07/07/2009 – Nova Força
Posted: 07/07/2009 Filed under: BJJ, Brazilian jiu jitsu, Epsom, Nova Forca, standing guard sweep, Tim Radcliffe Leave a commentClass #232
Nova Força Epsom (BJJ), Tim Radcliffe, Epsom, UK – 07/07/2009
At long last, I’ll be heading to Turkey with my gf in a couple of months. I’ve been meaning to take her there since we started going out eight years ago, so very much overdue. Also given me the sufficient kick up the arse I need to finally try and brush up my rather terrible Turkish. Only downside is that the people I cycled past probably thought I was nuts, as I was loudly repeating Turkish from my language podcast on the way to and from training.
Tim went through two sweeps today, both of which I’ve seen before, but still can’t perform very well. The first standing sweep begins when they stand in your guard and try to open your legs. Grab their sleeves, slip down their body and open your guard. Once you get to their knees, squash them together with your legs, locking your feet. This needs to be quick, as normally they’ll put one leg back to begin passing, which prevents you trying this technique.
Using your sleeve grips, push their arms down and as far back as you can. This should put them off balance. You can now crunch your legs towards you and roll over one shoulder (as in the typical breakfalling drill). Keep pulling on the arms to end up in mount, aiming to end up near their hips.
I had some trouble getting this right. Locking the legs is straightforward, but I found pushing the arms back in combination with crunching your knees in and rolling over awkward. Aside from my general ineptitude, I also don’t like techniques where I feel I lack control, which is the case with this one: momentum is a big part of it.
On top of that, when I rolled back, I was ending up too far forward in mount, which in sparring would provide my partner with the option to escape out the back. That was because I wasn’t controlling the arms properly, or pushing on the sleeves as I rolled.
The next standing sweep is a variation on one of my favourites, the handstand sweep. This time when they stand up in your closed guard, you keep your legs locked around their waist. Grab a sleeve, then underhook their opposite foot with your arm. Drop your hips to their knees and twist: if their knees are closed, use your hips to dig your way between them.
Drive your hip against the knee of their trapped leg to knock them to the floor. Come up on top using the grip on their sleeve, with your legs in a hurdling position (i.e., one bent with the foot pointing back, the other straight, pointing diagonally away from their body). You’re now well placed to shift into a strong mount.
Simon had a tip on the grip here, demonstrating what he feels is the most powerful method. First, get your thumb under the sleeve. Twist that up, wrapping your fingers around the top, continuing to twist. You should end up with a pocket of gi material held by your four fingers, thumb gripping outside.
In free sparring I started with Tim, quickly getting into the usual thing pattern of escaping side control to guard repeatedly. As before, I was concentrating on staying on my side, shrimping, and also trying to get my forearm to my thigh in order to block knee on belly. Need to be quicker with that, and also keep in mind the option of going to knees from under side control.
After briefly rolling with a beginner, which resulted in me showing them how to escape side control (which surprisingly they don’t appear to have seen yet), I went with Simon. He’s always really good for tips, though he tends to go at a harder pace than the other senior belts I’ve rolled with at Nova Força.
First thing was that I need to press forward when in someone’s guard or I’ll simply get knocked over backwards. That’s especially true when starting from knees for sparring, as I’ll tend to be passive and wait to see what they’ll do.
Secondly, to defend the baseball bat choke (Simon said this was applicable to chokes in general too), I should press the elbow of their choking arm outwards, defending my neck with my other hand. As they need to close their elbows for the choke, that will give me room to turn towards them and shrimp out.
Finally, to escape mount I need to be proactive with my elbows. Rather than just staying tight and defensive, I have to really push on their legs and shrimp. Simon exposed the weakness in my defence by repeatedly moving into a mounted triangle, which is something that’s happened before with other people too. So, more activity on my part under mount!
21/05/2008 – BJJ (Advanced)
Posted: 21/05/2008 Filed under: advanced class, BJJ, Brazilian jiu jitsu, Jude Samuel, London, Roger Gracie Academy, standing guard sweep 6 CommentsClass #147
Roger Gracie Academy (BJJ), Jude Samuel, London, UK – 21/05/2008 – Advanced
I’ve already mentioned bjjMap.com in this blog, and there is now another club database in the works, called simply Gym Database. The site interface is looking great so far, although there are a few problems that still need to be worked out (though I think I encountered more as I was adding a UK entry: unsurprisingly, the site is geared towards the US at the moment). Should hopefully become a useful resource once the kinks are ironed out: the developer also started a thread on Sherdog, looking for any suggestions people might have for improvements. Also reminds me to put up a link for one of the other big databases, TrainJiuJitsu.com.
