Category: Rolling Reflections

Mid-Year Status Update

Damnit, I’ve fallen off on the blog for a bit. Starting it back up today.

Its been a month since I’ve rolled. Have had some terrible luck the last month or two. First, my shoulder flared up badly after rolling with Pedro around April- getting flattened with my arm stretched across my chest was not good for my already busted shoulder. Have been seeing a great physio who has identified some things with not only my shoulder, but my elbow as well, so I am optimistic I have found someone who knows what they are doing. Helps that she trains and understands when she asks what do I want to be able to do with my arm, and I say “hang from a pullup bar pain-free… and be able to do a left handed high elbow guillotine”

After the shoulder, a month or so ago I got spiked on my head rolling. Super unfortunate. I was on someone’s back on the ground working a choke when they tried to do a flip forwards (with me attached). Inevitably my head hit the ground mid-flip. There was a big riiiiiip sound, and I immediately laid on the ground dead still. Eventually (later learned due to shock) my hands got tingly and curled up, an ambulance came eventually and took me to ER. CT scans and some tests later, it wasn’t as bad- muscle strain, no vertebrae damage. Physio said years of BJJ made a difference in how bad the damage was- would have been a lot worse if I was less experienced.

So since that happened I haven’t been rolling at all. Couple days after the neck incident i began doing drilling before class. Passing only- couldn’t even lie on the ground to play guard as that requires elevation of the head. So I’ve actually managed to get some quality drilling sessions in for a couple weeks, working a ton on the torreando and knee slice passes, using Jon Thomas’ material on youtube and Grappler’s Guide. Its really good stuff.

2 weeks ago I came down with the annual flu. Thought I would avoid it this year. I blame myself for not continuing with the Wim Hoff cold showers for immune health last month- I’d been diligent but eventually after some stressful life events I said fuck it and stopped.

So I’m still battling the last bits of this sickness- still coughing once a while, just enough that training is out. Throughout the time I’ve been sick I’ve been a total sack, playing PS4 all night as I am prone to do when i am unable to do BJJ. It’s fun, but also depressing because there’s just no external benefit to it. I am trying to motivate myself to do other things like play guitar, but it is hard to get into anything that requires skill/thought when you are just coughing and feeling run down.

I’m hoping this is totally gone in the next day or two. There’s a Clark Gracie seminar on tonight. I’d be pretty excited to go usually; I’ve met Clark and he is a great guy, and I love omoplatas… but when you’ve been sick and haven’t trained in so long the excitement isn’t there.

Anyway, hope to leave this behind soon and get back into the training.

Los Angeles day 1

36 hours. That’s how long we’d been awake for since we woke up Wednesday morning nzt to catch our flight to LA in the afternoon. We had arrived wed morning LA time, and had to kill time till we could check in at 4. Before we could get any sleep, it was time for us to go to our first drop in.

Our stop was Academy Jiu Jitsu in Downey. Clinton had trained with the head instructor Gustavo a couple of years ago on the recommendation of a Peruvian purple belt that had stayed at our gym for a year, so was keen to catch up.

The drive itself was a war. LA drivers are psychopaths who don’t give a fuck about indicating or the colour of the lights. Adding to the lack of sleep, not gonna lie I was terrified being on the roads. Thankfully Steve is an amazing driver, adequate sleep or not.

The gym was very aesthetic, with clean white mats set against wooden walls and black wall mats. We started off with a technique and drilled it, a timer going off every two minutes to signal swapping over. We started with a leg drag from DLR, and I picked up some nice details about creating the reaction to expose the drag. From there we worked a leg weave to mount. Again, some new details on the transition to dope mount.

After that, it was time to roll. I managed to get in some rolls with both the black belts (Gustavo and Hector) and they floated right through my attempts to play any kind of guard and swept me like nothing. Incredible and they weren’t even trying.

There were no purple belts there surprisingly, so I had some good rolls with their white and blue belts. They gave me some unexpected attacks to deal with, like americanas from bottom side, which was fun. Considering the lack of sleep I was happy to do as well as I did. Afterwards the team were super friendly and gave us some good tips on where to get good pho (Garden Grove is the area apparently).

Afterwards we hit up some delicious roadside Mexican food. Had 7 tacos (the best one is marinated pork- “pastor”) with some amazing pineapple juice. Then we managed to finally get home and pass out.

The food and training made it worth those 36 hours!

Arm triangles!

