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. 

I Bought Lachlan Giles’ Half Guard Anthology instructional

quest for half guard proficiency continues…

Black Friday has come and gone; I took advantage of a 40% off deal to get a copy of Lachlan Giles’ Half Guard Anthology video set. With almost 11 hours of half guard content, at US$46 it was a steal. Plus, having visited his gym recently and already being a fan of his youtube channel, I knew he was a fantastic instructor and that I would get more than my money’s worth. 

There’s actually 8 Parts!!! 

My plan is to follow Lachlan’s advice on how to use the instructional- focus on a few things at a time, try them out in sparring, and then if something isn’t working to consult the ‘troubleshooting’ sections on the dvds (which ALL instructionals should have, and the fact that most don’t is why a lot of instructionals are very limited in their applicability).

You can definitely tell Lachlan has put a lot of thought into how he wanted to structure and present the material. A great mix of concepts, techniques, applications (rolling footage of the techniques), and troubleshooting (addressing what-ifs) so far. So far, having only watched up to disc 3 of 8, I have learned some great details already. 

Last night’s nogi sparring was the first time attempting to put theory into practice.  There were a couple of things I wanted to try out and planned ahead of time to go for, but also i there were spontaneous moments where I recalled a technique and just went for it on the spot. 

Theory into practice: Day 1 

Below is based on two rolls I had: a high level purple belt, and a blue belt getting his purple this weekend. Both are well aware I am focusing on my half guard.  

  • Overall half guard positioning- Lachlan favours a high knee shield against the same side shoulder (as opposed to the Z guard across the hip), and using the elbow glued to the inside of the knee to reinforce the shield and prevent the shield from being squashed. Aha! I did not get leg weaved that night!  
  • Pulling half guard against kneeling opponent- Lachlan advises to get the upper body frames first, then worry about getting the legs in.  Most half guard acolytes tend to dive in legs first, which can be exploited by a good passer. Again, a very simple and easy to apply idea that has an immediate positive effect. 
  • Aggressively coming up with the frame on the throat. This has been a great answer for the more patient top players who refuse to pressure down into my half and instead maintain a strong straight posture until they are ready to stand up completely and initiate knee slices. From here, Lachlan shows a great option of sliding the bottom foot deep and bumping them over into a leg entanglement, which I managed to hit on both my training partners! (no finish tho as my leglock game is trash)
  • The Choibar. This was surprising. Upon watching this technique I had doubts I could ever do this,  but I saw the moment mid-roll and was able to escape a crossfaced bottom position using this grip. Had to fight to get the leg across the other side of the head. Was not able to extend the arm for the armbar, but definitely a good tool to create space. 

not so much a ‘review’ but…

As I’ve barely scratched the surface of the series and probably will be going through it quite slowly, I’m hesitant to attempt a traditional review of the instructional. Besides, what’s the point in powering through 11 hours of video for the sake of a review?  

Rather,  I think it might be interesting to continuously blog about my experiences in attempting to use the knowledge from this series in my own training. Hopefully this will give an organic, longer-term view of how effective the material is, which at the end of the day, is why you watch an instructional right? 

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. 

3 Lessons from a year teaching BJJ

I have had the privilege of running my own BJJ class once a week for about a year and half, and would like to take some time to reflect on some of key lessons learned from this experience.

Getting the opportunity was simply a matter of asking. I had been a purple belt for a year, and there’d been a gap in the class schedule. At the time there was no Friday night class as there were no black or brown belts able or willing to commit to running a regular class. Back then, Friday nights were informally regarded as an open mat time, which effectively meant no one would turn up.

I broke the subject with my head instructor, at first asking how he would feel about a couple of us getting some training in at that time, as I had multiple people telling me they wanted to train on Fridays. No problem, he said. I then asked how he’d feel if I ran it as more of a regular class rather than a open mat, to which he replied that purple belts should definitely teach, both to give back to the team and help the lower belts, as well as for their own development into brown and black belt. So just like that, I had a class slot.

To have been offered free rein to structure a class however I saw fit was a tremendous opportunity to explore and experiment.. I could put to the test the theories and methodologies put forth by many outstanding coaches and practitioners, all to answer the question- what are the most efficient and effective ways to learn and teach others BJJ? …but I’m getting ahead of myself a bit. That’s a whole other topic to dive into.

First things first, I had to get the basics right.

1. Run it consistently.

It doesn’t matter how good your classes are if people think you are half as likely to not show up, leaving whoever bothered to turn up (if any) to salvage some sort of training. Nothing drops attendance and enthusiasm quicker than an inconsistent schedule. I needed to make sure people would know that either I was going to come and run the class, as expected; or I was either too sick or away from town and couldn’t be there.

What it didn’t mean though, was that I could take the night off if I wasn’t feeling particularly motivated to teach that night, or got an invite to a night out, or wanted to avoid the half hour walk through the rain and wind to play PS4 instead. I had committed to the responsibility of running a class, and I was accepted because I had promised my coach that I could be consistent at that time, week after week.

Communication is and always will be key. I set up a Facebook group, and made sure to post every Thursday letting people know what was happening. I’d tell my teammates whenever I’d see them, and post on Instagram after class to show my coaches and everyone else that the classes were in full swing, week after week.

2. Come prepared- but be prepared to adjust.

To run a good class, you have to prepare ahead of time and think about what you are going to show the people who turn up. Lack of direction in a class is obvious to those that attend. When you come prepared you take the class confidently, going from the warmup, to the techniques, and the sparring smoothly. With the right planning, a lot of ground can be covered in an hour slot.

At the same time, you have to be ready to adjust or completely scrap those carefully laid plans. Such is the case for example when you’ve planned a technical and intricate look at a specific technique, and then the only people who turn up have been training a couple months. Recognising the audience and being able to teach to the levels of the participants is critical to ensure what you’re saying and showing is being retained.

3. Don’t correct excessively.

Eve and Rener Gracie made a great video regarding teaching your SO jiu-jitsu. A key takeaway for me was that as a teacher, you must recognise that the majority of people are likely not as obsessed with jiu jitsu as you are. Therefore, they are less likely to be receptive towards being corrected on what they are doing wrong, and an excess of correction will cause their enthusiasm for you ,your class, and even jiu jitsu as a whole, to diminish.

When teaching those who see jiu jitsu as more a casual hobby than a serious commitment, you should focus on providing encouragement and positive feedback on the things they are doing well. When you see someone attempting to learn a technique for the first time and they get it 90% correct, focus on that 90% and not the 10% they could tweak.  By focusing on that 90%, you will encourage them to stick with it, and eventually that 10% will correct itself over time, either by the student eventually being interested enough to ask for advice, or by sheer mat time. But if you keep pointing out the minute details that need fixing you are going to wear on most people’s willingness to train.

Remember, the vast majority of people are doing jiu jiutsu for fun, not to become high level competitors. Once again, this comes back to knowing your audience.

 

 

 

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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