Day 9: Do not fear growing slowly

We go no-gi on Fridays, and it's a different game, for sure. The 5 o'clock class had an interesting drill that I missed out on-- working on weaknesses. This was basically situational grappling, with guys rotating through the positions they have trouble with, live. I guess it was not such a big deal to miss it, since I need work on everything.

The six o'clock drill was the armbar from the guard. Get an overhand cross grip on the arm. Reach across to their opposite shoulder, then pivot your body using foot pressure on their hip and your grip on their shoulder. Shoot the near leg up under their armpit, then push their head over so your other leg can clear it. Squeeze your knees and raise your hips-- don't cross your ankles. Keep your knees and shins tight against your opponent the entire time to keep them in control.

I rolled with Craig a few times and he was very good at recovering guard after I got side control. He showed me a way to combat the knee slide by underhooking the near leg. I think I made some progress with openings and guard passing, but I still left myself vulnerable to several armbars. I've got to resist extending my arms so freely and keep my elbows in. I'm starting to internalize this. Damon was obliging with an armbar as well, though I held him off for longer this time. Finally I rolled with James, who is about 170. I was dominant in side control (with the benefit of 50 pounds) but I couldn't finish as his defense was very strong.

Things are starting to make more sense. Going forward I'm going to try and work on my quickness, which is lacking, and my moves from the closed guard.

Day 8: Do clothes make the man?

I strutted out onto the mat in my new Koral gi (Thanks, Mary!) with little energy to spare. Jason was quick to spot my new garb and ribbed me playfully and loudly. Class was pretty sparsely attended, so we got right to it.

The technique today was the sweep from the X guard with the opponent standing. Starting in the butterfly guard, control his arm and move one of your legs over onto his opposite knee. Switch hands with the sleeve grip, and turn perpendicular to get an underhook on the leg that your feet are not controlling. Try to get his calf on your shoulder-- you can use your underhook to pull yourself in. Now break his posture, scissor your legs, and roll with him into side control or mount.

I had a pretty easy time with this move, and worked several reps with Mario, Luke, and Jermaine. We also worked it from standing, with a cross crip on the sleeve, collar control with the other hand, pulling right into the butterfly guard.

At sparring time I rolled with Jason first. He's huge-- at least 300 pounds. He let me get position on him and I tried to land an Americana but couldn't. Later I also got in position for a Kimura, and had it set up, but he is very flexible and escaped, and finally made me tap to the "paper cutter" gi choke. I then rolled with Chris, a blue belt who is stocky, compact and very strong. He choked me out twice, pretty quickly-- I forget how. Near the end of the session I invited Luke to roll. We started the same day so we share a sort of kinship-- also he offers a good barometer of my training progression. Unfortunately he is about 160 pounds so it's not entirely fair. He's fast, and I wind up in his guard after every restart. I'm way stronger, so I can pass by getting my knee over his thigh and into side control, which is where I want to be. I got him on an Americana and a Kimura, and almost landed the armbar from the mount. Encouraging, but a little too easy.

For next time, I need to continue to work on my hip escapes and try to actually get opponents into my guard instead of getting sucked into theirs and immediately playing the guard-passing game.

Day 7: Feelin' good's good enough

Today was a lot better than yesterday. I got to class fairly early and took some initiative of my own to get some work done. I met Thomas for the first time, and he agreed to practice the guard pass/mount escape drill that Ernie showed me yesterday. Thomas showed me the escape from the mounted position, using the Gable grip to break down the opponent's posture, hooking the near heel with the leg, and rolling out of mount into their guard. I then passed guard and we cycled through again.

Guard passing was the order of the day, and Ralil stressed the need to use multiple passing tactics based on the opponent's defense. We began with the basic guard passes: sliding around to side control, the various knee-through methods, and the stacking pass. Then we worked scenarios for a blocked pass, requiring a change of tactics.

Ralil showed Luke and me the common escape from side control, using the upa to the hip escape, followed by bringing the leg across to recover guard. I did pretty poorly at this and I will have to practice my hip escape so that I can create more space for bringing my leg across.

To wrap up class, I rolled with Damon, who had his fingers taped after his injury on Friday. His strength was undiminished, however, and he worked me pretty hard. Armbar, Kimura, armbar. He showed me a good armbar defense when you are in his guard-- take the elbow of your vulnerable arm and drive it into his navel, and cup your chin as if you're really thinking hard. Then you can try to pass guard by getting your other arm inside his leg and getting a knee over.

