BJJ class 91 – choke

Great class!! I’m real glad to be back on the mats again….last year it felt like everything was falling apart with my injury and leaving my comfortable, long-time job to start my career afresh with internships and job searches. With this month, everything seems to be fitting in place with a new job/career and being back on the mat, that even though I’m almost broke and overweight, I feel like a million bucks!

Class 91 was the wednesday right after monday’s class 90. Class started with a tiring warm-up which included alligator crawls (going from one end of the mat to the other, while in the push-up position with elbows fully bent, you crawl forward only by pushing/bouncing your body up about 6 inches each time) and me wondering if my inability to complete all the exercises was due to my post-surgery weakness or general lack-of-strength-and wouldn’t-have-been-able-to-do-them-anyway-even-without-the-surgery-ness. After asking myself that question through the warm-ups, we did some cool breathing exercises – the exact same exercises that Rickson did in his Choke documentary. We did them all (tried them, actually), including the facial expressions and the weird roll-your-stomach-into-your-chest thing. If you don’t know what I mean, go watch the movie again. Or watch it for the first time.

Then we did some cool jedi rolling exercises. People pair up and roll. In each round, only one guy does attacks – anything, sweeps, locks, chokes, etc – and the other guy defends. But not your usual defense – no sweeping an opponent or muscling your arm free or anything. Just lay on the ground and defend through posture alone – tuck your chin in, keep your arms in, if an arm gets pulled just roll into a direction that will nullify the sub, if a choke starts sinking in just turn your head and tuck your chin into it. In other words, the defender must do a very passive defense. And do it with eyes closed. While I was the attacker, I couldn’t get any chokes in, but manged to get myself two americanas (keylocks again!!) while my training partner managed to get leg/foot subs only.

After 5 minutes each of that, another round was for armbar attacks only. I didn’t get any, but I almost got another americana and my training partner got an armbar in (if I remember right). After 5 minutes each of that, another round was for chokes only. I was getting a clock choke in tight when the time ran out but my training partner managed to sink in a few sneaky knuckle RNCs. I don’t understand the chokes exactly, so I’ve got to ask him again.

After that was a few rounds of sparring. I don’t remember much since this was about 5 days ago. I do remember getting one americana in, and not getting subbed by anyone. Of course subs aren’t everything (but they are easy to count). While rolling, I was getting smothered a lot and found myself being very defensive. Then I remembered something I realized or told myself a long time ago: I should be more aggressive and try to control the pace of the fight more. I started doing attacks amidst my opponents attacks and I managed to get his focus off of attacking me into defending himself, which eventually lead into the americana (+1 in my tap counter). I did roll with another person after that, but I don’t remember much. What I do remember was how most of my movements felt, be they sweeps, passes, sub attempts, whatever – they all felt loose and lousy.

Therefore, my current goal is tightness. I want to get my game tight. Not tight as in cool or awesome, but tight as in to use proper technique and not allowing my opponent space to move. This includes making my body feel heavier than it really is when in a top position, being able to hold my opponents limbs in place while I attempt to pass, and not giving my opponent space to pull or shrimp out of a situation. Aiming for tightness is a big goal and will touch upon all the areas of my game. I feel that it’s a good general goal for getting back to shape, as I won’t be focusing on only one specific aspect and will hopefully make me get back with as well-rounded a game as possible. When I reach the end of my goal attempting period (50 subs on my tap counter), tightness will still be a part of the goals I will form then, but I might try to concentrate on other more specific areas at that time. Let’s see how it goes…

Ous

weight loss

I was never too successful in loosing weight before. This is the first time I’ve ever lost this much and have sustained it for a period of time.

The only times I ever tried to loose weight was in college, to make weight for competitions. I would pretty much just go on a crash diet, having nothing more than crackers and water for a week, and digest nothing, not even water, during the day of the weigh-in. Me and several of my taekwondo varsity team members did this and would always go for a feast after the weigh-in and stuff ourselves since weigh-ins were usually a week before the tournament. My weight loss was never sustained with this very unhealthy practice.