Christina has returned from the US: its been strange not having my regular training partner there in class, so cool to have her back. She and her husband Lorenzo had the chance to train at both American Top Team in Coconut Creek and Gracie Barra Orlando. I seem to remember there is at least one person from Bullshido who trains at ATT Coconut Creek, so I wonder if he was there: I asked Lorenzo if he remembered a big Asian guy, but either Anthony wasn’t there, or Lorenzo didn’t get a chance to train with him. Still, reminds me how I’d like to go off on a geektastic trip around some part of the US to go train with internet people. My current vague plan is San Diego, LA and Bend, but it’s a very hypothetical plan at the moment. Definitely want to get out there at some point in the future, though.
Getting back to class, first technique, very handily, was a sweep for when your partner stands up in your guard. In fact, it was the basic standing sweep generally known as the ‘handstand sweep’. As they stand, keep your guard closed, wrapping an arm around their same side ankle. Twist into their knee with your hips, pushing up with your other hand for extra leverage, which done right will drop them to the floor.
However, that still leaves them a hand with which they can post out and recover. To prevent that, Jude showed a more difficult variation on the standing sweep. The same set up, but this time, you don’t use your free hand to push up by your head. Instead, you grab their opposite sleeve, thereby both preventing them from posting out, and also providing you with an easy way of pulling yourself up into mount.
The difficulty is due to the decreased leverage at your disposal. Now that you can’t use that hand to push up, you instead have to really twist into their knee. Make sure your grip around their leg is tight, pulling their foot right to your head. You will also use your grip on their sleeve, pulling their arm way across towards their trapped leg. This is tougher to pull off, as we discovered when drilling.
Next, Jude showed us another standing sweep, which looked a little like the standing version of the flower sweep. Again keeping your guard closed as they stand, pull them down towards you with a hold on their collar. Having bent them downwards, move your legs up their back, then reach for their opposite armpit, grabbing over their shoulder.
With your free hand, swivel and wrap around their opposite foot, then use that grip in conjunction with your leg to drive them to the ground. Note that if they put their legs closer together, you can not only wrap around their opposite foot, but reach though with that same hand to grab their other pant leg. From their, you can roll into an armbar.
Alternately, if they adjust their legs, you can switch to a standing armbar by bringing your leg over their head. If they also manage to get their arm free of that, you should still have your legs in position for an omoplata sweep, rolling through and then adjusting to either side control or s-mount (where you have their arm trapped and kind of swing round behind you into mount, with their arm still between your legs).
Sparring was unusual today, in that everyone competing at the Mundials (plus Indra, who was being impressively brave) went to the mat and then had to stay there while people switched in and out. Guard passage was followed by takedowns then finally free sparring, in one minute rounds but no rest for the people out on the mat. During that I had a chance to play with the ‘paw’ concept in half-guard against Oli, as well as go for deep half guard, but then Oli was going light. Even so, I was still sitting their clamped on his legs without much of an idea what to do: I guess getting to the position is something, but I really need to work out a better plan than my usual terrified squirrel-fu.
Normal free sparring kicked off with Christina, where again I fell into the typical pattern of trying to keep her at bay with my open guard. Its getting better, and I felt I was at least partly controlling the distance, but she eventually passed to knee-on-belly. At one point I again ended up in a sort of deep half guard, but not very tight.
Also, I tried sitting up in closed guard to try and stop her standing. That did work, but I wasn’t able to do anything else. I tried sit-up sweeps and the kimura set-up, but Christina’s base was too good and her defence too tight. I threw in some choke attempts too, but couldn’t sink in anything around her neck: she was happy to let me get one grip, but that was as far as I managed. Grabbing the back of her gi was difficult, and her chin was sufficiently tucked that I failed to wedge an arm underneath even when I did get that gi grip.
