to be like them. Hollywood wouldn't lie to us surely! We wanted to palm strike a stack of bricks and only break the bottom one. We wanted to be able to fight blinded using some kind of sixth sense that only Karate would teach us.
So it was that my Mum finally relented and took me down to a nearby Shotokahn Karate class. I instantly loved it. People in different coloured belts, walking up and down in lines punching, kicking and standing in silly stances while screaming at the top of their voices at the end of each set. Yes! This was for me! I joined up, got a gi and set about learning my lunge punches, rising, inside and outside blocks and the never-can-fail knife defence of the X-block. I memorised the ever useful Japanese terminology that would allow me to ramble meaninglessly if I ever met a native. Imagine how you'd feel if a foreigner came up to you and started saying "Hello! left inside block, right reverse punch in forward stance! Thank you Sensie OSU! This didn't strike me as being the useless Asian sycophancy that it was at all, I could speak Japanese!
I was even told that I might be able to skip grades, I was learning that fast. It turned out that I didn't skip any grades, after telling everyone I knew, what an obvious Karate bad-ass I was. I got to Orange Belt before leaving and it would be a 2 years before I came back a much leaner young man with even more of an obsession with bad-assery. It turns out that I was actually a complete pussy and learning a Martial Art that contained next to no sparring at all was quite possibly the worst thing for me but more about that later. One of my Karate friends lent me the first few UFC's on VHS. I couldn't believe what I was hearing, it was like The Kumite from Bloodsport but real! Not understanding that movie fighting and real fighting were about as far removed as movie sex and real sex, we didn't understand what was going on. Why were they all falling over? Where were all the jumping spinning kicks and people falling into the splits to punch someone else in the nuts? What a load of crap! And that was that. I could have had an epiphany then about real fighting and not wasted several years of my life but I was too young to understand and goddam did Van-Damme look cool in Kickboxer.
The false sense of security I had got from learning almost twenty Katas and being able to execute a super fast side snap kick in Horse stance, led me to receive a good kicking from a gang of teenagers after we responded to their shouted abuse. I was totally unprepared for any attack that didn't start with the perpetrator either shouting (in Japanese of course) what level they're attacking or stopping inches before my face. Aggressiveness, Adrenaline, resisting opponents; Karate had prepared me for none of these. to put it bluntly, I was fucked. They punched me to the ground and set about kicking until their feet ached. I got away with minimal injuries thanks to my patented Fetal position stance, made famous by Fred Ettish - another Karate-ka who found out the hard way that using Karate in a fight will get you in serious trouble.I realised that what I'd suspected for a while now was true. I didn't know how to deal with conflict. I hadn't been prepared for the adrenaline, contact and unpredictable nature of a real fight. My Brown and White belt was a lie and my pretty certificates with the emblem of a tiger all over them weren't worth the card they were printed on. Being able to do advanced Katas like Bassai Dai and Canku Sho didn't help in the slightest. Well, bye bye Karate and thanks for nothing.
It was then several years until I started to yet again dabble in Martial Arts. Chasing girls, drinking, recreational drugs and heavy metal were now my preferred pastimes but it was during an unusually sober party that I began talking to my friend Russ about Wing Chun. Apparently, there were very old men who were Wing Chun masters that could use their chi to root themselves to the spot so strongly that several body builders couldn't move them. Then of course there was Bruce Lee's one inch punch tricks to salivate over. Oh we were sold man! We turned up to the class and met the instructor, a very nice guy who took us through the basic guard, movements and explained about the centre line theory: The shortest path to a target is a straight line. Of course it is! Why didn't we realise before that a straight punch using just the arm and no body torque would be preferable because it travels in a straight line, rather than those silly looping boxing punches? We spent what ended up being two years of two man drills, silly sticking hands exercises and occasional pad work with the odd bit of sparring thrown in before I decided Wing Chun was too boring. Up to this point we had all the books, were looking into how to make a wooden dummy and thought Bong Sau was the be all and end all of fighting. Vertical punches using the bottom two knuckles seemed perfectly logical, as did attacking vital areas whenever you strike. Why incapacitate someone when you can maim them? Right.....?