Anyway, I started the year at about 200+ pounds, no thanks to the holidays and having my mom over – who cooked all the good stuff I’ve been missing all these years in NY. After the holidays, I settled to the high 190s, usually weighing in at 195-198.

Then I started training for a BJJ tournament and wanted to cut some weight (I didn’t get to compete thanks to my shoulder injury). I didn’t really do much in terms of dieting or more exercise, so my weight stayed the same.

In June I went on leave from my job for an unpaid internship. I started what I call the “Poor man’s diet” or “internship diet”. The diet was based more on economics than on nutritional science: I was spending money, but wasn’t making any. To save on cash I cut back my on portion size, reduced to nothing the small “snacks” I would have during the day, and replaced a lot of my meals with smoothies. With more free time interning part-time and all, I started exercising at home too. Incidentally, my economic diet turned out to be very nutritionally sound as I was burning more calories than I was taking in.

In early July I injured my shoulder and had to stop BJJ, which didn’t stop my diet but made me change my exercise routine. Despite my not going to BJJ in the past two months, I was able to cut my weight down to 182 pounds from 198. I’ve been loosing weight steadily for the past several weeks and haven’t felt starved or deprived. I’m hoping to get down to the high 170’s and even lower. To help track this, I’ve added the weight goal to my “Goals” page.

I’m interested in hearing what other BJJ’ers do when trying to cut weight for a tournament, how do you do it and does the weight come back after the competition?

BJJ Class 89

This was an ok gi class.

After warm-ups, white belts were split from blue belts and we learned an arm lock from butterfly guard. I liked the technique a lot so expect to see it illustrated soon.

After drilling the sub for a while, me and the guy I was working it with started trying variations and escapes. There was one escape that I tried that involved pulling your arm out a bit and moving your body closer as you pull your arm to get it free. As I tried it my right shoulder went “POP!!” Hearing (or feeling it) felt weird. But my shoulder felt fine and we continued experimenting. My right shoulder went “POP!!” again. My shoulder felt fine but I decided to quit trying that escape.

Drilling the move took up most of the class time so there was time for only one round of rolling. It was “white belts with colored belts, colored belts help the white belts.” I paired up with a blue belt I haven’t rolled with yet. I did a decent job and he said said “good job” or “nice” a few times.

Guard Passing. This one was very easy. He was just playing defense and didn’t really try to sweep me or anything, so I was able to pass rather easily.

Guard offense. Never got guard, was always on top.

Names. Didn’t do too bad I think.

Weight. For the first time in years, I’m below 190 lbs again!!

Anyway, AG came by and so I left pretty quickly right after the class. I felt fine.

I didn’t realize the damage done to my shoulder until about 4 hours later. I was laying in bed trying to sleep when I rolled to the right side of my body. I yelled from the pain – – I couldn’t put any weight on my shoulder.

I iced it immediately and repeated icing it again for the next two days. I also couldn’t raise my elbow up above shoulder level. Based on some web research, it seems I have a rotator cuff injury. Not good. After two days of ice i’ve been applying heat on the shoulder, mostly through those eight-hour or so heat pads for about two/three days now. Thanks to the ice/heat therapy the swelling has gone and my shoulder feels better. I can raise my elbow up above shoulder level (so I can put a shirt on normally again instead of taking five minutes) but I still can’t put weight on it and some movements hurt.

I’m going to see a doctor before I go back to BJJ. It doesn’t seem like a serious injury but it should still be checked out. Hopefully the damage isn’t too much and that I will recover quickly. Having surgery for something that feels “kinda ok” hopefully will not be needed and feels like overkill at this point, but I need to be sure that nothing is torn or anything as I want to get back to training ASAP and I hope it’s safe to. This injury does put a damper on my plans for competing – – there’s less than a month to go before the NAGA tournament. Tsk, tsk.

Anyway, I’m trying to see the doctor I went to for my snowboarding finger accident on Valentine’s day two and a half years ago. I’ll make another post about that.

BJJ Class 87 and 88

No monster two-and-a-half-hour sessions this week.

But I did wait so long before writing this, I don’t remember them all too well.

