On Christmas eve's eve slightly smaller group of people gathered to learn more about the Brazilian art. It was a combined practice for both ongoing courses, but only one courageous person from the basic course was brave enough to join.
We started the day with technical sparring and after few rounds we continued with new techniques. This time we focused on the attacks from bottom guard and more specifically trapping the opponent's arm in your armpit and your hand holding his lapel. This position can be achieved with arm drag and going under the arm to secure it under your's. From that fairly good controlling position we practiced several different submissions: cross choke, arm bar, omoplata and triangle choke.
Without going into much detail few points to remember: For instance when going for omoplata and you're on your side try the opponent's body tightly secured between your knees and shins. If you can keep your feet on his hips, it will make escapes very demanding. When applying a choke, the lapel can be your best friend.
We tried these submissions in a drill where one person already had his hand trapped. I submitted Juuso several times and thought that I had found unstoppable technique. The we changed positions and I tried to keep very close control on the side where the hand was blocked. That seemed to make all the finishes very difficult to do. Now I'm confused about its usefulness.
Few days break now, will be back next week! (Juuso's gone for one week longer)
Tuesday's class was the second to last class before the holiday break. After skipping the previous two classes, I felt glad that I could attend this one.
Juha had spent the previous week at a training seminar, and it seemed like he had caught a cold there. He was still recovering from it yesterday, and couldn't physically participate in much of the action. It might explain the relatively light warm-up we did: some jumping jacks, stationary running, 30 push ups, and 30 squats.
Next, we had a round of light technical sparring followed by a guard pass queue. For some reason everything seemed unusually tiring from this point on. It might have been a fault in the air conditioning as all the windows were fogged and the air seemed warmer than usual. Excuses, excuses.
For the day's self-defense drill we did an escape/takedown from a front bear hug. The technique was to cross one arm between your and your opponent's body while dropping to a good posture. Next, put your other hand on the opponent's shoulder and push away. As you push and step back, you quite effectively rotate your body away from the attacker. Now you have room to underhook the hand from the shoulder to wrap around his back. Step to that side, underhook the other arm too, and connect your hands. From there, you can do the traditional takedown of pulling on the opponent's lower back while pushing his chest with your head. Maneuver your legs straight into mount while you are at it.
After we finished with the self-defense part, Juha showed us a detailed version of a choke we have done before. In the north/south position, the bottom guy should usually keep his hands and elbows safely tucked in. If, however, he wraps an arm around your body, you can go for an attack.
Here's a video demonstration:
It's not shown on the video, but Juha demonstrated a tight way of moving back to side mount after grabbing the collar in n/s. You can constantly keep a very tight pressure on the opponent's body by pressing your shoulder (of the same arm that grabs the collar first) down on his chest while walking with your legs. When Juho put the pressure on me, it was extremely hard to breathe (I blame it on the air conditioning!) and the discomfort was almost tap-worthy.
The rest of the class was spent on honing our guard passing skills. Here's a collection of assorted tips:
If you are going for a double underhook guard pass, but your opponent walks his body backwards with his shoulders, you can simply pull him back to your lap. Pretty obvious, but effective (and fun).
If you have trouble breaking the guard when using the "traditional" method (pressing on chest and hip and standing up), make sure your feet aren't too close to the opponent's head. Step back until you are pushing his hips straight down.
In the same traditional guard pass, it might be difficult to lift the guy's leg to your shoulder after breaking the guard. Don't simply lift it with your arm. Instead, rotate your upper body to guide the leg into place.
The opponent might try to stop your pass by pushing on your hips. If he's good at it, you might not be able to approach side mount. With the other leg on your shoulder, press his other knee to the ground (far from his hands!) and step your nearer knee over it. On the same side, press the hand to the ground too and move to side control.
Begin as in the previous tip. After pressing the knee to the ground, you may accidentally move your knee too close to the opponent's groin. This way, you don't have room for your other leg to pass. But worry not, you can step the other leg over from the outside.
I wonder if I forgot something. Hopefully not. The class finished with these guard passing tips, and we didn't have time (or energy) to spar at the end.
Another day, another visit to the world of jiu-jitsu. Tommi was again the man in charge and in his command we ran around the gym doing all sorts of jumps and crawls. This was followed by hip throws (behind neck).
Main theme for the evening was escaping side control when the aggressor is holding your head with both arms. Three different escapes were shown:
If his head is quite far from you, it is possible to get your leg over the head and swing yourself to side mount position. From there we ended it with juji.
