My ears got swollen a month ago in a practice. First I just tried to be careful not to get any hits to my ears, but it is practically impossible to avoid them completely especially while sparring. So my ears were hurting but I wanted to practice, what to do? I googled a bit and found out that Brute Shockwave guards had gathered quite a following. So I placed an online order and few days later I was back in the game.
I have not seen anyone else use ear guards in our gym, so I was first kind of hesitant to use them. But after several classes they don't seem so strange anymore. They cover ears very well and hardly bother at all. Couple of times they have moved a little bit but generally stay on firmly. As I don't like the aesthetics of cauliflower ears too much I try to continue using these at least if there is even the slightest sense of pain in my ears.
Thumbs up!
(After looking for a suitable link I found out that they've been discontinued. Shame.)
I'll keep it short this time. After a long and exhausting warmup we continued with techniques from turtle position. It's fairly common to turn to turtle after defending a guard pass, as that way the opponent gets no points. But you don't want remain there too long or you will get choked. One way to avoid "hip" choke from the side is to roll the opponent over your back if he is too far over you. I am sure that this clip will show the method much better than I can explain.
We had few different variations for this, but they were somewhat similar.
I was so tired this afternoon that it required more will power than I normally possess to get to this practice. I guess I wasn't the only one as there was only eight persons attending. Spider guard leg/hand position change game was the warm up this time. I did not really get the idea.
We practiced open guard. Basics of passing in open guard is to keep tight control of the legs of the person whose guard you're passing. Good grip is from the inside of the pants. Then you can either lift the legs up or push them down. If you push them down, try to keep them firmly on the ground and pass going with your shoulder going first. Good control is essential, as always.
Defending the classic sweep from butterfly guard was another topic. When you find yourself about to be swiped from butterfly, nicely push the sweeper to the opposite direction with your head pointing the same way. At the same time lift your knee between the opponents legs. From there going the over the leg (knee first) and passing shouldn't be impossible.
Open guard passing for a while and then two simple techniques to get you back to guard from turtle position. The second one looked like this:
The first one was similar, but from a different hand control. The common mistake is forgetting to control the top persons knees so that you don't accidentally give way for the hooks to get in.
There's no better way to kick start a saturday morning than with some shrimping. Tommi guided our tiny crowd (apparently, most people had something better to do than shrimp on a saturday morning) across the gym with forwards and backwards shrimps, ukemis, technical stand-ups, and some strange breakdancey cross step.
The breakdance was quickly brought into context, as we used it to escape from the bottom of the n/s turtle position. With an opponent, the strange move became quite simple. First, bring your ass up by straightening your legs and spread them out to form a good base. Grab the opponent's arm and step under-and-out with the other leg. Straighten your neck to throw your opponent off-balance, and climb to back mount. It's simpler than it sounds.
The main trick for the day was getting the triangle choke from side control or mount. I am unsurprised that Rodrigo Gracie explains the technique better than I can, so check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL0LmvbLqVc for a wonderful and detailed explanation (they don't allow embedding for this clip).
After the triangle felt somewhat ingrained into our minds, we started sparring. Old Man Cauliflower paid me a visit as I got caught in an earlobe-twisting arm triangle, and I got to spend a cool twenty minutes with an ice bag over my tender and swollen ear. Oh yeah, that reminds me: write an angry letter to the company that makes the Jomo brand ice bags. The previous one I used merely went down to a weak lukecold (you know what I mean) temperature, and the one I used on my ear immediately leaked its properly cold contents on my neck and all over the floor.
Bill O'Reilly expresses my opinion on the latest batch of Jomo ice products:
Everybody had a say on what to do for warm up: after the full round and approximately 15 different exercises I felt that I had went to body pump class instead of jiu-jitsu. Then we continued training the mount position, both bottom and attacking.
Tommi showed two different techniques, the ezekiel choke and juji after trying americana. Ezekiel is my old favorite and I've included it in my "game plan" pretty much since I first saw it in a video clip. The idea is to sneakily have your other arm behind the opponent's neck and slip your hand inside the sleeve of your other arm. Then bring the open hand to his throat. It can be utilized pretty much from any position, but from mount and side mount it is probably the likeliest to succeed.