We learned a gi choke from side control in class 87. I was wearing my oldest gi, which has shrunk so much since, that doing this sub was very difficult – I just didn’t have enough gi material to pull around my opponents neck to choke him. So I didn’t like the sub all that much. And my partner didn’t really feel like working the sub anyway, so we just drilled side control. Some tips I picked up:

• Keep your hips low to the ground and tight to your opponent. This makes it easier to control your opponent and harder for you to be pushed/bridged off
• When your opponent bridges, switch your base to put more weight on him and negate the effects of the bridge. When doing the switched base thing, don’t sit your butt on the mat, rather sit on your opponent (not on top, but more to the side). Also, keep your thighs off the mat so that all the pressure is on your opponent, keeping him down
• Face your opponent. If he is pushing you away on your face, it is much easier to counter the push if you are facing it rather than facing the other way.  If he pushes your head away, he pushes you away.  The body goes where the head goes

After the drilling the sub (or side control) there was specific rolling. The first set had you trying to maintain closed guard and your opponent trying to open it. According to the professor, if you are unable to break down your opponents posture and he is trying to open your guard, you typically have 10 to 15 seconds before your guard is opened. There was several rounds of this from both sides. It was very tiring, more tiring than regular rolling.

After that there was more specific rolling. You keep your opponent in your open guard, your opponent tries to pass. I managed to sweep a few with my spider guard (including a blue belt), although a noob was able to pass.

There was no regular rolling after.

Class 88 was very tiring. There was some warm-ups, then it was all rolling. It was also about 95 degrees that evening. Needless to say, the heat was exhausting. One roll was enough to wipe you out. I sat out on a few rolls, either chatting on the sides or teaching/learning some techniques. I really don’t remember much since the heat was just too much. It was also a gi class.  Gi + hi temps = no energy/memory.

Anyway, I found out the age of one of the guys there. I couldn’t believe he was a old as he was, exercise really keeps a person young. He rolled as if the heat didn’t affect him and he regularly beats us younger guys. He just works out a lot, doing lots of body weight exercises. So anyway, me and another guy did some exercises with him. Push-ups and dips on gymnastic rings (hard) and pull-ups (I can do five in a row). Anyway, the small post-BJJ work-out was motivating and I want to try to get to where I can do 10 or 20 pull-ups in a row and make those push-ups and dips on gymnastic rings seem easy.

Goals…

Guard offense. Didn’t get to do much. Swept a few but didn’t try anything new and thus didn’t get to work on it much. A noob passed my open guard.

Guard passing. Felt like I did more of this but I don’t remember much.

Names. I forgot someone’s name that I’ve known for a while. Bad. Maybe it was the heat.

Weight. I’ve been below 195 for a while now. Good. Reached 190 today. Better.

Tap Counter. No taps this week. Maybe reaching 50 taps was too lofty a goal. Should I change this to 25?

BJJ Class 85 and 86

Back to back gi classes again. I’m starting to really enjoy these two and a half hour monsters.

Both classes were identical, except the second one was a half hour longer. Warm-ups, drills, and “specific” rolling was all the same. Warm-ups weren’t bad: running, push-ups paired with jumping jacks, and sit-ups paired with hipscapes. Then side falls (practice falling to your side and slapping out) and forward rolls. In the second class there was jumping forward rolls where you jump over an objects and land, headfirst, with a forward roll.

After the forward rolls there was applied side fall breaking. A guy bends down from his waist, as though to play leapfrog, and you go up with your chest on his back and he throws you off as if with a hip throw. The effect is that you fall from hip height and you have to breakfall that. After too many of those, there was basic cross choke drilling from closed guard to which we had specific rolling after. Rolling was cross choke only, all sweeps, passes, everything, but subs were cross chokes only.

Guard passing. Feel like am getting a little bit better, which is good. I don’t remember having any major difficulty, but I am unable to pass any purple belt guards.

Guard offense. Did a good number of sweeps. My open guard is starting to feel better but still requires a lot of work. I managed to do several cross chokes from guard on noobs (not to be added to the tap counter).

Names. Good today. Except for names of noobs.