Should he keep his head "correctly" close to you and keeping better control, you can try to hook his leg with yours, force him to ground on his belly and even get to back mount and choke him.
If his hold is tight and legs are too far away, you can try to sweep him. It normally requires for you to get very close to him and getting him to push into same direction as you are trying to sweep to.
These we practiced in a drill for a few minutes, defending and attacking.
Good half an hour of sparring, well first 10 minutes or so closed guard passing. Nothing special happened. Oh, I managed to sweep much bigger guy once or twice. That's it for the day's achievements..
Despite Tommi's generally laid back attitude, Tuesday's warmups were far from relaxed: sprawls, lifts from guard and close to hundred leg-raises.
Next we went through few bear hug escapes, both from behind and front. If the attacker comes from behind and gets a good hold, try to get a good stance and move so that one of his legs is between yours. Grab it from the ankle pull and fall behind. You should end up in a position where straight knee lock is possible. Knee locks are not allowed in sparring though, due to them resulting too often in bad injuries. In ADCC rules they are allowed regardless.
I am writing this again days after the practice so my memory is fading. But if I recall correctly the techniques of the day were juji from guard and inverted armbar from the same position. In juji its important to climb the opponent's back with your legs so that your hips remain high up. I'll try to find a suitable video clip for inverted armbar here. Edit: not quite it, but gives the idea:
There were few unlucky accidents: dislocated toe, bleeding nose and something else that I can't remember. Accidents happen, who cares? Still quite safe sport, if bruises aren't taken into account.
As promised on thursday, Juha held a slightly longer class on saturday to teach us some techniques that aren't part of the Alliance beginner curriculum. The longer class (with more theory than usual) combined with the fact that I'm a little late with writing this entry mean that I don't remember every detail sharpy anymore. My apologies.
We warmed up with two rounds of light technical sparring, first with about 40% strength, going up to about 80%. It's always difficult to regulate the level of force, but both of the rounds felt good to me. Especially the first lighter round flowed nicely, and we were able to give and take positions without unnecessary competitiveness.
Like usual, we also went through a self-defense sequence. This time the attacker approached with a straight punch, which we evaded by leaning sideways and blocking the fist away from us. Juha demonstrated that, if possible, we should always move towards the "outside" of the attack. It essentially means that we should move to the side of the striking hand, so that he can't reach us with the other one. After blocking the strike, we did a bear hug takedown by pulling behind the lower back and pushing on the chest with our heads.
The class continued with some freeform guard passing for about ten to fifteen minutes. It was fun, but nothing spectacular happened here. I did learn that in order to kimura sweep someone, you have to do it with some determination. It's been a while since I've concentrated on them, and my lazy half-assed attempts weren't very successful at first.
We moved on to the main position of the day's techniques: the open guard. As a refresher of previous techniques, we practiced the familiar foot sweep. First, hook your foot behind one knee, pull yourself towards that leg until you can reach the ankle with your hand, and finally release your foot from the hook and use it to sweep the opponent's other leg. After the sweep, you still hold an ankle with your hand. Let the ankle slip into your armpit and grab the guy's belt with the hand, trapping his fully bent leg. As the opponent now only has one free leg, it's difficult for him to keep you in his half guard, and passing is relatively easy.
We also did the triangle choke from the open guard. Let's say you have your opponent in the open guard, with your left foot on his hip and your right foot on his biceps. Now, if he doesn't hold on to your legs, it's very easy to put your right leg on his neck for the triangle. Very simple and effective; I wonder why I haven't done this on a regular basis. I don't remember anyone ever holding my pants in open guard.
Juha gave us a few general pointers for the triangle:
To get the triangle, it's important to raise your hips using your other foot (on the opponent's hip, for example) instead of just lazily lifting your leg.
When your legs are in position, but your opponent keeps his arm on the wrong side, you don't want to just pull on the hand. Simply lift your hips to a bridge, and the arm automatically moves to a better position.
If the opponent stacks his weight on you when you have the triangle, straighten your hips by "walking" backwards with your shoulders.