Fernando was game again, and I grudgingly obliged him. His reasoning was that he had to beat me now, before I "got too good." I almost immediately put him into a Brabo choke from our knees and he tapped quick-- too easy. We went again and I armbarred him instinctively; it was pretty cool. He got me once when I slipped off a second attempt at the Brabo. Afterwards, he mumbled about "not rolling with me anymore." Heh. I felt bad for taking it to a much smaller guy, but I wasn't going to roll over for him, and he challenged me, to boot. I admire his pluck and I'm glad I didn't injure him.

Next goal: perform a submission on someone in my weight class.

Day 6: A new guy's life isn't worth as much

The earth rushed up at me this evening, and struck me surely and squarely in the mouth. I wasn't expecting to come back down so suddenly, but here I am, crumpled in a heap.

Hyperbole aside, today was a tough session that illuminated the problems I am going to face for the next few weeks at the least. As the low man on the totem pole, there is not a lot of incentive for people to work with me. Like Naps wrote, it's like 'Nam, and nobody cares about the new guy. I was unable to get to class at 6 due to an untimely accident from one of the canines of the house, so I missed the lesson and the drilling. While the early arrivals rolled, I was in a sort of limbo, trying to get warmed up, but with no real direction.

Damon dislocated his finger Friday, so my favorite partner was out of action. Ralil told me to go through some of the warmup movements, like the snake move and rolling from the knees to the bridge position and back. While I understand the importance of these movements, there was very little room to be shrimping across the mat so I did as well as I could.

Shortly, LV showed up, and I was glad to see him. He's an older guy, and he seems to have taken an interest in my education. We worked through the scissor sweep, which I still screw up when I try to do it quickly. LV made me concentrate on being fluid, not jerky, and I even closed my eyes for few repetitions. It helped. I then got some additional help on the armbar from the guard, again concentrating on being fluid and not tensing up so much. I think I made some progress, but I can't really be sure at this point. I was able to show LV the sweep we had learned from the butterfly guard a few days ago, giving him a little tip on leg positioning that he found intriguing. It appears that I am retaining something.

LV had to go to work, so I was again left to float. Ernie, a brown belt, was not happy with my languor and admonished me to find someone to work with and gave me a simple guard pass (that I hadn't learned) to work on. Gus grudgingly agreed to allow me to practice with him, but his mind was somewhere else. He was in no mood for developing a white belt's guard passing skills.

I ended my session rolling with Jack, who made sure to let me know just how far I had to go. Armbar, armbar, armbar, choke, choke, armbar...Damn. He's so fricking tall, and he uses the butterfly guard so well that I couldn't do anything. I did manage to snatch his extended arm, palm down on the mat, but I couldn't get my legs onto it and he was soon choking me instead. I was not really happy with my performance other than that I paced myself better and didn't burn up my energy right from the start. Pretty discouraging, all told. I better brace myself, though, because apparently there is a pretty big wall at about two months in that I'll have to face. Presumably knowing that it's coming will help. I hope.

Week 1 comes to a close

Goddamn, this is addictive. I wasn't really planning on training 4 out of 5 days this week, but as the end of the day came around I couldn't keep it out of my mind.

Thursday started off with some heavy drilling of an arm drag sweep from the spider guard. I'm going to describe it so I can commit it to memory-- this will probably be useless for any readers. Drag the arm in across their body and get it in it under your leg. Slide your opposite leg across under that leg and hook your instep around your opponent's knee, and get the other instep in back of his knee. Then pull him onto you to break his posture, and quickly roll using your leverage on his arm and his knee to get mount or side control.

I had Damon as a sparring partner for this, which is great. He's bigger and stronger than me, so I can't bully my way through any of the moves and I have to use good technique. It doesn't hurt that he's pretty funny-- when we roll he sings about jiu-jitsu in a high-pitched voice to show me that you need to relax. Good execution is "jiu jittery". It's funnier when you're there, trust me.

We rolled a little more "for real" this time after drilling, and I realized how far I have to go. He let me get some good positions but I was still powerless to get any submissions. I resisted his attempts well, I think, more on instinct than on technique. I tried to keep my hands in and clasp them palm to palm when I was in trouble, and for the most part that wasn't bad. My stamina still sucks, though, and I felt bad that I couldn't give my partner a better roll.