Here Ilya Goldman demonstrates:
Then we briefly went through juji especially after americana. While defending americana one usually uses the other hand to protect the hand the shoulder. From there the hand is free for some serious armbar action.
Mount attacking and defending with different partners for a while and then free rolling I think for three rounds in the end. I felt slightly better with my moves this time.
This was the first class to concentrate fully on the mount. So, after a quick warm up, we picked our partners and started going through some basic stuff about control and escapes.
The mountee has several things that he might try to throw the mounter away from the position. Juha showed us a collection of attempts and counters to them:
If the bottom guy bridges to get your hands on the ground, you can straighten your hips to avoid falling.
Or, you can lay flat on top and put hook his legs. Don't extra-hook with your feet, because the opponent may kick his legs straight and twist your knees to a mush.
If the opponent tries to maneuver his hips in some other way, you can grab behind his neck with both hands and press your elbows to his chest. It's really hard for him to do anything from that position.
If the opponent gets on his side and is about to free his bottom leg by pushing on your knee, quickly grab his pushing wrist and pull it away.
Whatever you do, it's always good to scoot your knees closer to the opponents armpits when returning back from any of the above counters.
To keep things fair for the bottom guy, Juha showed us a new escape combo. You start with the basic bridge escape, where you grab the collar and a sleeve, trap a leg, and bridge to roll the guy away. He can block your sweep by posting his foot on the ground for support. However, this makes his knee rise from the floor, so you immediately move your hand to the knee, and push and free one of your legs.
Armed with a new set of mount tricks, we practiced escaping and keeping mount with our partners before a couple of rounds of free sparring.
Thursday was pretty much the exact copy of a practice from few weeks back. Grabbing the leg after shooting down and then sweeping the opponent nicely was still surprisingly enough in my memory. In side mount, we had the same reversal by rolling the opponent over. Easiest done if he has both his hands in the same side as his body.
This video shows kind of similar looking but totally different technique. Here the main idea is to somersault over the opponent. See for yourself (Not sure if it works well with gi though.):
Quite many rounds of sparring, in the very beginning and also in the end. It seems that the quick development of first few months is now over, not much progress has happened lately. Maybe the development is hidden somewhere in my head. Gotta keep on trying!
After a week's break from training, it was a welcome change to be back on the mat yesterday. Only about ten people showed up, so there was ample room for maneuvering during the class.
Pappa raised our heart rates by making us do some stand-up man-hugging exercises followed by a surprisingly exhausting guard pass queue. My guard defense game has really dwindled down to a predictable collection of a few select moves. Only a couple of months back, I was throwing all kinds of sweep and submission attempts from the bottom guard, with an acceptable success rate. These days, I seem to repeat the same two moves over and over again. Here's a quick outline of the repertoire I like to call "Juuso's Hot Guard Game":
Go for the cross-collar choke.
If it fails, do a half-assed arm bar attempt. It always fails.
Return to step 1.
I have no idea what happened to the helicopter/flower sweeps, the knee pushes, the kimura sweep combinations, and all the rest. Whatever the reason, when I get the guard now, my brain shuts down to tunnel vision mode and it's all boring from there on.
After a quick drink, we trained a new simple counter to a behind-the-neck hip throw. If the uke gets a hold of your neck, but hasn't yet managed to lift you up, your first task is to drop down to a stable low base. Follow up with the familiar backwards takedown, where you extend your leg, hold the uke's body, and sit back for the takedown.
To further train our throw-countering skills, we did another one. This time the uke started with the under-the-arm hip throw. The counter is basically you climbing to his back right from the start. If the opponent is throwing you from the right side, hook your left leg around his hip/leg. From here, you're pretty much covered. If he continues the throw by kneeling down, it will fail miserably, and you can just follow the movement and hook the other leg at your leisure. Free back mount!
As the last techniques for the day, we attacked the turtle position. The first one went something like this:
In the video, the guy grabs the turtle's gi lapel and rolls over. We did a variation where we connected our hands together, one hooking under the arm and the other overhooking the other. Insert knee and roll.
