1,2,3, baby tell me how's my knee? you look just fine, now i'm really going to make you fly!

I've decided not to go train Mondays, but need to make it the other days.

We've got morning classes now, I'd like to work those into my day and I'm curious about what effect that'll have on the rest of my day.

Yesterday:
We started out training take downs.

Big Circle:
Hand on same side lapel, hand on same side seam. Pull opponent toward you, hip into their hip, same side leg across theirs so you're setting them up for a trip, then just look over your shoulder.

Little circle:
big circle fails, so you move the foot for big circle onto the back of their other foot. From here you just kind of.. shin forward which causes them to fall, or you can pick their foot and hold on.

Toss:
Both fail, but now the opponent is setup. I noticed a TRIANGLE OF ACTION here. Basically, triangles are the shit.. if you ever see a person's body positioned like a triangle, you know where their center of gravity is. In this instance, you simply move close, drop to your knees, load your hands up and pull them across your back so they flip over your head.


Then we moved onto guard-escapes, sweeps and submissions:
Guard to Triangle:
Guard to belly-down Armbar:
Guard to situp sweep:
guard to omaplata:
guard to guillotine:

A lot of these seem foggy in my head now, but I learned something important from the situp sweep: when you go to move, do so explosively and slap your foot off the ground opposed to kicking it and trying to use momentum.

I feel comfortable with: the omaplata, situp sweep, guillotine. Less so with the triangle and even less so with the belly-down armbar.

I also think I'm forgetting some of the things we trained last night.

North-South Escapes & Deep Thoughts

SO, three weeks have passed,
I've been skipping Monday & Tuesday, I'll elaborate as to why toward the end of this article.

IN BJJ, I'm often using my legs wrong. I love to pull them up toward my head and use them like a vice to move people. It doesn't always work. It mostly doesn't work.

But we've been trying North-South escapes and one of the moves is similar to just that!

Basically, you pull your foot up, grab it at your toes on the same side, tuck it between their legs and 'flex' your leg in such a way that it easily takes you to their back. So friggen' simple!

Another escape, you use your head as a fulcrum on their knee - it's important to remember to grab their knee when you do this so they can't easily base out. Once your head is in position, you just bridge and push from your far side, across them, your head prevents them from basing and they fall. you assume side control.

Another escape was to swing your legs back and forth to build up momentum, then kick your knees into their stomach and go for mount or attack the arms.


Another thing I am very happy to have learned is an arm-pick from side control where you use the tip of your elbow to scoop their arm, you lock your arm behind their head so their arm is trapped accross their neck and then apply pressure. This chokes them out.

If you can't quite get that last choke, you can then grab their other, free arm, move into a high mount and now you've got both their arms.

--
In free rolling I pulled off a lot of that, including an actual-speed triangle! For the first time! Woo!!

--
Lastly, I've found myself ADDICTED to bjj - and I'm not sure how I feel about that. Similar addicts say it's good, but I'm not sure how i feel. It's easy to become satisfied by the gains I"m making there while more tangable personal growth efforts fall to the wayside. I've been skipping monday and tuesday to get some of that motivational pressure back in my life, but I literally end up feeling depressed when I don't train! At first, when I missed a day or two, I thought I was depressed for other reasons, but that emotional pressure went away after I trained. I don't like being obligated to things and I miss the pressure to be more - if I were to plot my learning, reading and training, outside of BJJ - it would have taken a nose-dive when I joined BJJ.

My gym opened up morning classes, I think I may start going to those in conjunction with my normal training times. I'm going to try and get my schedule to three classes and at least one open mat a week.

Our gym also stepped itself up; we have more water barrels so we won't run dry, they installed carpeting and furniture for waiting parents, covered all the outlets and open vents, put proud stickers on the window. The gym leader quit his day job to do this full time. It's very nice!

These are the things on my plate:
Breathing, Not Spaz, Posture, hooking my feet in their transition.
Arm Bar, Arm Tuck attack, Triangle, omaplata.
Arms in, Elbows in, turtle, side control escape.

Side Control Escapes

WELCOME BACK - to myself!

Not counting a couple of days of training, I nearly took two weeks off from BJJ! St. Paddy's in Savannah took up some of it, work and laziness the other.

My buddy Josh brought his BJJ mats to my house which I have setup in my living room. Josh works with Shannon (another friend) at a BJJ school as an instructor in a neighboring town. Josh has been practicing his instructional moves with me - it's enlightening.

Anyway!

Last night at BJJ we worked on side control escapes.

I learned that when you're on the bottom, arm placement is important. You want the tip of your elbow in their hip as to support their weight, you also want your other arm either framed across their neck, or tucked under their far arm and around to their back.

Basically, step your back foot back further and frame it on the ground, use that angle to twist your body onto it's side and then get your arm below yourself so you can't be easily flattened out.

Put your hands on their hips, elbows on the ground and straighten out. Then, 'thread the needle' so your knee is up, bring your other leg through and step around

OR

When on your side and they're pressing on you, straighten your arm out, grab their pant leg, walk your legs into theirs and use your grabbed pant leg to dump them and you take their side

OR

When you go on your side, with you arm tucked, put your knee against theirs and straighten your leg out as to extend their leg - then use your other leg to hook that straightened out leg, pinch your thighs together (flag pole), twist their body, free your original knee and move to full guard - you may have to push on their loose leg. You can also sometimes get to full guard without pinching and twisting their body if you're quick/flexiable and lucky enough - but our gym leader said that wasn't the best habit to get in - it would work in a pinch but not against people who didn't want it to work.