Near the end of practice Fernando asked me if I wanted to roll. He's a white belt that has been training for about a month, and I have at least 70 pounds on him. I was about to decline, but he seemed game, and hey, what the hell. He is very fast and nearly got me in a triangle right from the get-go, but I was able to muscle my way out of it. Once I got side control he really had no way to escape my 220 pounds, especially after I had sprawled out and dropped my hips. I got him to submit to an Americana from this position, and then again with a Kimura on our next round. I was proud to show what I had learned, but it seemed pretty unfair. He paid me back when my wind ran out and he got me with a guillotine choke.

By Friday I was a little beaten up but there was no way I was going to miss training. Friday is no-gi, and I figured I needed to get a feel for that aspect of the game. We started by drilling an escape from tight side control with a "forklift" arm posture and "machine gun" bridging. It got interesting when we built it up to rolling out into a position to get one of two chokes (by rolling towards the opponent's head) or a takedown (by rolling towards the legs).

I rolled with Craig and he showed me a few new things. The best was the armbar from the guard-- a bread-and-butter technique. I had a conceptual leap to understanding that a missed triangle flows very easily into the armbar, which I guess means that I am starting to "get it". Craig still armbarred me very easily a few more times, but I showed some spunk, and started to relax a little more. He's not as strong as Damon but he's more technical so it was an interesting session. Everything is still happening very fast but I am starting to grasp how things flow, so there's a start.

I'm going to take the weekend off to get restored. If it doesn't rain too hard I'll take one of the dogs up on one of the trails in the morning to get some blood flowing to my legs. My groin and hips are totally rocked!

Day 3

My last email to Naps (well, at least about BJJ). From here on out he can read the blog.

Naps:

I thought about training all day today. It's like being a kid again: sitting in class, my mind wandering, already done with my assignments and just waiting for football practice. Except there's so much less bullshit than with football or even rugby practice. That's something I appreciate at my advanced age. Let's just get to it, fuck the rah-rah stuff.

Today: lots of work on the triangle choke from the spider guard, some work on side mount positioning, escapes from side mount, and also work on linking moves together in a sensible way. I got another good bunch of lessons from tall, wiry Jack, and from Craig, "Crime Scene". Again I was denied the "forbidden moves".

Having a blast,
Foos

Naps replies:

Foos,

You have to realize that everyone wants to be there. Football and rugby has minimal costs, it's a team sport, and if you want to get lost in the shuffle, no problem. Dropping $200 a month and risk injury to fight other dudes isn't something you show up to half-hearted. Most guys in my school have shitty jobs and making the $150 a month is a big sacrifice for them.

Keep working those basics. My ground basics are pretty poor because my stand up and top game are dominant. Being a complete, well-rounded fighter is much better and at this point I probably rely too much on my conditioning and intensity. I have plenty of holes in my game to fill but I'm lucky enough to make up for it in other ways.

I trained tues and will be hitting it thurs, fri and sat. Friday's are the toughest because me and another guy run the open mat. We do conditioning circuits and lots of situational grappling. Steve designed this week's program and I think he's a little overzealous. He sent me an email, here's the plan:

Warm-up (total 16 min)
2 min each

* pummeling drill
* hand fighting (one person in guard)
* posturing up (one person in guard)
* standing hips forward (one person in guard)

Repeat

Grappling (total 15 min)
5 min each
3 rounds changing partners


Workout Routine (total 15 min) will require partner
1 min each
3 rounds

* fireman's carry
* medicine ball circle, throw and sprawl
* box jumps and ladders
* crab walk
* sit-up weighted ball toss


End session with "King of the Hill" take down round (open weight and rank)


This is our tournament prep. I will usually only BJJ 2 or 3x's a week normally. Keep working it bro and we'll have a showdown next time we get together.

I replied:

Naps:

Believe me, I appreciate that everyone wants to be there. I have never done an individual sport before so I was surprised by the difference.

That conditioning circuit looks very challenging. In fact, it looks a bit insane. Just regular drilling is enough to use me up at this point, alas. It's motivating me to improve!

Day 2

Another email to Naps.

Wow.