Working on my arm triangle lately. I think its a submission i have a pretty good mechanical understand of; just need to develop some reliable setups. I’m working on one from 3/4 mount, courtesy of Seph Smith. Watching Ryan Hall’s Arm Triangles set has been really eye-opening as well. The nogi Ezekiel choke is a great little counter against the arm triangle escape. Everyone I have put it on so far has commented on how nasty it feels-they tap instantly- so I might have to refine it a bit to make it more of a clean blood choke. Thanks to this set I’ve finally learned how to put on Darce that properly chokes both sides of the neck, as opposed to cranking hard on one side.

Pressure passing was going well last night. The tripod posture has been really effective, focusing hard on shutting down the hips. I watched the BJJ Scout Murilo Santana breakdown video, and noticed the way he postures is the same way I have been doing it!

I was able to stay safe and pass against a dangerous spider/lasso guard by really focusing on my balance and stability, and being relentless with occupying space, dropping to both knees at times when I felt a DLR hook oncoming, resisting the urge to engage in a standing pass battle which I felt was where my opponent was trying to draw me into.

One new thing I faced last night was the half butterfly; it was shutting down my pressure and I was getting elevated. I was eventually able to figure out how to kill it, by pressuring and also ‘floating’ towards the hook side leg and flattening it, which put me in 3/4 mount.

Prof. Luciano also showed me a real easy/sneaky lapel choke from side control (after he hit me with it of course). Kind of a reverse grip baseball/brabo choke , with the opponent’s lapel under their armpit. Stoked about this; as I now have this choke with their lapel, plus the good old Jacare choke with my own lapel. 2 gi chokes from side control is all I need.

Finally, it was good to see some really old faces in class, one guy Stu I
probably haven’t seen since 2012. My man Ricky is back too (we started BJJ on the same night!), White Mike… guys from the old days when the gym was in some run-down building on Quay Street.

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. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BrYy5I_gnn4/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

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. 

 

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. 

Half guardian

Honestly I think a lot of us in the intermediate and higher level would significantly accelerate the improvement of our jiu jitsu if we just ditched the usual class structure and just picked what we wanted to work on and did rounds of positional sparring from there, mixed in with troubleshooting discussions in between. In other words, trial and error and problem-solving.

Good, focused, worthwhile rolls tonight. Was able to force everyone I rolled with into my half guard which is in itself a victory as a lot of people tend to stand and pass, x passes and knee slides being most common. By using the shin to shin and outside knee torque I was able to get people to sit back down when they attempted to stand.

Tonight I was able a couple of times to get the underhook and shoot under deep… before class I watched a great technique of half guard master Jake Mackenzie where he shoots deep half and comes back up to secure a knee torque underhook half. I was able to implement this back and forth idea when I felt in danger of guillotines (in normal half) or kimuras (while deep half). This creates a lot of instability to my opponents’ base. Plus I didn’t get guillotined once tonight which is a huge improvement from last week!

I also managed to get out of a deeeeep darce today (off my quarter guard dogfight counter against a knee slice) using the principles of this video to force my opponent to change to a bottom side darce, where I worked to get my trapped arm below on the mat. Really stoked about this!

Friday, Saturday log

Friday

Great turnout for my Friday class, around 14 of us on the mats! I went over some of Paul Schreiner’s material that I blogged about earlier. The key thing I wanted to iterate was about choosing the right tool for the job- sensing your opponent’s base and balance, and sweeping towards the weak plane. And by utilising multi-directional sweep attempts you can create those weak planes- what Judoka call kuzushi, or off-balancing. It’s something I need to work on as well; not just reacting to my opponent with counters but actively forcing them to react to my offensive manoeuvres. 

After class a couple of us went down to Pocket Bar for a drink and then onto Tiger Burger for some Korea-burger mashups. I had some crazy fried chicken sandwiched in between two glazed doughnut buns, with a side of kimchi fries. Glorious. 

Saturday

Had to wake up early for a Saturday in order to cover the morning Woman’s class at 8:30. There’s not a lot of  traffic so was able to use my Zoom e-scooter down the roads a bit more than usual. Nice relaxing cruise to get in the mood for teaching. 

I showed the armdrag today. Started with the basic standing version to the rear waistlock, and moved onto the ground as a backtake (from butterfly), and finally back to the feet again to show how it can be used to set up a simple single-leg takedown. I tried to emphasise that learning the armdrag isn’t learning an isolated technique; its a very versatile tool that works in a multitude of situations. I was very impressed that everyone picked up the techniques well, including one new girl who is only 4 lessons deep.

