14/12/2010 - BJJ (Advanced)

Class #369
RGA High Wycombe, (BJJ), Kev Capel, High Wycombe, UK - 14/12/2010

Fellow members of Bullshido have most likely been reading MrBadGuy's thread for a few years now, but I only just got round to checking it out. Entertaining stuff, and I imagine particularly amusing if you're from the Houston area. He writes about the various schools he's checked out, which would seem to be just about every school in the city, until eventually he was able to earn his purple belt in BJJ. Currently in two parts: part one runs through his time with Kuk Sool Won, a dodgy BJJ school (they do exist, though thankfully fairly rare) and a whole bunch of other random martial arts. Part two brings us up to the present: I'm guessing there will be a part three once that thread gets too huge. Particularly in that second thread, there is a lot of random stuff by other people to scroll through (mostly requests for updates), but you can always do Ctrl + F on "MrBadGuy" to skip past it.

In what has become something of a pattern, I wasn't able to make Thursday because I was in the wrong part of the country. That reminds me yet again that it is really cool Kev has a number of different payment options: per class, per month, or per block of classes. I'm on the third option, which works out perfectly for my geographically uncertain schedule. Kev normally closes down RGA Bucks for a couple of weeks around Christmas, so I should hopefully be able to get in a few sessions at Gracie Barra Bristol over the New Year, when I go visit my gf. She's still looking at a place to buy, so fingers crossed that works out and I can finally move down permanently in a couple of months.

Kev continued with the mount, but went in a completely different direction by combining an escape with a nifty sweep. To escape mount, turn to your side, using your lower elbow to push their leg back, the upper arm for defence. You're going to do a similar motion to the foot drag into half guard, but rather than trapping the leg completely, you just want to balance their foot on your lower leg. Use your other leg to lever that foot down, opening up a space by their knee.

Reach through that space with your upper arm, wrapping their leg, immediately swivelling as well as knocking them forwards with your legs. This will mean you can then go for a deep half guard sweep, which is the 'Homer Simpson' Kev showed a couple of months ago, from Jeff Glover's deep half DVD. Run your legs towards your head, then once you feel they're off-balance, roll back the other way to come on top. As I often get stuck there if anyone adds any resistance, Howard recommend I try to drive my head towards their chest, which facilitates the shift to half guard.

While walking round, Kev also showed Howard and I a deep half guard pass you can use if somebody puts you in that position. Grab their leg and walk around their head, swinging that leg over to the other side. At the same time, you need to work your trapped knee to the ground, meaning that you are then in a much stronger position, ready to attempt a knee slide pass.

For sparring, I was paired up with John, who is still carrying that knee injury: I'm small and tend to go light anyway, so I'm always more than happy to help people train around their injuries. Unusually, it wasn't free sparring tonight, but several rounds of specific, starting with mount again. Underneath was much the same as before, going a bit lighter than normal in order to avoid aggravating his knee injury.

On top, as earlier, I was looking to try feet in hips as well as the grapevine. Although I'm sure the injury had something to do with it, as that must have reduced his ability to bridge and general mobility, worked fairly well. I was able to climb high, and then pressure with my hips to try and open up an arm. That worked rather less well: although I can sometimes maintain the mount for a while, I still fail utterly to complete any attacks from there. MUCH prefer side control.

While I'm at least occasionally comfortable maintaining mount, I still struggle with back mount, which was the next position for specific sparring. Escaping was complicated by the injury, as I was worried I'd tweak his knee, but I could still practice fundamentals, like protecting my neck and Saulo's 'scoop' defence from Jiu Jitsu University. I very almost got caught with some kind of choke, which I wasn't paying enough attention to as I thought he only had the one collar. Dangerously complacent.

On his back, I continued to flail about ineffectually. However, again I was able to play around with some stuff I haven't tried in a while, like trapping his arm under my leg. That theoretically makes it easier to get the choke, as you then only have one arm to worry about, but I still couldn't get where I want. Interestingly, he kept on trying wristlocks as I attacked. That definitely make me more hesitant, so seems to be a good tactic.

The final round was from turtle, where again I was being cautious due to the knee. On top, most of the time I could at least get enough of a hook to move into top half guard, but I think that was directly because of the knee injury. He also tried a wristlock yet again, but this time from under side control, which surprised me. The dominant position meant I had enough leverage to wriggle free, but as before, it makes you a little more hesitant, so useful distraction. Possibly time to take another look at The Art of the Wristlock.