20/10/2013 - Study Hall (Closed Guard Passing & Side Control Chokes)

Class #530
Gracie Barra Bristol, (BJJ), Study Hall, Bristol, UK - 20/10/2013

Dónal wasn't able to make it to Hit Fit this week, so study hall was my only bit of training, aside from teaching on Tuesday. That only happens once a month though, so hopefully I'll be able to work something out so I'm at least getting in two classes rather than just the one.

I continued working on the closed guard, this time passing rather than from the bottom, trying to maintain my posture and practice grip breaks. I'm teaching them next week, so I'm still attempting to work out the best combination of techniques. I will probably put grip breaks and posture in the first section, then opening the guard from the knees. The question is whether to also add in a pass: I think what I'll do is show the guard break, then tell people they can drill that, or stick around for a passing option.

Practicing the grip breaks is useful, though I still feel with the two-handed sleeve grip break I'm not ending up with their sleeve in the optimum hand. Something I can keep playing with. The one-handed 'y' grip break doesn't work too well for me, but I'll continue playing with it anyway. I'm also not sure about the hierarchy of grip breaks: e.g., if they are holding both my collar and my sleeve, I am tending to break the collar grip first, but perhaps I should be dealing with the sleeve first.

Moving into the guard break, the kneeling option works fine in drilling, but in sparring I will often get knocked off balance or my grips get stripped. However, getting in reps is valuable: I don't want to get into the resistance part too early, as simply doing lots of reps is productive too. I feel fairly confident once I can get a grip around the head, but at the same time, I don't want to get sloppy about the legs and try to crush through.

With regards to the side control chokes, I'm continuing on with the options from that private a while ago. The breadcutter puts a lot of pressure on the neck, so I want to work on that being a blood choke, not a simple pain compliance type thing. Interestingly, it worked better as a choke when I was practicing on somebody bigger, but that might have just been a more careful application on my part.

I struggle with the second grip for the baseball bat choke, which was too shallow a number of times today. I also tried using their gi lapel for the first grip, then for both grips. It was more effective when I used it for both grips, acting as a anchor so I could squeeze into the neck with my forearms. Apparently I was easing off at one point, so I'll need to be careful I'm not letting off the pressure.

After that, I ended up doing a bunch of teaching, but that's cool as I enjoy practicing that too. It's useful to try and work through problems people are having and see if I can come up with something of use. Speaking of which, Geraldine told me that she managed to get the step-over triangle twice in nogi, which is awesome as that's what we were working on last week. :D