Month: December 2018

Weekend trip to Hawkes Bay

Napier Trip 14-16th Dec

Was down in Napier over the weekend for a wedding, so naturally Kristin and I planned to hit up the local BJJ gym in the morning. The other couples all had winery tours and such planned… not our thing haha. 

Saturday morning we went on down to an open mat in Hastings at Clark Gracie Gym NZ. We were greeted by the very friendly owner Damian and had a chance to get in some rolls with two of his students that were there, a blue and brown belt. In between rounds Damien showed me loads of technique (he saw that I was playing half guard and gave me some gems) and we chatted non-step about everything jiu-jitsu, despite me having just met the guy and not even being a member of his team. It definitely left a huge positive impression on me about the kind of black belt or gym owner I would like to one day be. 

I had good success with the underhook game and kimura grips to the back against the blue belt; however I did get my ass kicked by the brown belt, who had a very good kimura and guillotine attacks from the top. I did manage to hit the transition from half guard to X guard sweep (from the Lachlan Giles set)  which I was stoked about though, as well as a half guard sweep that Damian had just showed me! 

Absolutely would recommend anyone travelling to the Hawke’s Bay to hit up Clark Gracie Gym. Afterwards we hit up a local smoothie bowl place in Havelock North (Pixies). Really nice, probably the best acai I’ve had in New Zealand. 

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Yesterday night’s rolls back home: 

I’m still working on my half guard and implementing the material from Lachlan Giles’ Half Guard Anthology set.

I rolled 3 times with Clint. Usually in training you’d roll with different people each round, but I think its quite useful to roll with someone multiple times especially if they are similar or slightly better in skill, as those are the rolls you get the most improvement out of, and also by rounds 2 and 3 they know what you are trying to do, so the technique has to get better to be successful. 

Unfortunately in those rounds, my high elbow guillotine escape streak has been broken. I went the wrong way and didn’t do the escape.  I’m sad about this. Clint laughed evilly. 

Overall I felt like I struggled to get into half guard against Clint; he knows I want the position and refuses to give an inch. I need more work on this aspect. Instead, I find myself more in quarter guard against his knee slice.  I’m still getting darce’d from here. It’s because I’m not winning the underhook. When I do win it, I’m getting sweeps. I’ve got to be more aggressive with it. 

On a positive note, somehow hit a triangle choke. I went for the reverse locked triangle when they hid their arm behind (baiting me to change to omoplata) and kept squeezing until they exposed the arm during the escape where I was able to drag it over for the conventional finish. Quite surprised by this as my triangle is not that great. 

And lastly managed to use Choi bar as a counter to over/under pass and general cross-face attempts. Couldn’t finish the sub, but man it’s awesome. I’m a believer in this now.

Tonight is going to be another strength session with Tash. And then I’m going to crack into a bit of John Danaher’s Enter the System: Back Attacks. 

 

More half guard reflections

But first, a whinge. 

I am really not enjoying gi training at the moment. It’s probably all the half guard work I’ve been practicing; it’s much harder to play half in gi with people grabbing and holding everywhere to stop you from getting the underhook. My right index finger has been constantly aching for about a month now ever since a white belt landed on my hand, so gi gripping is not too fun in any case. 

Anyways, I haven’t been watching as much of the Lachlan Giles set as I’d like to. Just haven’t had the time, which is really just me being too addicted to Red Read Redemption 2 like the sack of shit I am. 

The biggest problem I’m having lately half guard is spending enough time in half guard. There’s quite a few rolling partners who just refuse to engage in it which is forcing me to think of new baits. I’m getting a bit of snagging half guard from turtle as a result. Probably not a good strategy to give up the guard to turtle up, but I just need more time in half! Worst of all are those that double pull guard on me, argh! 

I’m starting to make better connections/transitions between half guard, RDLR, and X guard now, which is of course based on both my own prefernce for RDLR and Lachlan’s instructional. Goal is to develop a good system here. I’m thinking the main components will be:

  1. Underhook based half guard game against low passers- getting underneath and coming up to the dogfight or going further down into deep half 
  2. RDLR against standing passers/knee slicers- RDLR sweeps and saddle entries, or use it defensively to force them to come back down into my half guard
  3. X guard into sweeps or leg entanglements if they stand from half and I can grab under the outside leg

Nogi tonight, will see how how much of the above I can pull off! 