Tran was my second and final spar, with another familiar pattern, this time escaping his mount and defending cross-chokes. I clung to half guard for a little while, but Tran was able to bring his knee up and drive through for mount. He then worked for the choke, but I was able to slip my hand in between, stopping him from clamping down on my neck. It was uncomfortable, with plenty of strain on my hand, but I was in no danger of being choked. However, this is a habit I should probably get out of: much better to defend the choke earlier than a last ditch blockade, which might well fail against someone willing to painfully crush my hand into submission.
Also nice to chat to Brian, as I don’t often get to vent about writing commitment frustrations with people who can sympathise. 😉
02/01/2008 – BJJ (Beginners)
Posted: 02/01/2008 Filed under: beginners class, BJJ, Brazilian jiu jitsu, Jude Samuel, London, Roger Gracie Academy, standing guard sweep 2 CommentsClass #113
Roger Gracie Academy (BJJ), Jude Samuel, London, UK – 02/01/2008 – Beginner
Nick G has moved his excellent blog, The Jiu-Jitsu Brotherhood, to a new site, here. Looks like he was still working on it last time I checked, but presumably new articles will be appearing there rather than the old blogspot site.
As it’s the start of a new year, I’m going to go through my training to date (I’m very, very geeky about my statistics: Excel sheet stuffed with formulae). Since November 2006, I’ve been (before tonight’s class, that is) to 112 classes of BJJ, of which 85 were beginner, 26 were advanced (11 gi and 16 nogi), which means 122.5hrs total at RGA, with another 1.5hrs from the Brighton TD, and finally the half hour intro with Oli back in October 2006. I’ve been to one competition, and plan to make at least one more this year (I doubt I’ll ever be all that into competition, as its not really my personality to compete, but nevertheless important to test myself outside of class). That means BJJ now makes up 16.93% of my total martial arts experience (which – and this is partially guesswork – is 735.5hrs), the lion’s share still being Zhuan Shu Kuan (68.66%, but that’s unsurprising, seeing as I trained there for 8 years). I haven’t been back to ZSK since April last year, as I’m not really interested in stand-up anymore, but as I enjoy the socialising, may well try and make some sessions later this year.
My main focus hasn’t really changed much since I began: in the beginners, I concentrated on sweeps, and since moving to the advanced, I’ve been looking into escapes. Those two areas (which are big areas) still need plenty of improvement, so I’m not going to stop working either of those. However, I also need to get some kind of top game, as at present its non-existent, along with attempting more submissions (though I mainly want to use them in combination with a sweep, like the kimura from sit-up or armbar from scissor and flower/pendulum).
I wasn’t feeling 100% this morning, and still felt a bit off during work, so decided to go for the beginners instead of advanced tonight. That’s what I normally do if I feel a little dodgy, but not enough to skip training: means I still get at least one class in, so don’t then feel so bad about taking the rest of the week off if it turns out I am coming down with something.
Training tonight focused on sweeps when they stand up in your guard. First one was the usual ankle grab sweep, which despite being basic is something I always have trouble with. It might be that I’m not raising my hips high enough, or thrusting them forward sufficiently, or perhaps both. Will have to remember to check that with Jude or Oli etc next time I have a chance. I also find it difficult to follow it up quickly, particularly when – as today – my partner (a guy called Doug, who has been at RGA around two years, but kept away by work for the past three months) is a fair bit taller than me. Doug suggested holding onto the gi to pull yourself up, though mused that this might also mean you effectively pull the guy towards you, negating the sweep. Either way, the proper method as Jude showed it was to come up on your hand, pushing forward so you can get to mount.
The next sweep involved feet in hips (not sure what the usual name for this sweep is, though I think we’ve done it before). If the ankle grab sweep fails because they’re pulling on your lapels for balance, reach inside their arms. Then draw your legs back until you can get your feet into their hips. Finally, pull their elbows back to your head, so they’re overbalancing right over you, then lift your legs and roll them straight over into your mount. I need to remember to get them all the way forward before straightening out the legs, as I think I being a little premature at points in the drill, meaning that the sweep didn’t quite complete properly (or wouldn’t have, if there had been much resistance).
Sparring was guard passage, which on top against Doug I generally tried the tailbone break. As often happens, that wasn’t hugely effective, but did put me in position to bring my knee through when Doug attempted to initiate something. He swept me a few times by getting his knees into my legs (or was it a scissor? Frequently find myself falling prey to this, but I don’t think it involves getting the shin into the stomach as with a scissor sweep. Could be wrong, though), but I also managed to use that opening once or twice to pin a leg and get through to side control.