Weight. Gained back what I lost on fathers day. Went to a barbecue for a birthday on Father’s day but no fathers were present. A scale in the dressing room said I was 190 pounds with the gi on, wonder if my usual scale is inaccurate of if this one is.

Except for noobs, the cross chokes I got were from side control, half guard, and mount. I choked two blue belts and I believe a white belt but I can’t remember how exactly and on whom. So I’ll add two subs to the tap counter.

After training a while, you find that you prefer rolling with a subset of all the people at your school. Eventually, you even know when to roll with specific people. Y’know like “It’s better to roll with this person towards the end of the class because he has too much energy in the beginning and rolls like crazy until he tires out” or “roll with that guy in the beginning of a gi class only because he sweats like Niagara Falls” and the like (those were exaggerated examples btw). Sorry, was talking to someone after class about it. That and about bad injuries from rolling… someone in my school broke his thumb when it got caught in a gi while rolling, the guy I was talking to got cauliflower ear, and I armbar-swept a guy onto a treadmill.

Anyway, going on vacation. Yeah!!!!

BJJ Class 84

Another gi open mat class.

After a short individual warm-up I rolled with a white belt that’s been there longer than me. After rolling a bit I went for an armbar from mount, everything was in place and it was tight, but my back landed right on the wall with no space to fall back on, so we moved back to the center of the mat and reset positions. That was one near sub. He later put me in a clock choke, which I tapped to. A little bit later I managed to sub him with a clock choke. When we restarted, I pulled guard and he got on his feet to look for a pass. I saw an opening for an armbar, locked his opposite shoulder, and moved my other leg to hook over his head. As he was falling down to the mat, I was smiling happy as I do whenever I get the armbar from guard, but instead “BANG!!!!” his head landed on the edge of a treadmill that was tucked to the corner of the mat. Man, not really my fault, but I felt bad anyway. He ended up with a huge red bump near the top of his head. I’m glad it didn’t bleed and that he wasn’t seriously hurt. After resting and icing his head for a bit, we continued rolling after he said something like “I’m fine, I like getting hit.”

My next roll was with a huge white belt with whom I used to have a lot of trouble with. I still do, but not as much. Things were even until he got side control and we were there for the rest of the match. Afterwards, a blue belt practiced his leglocks on me, and he gave my some great tips for when you are under side control. I wish I had learned or been taught these sooner, as I still have problems being under side control. Here are the tips (some of them I knew already, but they were put together very nicely, and it’s always nice to get a reminder for something that isn’t done by instinct yet):

• Keep your elbows in. Always. You can let your forearms out to defend, but your elbows should always be tight to your body
• Don’t let your opponent get an arm behind your head. You can do this simply by keeping your head flat on the mat (forcing it down if needed) and shrugging your shoulders. If the arm gets behind your head, it will be more difficult to bridge to help you escape to a better position
• Stay at an angle facing towards your opponent. Not flat on your back and not facing away. This reduces the weight (your opponent’s) that you have to bear, and makes setting up bridges and escapes easier
• When you bridge up, bridge up very high on the shoulder that is closest to your opponent. This makes the bridge go up and toward your opponent, not just straight up
• With the space created from the bridge, hipscape (shrimp) out and then back in to try to regain your guard.
• If your leg is blocked when trying to compose guard, slide your nearest leg under your body so that you go belly down. You should stay low when doing this, or you will be easily rolled back into side control. Quickly go to turtle, and spread your arms out a bit like a “U.” This is so that in case your oppponent tries to take your back, you can catch their legs, and maybe single leg them down, or if they don’t, transition to either guard or stand-up or whatever

Drilling with the blue belt took a lot of time, so I rolled with only one person afterward. It was a long roll that we did, ten minutes or so. After the ten minutes, there was no one else to roll with so we rolled again for ten or fifteen minutes or so (well, felt like it). I scored an americana and an armbar, and he had two subs on me as well. In terms of points, I was prolly ahead (he thought I was) and I really got to practice my passing. We were pretty even and I really enjoy rolling with this guy. He rolls technically and it makes me be more technical as well. The roll ended when he got half-guard or side control and I was too tired to defend, and he got his third sub on me, an americana or straight arm lock, which ended our rolling.

