BJJ 21.1.2010 & 23.1.2010

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?

So... Umm, yeah. That's about it.