The second attack was a choke. Juha introduced another difference between BJJ and judo. In judo, it's called the hip choke and in BJJ it goes by the name side choke. And whaddayaknow, there's a video for this one too:
Fabio there shows something between a hip and a side choke. The difference, as far as I understood, was in how far you put your body across your opponent. In the video, Fabio has his whole upper body over the turtle's back and his hips can almost touch the opponent. In Juha's "BJJ" version, there's a little more distance, and only your shoulder and the top of your side are on top of the turtle. The reason is quite simple: if you lean too far over the turtle's back, he can grab your arm and roll you over.
We finished the class with two rounds of sparring. I got caught in a nasty headlock that twisted both my earlobes into two ad hoc cartilage calzones. Luckily there's no noticeable swelling, just tender and pink ears. Maybe I'll borrow (steal) Juho's ear guards...
The second time we practiced omoplata. Or maybe the third, anyways not so much practice for it yet. Basic idea is like this:
The video shows the somersault escape, which is what we also tried to do in the class. Tommi emphasized the importance of getting both legs from under the opponent and switching hands when you've freed the legs. We tried to escape the omoplata also by stepping over the opponent after he got the hand and is trying to sit upright. Seemed difficult enough.
After the usual warm ups etc. we tried to understand the beauty of the spider guard. So in open guard you have both your legs in the biceps' of the one in top. If the attacker has knees on the ground a fairly easy sweep is to move one shin on his hip/stomach and push on the leg that is till on the biceps. Simultaneously pull on the other side arm and roll over to mount. Should he be standing you can try to get your leg from under his hand to his biceps. Again put your other side leg's shin to his hip but this time pull him over you and somersault to mount.
This video shows a mix of the techniques we had in the class:
We had some guard passing from open guard, but no luck with using the sweeps. Guess I got sweeped a few times. Good that someone is learning! Couple rounds of free sparring in the end as usual.
Whoops. It's been a while since these two classes went by, and time has zoomed on at a furious pace.
On thursday, the attendance was about the same as the previous time, with only a handful of newcomers from the freshly finished beginners' group. Juha had noticed the lack of finesse in our ukemis last time, so he made us whip backwards and forwards ukemis for a hefty chunk of time.
In addition to our poor acrobatics, our ab muscles were also a cause of concern for Juha. His "a few crunches" turned out to be the usual three-hundred repeat ab workout. Perhaps it was just an illusion, but it seemed like the whole group survived the pain a little bit better than previously. We finished the warm-up with a couple of rounds of light sparring.
The day's first techs were two kinds of block/takedown counters to basic kicks. In the first, you lift your knee to meet your elbow, so your forearm and shin create a pretty extensive shield for the kick to land on. Next, you step forward and do a familiar bear-hug takedown to mount.
The alternative was to evade the kick as much as you can by stepping sideways while moving in. Grab the kicking leg with your arm, step closer, and sweep the remaining leg. There's many ways to continue from a takedown like this, but we went for the straight ankle lock, given that the uke's leg is already trapped in your armpit. The ankle lock is something I've only recently began to use in sparring, so practice and Juha's pointers were more than welcome.
Finally, we did some arm bars from the side mount. The first was a tight transition to a reverse arm bar. If it fails, Juha showed us how to spin around to the other side to turn it into a normal arm bar. The video shows the basic idea. If you understand the language, consider it a bonus!
The guy in the video goes directly for the spinning arm bar, without trying to get the reverse version. He could have simply leaned back at 0:24 instead of stepping over. The key in the technique was tightness and control, which I lack. Juha and my training partner really knew how to keep the pressure on unrelentlessly. I tried, but the result was meh.
Saturday
The next class was slightly less populated than on thursday, and so is my memory. I'll try to dig deep, but the effort is doomed right from the start.
We began by training the tomoe-nage (sacrifice throw) setup much like we often do with the basic hip throws. No actual throwing, just light lifting and countless repeats. There's something about the sacrifice throw that really suits me perfectly (not to say that I'm any good at it, but I find it delightful and inspiring), so I was pretty happy to warm up by repeating the flow-like routine. Grab gi, place foot on hip, fall back, hook with the other leg, and lift.
Juha explained a key difference between the BJJ and the original judo version of the throw. In judo, you typically grab the opponent's sleeve with your left hand (for example) and place your right foot on the hip bone. In BJJ, you place your foot on the same side that you grab the sleeve with. This way, if the throw goes FUBAR, you at least have a chance of maintaining spider control or whatever version of open guard you see fit. In the judo version, you are at a severe risk of getting caught in an ankle lock, because you aren't controlling the arm on the side where your foot is.