Next, it was time for the bonus technique. As we suspected from Juha's mysterious hints, it was the omoplata lock. We practiced taking it from the open guard, with both a kneeling and a standing opponent. It felt more complicated than many of the other locks we have done, but the basic idea was this:
On the side where your foot is on his hip, pull his sleeve towards the ground
Get the arm to bend (even a little) in the kimura direction, using your leg
Gain some angle between your bodies, so that your head is on the side of the bent arm
Bend the arm more with your leg, eventually hooking your foot under his chin
Grab his belt and move your body next to his
Sit up and point your feet away from your opponent
Extend your hips forward to get the submission
I couldn't find a video with the exact same technique (seems like you can get the omoplata by a gazillion different methods), but here is the closest match. The video starts out from the closed guard, after a kimura attempt, but from 0:25 onwards it's basically the same thing as Juha's example.
Juha quickly showed us some combination attacks using the omoplata, but I didn't grasp them well. The idea was to chain different submission attempts until something works. So, if you don't get the omoplata (your opponent escapes by rolling forwards at the end), you can get an armbar. And a triangle, somehow. And another omoplata. And a strange spinning mount thingy.
At the end, we did some freeform open guard passing instead of regular sparring. I think someone succeeded in the omoplata, but I didn't find a chance to try it out. Once again, I reminded myself that my open guard pretty much sucks. Maybe I should follow Juho's example and actively practice it while sparring.
Thursday's class was held by Juha, and he started us off with some quick but intense warm-up exercises to make us get more comfortable with our physical performance limits. We began with backwards ukemis (just falling on our backs, not rolling over) and doing the technical stand up. Then we formed pairs and did 40 reps of standard judo arm (or hip?) throws. I guess nobody was really tired at this point, but Juha had a surprise for us. Using the same pairs, we moved on to the ever-agonizing guard deadlifts with 20 reps for each, followed by another 25 reps without any time to rest. For a weakling like me, twenty is plenty. Fourty five is something else. Luckily, I had to skip a few of them because we had to suddenly reorganize our pairings halfway through the exercise. Some of the guys had hurt themselves earlier on, and straining their backs and legs proved to be unwise.
After the warm-up, we moved on to the first technique. It was an escape from a standing guillotine choke, which we had already gone through in the introductory course.
Pedro Sauer demonstrates the escape:
In the video, Pedro continues to an armbar, but we only took the side mount. Juha taught us a tip on what to do in case the other guy continues to hold the choke even after the takedown. First, you put your top hand (the one under your opponent's head) on the far side to prevent him from rolling you over. After you are stabilized in the side mount, bring the top hand to push his chin, slip the hand under his chin, and grab the back/shoulder muscle next to his neck. Now you can put all your weight on your forearm to press on his neck. This should make it easy to open the choke hold with your other hand.
The next technique was a transition from side mount to the knee mount. You start with your one hand grabbing the opponent's gi collar under his neck, and the other holding on to his pants on the far-side hip bone. Then you twist/roll the guy a little by lifting and pushing with your arms, and land in knee mount. Put all your weight on the knee and pull with your hands to make it miserable for your opponent. Juha told us that it's possible to get a tap simply by holding the knee mount tightly. Later, when I got the chance to roll with him and got to experience the misery, I completely agreed.
Now that we knew how to get to the position, we went through a couple of attacks from the knee mount.
The first one was a basic collar choke. To begin, you bring your lower hand next to the hand that is already holding the collar. The tricky part is to get the top hand to the other side. You can try to simply grab it quickly, but your opponent is likely to defend it by bringing his near-side arm up. If so, you push the arm away from you, to his neck. Next, he will probably resist the motion. At the very moment when he starts to turn back, you shoot your thumb inside his collar and drop your knee back to side mount for a choke.
The second attack was a spinning armbar. It's probable that the opponent tries to escape the knee mount by pushing on your knee. If he does, you hook his far-side elbow with your lower arm. Open your own elbow a little to straighten his arm, put your other hand on his exposed shoulder blade, and lift his shoulder off the mat. Step to the other side with your top leg, grab his pants to prevent him from escaping, and fall back into an armbar.
Here's a video of the spinning armbar, starting all the way from side mount:
At the end of class, we had time for two rounds of sparring. First, I matched with a ferociously aggressive guy, and we had an intense round with some nice high-speed sweeps. In the second round, I paired up with Juha. He has an effective way of teaching where he slowly but surely sets up submissions and gives tips on how to defend them. After a little while, he sneakily repeats the same motions to see if you remember how to react. I felt like I learned quite a lot in those five minutes, and in the end managed to protect myself from string of his powerful choke "attempts".
Pappa held the Tuesday practice as we've come to expect. Technical sparring for warmup, which was nice. We were supposed to take it easy in the beginning and then increase the effort round by round. Which I kind of did, but adjusting to the appropriate strength levels is not always easy. Warm I was.