After the rolling I watched my instructor roll with a purple belt. My instructor is really awesome to watch, he really has fun rolling. He won the Mundials (first place) twice in the past. Anyway, it’s pretty amazing how much there is to learn in terms of submission grappling. You can watch how, almost effortlessly, an older white belt will work on a newer white belt. Then, you can see how that white belt gets outdone by a blue belt, who can be beaten by a purple belt, who can be outdone by a brown belt, who can be outdone by a black belt. It’s really amazing how much more depth and learning there is to BJJ that no matter how good you think you are you can still improve your game many times over. And I’m really glad that BJJ schools haven’t become belt factories or McDojos.

Guard Passing. Felt like I did much better than in the past few weeks. Still have to smoothly transition controlling my opponents upper body from when I control their legs. Also have to figure out how to better control their posture when I am controlling their legs.

Guard offense. Sweeps were cool today. And I did almost get that armbar from guard. Otherwise, I didn’t spend much time in guard. Half-guard feels better today although I’m not really working on it.

Names. Remembered a good number of names, although I also forgot a good number of names.

Weight. I’ve managed to loose two pounds and keep them off for a few days. Hope this beer I’m having now doesn’t bring it back.

I’m going to try to make the monday night class a long one (attend two classes back to back) as I’m going on vacation with AG on wednesday.

Ooomph.

BJJ Class 82 and 83

I went to these two gi open mat classes back-to back, which resulted in a marathon two and a half hours of non-stop rolling. And wow, I don’t think I’ve ever rolled that much non-stop before.

I can’t remember everyone I rolled with and what happened, so I’ll just go straight to my goals performance.

Guard offense. I remember being active in the guard, sitting up to pull my opponents down to break their posture, and fishing for kimuras. I didn’t get any kimuras and I should really work on setting these up so I can get them. A problem that I noticed that I’ve been doing is my sweep timing/direction when my guard has been opened and a pass attempt is near, I haven’t had much success in sweeping at a pass attempt. Also,my open guard needs a lot of work. It sucks, having my feet on their hips or doing spider guard.

Guard passing. Still not as successful as I have been recently, but I am now being more aware of staying close and tight. So I don’t feel so bad about not getting enough passes. I notice that when I have control over an opponents legs, I have trouble transitioning the control to their upper body, making settling into side control rather difficult.

Names. Bit better now. Realized that I remember unusual names better than common names. So names like Tom and Mike are harder to remembes only cause there are more of them, as opposed to Japanese names and other uncommon names.

Weight. I dunno. Even tho I had great work-outs this week, I completely ate through a container of chocolate wafer sticks. Yum!!

There was a group of noobs rolling for the first time today and the other guys were teaching them submissions and such. When I paired off with one, I decided to not teach any submissions, but rather teach something I wish I was taught when I was a noob (guess I’m not a noob anymore then?). I taught this guy about the concept of base/balance. So I showed how a sweep can be neutralized by adjusting your base, and how, no matter which position you are in, dominant or not, you are better off if you can break your opponent’s base. By example I showed him that when mounted, you can easily escape if you are able to remove your opponents base and do an upa escape. Showed him that the guy on top can post out or adjust his legs, and you really just have to take this ability away to roll them off succesfully. I just hope that I helped this guy out better by teaching him this concept rather than teaching him subs. Besides, it will take a while before he will submit anyone, but knowing how balance works can be used from day one.

I got two taps today. One from a blue belt with an Americana, and the other with an elbow lock, kinda like the pic above, only from side control and not from north-south. I don’t remember who I did this on.

I also tapped the girl a few times, but am not adding them to the count. I wonder if I should start a tap counter. I can use it to evaluate my progress. So when I reach, say 50 taps, I can look at what I’ve done and look at my goals and decide whether to change my goals or revise them.

