BJJ 2.2.2010

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":

1. Go for the cross-collar choke.
2. If it fails, do a half-assed arm bar attempt. It always fails.
3. 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...