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.