Yeah, I think I’ll do that. Starting with these two classes. I’ll set up a page where I count my taps. After every 50 taps I get, I will review both my progression based on my goals and on the type of subs I get, and use that to evaluate and maybe even change my goals. Right now, I feel like I should change my goals a bit, as my guard offense goal, which is really a closed guard goal, is limiting me. I mean, yes it is helping me a lot, but at the same time it makes my guard game one-faceted, rather than multi-faceted. I mean, I don’t have an open guard game at all. So maybe, after 50 taps, I’ll change my goals to work on open guard. We’ll see…..

Anyway, after rolling, some of us were discussing the armbar and options. A lot of this post was discussed. What’s cool is that, and I didn’t realize this before, you can go from the armbar to the kimura (the reverse order of what I posted here). Cool right!! Also, I asked one of them how to do the arm slice/bicep squeeze from North-South, as I had tried it and couldn’t finish it while rolling and I just plain forgot how to do it. So here we go:

From this step, Boarder already has his grips to do the Kimura, but because Nogi is defending, Boarder cannot bring the arm out to finish the sub. So first, Boarder must reposition his left hand, the one that is around Nogi’s arm and is gripping his other wrist, so that he grabs his elbow instead.

Boarder steps across with his right leg. Before or as he does this, he should let go of his right hand grip on Nogi’s wrist, and grab his left elbow. All he has to do now is to sink his elbows down to the mat (adjusting his base as neccesary) to make Nogi tap to a crazy painful bicep squeeze. Ouch!

BJJ Class 81

Gi class. Not so good. I’ve been doing this for a little over a year now but I don’t feel so good lately. I don’t know if it’s the summer heat, mid-terms at school, the stress from leaving my comfortable paying job for an unpaid internship that I don’t like all that much, or something else – who knows. Since the month started it feels like I’ve lost most of my technique. I can’t sweep anyone, I can’t pass guards anymore, and my guard gets passed like clockwork. I’ve felt this way several times before, but I thought I had put together a nice little set of basic techniques that I could fall back and depend on.

I guess everyone has learned my small bag of tricks and have developed counters to those few techniques. BJJ really does evolve and I should keep evolving and improving as well. The goals I set up for myself a few weeks ago should facilitate this process.

After light warm ups there was several rounds of rolling. I think I defended well against a huge purple belt and a huge blue belt. It’s the non-noob whites and new blue belts that have been giving me all the trouble. Against the three that I rolled with, I kept defending or falling into traps I should’ve seen coming. One kept cross-choking me and the other swung his leg violently at my face as he went for an armbar, causing my nose to bleed. After, there was a lot of butterfly guard defense/passing drill. One guy is in butterfly guard defending or trying to get deep half-guard, the other tries to pass.

Guard passing. The only guard I passed was the big blue belt’s. He kept trying to attack my arm and neck, and when I based out after a sweep attempt, I was able to pass. The rest of the roll was spent trying to get my side control tight.  All the white belts I rolled with were all doing butterfly guards, I couldn’t pass any of them!  I remember being able to pass butterfly guards before…  In the drills later, I had a real difficult time passing.  I did a few times, but I really need to work on making my passes tighter and on sprawling on my toes when needed.

Guard Offense.  I only got guard once during rolling, which was when I was against the huge purple belt.  I defended it pretty well and attempted several sweeps.  I’ve yet to sweep a purple belt… The drill later didn’t really have any room for offense, as it was a defense drill for the guy doing the butterfly guard.  I haven’t really practiced or tried the butterfly guard, so I really sucked on this drill.

Names.  I remembered some.  Weight.  Still where it was the last time.

Overall, I should really work on achieving tightness in technique.  That and work more on my conditioning.  After the first roll, I felt wiped out.  I’ll try to do 15 minutes on AG’s elliptical, with my heart-rate at at least double the normal resting rate.   Hopefully I can get my conditioning up first, so I can have the energy to work on my technique when in class.

Anyway, midterms are next week…

BJJ Class 79 and 80

Class 79 wasn’t so good. It was a gi lunch time class. I was drunk the night before, it was a very hot day, and I came in late. In addition, I washed my gi just before class and so my pants were still steaming from the dryer and my gi top was moist and very heavy (I usually wash and hang-dry my gis at least a night before a class).