Need to be more careful of my base, so I don’t get swept in that position where I’ve got my knee back, and also should try standing passes more often. I was possibly a bit wary this time due to having spent the whole class working standing sweeps, but that’s no excuse. I did at least defend OK against his choke attempts, by either squashing his arms together at the elbow or isolating one arm until I could get space to posture up.
Underneath, I got passed a few times, such as when attempting scissor sweeps, but had a chance to play with my half-guard. I had a vague attempt at the lockdown thingy where you use your foot to wrap round and cause extra pressure, but will need to review the basic section of the Bravo book to make a more serious effort. I did find I was able to get up on my side, and get my arm right across Doug’s back, but couldn’t quite move through to taking the back. However, it did at least enable me to recover full guard.
I also tried slipping down to a single leg when Doug stood up in my guard, which sort of worked, in the sense that while I didn’t manage to catch the leg, I was able to come to my feet. That does rather defeat the object of the exercise, though, as I want to be going for a single as opposed to merely ending up in a clinch. Final point I wanted to note is that I found myself in that position where I have a leg flailing by their head, which eventually gets batted away and they move into side control. I need to work out what to do in that situation to regain a secure position: I was trying to get my foot into his biceps, but couldn’t get the foot away from by his head.
My next partner was a Brazilian guy called Felipe, who apparently trained under De La Riva for four years (although this was ten years ago). According to him, De La Riva is a really nice guy, and very small (at least I’m guessing that’s what he meant by holding up his little finger: perhaps I missed some nuance of Brazilian sign language). Felipe had a tendency to cling firmly onto my trouser legs by the knee or ankle when I was in his guard, which I felt sure must mean I had a good opportunity to pass, as he was tying up his arms. I did manage to step through at one point, albeit with Felipe continuing to hold on to the trouser leg. He eventually relented and switched to half-guard: I can’t remember if I managed to step through initially and then on the second try stayed stuck in half-guard, or if I stepped through the half guard too. Either way, I tried to focus on fighting for the underhooks from half-guard, and flattening Felipe out, which sort of worked, as I was able to get my arm under his head and drive my shoulder forward.
With my guard, I found again that Felipe likes to hold on tight (though he mention, not at all to my surprise, that his fingers were sore from the previous round). I put my legs up too high at one point, meaning he could easily stack pass me, and he also slid through to side control a couple of times. As he was staying so low, I probably should have tried to work my flower sweep more, which is something I’ve yet to work out, despite having been trying to do so for over a year now. I also couldn’t quite succeed in armbarring him, although he was going for a thrust choke and seemed in perfect position for the attack: need to get my hips over faster. We finished off as I was hanging on to his arm looking for a kimura, or possibly using that hold to sweep: couldn’t manage either, though the latter looked viable at one point.
I don’t feel too bad after that class, but will see how my body is tomorrow morning. Hopefully make the no-gi, as it would be annoying to start the year with a single-class week (though at least that isn’t no classes). Also depends on the weather: trains in this country are terrible, and tend to collapse in bad weather. May be snow tomorrow afternoon, so will need to check that before I consider heading off to training.
01/03/2007 – BJJ
Posted: 01/03/2007 Filed under: armbar from standing guard, beginners class, BJJ, Brazilian jiu jitsu, Felipe Souza, London, Roger Gracie Academy, standing guard sweep Leave a commentClass #34
Roger Gracie Academy (BJJ), Felipe Souza, London, UK – 01/03/2007
I didn’t get the chance to drill the scissor and sit-up as I’d hoped today, but instead I was surprised to see Felipe go through the exact same sweep I’d unsuccessfully tried on Dominique yesterday. Not sure what it’s called, but I’ll refer to it as the standing guard sweep. When Person A stands up to pass, Person B hooks an arm around Person A’s leg, gripping their own collar (an important detail I missed yesterday). They then push up off their other arm, drive their hips into their opponent and attempt to knock Person A to the ground. Here‘s the Paulo Guillobel video I saw a few days ago, which starts with the same technique.
It seems a difficult sweep to get, as in drilling the person standing generally had to let their partner knock them down rather than being forced to do so through technique. Then again, when drilling you’re expecting it, so I assume this sweep is one that needs the right timing, such as when your opponent is just about to pass and perhaps has their feet close together, or has overbalanced for some reason. That’s just conjecture on my part, though.