Throw or takedown of the day was for the situation where you're already firmly grabbed from the side. Hold the punching arm and fall on your arse while lifting the agressor's leg high up so you'll free both your arms. Get to side mount and finish with an armbar. I am yet to be convinced to try these submissions in real self-defense situations, but I guess the takedown part might work. Luckily I rarely find myself in such street fights.
The main bout of the evening was passing the guard Fabio Gurgel style. One hand on the chest, other holding the opponent's same side arm from the sleeve (Never put your thumb inside, or it might pop out. Ouch!). Quickly stand upright and push the guard down with your free arm. Get your knee over the leg, and you are most likely to end up in the half guard. From there you should get your hands around him behind the neck and the other armpit. Push his head with your shoulder in a way that allows you to grab his pants with your lower arm. Wiggle your further leg closer and at the same time push his knee down with your elbow. You should be able to get your knee over his leg. Keep his hand from pushing the knee back and turn his head facing the other way. That will give you enough room to free your foot and get yourself to mount. Juha emphasized the importance of getting the opponent's head and legs facing opposite directions. Defending anything from that position is extremely difficult.
As there is good chance to end up defending halfguard we also practiced simple sweep from there. If you notice that the attacker has his further leg quite close to your foot, you can try to get your leg over his shin and do a bridge to roll over. Positions are inversed, hurrah!
In the end we had another round of grappling. My imagination was very lacking, but I did manage to sustain the open guard for a fairly good period. Keeping the angle straight helps for sure. But no cool submissions originated from me, and I was choked once again in the very end.
Saturday's class was instructed again by Tommi. This time, we jumped straight into some new self-defense techniques without any intense warm-up aerobics. Friday night had been rather taxing, and I was glad that he didn't put us through a disciplined conditioning regime.
The first self-defense move was a takedown from a position where your opponent pushes your chest with a single palm. To take him down, you first stack your opposite hand on top of his to hold it in place. Then you grab his elbow with your other hand to control his whole forearm, and lean forwards with your body. This overflexes his wrist, and forces him to the ground.
The second technique began with the opponent grabbing your gi lapels with both hands at chest level. The first thing was to bring both your arms between the attacker's by doing a breast stroke swimming motion. Then you finish the swim stroke by looping your arms around his, trapping his elbows in your armpits. When you hold your hands together, this is a pretty tight control position. After gaining the control, simply step a little to the side, extend the leg that remains in the front of your opponent, sit down, and roll on top in mount.
Next, Tommi taught us a variation of the mount called the S mount. The basic idea is to let (or force) your opponent to turn on his side under your mount, and shift your legs to a good position. One knee goes to the back of his head and the other is planted (foot down, knee up) in front of him. This prevents your opponent from rolling away or bringing his knees close to his body.
A video demonstration of the position:
After getting into the S mount, we practiced a couple of attacks, all starting from the same position. We always started with the top arm hooking under the opponent's head and the other underhooking the opponent's arm.
The first attack was a simple choke, where you first grab the topmost gi lapel with the arm that underhooks your opponent's arm. Next, you "feed" the lapel to your other hand and grab tight. This is already quite close to a choke. To make it more effective, you want to force the opponent's head forward while pulling on the gi collar. This can be done by placing the back of your (free) hand behind the guy's head, much like in a rear naked choke.
It is possible that the other guy defends his neck and makes it difficult to get your hand behind his head. This leads to the second attack, which is a variation of the first one. Instead of pushing on his head with your hand, you can do it with the shin of your leg (the leg that is already behind his neck). First, you make a little room for your knee by moving your leg slightly back. Then you raise your knee and maneuver your shin to the back of his head. Now the choke is super tight and you can finish the fight by leaning backwards, tightening the collar, and pushing with your shin.
If, for some reason, the choke fails, you still have another submission to go for. Because you are only using one hand for the choke, the other one can grab the opponent's arm for an arm bar. I think this was the first time we did two different submissions at the same time. So, saturday's lesson: don't get caught in the S mount :).
Because we didn't spend much time with warming up at the beginning of class, we still had about 40 minutes left at this point. Tommi seems to value sparring highly, so we spent the entire time doing doing exactly that, with a total of six rounds.
Our sparring sessions always start on the ground, with both players on their knees. In the middle of a round, I suddenly remembered seeing a sweep/throw from that position, and decided to try it out. All the details were misty to me, and I only remembered the general idea. Well, it turned out to be quite completely wrong, but quite effective. During those six rounds, the throw succeeded (to some extent) about five times, and failed once. Whee!