Everything changed when I discovered that my Sifu also taught Preying Mantis style. I checked out a class and this what I wanted. The class was full of over stylized movements, jumping spinning kicks and lots of weapons. This was finally it! After all the years of searching I'd finally found the style that would make me look like my favourite movie stars. Out was Van-Damme and in were the likes of Jackie Chan and Jet Li. There were 83 forms to learn but I was never intimidated by this ridiculous number because every form we learned made us look cooler than the last. There were really low stances, one legged stances, everything you could want to make yourself look like a Kung Fu movie badass. My training frequency went from once a week to twice, to three times and then four after I joined the advanced instructors classes. We spent an awful lot of time learning forms as you would imagine but there were also whole classes dedicated to conditioning and we sparred more than I'd ever sparred before. We never used any sorts of protective gear, gloves and gum shields were for wimps. I was a convert. In fact, I was a zealot. I would tell anyone that would listen to me that Preying Mantis had everything you could need and was so tough that it would harden anyone up. Now I'm sure this is true for physical conditioning but have you ever tried to punch someone while standing on one leg and leaning over? Or turned your front foot out to the side and leaned your back knee all the way down to the Achilles heel and tried to hit someone in the groin? It's not particularly easy. But none of that seemed to occur to me at the time, I looked like something straight out a Kung Fu movie and that was much more important. I spent years learning my forms, learning Sword, Spear, Three Section-Staff; the list of weapons is endless. The Three Section Staff was by far the stupidest thing I ever tried, having managed to hit myself in the head and groin simultaneously several times. I went on training holidays, performed demos for Chinese New Year, I was a true believer and I would have lived and breathed Kung Fu if I could. It should also be noted that at this point, I thought groundwork was unnecessary because I would just knee anyone who tried to take me down in the head. Having had no experience of double leg take downs, I must have believed that had my knee connected, my attacker's momentum would just stop dead.
About Three years into my training, I realised that I couldn't kick terribly well and this was a major crisis. How would I ever be a true Martial Artist if I couldn't kick properly? It was this need and also a life long curiosity that led me to a nearby Muay Thai School. My inability to kick soon became more apparent when I had more than just the air to hit, but now that I was kicking more and more, I soon noticed a progression and this encouraged me to train at the Muay Thai School as much as possible. At Kung Fu, people started noticing the change in my style. Pad work now result in a lot more knees than usual and my roundhouse kicks no longer just tapped the pads but rather powered through and made my partner's arms ache. In sparring I would go for more low kicks and started checking other peoples kicks with my legs rather than the traditional (and totally preposterous) double forearm leg block. Eventually I became quite friendly with the guys at Muay Thai and went on two trips to Thailand. The training was intense but I was prepared to train until I dropped (which happened more than once).
It was around this time that my Sifu asked me to teach a San Da class at the Kung Fu School. As San Da, like MMA is a ruleset rather than a style, the idea was to teach a Preying Mantis influenced style according to the rules. I relished the idea and set to work training the guys who started turning up on Sunday mornings. The class was tough, I mean real tough. I was training these guys as I want to be trained myself, that is, until they were collapsing. The guys loved it and I was very proud that they were standing out in the Kung Fu classes as being sharper in their techniques and fitter than their class mates. There was, of course a heavy Thai influence in the San Da that I was teaching but I did my best to keep a Chinese flavour to it. The problem I had was that I was discovering most of the Kung Fu techniques didn't work either against a resisting opponent or with gloves on. I also had a responsibility to teach these guys effective technique so out went the spinning double hammer fists, the Mantis style grabs, hitting with the back of the hand in a wrist breaking way and in came everything you'd expect. Jab, Cross, Uppercut, Hook. Exactly the same happened with the kicks, jumping spinning hook kicks were gone and in were roundhouses, front kicks and side kicks. I taught jumping crosses, I don't refer to them as the cringe inducing 'Superman punches', jumping back kicks and several throws. I kept some of the spinning back fist-like Chinese techniques but emphasized their low percentage nature. We started sparring and I was very happy with the team that I was building.
Then I discovered the UFC
Rather than the usual epiphany, my realisation came slowly. I started having doubts about the effectiveness of the Kung Fu. I was getting sick of turning up for class, only to be told to sit down and go through theory. Yes, you read that right, theory work. I needed to know the terminology for countless techniques, the founder of the style and his students etc etc and valuable training time was taken up with this nonsense. I remember very vividly having been in a seminar, learning how to use the Gim (straight sword) and thinking to myself 'What the hell am I doing jumping about with a sword? How practical actually is what I'm doing?'. It was a steep down hill journey after that. I owe a lot of the change in my mentality to bullshido.net - a website dedicated to exposing frauds in Martial Arts and their advocating of alive training. The nagging in the back of my head that had been there since the Karate years was building to a crescendo. "How can I know these techniques work if the person I'm practicing them with isn't resisting?" became the recurring thought running around my head in every class. Due to a change in my working situation, it was a huge struggle for me to get to Kung Fu on time and I eventually stopped going and concentrated on Muay Thai for which I now had a fight lined up.