I signed up for my first month today. Changed into the loaner gi and met Roger, the instructor who runs the school. He told me to warm up so I did some jumping jacks, some pushups, and some squat thrusts to get a sweat going. Roger partnered me up with Damon, another white belt who has been training about 8 months. We worked a simple sequence: neutral to guard, simple sweep out of the guard, then into an armbar from the mount. I did 20 reps just getting into the guard, then 20 sweeping out, and then another 10 putting on the armbar from the mount. I had a tough time with the body position for the armbar at first, but the students are very good teachers and I learned it pretty quickly. After doing the moves separately, we strung them together, switching off back and forth. Just a few of these and boy, was I gassed. My conditioning is in bad shape so I will have to work on that. I managed to get through, I don't know, 12 or 14 complete sequences.

I drank a bunch of water and basically was a total mess. I managed to pull myself together a little and Damon showed me some ways to apply the Kimura. Roger, who was dressing to leave, jokingly admonished Damon not to show me the "forbidden moves!" We laughed. We did a few more reps and Damon said it was enough. I guess I looked bad. I did some pushups and situps and tried not to throw up.

One of the blue belts, Jack, took me over and showed me a simple escape from his guard. I was able to "thread the needle" with my knee and get side control, when he let me, at least. We rolled for a little while until I couldn't go anymore.

Man, was it fun. The positions and moves are so rich with purpose and function, which resonates for me completely. The stuff "for show" that's in other martial arts always really put me off of them; I really like that everything in BJJ is there for a reason.

Another convert of the "gentle art",
Foos

Naps replies:

That's friggin' great! You're just scratching the surface, it gets better.

My tournament is Nov 10th (no-gi) and Nov 11th (gi). I think Dad is going to try to make the gi event. I've been getting my weight down and getting my cardio up. Down to 194, fighting 180-189 and running 6 - 8 miles a morning and bjj 3 to 4 times a week. Wish we went live more, feel like I need more grappling time to feel ready to rock. Hopefully we'll crank it up when it gets closer.

You're on your way to being an ass kicker. You need to start watching UFC and MMA fights to start seeing how bjj is used in real fight situations. You'll be amazed how good and tough those guys really are now that you're doing it.

Keep me updated and I'll do the same.

Day 1

My first few entries are email exchanges with my brother, who suggested I try this sport in the first place.

Naps:

I had a good time tonight. There was another absolute beginner there, so the instructor (Ralil? pronounced with an H sound but I already know about those Brazilian R's) taught us some basic skills and just had us practice them on each other. We learned how to sit down into the guard position, the scissor sweep from the guard, the cross collar choke, the Americana armbar, and a bunch of other things. It was really, really cool how you need to position you body and your opponent's boby as levers and pivot points to gain maximum leverage for what you want to accomplish. I totally geeked out on the physics involved.

Things at the school were pretty informal and relaxed (this is California, after all) and all of the experienced guys were more than willing to help out. I would have appreciated more of a top-down approach, as in, "These are main ideas of BJJ. You should always..." But that is a minor complaint. I didn't have a chance to have my ass well and truly kicked by any of the experienced guys, but I suppose that there's time enough for that.

Thanks for turning me on to this. I hope it keeps being fun. Drop some wisdom about training on me too.

Naps replies:

It's like Nam. When you're new, you don't really count because so many guys watch the ultimate fighter, come out for a week and "die" or quit. No one will give a shit about you until you there a month or two.

If you watch UFC or any BJJ tournaments, the basic things are what win fights. Arm bars, triangle chokes, and guillotine chokes dominate so learn those. On the defensive side, never extended your arms. Always keep them tucked and move them like they're attached with a rope. Extended and separated is recipe for arm bar and triangle.

How's the back? We've both had our injuries and remember that you're paying them, so if you feel you can't roll that day and just want to do technique, let them know that. When I was plagued with my injuries, I was missing class because I wasn't 100% so my instructor called me up and said to use the time to sharpen my technique.

Try to do cardio on your off days. It doesn't matter what you know if you don't have the gas tank to go. When you get in better shape and you wrestle a guys that aren't, you can actually feel them give up. From there you can do whatever you want to him. That's when it's fun.

I told my instructor and he was excited that I passed the BJJ bug.

BJJ is like tough guys golf man. It's addicting cause the first time you tap someone out, you can't wait to do it again. And like golf, you can ALWAYS get better. In saying that, I hit golf balls at least once a week now. Golf and BJJ, a match made in heaven. Good luck. Keep the questions rolling.

Wait till you wrestle, it'll make rugby feel like flag football.

Another blog? Totally unnecessary, Foos.

Maybe it is. But I'm trying something new, and I'm going to use this to keep track of my experiences and the development of my skills in Brazilian jiu-jitsu.