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.

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.