Training log 3 & 4 Dec 2018

Monday 3/12

Our former teammate Jimmy is visiting us for the week. Jimmy started with us when I was a blue belt, and from a very early stage it was clear he was a special talent- I remember telling him when he was a white belt that he could go far with jiu-jitsu if he wanted. Now he’s based in Australia, training full time and mopping up in competitions. I fully expect him to be part of the current boom of Aussie talent making names for themselves on the world stage. 

Here’s a short Instagram video HL of us rolling. As you can see, he’s just a step too sharp for me to keep up. I haven’t been tapped so many times in a round by a non-black in a long time. I couldn’t get into my half guard game at all other than reversing that guillotine attempt at the very start, very happy about this! (I wrote about that technique in my previous post).  His heel hook and X guard game is so sharp, definitely inspired- and a little jealous! 

Coach Jonathan was watching our roll and gave me some feedback about the angle of my knee slice needing to be more close to the hip when going for that explosive Marcelo Garcia version. I’ll work on this pass for the next couple of training sessions. 

Tues 4/12

Another S&C session with Tash today before class. Posterior chain was the focus today, prepping me for deadlifts, which I haven’t done in maybe a year. I’ve never felt right doing deadlifts, so it was nice to have a coach looking at my form and giving me proper technique guidance. Worked up to 75 KG x 5, which is of course very light, but gotta start somewhere on the first day back into it! I’m a zero stripe white belt when it comes to lifting.

I have a little long-term goal, which I  never achieved even back when I was lifting regularly, which is to deadlift 3 plates (140KG). I want to get there by the end of 2019.  

Training jiu-jitsu straight after deadlifting is tough. Doubly so when coach makes the purple belts roll for 20 minutes from closed guard (10 bottom, 10 top). My closed guard is pretty bad as it is (my best move from closed guard is to open it), but that night I was a gassed mess with no legs left, had my closed guard passed twice by white belts in the 10 minutes and really struggled to get the sweeps/submissions. On top was only slightly less torturous.

Fatigue makes white belts of us all. This is actually a really good way to make a mixed level class more valuable to everyone; gassed purples versus fresh, enthusiastic white belts means a lot more opportunities for the white belts to be on the offensive, and for us to test our technique when there’s nothing in the tank. Something to file away in my coaching toolbox. 

Afterwards got to roll with Ryan, newly minted purple belt. Almost hit the rollover sweep but he managed to base his hands out. Should have gone for the back from there.  Managed to escape some bad spots (back, under sprawl) into half guard, but he got me with a very nice armbar from top turtle at the end. Really glad he is enthusiastic about engaging my half guard, my sweeps and his passing are getting better which he is noticing too. 

A game-changing detail

Sometimes in jiu jitsu, you just get shown a little something that resonates with you and makes sense so quickly that you’re convinced you’ll remember and use it for the rest of your life. Today I had one of those days. 

Today was Saturday comp training. Quite happy with how the rolls went in terms of my half guard. Hit a lot of the basic half guard sweeps from the underhook, the Jedi Mind Trick against the backstep, got out of some bad situations using deep half, hit some transitions into leg entanglements, and managed to escape a Darce choke. 

However, I was caught in a high elbow guillotine from half top; this was despite me coming up top and getting past the legs into top side. Usually I am able to get out at this point, but clearly against a good high elbow it was not safe. 

After rolling coach asked if anyone had questions, so I used the opportunity to ask about escaping this, feeling that what I did above was not the best option. I was shown a nifty, safer option that involves flopping sideways towards the choking arm and hip heisting to the top. Very similar to the escape Conor McGregor did against Chad Mendes. What made this memorable to me was a really nice detail by my coach involving framing the hips with my arms, which keeps you safe from the guillotine pressure throughout. 

I finished training feeling stoked. I had learned a solution to a very dangerous problem in my half guard game, and was given some unique details to make it even more effective. Its these kind of small details that are the real game changers.  The kind of subtle adjustment to a technique that you just remember apply for the rest of your jiu jitsu life.

I hope in a couple of years I can pass on things like this to the next generation and give them little jiu jitsu epiphanies too. 

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