The sweep itself was something like a hybrid between a judo tomoe nage throw and the balloon sweep from open guard. Here's the video where the sweep is done properly by a blue belt (skip to 3:26 for the sweep):
The whole sparring match is worth a watch, in my opinion. For some reason, I find watching the blue belt guy (called Corey) absolutely inspiring, and have crawled through all his videos several times. With every interesting move, it's watch-rewind-watch-rewind-watch-rewind ad nauseam. This time, the geekiness paid off!
Alright, I am like five days late with this update. Sorry Juuso! Anyways on Thursday it was Tommi's practice. In the beginning usual warmups, running around the gym with a dude on your shoulders. Then we again had few throws as a self defense technique.
The submission of the day was straight armbar (or juji-gatame as they say in Japan) from the bottom guard position. Armbar seems to be one the most important submission locks in the game, thus it cannot be trained too much. We went through two different methods of executing it from guard: First is from open guard were you need jump your hips off the ground and throw your other leg over the opponent's head. The second way requires tight control and grip over the opponent, getting to correct angle and putting both legs on top of the opponent. Check that thumb is pointing your way, tighten your knees, and expect a tap out. If you're not into armlocks you can also try a flower sweep getting you to mount.
We also went through guillotine choke standing up and from the guard. Simple but effective submission:
In the end we had a good half an hour of grappling. I was brutally outwrestled by one guy. I guess there still some way to go before I'll win the Mundials.
This time we started out with a rather thorough conditioning routine. After a light regular warm-up of jumping jacks and stationary running we faced a seemingly never-ending batch of hard labor. First 80 throw repeats, followed by 20 guard deadlifts, finishing up with 50 burpees. Juha made it look rather easy, but I already lost my will to live halfway through the deadlifts.
After a quick drink break we concentrated on two self-defense techniques, one against a surprise choke from behind and another against a headlock from the side.
The choke was countered (again) by grabbing the choking arm with boths hands, stepping behind the attacker's foot, and throwing him down from there. We continued the throw by not letting go of the arm, landing to a knee-on-ribs mount, and pulling an arm bar in one fluidish motion.
The headlock escape was something we have done before: drop your hips a little to form a good base, bring your hand to the attacker's chin from behind his back, push on the chin to create room for movement, step in front of the attacker, and finally pick him up by scooping a leg. When you get tired of carrying your opponent like you were just married, throw him down on the ground for domestic violence points.
From the self-defense drills we moved on to escaping and attacking from side mount.
The escape was based on a side mount position where the top guy had one arm over the defender's head and the other arm blocking his hips on the near side. From the bottom, bridge to make some room and shoot your far-side arm under the attacker's thigh. Then turn on your belly to lie face down on the floor and connect your hands. Post one foot on the ground to create a solid base and push with your head and shoulder while pulling the attacker's leg for a sweep. I've had some trouble with this technique before, but this time I felt like I realized the right direction where to drive the sweep. I'll have to try it out in sparring before making any promises of success, though; I feel really vulnerable to attacks while building up the base. If I tried it against Juho, I'm pretty sure I'd end up with a hopelessly unergonomic human backpack around me.
In addition to the escape, we went through two different variations of an attack from the side mount. Both depended on the defender making a mistake and not keeping his arms tucked in. Juha showed a couple of ways to hold on to the loose arm by trapping it with your hand and neck. After securing the arm, you rotate to the north/south position and pull up on the arm, lifting the defender's shoulder off the mat.
From there on, you have two choices. If the arm stays straight, you post one foot right behind his back and fall on your butt for an easy arm bar. Your other hand should be on the mat in front of the defender's body for support while preparing for the fall. If the arm tries to escape by bending (and holding on to something, like the belt), you step your knee over his other biceps and sit on his face. This way you have a pretty trouble-free position to force the hand into a kimura lock.
Paulo Guillobel demonstrates the complete attack from side mount to arm bar:
We had one round of free rolling at the end of the class. Me and Juho were matched against each other, yet again. This time, I had youtube-studied a couple of chokes from the north/south position (where I seemed to end up quite often last time) and was quite eager to try them out. I barely managed to get into the position once by giving up a hard-earned mount, but the round ended before I even had time to think about going for a submission. Maybe next time? In the end, we both managed to get one successful tap during the round with almost identical Ezekiel chokes. It was the first time I tried it, and it was uplifting to see the choke work as advertised.