After a hundred thousand tomoe nages, we practiced the basic escape from knee-on-belly. It was the same as before: grab the ankle, bridge, push the leg, and shrimp. With luck, the knee doesn't come crashing down on your nuts and you can catch it in your half guard. Juha patrolled the area while we did our repeats, and he was quick to point out any exposed space near our elbows. The key is to keep your elbows tucked in, and push mainly from the ankle side. If you let your knee-side elbow wander about, the opponent has an almost sure-fire way to put you in an arm bar. Juha was not ashamed of demonstrating this.
Then we did something. It was probably free sparring. Maybe there was some guard passing involved too?
The second round of Alliance BJJ basics is nearing its end, and on tuesday our current "advanced" class joined forces with the next "beginner" group to form a new hybrid class. The experience difference between the group is marginal at best, though, and calling myself an advanced student doesn't sound right at all.
Anyway, three people from the newest beginner class showed up on tuesday. We'd all been dreading the combining of the groups because the dojo seems small enough for either group as it is. But with a smaller than usual attendance from both classes, we fit in without trouble.
Juha brought us back to the basic solo drills at the beginning. We did our bridges, ukemis and technical standups, along with some omoplata-like leg wiggling and whatnot. We finished the warm up with two different kinds of basic throw lifts. Simple stuff, but I was dripping with sweat already.
The first technique was a counter to the kind of arm throw we used for warm-ups. I had the honor of being Juha's demonstration opponent, and he easily blocked my throw attempt by dropping his body to a low base and pushing me away with his free hand on my back. After a few repetitions, we all got the counter going pretty smoothly.
Next, Juha showed a counter against the behind-the-neck throw. He ducked under my arm as I was going for his neck, bear-hugged me from the side, scooped his hand between my legs and lifted me in the air. His first uke seemed to take it much better than me. I had a... conflict of interests between my crotch and his lifting arm.
We also did some takedowns from a standing position. The point was to push the opponent off balance, lunge forward with one knee on the ground, and grab a leg. From here, step between his legs, hook the one remaining leg, and sweep. If he does a one-leg-pogo-stick escape by hopping away, turn around and execute a painful hip throw to KoB.
The last move Juha showed us was a variation to a side mount reversal. We already knew the move where you grab the top person's (gender neutrality for the win) biceps, pull it in, grab his (or her) belt, and roll the whole package over. This time, the opponent blocked the final rolling part by slamming his (arrgh, gender neutrality be damned) hand on the mat. That's the key for a secret ninja move, where you move your both hands. The hand on the belt lets go and scoops under the balancing arm. The biceps-holding hand shifts to push on the hip bone. This makes space for your knee to slip between your bodies, much like in a traditional side control escape. But instead of fighting for guard, you push the opponent's knee with your shin until he falls flat on the mat. This is your cue to reach around and climb to his back.
The class ended with three rounds of sparring. Juha tried his best to pair the new people with members of our old class. I got a chance to match up with one of them in the second round, and we had a pretty fast-paced match. The main difference between us was the amount of energy spent. While neither dominated the other, I noticed that all the sparring practice had truly increased my fuel economy. Learning to anticipate positions and to relax makes all the difference.
My back still aches from the last round, where me and my sparring partner ended up in a dead-end position. From the bottom guard, I went for an arm bar, but the opponent easily stacked his weight on me before I could straighten his arm. I got to spend about half the round with my knees next to my ears. Today, I spent half my day doing awkward and inefficient cubicle-spanning office back stretches.
Saturday class and Juuso's feeling ill. Shenanigans say I! Either way, practice went on as usual. We began with technical warm ups: shrimp movements both directions, knee walk, ukemis and such.
Lots of time was spent on different judo throws. I am totally unable to do these correctly. Anyways they are good to train once in while. I should probably take some judo classes as well.
Okay, your opponent is defending your cunning attacks by going to turtle position. What to do? Your control is better if you are behind him. If you can't get your hooks in yet, put as much weight you can on his hips, and grab under him with your arms. Other hand next to his head, and the opposite one under his arm. Try to roll on your back from the side where your hand is next to his head. Get your hooks in and choke. Flawless victory!