We also did about 30 minutes of sparring last night. I felt pretty controlled and did better against the less spazzy people - moving slow. I've really been trying to slow myself down or at the least not be so winded. I find myself matching whatever's thrown at me regardless of my stamina - which is why I did better against less spazzy people. That said, my dominance and submissions didn't feel as present as they normally do.

Core Warmup, Takedowns & Defense

Yesterday, Wednesday the 4th-

We warmed up with core exercises. So tough! My legs were shaking at the joints when we finished- worth it!

We did some take down & punch defense:

1. hands near your temple, swat firsts coming in without reaching too much (straight punch)
2. hands near your temple, use your elbow to deflect body shots while still being ready as described in #1

3. Protect against a wide swing = bring your elbow up, then use your other elbow to strike as you drive through that same foot
4. Protect against a wide swing with your elbow, pinch their arm in your lat, drop your body weight and grab their leg.

Take down:
1. Duck under their swing, grab around their hips with both hands lock your hands, push your hips forward, extend your knees/legs as to lift them and dump them. Note: Keep lifting out of the back by looking toward the ceiling.
2. Duck under swing, grab their hips, pull your far leg through theirs and extend as to trip them - try and maintain posture
3. Duck under their swing, grab their hips, they sprawl. keeping one leg outside, drop the other inside- as your knee drops, extend both of your hands like you're taking a bow in a theater, this popping motion swings them off you and if they're sprawled then they're committed. From there, just swing around to their back for control.

Edit; my abs and sides are exercise sore! feels good!

Sick days!

Been feeling a bit under the weather - my sinuses feel painful and I've been feeling drained.

In line with the golden rule (do unto others as you'd like to be done unto) I make a habit of sitting out of class if I'm feeling communicable.

Rash, cough, sneeze or cold - you won't be catching it from me at the gym. Unless I'm a carrier and not symptomatic.

Kind of the same with body pain - if I'm familiar I'll try to push through, if it's a new pain then I'll give it a bit of time to heal.

At first a day off seem cool, like a cheat day - but as days pass I find myself day dreaming about BJJ with increasing frequency.

Grip and Mounts

Tuesday class!

A couple of new people as well as a guest in class last night.

We warmed up with grips and tosses:
- Pummel, pull arm across using both of your hands, step behind, both hands grip on arm.
- Pummel, pull arm up, step through, hips forward with head up, step around, grab hip and back arm so you can't be elbowed
- gripped, go for 'little circle' on their forward facing leg so that your calf and thigh trap their leg, turn to the direction your 'little circle' foot is pointing (active toes) and dump them, mounting.
- gripped, go for little circle, fail, go for big circle, lock their leg using a forward movement, pic their foot, dump them, control their foot while they're falling, and then knee on belly or similar
- gripped, go for little circle, fail. go for big circle, fail. step through their legs, turn your body as though you're getting ready for a toss, but the hand movements aren't there.. so you pull your far elbow up through your other arm, which creates a pivot point and gives you the leverage needed to dump them. This was difficult at first as I didn't realize to pull my elbow across, it's not an obvious movement but what is obvious is you can't do it correctly with out it because there's too much torque on one of your arms.

Training:
- Guard Sweep 1: Scissor sweep. I'm still not sure how to get them to apply pressure to arm it. Though I learned how to better keep someone on you which is to detach your hips from the ground, point your toes down (lock) and then when you remove their post on you, hips down, legs up and they'll come forward and that's when you get them into a bear hug kind of thing.

- Guard sweep 2: When you pull them forward, as soon as their base comes off the ground you straigthen the leg on that side out and push them a bit, they roll right over and with your leg straight you avoid getting it trapped

- Guard sweep 3: they leg up to prevent a sweep, so you stretch out opposite, thread your leg through their open leg and tip them over

-Guard sweep 4: they leg up to prevent sweep and you're trapped, so you move toward the leg up and put your hand through, kick your leg and dump them with the momentum, holding their leg as you ride up, keeping things tight the entire time.

Yesterday.. we did.. something

Last night we covered a bunch of things which were new to me - while doing them I thought, "this is going to be a difficult blog post".


Shoot for a double leg, accept a single leg. Wrap your arms like you're hugging it to your chest and pinching in you legs. Head starts on the outside of the body, ends up on the end side. Step out with one leg. Swing them down.

Shoot for a double, accept a single. Wrap your arms. Head starts on outside moves immediately to inside. While pinching with your knees, slide your hands down their leg to their ankle and create force with your head and distance. this extends their leg out causing them to fall while you still have good grip.

Here's where things get a bit blurry;

Side control, pinch & hug their arm. step your leg over their head, pull it tight. hips into them, that's an armbar. Lazy man can tuck their opponents arm over their hips and behind their top arm.

Similar move to as above, but if they bridge away from you, step up so you're straddling their head and you have their arm directly across your body, that's an armbar.

Then about 20 minutes of rolling.

I showed up a few minutes late and only got one session of rolling in because we had an odd number of people. But I'm feeling more adept here.