The fight training was good. I was getting fitter than I'd ever been and my body shape was changing dramatically. I'd agreed to fight at 85kg, a whole 10kg below my normal weight. I took to the training with a vengeance, sprinting up hills before training with my coach, running every day, extra sparring after class. My diet was awful, I was hardly eating and drinking less than a litre of water a day but I somehow still had the energy for training. Fight day came and one thing was clear, I was up for it. I wanted to smash the guys face in. Then the fight started and he hit me... It was all over from then on. Even though I had been training for this fight, I had never done any full contact full-on sparring. The fight or flight response kicked in and it was set to flight. I have been told to watch the video and that I won every time we were in the clinch but that's not how it felt. I felt like I ran the whole time and let the guy go to town. On reflection this couldn't have been true as I made it to the end but I felt like I'd been on the receiving end of a sound beating. I didn't have the mentality to fight, the aggression wasn't there and there was no way I was going to be someone's punchbag. My whole world collapsed around my ears. I had a few weeks off training to recover from my injuries from the fight: a perforated ear drum, black leg and hurt ribs and came back determined to train as hard as I was previously but my heart just wasn't in it. I'd been cross training at the local MMA club Team Sure Grip for a while and was feeling a passion for grappling, my whole purpose for training Muay Thai was destroyed and I wanted to be able to compete in something that didn't leave my body in ruins. Now I have to point out here that TSG is a gym full of amazing fighters with a top level coach in Dan Burotta but they were only doing one Gi class per week. As much as I loved MMA, I wanted to concentrate on Jiu Jitsu. I was also still feeling the sting of the realisation that I couldn't handle being punched in the face and I think this may have also been a contributory factor for not wanting to join the MMA classes.
In August of 2006 I took myself down to the BJJ class taught in the Budokwai. I loved it but felt way out of my depth as a beginner in a class of Blue belt. This then led me to make the journey from Southend to Ladbroke Grove on a hot, sunny Saturday afternoon to attend an introductory class at the famous Roger Gracie Academy. It was comprised of basic drilling, a choke and a sweep. It felt amazing wearing the Gi and practising the moves I'd seen Royce defeating people with in the early UFC's. The gym was huge with a large mat and large pictures of BJJ legends on the walls. It was obvious that if I wanted Jiu Jitsu, this was the only place to train.
I was then presented with the sales pitch; an irresistible offer of my first month's training, a gi and an RGA t-shirt for £100. I signed up on the spot and was hooked. I felt like I was making progress over the months as I obtained my first three stripes for my White belt and I started obsessing over Jiu Jitsu; watching DVD's, Youtube videos, websites, pretty much anything I could get my hands on. I was a convert but never a zealot. I would walk away cringing when listening to over zealous newbies crowing on about how BJJ could destroy just about any other Martial Art and let's not even go into how many new guys were trying to master Rubber Guard before they could even do an armbar from guard properly!
Sadly though, the journey from West London to Southend after training was taking far too long in the evening and attending a Saturday class meant a 5 hour round trip, so I eventually stopped training at RGA. I then spent a few months just weight training with not a lot of success other than increasing my waist by 6 inches and my weight to 110kg. It's true what they say about a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. I knew that Protein was important for muscular growth so I was stuff my face with as much Protein as I could find, safe in the knowledge that any excess over my body's needs would be excreted through my urine. Was I correct? Kind of, but I wasn't thinking about the amount of calories that I was taking in or knew anything about the potential damage on my body by having such a high level of acidity in my blood.
After a while the Jiu Jitsu bug had got hold of me again and I spent a couple of months looking for a place to train. Someone suggested the RGA school in Farringdon taught by Nic Gregoriades. After a few phone calls it was clear that Nic no longer taught there but the class was still in full swing so I phoned VIE (the gym that the class is in) and spoke to a lovely young lady called Kelly about joining, times and fees etc. The reason I'd dismissed Farringdon before is because some of the classes start at six and I thought there was no way I'd ever get there in time but Kelly assured me it would be possible from where I worked so I tried and I could indeed make it. My friend Andy and I went down, signed up, got a free Gi and that's where my Martial Arts history becomes my Martial Arts present.