Something unique I did- near the end I had every girl perform the armdrag single leg on me, one at a time, while the others watched and cheered. Seeing their nervousness at having to demonstrate while everyone watched turn to excitement as they successfully demonstrated the technique was great to see! 

At noontime I attended the Competition class. Small turn out today, although there were 4 black belts on the mat (2 left before rolling). Lots of warm up and conditioning (all wrestling related), then lots of takedown drilling (front headlock). I know it’s important, especially for general grappling skills, but to be honest I’m finding it hard to stay focused, probably because own competition jiu jitsu game doesn’t involve wrestling on the feet. And because there’s so much conditioning and drilling that by the time sparring starts (about an hour half into class) I’m mentally fatigued. It used to be 1 hr drilling a variety of techniques/1 hr sparring rounds; now it seems like 30 min conditioning/1 hr drilling standup/30-45  minute rolling. 
We did a ‘John Danaher high wrist’ guillotine at end which was a little interesting variation on the high elbow style. 

Not much to say about the rolling. Wasn’t feeling very engaged, so my usual recollections are not there. 

Half Guard, courtesy of Paul Schreiner

I am at the stage of my jiu jitsu development where I find the majority of my improvement comes from being very specific in terms of what I am trying to achieve in my sparring rounds. With this approach, I can measure my progress based on the degree in which I was able to execute the particular goals I had specified under the realistic pressures of sparring.

Lately, my focus has been on developing a complete half guard game, having primarily been influenced by Paul Schreiner’s fantastic Half Guard instructional. I’ve been drilling and attempting in sparring the first 3 basic sweep techniques he shows- the Bridge, Twist, and Matheus Diniz sweeps. What makes the instruction so beneficial is that he isn’t just showing these techniques in isolation. Instead, he is giving you a series of tools to be used depending on the opponent’s position, with the ultimate goal of either sweeping immediately with that technique or, as is necessary against good opponents, to off-balance and create openings such as a deep underhook- the primary goal of most half guard games.

This has been the missing link for me. Most practitioners are aware of the value of obtaining the underhook from the very first time they are shown a half guard. However, despite being shown half guard almost 7 years ago, I have until now never really had a good idea of what to do against opponents unwilling to concede a good underhook. Thus, not knowing what else to do, I would throw up a middling weak underhook, inevitably gifting my opponent a violent Darce choke from the top. No more!

I’ve found that having even just those first 3 sweeps in my toolbox has led to immediate results in my rolls. It has given me an option/counter for 3 particular positions/reactions my opponent may have while on top. The Bridge and Matheus Diniz sweeps are quite simple, so I have seen quick and consistent results against the white/blue belts, despite having not once drilled the latter.

I’ve also had a degree of success with at least one of the three sweeps against my fellow purple belts and the brown/black belts. I am getting quicker at recognising the opportunities given by their defensive reactions and getting more proper underhooks. Going forwards I need more work on refining the deep underhook options, as tonight my sweeps from there were defended against. I will study Paul’s materials on this, as well as the king of this position, Lucas Leite.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of the gold contained in this instructional! There’s a whole underhook sweeping section, recounters when they counter the deep underhook…. you can see it all connects into a complete game.

Further notes…

  • The twist sweep has been a fantastic counter to guillotine/Darce choke attempts from the top player, as it takes full advantage of the forward weight of the opponent as they lean in to attack my neck.
  • In saying that, tonight I was tapped by a guillotine from the sprawl (off a half guard dogfight) as I tried and failed to drive a double leg to top side. Next time I will handfight the choke, reestablish the half guard, and twist sweep.
  • My Matheus Diniz sweep is always putting me in my opponent’s closed guard, which isn’t ideal. I need to refine the movement to ensure I end up at least in my opponent’s half guard.
  • Craig Jones’ technique on baiting opponents into half guard works very well, which has not only given me more of my rolls playing half guard, but also a link between half guard and RDLR!

To be completely honest, after coming home I was feeling a little bummed by some of tonight’s rolls(I gassed out, got my guard passed more than usual, got tapped a few times), but taking the time to reflect and write on the above has redirected my perspective to where it should be. On reflection, even in my worst rolls there were moments – however small- that contributed to the specific half guard goals I had in mind. So in that way, my half guard got a little bit better tonight. And that’s good.

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