This one is very close:
After the theory comes practice, and we trained defending and attacking the turtle with random pairs. Couldn't really get a hold of it just yet, but I managed to escape once or twice. As the time was almost over we only had two rounds of free rolling this time. Two nice chokes from half guard, ezekiel and cross choke. People don't seem to expect much attacking from bottom half guard, good for me as it seems I spend most of my time being under.
I just bought 6 months more time to my card. So jiu-jitsu training seems to continue at least for the time being. My ear is hurting though, but it shouldn't be anything serious.
This Thursday it was again Tommi's turn to show the "soft" way. Right away to jiu-jitsu, warm up was a drill: side mount (under) to butterfly guard and sweep to side mount top and the other way round.
Day's main thing: north-south escapes. So there is a dude on top of you his ass on your face. (Or a girl for that matter, which is better but you might still want keep positions under your own control.) How to get away? Swing your legs frantically so that there is more room to move and try to get your knee between you and him. Once the knee is there you can circle on your back on the floor and get to guard with help from your other leg. If the control is very tight other option is to turn on your belly, grab his leg and sweep him to your side mount.
This video shows the first method although in ends in triangle choke. But hey, that is more than just an escape:
We practiced these for a while against an opponent, one is on top, the other is under. Try to escape or submit!
Then Tommi put us into paired line. Five rounds of grappling with random pairs. Managed few chokes, and Tommi submitted me only three times this time. Naturally arm bars mostly. In the very end sit ups and like. There's been lots of abdomen training lately, summer and six pack here I come!
Tuesday's class was much lighter than saturday's unforgiving punishment galore. We dived straight into a couple of sparring rounds with 50% power, and finishing submissions was off limits.
Everybody paired up while I was still taping my mangled fingers, so I ended up rolling with Juha for the first round. I managed to slip him into my guard, but it took only a few seconds for him to pass into side mount. The rest of the round saw me practicing my underdog skills from side mount, mount, S-mount, and knee mount. While I stood no chance of gaining control, I did block quite a few chokes and locks because I noticed Juha's more-or-less sneaky set-ups early enough.
A brief session of guard passing followed before went for the day's technical part. The underlying theme for all the moves was spider guard, and most of the stuff was already (remotely) familiar: how to pull spider guard from a standing up position, how to position the legs, etc. There were also two sweeps, including a fun new one. Hold on while I try to find a youtube example...
...and here we go:
The point is simple. If the opponent tries to pass your spider from the wrong side (you should pass on the side of your trapped biceps), you keep your foot on his biceps, and grab his knee by the pants. Once he has "passed", lift the knee and roll him over. The sweep itself requires surprisingly little effort, because the top guy has no real balance. It's one of those "wheeee!" moments of smooth zero-gravity orbiting.
We also trained taking the triangle and doing the basic spider guard sweep (much like the scissor sweep, but with the sweeping leg still on the biceps).
The class finished with two rounds of free sparring. In the first round, I landed my first ankle lock from open guard. Yay! I also pulled off my recently-learned favourite move, the brute force cross collar choke. It's ugly and it's trivially simple, but after getting caught in it time after time with Tommi, I've learned to appreciate its cleansing purity.
Gather around, children, and hear the tale of saturday's class.
There was once a man named Juha, and he hated people with all his heart. So deep was his hatred, that he made us do 50 sit-ups, 50 twisting sit-ups, 50 crunches, 50 hip lifts, 50 leg lifts, 50 side crunches, 50 side leg lifts, 20 guard lifts, 40 burpees, and some guard passing. And that was just to warm us up for the remaining part of the longer-than-usual class.
After I had lost all will to live, we moved on to the day's technical agenda. The first thing for us was to practice our two-leg takedowns, focusing on aiming our force to the right direction. By bringing the hind knee down first you can pretty much ensure that the movement isn't shooting straight towards the ground. Once the momentum is built up, it is time to tip the opponent over by pushing him off from his base of balance, a little to the side.
When the takedowns were going more or less smoothly, we gathered for some guard passing. This time, Juha instructed us not to close our guard at all to work on our open guard skills. My open guard game sucks completely, and I lost almost every round miserably. For some reason, I have absolutely no idea how to act in open guard. My performances were so poor that I felt like I was not even learning from my mistakes. Note to self: learn the basics of open guard.