Other than a long layoff due to surgery that I am currently in my fifth week of, I have been training at VIE ever since. Always wanting to be humble I took the stripes off my belt and allowed my new coach Cesar Lima to evaluate me himself. I got my three stripes back after a few weeks, my fourth some time later and eventually by Blue belt. It's hard to describe what an anti climax getting my Blue belt was. When I was a White belt, the Blue seemed this mythical far off level of grappling awesomeness and imagined myself glowing with pride but when I eventually got there I didn't really feel any different. In fact, and this is quite common it would seem, I didn't actually want my belt. I didn't feel ready for it and I hadn't yet competed at White belt. The idea of competing at the bottom of the skill tree of Blues wasn't terribly appealing. Since then I've certainly felt like I've grown into my Blue belt but have recently got myself into a training rut. I'm hoping that the time off will help me re-evaluate things and maybe even help with my retention. I think I was burning out as I was was approaching my surgery date so I'll be interested to see how I approach my Jiu Jitsu when I get back.
During my BJJ training I have attempted to supplement with Judo but received a serious shoulder injury in my first ever competition which led to me being out of action for a few weeks and gave me a serious phobia when it comes to being thrown. I tend to cling onto my partner like a Koala Bear rather than letting them throw me when we're drilling or worse, I put my hand(s) out to stop myself rather than break falling properly. I know this is a serious issue I need to overcome and I do need to work on my stand up grappling A LOT. To that end I'm going to train at TSG in Southend at their Wrestling class. As good as Judo is, I don't think it's necessary for someone who only wants to know a few takedowns for BJJ competition and I'm not particularly taken with some of the habits that Judoka pick up; falling flat on your face, turtling and giving up your back for some throws to name but a few. All I want is a good double and single leg which I think a freestyle Wrestling club will be a lot better for than learning the intricacies of Ippon Seo Nage.
As of May 2010, I've accrued the following grades (for what they're worth)
- Shotokan Karate - Brown Belt
- Judo - Yellow Belt
- Preying Mantis Kung Fu - Blue Sash (assistant instructor)
- Muay Thai - Level 4 or Green belt/arm band
- BJJ - Blue Belt 3 stripes
Introduction
Well here we are. It's only taken me around two years to finally get my arse into gear and start keeping a log of my training. I did make a rather lackluster effort some time ago to write down what I'd gone through each lesson on the Bullshido.net members section but it soon fizzed out, thanks in part to my rather shockingly bad memory and a sizable helping of laziness.
Every person that I ask for tips tells me to keep a training log and it would seem that everyone from intermediate Blue level and up is doing it so there must be something in it right? Whether it's the visualization of the techniques required to write them up in detail or the ability to go back over previous posts and look up a minor detail you may have over looked, some facet of writing everything down seems to help people further their abilities.
As I write this, I am a two stripe Blue Belt who is feeling the Christmas break really badly. This is my first full week back in class after three weeks off and I've been waking up every morning after, feeling like I've been on the receiving end of a good kicking (although technically I probably have). Tonight will be my third class of the week and I shall hopefully be able to add at least one of my weights sessions next week. The road back to your normal fitness levels after only three weeks off seems a lot longer than in any of the other Martial Arts I have practiced. Is this down to BJJ being harder on the body or my ever increasing age? At Thirty years old, I do seem to be feeling it a lot more than when I was only Twenty Five, training to fight in Muay Thai and not even eating properly.
I've felt like I've been in a slump for a while now and I'm hoping this blog will be the beginning of my rise out of it. I plan, though I don't know how long I'll keep it up for, to go to class with a very good idea of what I want to work on as simply turning up and practicing doesn't seem to be enough right now.
I've recently noticed that I have real problems controlling people's posture in my guard so this is something that I am going to be actively working on tonight.
Every person that I ask for tips tells me to keep a training log and it would seem that everyone from intermediate Blue level and up is doing it so there must be something in it right? Whether it's the visualization of the techniques required to write them up in detail or the ability to go back over previous posts and look up a minor detail you may have over looked, some facet of writing everything down seems to help people further their abilities.
As I write this, I am a two stripe Blue Belt who is feeling the Christmas break really badly. This is my first full week back in class after three weeks off and I've been waking up every morning after, feeling like I've been on the receiving end of a good kicking (although technically I probably have). Tonight will be my third class of the week and I shall hopefully be able to add at least one of my weights sessions next week. The road back to your normal fitness levels after only three weeks off seems a lot longer than in any of the other Martial Arts I have practiced. Is this down to BJJ being harder on the body or my ever increasing age? At Thirty years old, I do seem to be feeling it a lot more than when I was only Twenty Five, training to fight in Muay Thai and not even eating properly.
I've felt like I've been in a slump for a while now and I'm hoping this blog will be the beginning of my rise out of it. I plan, though I don't know how long I'll keep it up for, to go to class with a very good idea of what I want to work on as simply turning up and practicing doesn't seem to be enough right now.
I've recently noticed that I have real problems controlling people's posture in my guard so this is something that I am going to be actively working on tonight.
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