Tag: BJJ

Back to writing…

Oh jeez I’ve been slack on writing on this, and I know exactly why. It’s that damn Los Angeles trip hanging over me- apparently it’s been a month since I’ve gotten back, and I’ve yet to do a full write up of my travels there. And since I haven’t done that, I haven’t written any further entries. Now I’ve accepted that I’ll have to do the big write up down the line, out of chronological order, just so I can start writing about the day to day training again.

The trip does loom over me though, and permeates my current training back home. Firstly, the goddamn lasso guard. Everyone competitor under lightweight uses lasso in some form, and for 8 years I’ve ignored it. Now in training I’ve been drilling lasso and going for it as much as possible, and I’m finally seeing why everyone uses it; how it ties in to the DLR game and creates both offence and provides a strong defense. My guard retention is getting better and my fingers are getting more sore.

I’ve also been studying Keenan’s lapel guard a lot, which is another thing those Cicero Costha athletes played on me constantly and gave me absolute fits. I have been having a good bit of success using the lapel guards, especially against people who have no idea what I am doing. Guys like Clint who are now aware of the danger of giving me a lapel are giving me trouble setting up the guard though. There is a strong relation to lasso/sleeve control, lapel guard, and DLR, so it is all fitting together slowly but surely.

Finally, I’ve been trying to fit in more pure drilling with Clint and others whenever possible. I think both of us realised the value of drilling while over there; arguably moreso than rolling. Of course both are important, but we spend more time free rolling than we do drilling (our own techniques, which aren’t necessarily what is being taught).

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!

Uncharted

I feel like big changes are going to happen in my life this year. As a man who likes his routine, the onset of change does provide a fair amount of stress and anxiety. Thank god for jiu-jitsu. The routine of commuting and training, coming home late to eat and wash…its familiar. Almost 8 years now. Its comfortable.

Discovered some videos of this guy Priit Mikhelson while browsing the BJJ Globetrotters website. Interesting guy with some very strong opinions on jiu-jitsu and coaching. I like listening to people who have views on this kind of thing, as it challenges myself to think about the way I teach my class and whether I’m doing the best I can.

Anyway, he has a one hour video on the Turtle. Some key positioning changes to make it very hard for anyone to take the back (full seatbeat, or hooks). I tried some of it out last night on the girls; it was pretty successful. I’ll try to keep that in mind if I ever turn away to escape the guard pass into the turtle. Also, its just a weird goofy position, especially combined with what Priit calls the ‘Panda Guard’. I’m gonna call it the Snorlax though!

I mapped out the gyms that I’ve visited so far in my BJJ life. It’s pretty…disappointing? Really not that many gyms in 8 years of practicing jiu-jitsu. To me it seems like I really have not gone out ‘into the world’ and connect more globally with the community. I guess again, the routine of going to my own gym is comfortable. Maybe also because I don’t compete much, so never traveled for that purpose either. I’ve never dropped into other gyms in my own city for example, other than affiliates.

  • Long term goal-fill out this map with far more pins, across many different countries.
    • I’m off to Los Angeles next week- so that will give me a few more pins!
    • I would like to get some more in SE Asia (Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam), Korea, Japan, East Coast USA, Canada, and Europe…
  • Medium term goal- visit other gyms in my own city.
  • Short term goal- continue reading Christian Graugart’s The BJJ Globetrotter

First week back

The tweaked knee has changed the way I’ve been rolling last week. Still wearing a knee brace, though the physio reckons it’s mostly a placebo/confidence-booster at this point. Basically, total flexion is not good for it right now, and neither is any lateral stress. That means basically for the left leg:

  1. no DLR and RDLR hooks
  2. no butterfly hook, no crab riding (inverted butterfly)
  3. no omoplata/triangles
  4. no top armbar with the leg tucked in by the armpit
  5. no closed guard
  6. no sitting inside closed guard
  7. no knee sliding to the right (how i hurt it in the first place)
  8. no 50/50
  9. no leg lock turning escapes
  10. no guard retention via leg pummelling

This has been quite the difference- as Pedro commentated, my guard game is heavily dependent on being able to pummel my legs. Luckily, I’ve been working on my half guard for a few months now, which I can continue to use. Right now, I’m trying to utilise the ‘shell’ variation of half guard where the bottom leg knee is at a 45 degree angle, blocking the hip. What’s nice about this is that it slows down or even shuts down the opponent’s ability to immediately stand up to initiate a standing pass.

On top, I’m working hard being tight with my pressure and going primarily for the over/under pass. Once I pass, I’m working on either getting the armbar on the far arm (which I never used to get, until I saw some great details from Demian Maia’s video), or if I’ve gone from over/under to the 3/4 mount, finishing the pass into the mount using the tripod movements (again, Demian Maia stuff!) and working on isolating the arm for a arm triangle, armbar, or back take.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to my 2 readers. I think I’ll be making the blog public soon.

The last few weeks of December was supposed to be a week of no work and more training. I had plans to attend a Sunday charity marathon roll and then fly back to Christchurch to spend time with my parents and drop in at the local gym for a week.

Unfortunately things didn’t quite work out as planned. The charity roll itself was great; the mats were more packed than ever before as people from many of our affiliates, even other gyms, came together to roll and donate to a good cause in the wake of a recent suicide of a young woman within the local jiu-jitsu community. I had the chance to meet some new people and enjoyed some good rolls, although I’d say the mats were a bit too packed.

However in one of my rolls I went for a knee slice and felt my left knee pop. There wasn’t immediate pain, but soon enough it started. Soon I had to sit down mat side, and after the event wound down and people went off to the nearby cafe for a bite, I felt the pain come on as I walked. On the bright side, the cafe serves a good coffee, and it was nice to catch up with Hux who had moved to Australia a couple of years ago and was in town for a couple of days.

Since then I’d been on the couch smashing Red Dead Redemption 2 and Final Fantasy XII: Zodiac Age till I went off to Christchurch, where I spent more time couching and eating food while my gi (packed just in case) sat unused.

I have been trying to watch jiu-jitsu instructional though, and have a renewed appreciate for Ryan Hall’s Deep Half Guard set, which I think I have had since early blue belt. There’s a lot of stuff, particularly in disc 1 that I glossed over earlier in my journey, that now makes a lot more sense conceptually. His approach to half guard is interesting and definitely a little different from Lachlan’s, though the structure of the half shield is pretty similar. one thing I’ve picked up that Ryan, as well as Seph Smith (no surprise as he’s one of Ryan’s black belts) and Rob Biernacki do is use the bottom knee as a frame as well. I have kinda short legs so I haven’t naturally done this, and I’m not sure I can, but definitely something to keep in mind.

Anyway, as of a few days ago I’ve managed to pick up my yearly throat infection. However, good news on the knee- not a tear, diagnosed as pinching of the tissue in the knee around the patella and meniscus. Once I’m no longer sick, I’ll ease back into some training, using pain/discomfort as a guide.

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. 

 

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. 

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? 

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started