I performed rather poorly. I had great difficulty passing the guard and my guard offense sucked. I got some great tips for putting pressure and keeping passes tight. Names went real bad too.

Class 80 was much better! It was a gi class and, after the warm-up, a stand-up class. It’s rare enough that we do stand-up, so it’s even rarer still when we spar standing… half the stand-up time was practising throws on about 12 non-reactive guys. The second half was practising throws and take-downs on the same 12 or so guys, but with them being fully defensive and able to counter.

My stand-up sucks. During the second half, I was able to throw only one person, a blue belt (a real surprise), who, when it was his turn to try to take me down got me in a wrist lock with the gi even before he initiated his throw, which caused me to yell “tap, tap, tap!!” as I was being thrown. Now, days later, my wrist still hurts. Also, as one or a few guys had “sandpaper” gis, I have a nice pill sized wound on my finger. I bled all over a friends gi (by the lapel) before I noticed the bleeding. It was hurting way before the bleeding, but at least a band-aid fixed it.  In one way or another, I always get hurt on days that we do stand-up.

There was three short rounds of rolling after the stand-up. Nothing happened much with the two blue belts I rolled with. One of them was in a “the problem with white belts are…” mood (I’m a white belt) and the other kept getting interrupted cause we kept on rolling into other people or walls. I managed to pass each of their guards, though it seems I was able to do it more because of the mood and interruptions than solely on my skill. My last round was with a fairly new whitebelt. I let him sweep me and get into side control. I escaped to guard, swept, mounted, and arm-barred him. When we restarted, pretty much the same thing happened, though I had a bad armbar attempt which I was turning into a triangle when time ran out. I wasn’t able to practice my two goals very well, but at least I was able to do two passes and two sweeps. I’m also trying to remember two additional names from the class. Ok, the same name for two people…

My weight is still stuck at the mid 190’s.  I am now trying to loose 5-6 pounds for a competition in August…

BJJ Class 78

Good gi class. I arrived at the academy a bit later then my usual so I wasn’t able to stretch before the warm-ups started. I really should’ve because the warm-ups were killer. Push-ups, sit-ups, squats, and several variations of each that left you feeling too tired. It was the first time since I thought I had grown strong enough to be able to do all the push-ups that I wasn’t able to do all the push-ups. I’m going to revise my once weekly home work-out…

We did a very cool technical sweep from guard and a variation. It is so technical and uses leverage so well, that doing it uses no strength, it just flows and feels so smooth – I really like it! So yes, expect it to be demonstrated by my Snowboard Instructors soon. We did a variation for when your opponent gets an underhook on a leg and attempts to pass. Cool, a guard offense/defense move!!

After the sweep, there was one ten-minute round of rolling. I really felt like rolling, so even though I became more alert and aggressive when I was working on my goals, guard passing and guard offense, I kept going for a sub even after obtaining a more advantageous position (side control and mount). I rolled against a guy that’s been back for a few weeks after a three-month or was it more lay-off from an injury. I managed several subs including an armbar and a keylock from mount – even an ezekiel, which I’ve never done successfully before. Old School and Plan B are still my most reliable half-guard sweeps. I did knee-on belly for the first time, and managed to stay on for about 5 seconds.

What really helped me get the knee-on-belly was browsing through a BJJ book the other day. It basically said that after passing and attempting to get side control, if you’re opponent straightens both arms out at you making it difficult to secure side control, you should be able to go for knee-on-belly.

Guard passing. Did several and made sure to watch my hand placement when attempting the pass which I got great pointers for on the last class, BJJ Class 77. That pass and the slide-your-knee-inside-the-guard pass are quickly becoming my favorites.

Guard offense. Think my scissor sweep is getting better. Hope the sweep learned today can be incorporated into my game quickly. Attempted another omoplata but didn’t get it. Is this a low percentage sub? I mean, as a white belt, is this a technique worth pursuing?

Names. Didn’t name too many people. Think I knew half of the names of everyone there today.

Weight. I dunno, it’s really settled around 195. I really should try to loose some.

Might be competing in a NAGA event with some guys from my school in the summer…