I preferred the follow up, an armbar from standing guard. When Person A successfully resists the sweep attempt, Person B grabs their arm (which would normally be gripping Person B’s collar in preparation for a pass). Pulling down and across, Person B walks their guard up high on Person A’s back. At the same time, they need to keep their hips raised so Person A can’t pull out the arm, and also maintain their grip on Person A’s leg, in order to improve control. Once Person B has achieved a sufficiently high guard, they swivel and bring the leg round, staying tight on Person A’s back, then go for the armbar.
Chris reminded me once again how good a training partner he is, constantly providing useful tips. He also always provides the right level of resistant to pick up my mistakes: in this case, I kept forgetting to keep my hips raised up, meaning he could pull his arm out. If I was with somebody who ignored my mistake, then I’d end up using sloppy technique in sparring and have no chance of getting the sub (presuming I found myself in position to go for it).
Sparring went pretty well for me today, as IIRC, I managed to sweep or pass consistently. However, my technique was a bit crappy, and I get the impression that there was probably some simple counter to what I was doing, especially as I wasn’t doing the motion right. Sparring was initially split into weight groups, which I definitely prefer to king of the hill, with my first spar turning out to be a long one. I was with a guy called Jonathan I’ve not sparred before, who was making all the attacks at first. With a bit of wriggling and pushing I was able to resist his attempts at collar chokes and sit-up sweeps, but not able to do much more than that. When I finally picked my moment to stand up, he unsurprisingly went for the sweeps we’d just been shown. However, I had little trouble maintaining my base, and eventually got control of his leg, trapped it with my shin and passed to side control. Getting the pass is always nice, but I really need to stop getting stuck in these long wars of attrition and be more proactive. That old fear of standing up is still lingering, so looks like I have a bit more work to do before I can overcome it after all.
I had to sit out for a bit before my next spar, as my left foot had completely cramped up. Once that relented, I had a similar roll against Anne, although this time I stood up sooner. With Del, I managed to turn him over from underneath – I think from a failed kimura attempt, but not sure. Whichever, I ended up in a sort of side control (he was turned to his side with an arm round my neck), but as Del is one of the more aggressively competitive members of class, he wasn’t keen to stop. However, as its specific sparring, getting on top from having been on the bottom signalled the end point.
Sparring then switched to just working with one person, which for me turned out to be Nathan, who I’ve sparred a number of times now. I had a chance to work my open guard as he tried to pass, seeing how my control was if I had one leg in, or both legs around his inner thighs. Seemed to function ok, but on the other hand we were both pretty knackered, so he may have been able to easily clear my legs if he’d been fresher. I found success in keeping him close with my legs, then going for a kimura on his arm. I didn’t get the kimura, but I did keep ending up with a solid grip on his arm. Coupled with my firm lock around his back, this meant I had enough control that I could execute a sit-up sweep, albeit poorly. The reason it was especially poor is because I was exerting a lot of effort to put him on his back – I’m definitely missing a step of the sweep, possibly not isolating his supporting leg enough. I swept like this several times in the course of our spar, but my technique was crappy, so needs plenty of work.
Success in passing, as before, mainly came from trapping a leg with me knee. I need to improve my ability to force the guard open, because at the moment I’m normally getting the pass when they choose to relax their guard. While that works too, I’d rather be using good technique on my part as opposed to waiting for them to make a mistake.
My cardio sucks arse, as I was completely knackered during sparring. I’m clearly going have to really improve before I have a hope of making it through an advanced class, as at present I’ll simply drown in my own sweat. Another thing that annoyed me, totally unrelated to class, is that I’ve missed the train I wanted to get twice now. Need to start taking the bus instead of walking to the station!
Still, can’t pretend it isn’t satisfying to get lots of passes and sweeps in sparring, even if the technique wasn’t anywhere near as polished as I’d like. Something else that pleases me is a confirmation of the rumour I heard about RGA moving to a new location. Felipe was talking about going to a bigger venue next year, when we’d be able to have more classes due to a split level mat, with two running concurrently. If I understood him correctly, the plan is to have beginner (up to third stripe white), intermediate (third stripe white and blues) and advanced (senior blues and up), which sounds promising.
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