The second actual technique was an escape from high closed guard. If you end up in the situation where your opponent has you in his guard and his legs are high up on your back, you can try to navigate your knee between his legs. When standing up, grab his belt line or the edge of his pants, and push yourself backwards. This should clear up some space to put your knee in the middle. Get low on your other knee, and leave the front knee pointing up. Then you can pass the guard by stepping your front knee over the opponent's opposite thigh, and following with the rest of your limbs.
The last move was a simple choke from side control (top). When you have your hand under the opponent's head, put your thumb in his collar next to his neck and grab the gi. Next, pull your elbow free from under his head, and rotate your wrist over his neck. Finally, you grab the other collar with your other hand, and tighten the choke. This should work especially well in a situation where the opponent tries to turn towards you from underneath. When you have the grips sunk in, any shrimpy movements actually work against him.
Last, we had a few rounds of free rolling, and then we were free.
Thursday evening with Juha. After quick warmups we had few rounds of passing the guard. Then we went on with the Alliance curriculum: escaping the knee on the belly. Every time I've been under in such a position it has seemed effectively impossible to get out of. But a fairly simple way to get away from there is to push the from the ankle between your own legs, getting you to half guard.
Not the same escape we had on class but I could not find the right one. The idea was to push the knee between your own legs, but it is important that you keep your both arms close to your body. One way to nullify that escape is just to hop to the other side when your leg is being pushed.
Then we continued with passing the half guard. Details are gone by now, but I am sure that the spider hand movement was somehow involved in the process. And remember to use your force so that the opponent's head and legs face opposite directions. Shoulders are surprisingly good at controlling the head!
Tuesday brought us the first taste of jiu jitsu in 2010, and Tommi shepherded us through some new moves. We basically skipped the traditional warm-up session and went straight into some takedown action.
Just to get us going, Tommi kept count as we alternatively lunged for two-leg takedowns and defended them by sprawling. Then we moved on to the classic one-leg takedown, where the attacker hugs the opponent's leg and pulls him down to the ground. We had done it before, but this time Tommi showed an attack for the defender whose leg is threatened. Because the attacker's limbs are pretty much tied up in the leg hug, you have free space to set up your counter attack. Grab the opponent's upper body, step your free foot deep forward, and sit down / roll back for a tomoe-nage-esque throw. With luck and some high-risk acrobatics, you end up in mount.
After we got familiar with both the takedown and the counter-throw, we did an exhausting sparring session from the position.
Another move that Tommi included in the class was a basic sweep from butterfly guard. Here's a video to dissect it nicely:
Practice makes perfect, so we sparred from the butterfly guard. The sweep wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. (Even though I didn't think it was that easy to begin with.)
Just to make sure that we weren't slacking off, Tommi put us through maybe five rounds of free sparring at the end of class. At one point, I paired up with Tommi. Anticipating the outcome of the match, I asked Tommi if he was going to (yet again) trick me into a dozen consecutive armbars. He said that this time he wouldn't, unless I clearly gave him the submission. Ten seconds later, he tapped me out with an armbar.
I can't really remember anymore what we had on these two practices around new year, but I might be able to write about one or two things.
On both times we had a clear theme with the techniques. New year's eve was about chokes when the opponent is in turtle position and you're on his head side. It is quite difficult to explain but the idea is to grab his collar and move your head between his hand and leg from the other side to under him. Somehow roll while your hands are around his neck, and you might be able to completely black him out very fast. There were different variations, but my memory is unfortunately very hazy. I couldn't find anything suitable from youtube either.
The following Saturday Tommi showed several nice sweeps from guard when the opponent is trying open your legs. If you're able to catch his leg while standing up, you can try push him down with your legs. If he is defending you can also go other way and somersault backwards on ground and stand up holding his leg. From there take down should not be too difficult.
On both times we had a few drills and several rounds of sparring. But like I said, it's all very fuzzy for me. All I remember is that I had fun.
My ears got swollen a month ago in a practice. First I just tried to be careful not to get any hits to my ears, but it is practically impossible to avoid them completely especially while sparring. So my ears were hurting but I wanted to practice, what to do? I googled a bit and found out that Brute Shockwave guards had gathered quite a following. So I placed an online order and few days later I was back in the game. 