17/06/2013 - University of Jiu Jitsu (San Diego, USA)

Class #505
University of Jiu Jitsu (BJJ), Rentao Lima Vieira, San Diego, CA, USA - 17/06/2013

My final training in California was at another beautiful facility, the University of Jiu Jitsu. I have admired the instructionals of the Ribeiro brothers for a long time and Saulo is a jiu jitsu hero of mine, meaning it was an honour to train at his gym and interview him.

This was all thanks to Dave Kim, the man who both originally pitched the idea of the BJJ Library to Saulo and now runs it (that includes filming, admin etc, so he's a busy man), having moved across the country to do so. He contacted me about reviewing the site some time ago, then when I mentioned I was coming to California, he immediately offered to drive me over to the academy and set up the interview with Saulo. I felt very lucky to get to chat to the man himself for almost an hour as a result.

The University is yet another stop Julia visited back in 2011 during her West Coast trip. Unlike that time, Saulo was not there to teach the class, as this was the early morning 09:00-10:00 session. The instructor was Renato Vieira (sitting next to Saulo in the picture above), who judging by Google and Facebook is associated with Rodrigo Pagani, one of Saulo's black belts. If you're on BJJ Library, Pagani is the guy who has the Curu Curu guard videos, although I haven't looked at those yet. Vieira led four of us through a standard warm-up of running round the room, facing in, knees up, shrimping and so forth. That progressed to a strongly judo influenced set of drills, with grip fighting followed by some takedown entries.

The technique for the lesson was a deep half guard sweep. You have half guard with a knee shield. Move your head and arm close to their non-wrapped leg, curling in tight. Stretch out their trapped leg with both of yours by straightening them, while at the same time shooting the arm you've brought near their other leg underneath it. Bump them up with that arm, bringing it past their bottom, as you turn your body. Your reaching arm now locks above their knee, while your other elbow stays hidden: the first thing they will try from top deep half is isolating that arm, therefore keeping it safe is a priority.

Hooking under their ankle with your leg and lift, using that to spin to the top and initiate your pass. When Vieira walked round to check on drilling, he added another detail for Dave and I. Normally deep half results in them having a leg behind your head, but sometimes they may be able to get it past your head. If that happens, switch your grips to instead gable grip and lock around the hip of that same leg. From there, you still want to lift up their ankle, but simply roll them backwards. Come up and use your control of their hip to transition into a single stack pass.

Sparring started with Dave at a fairly light pace, probably because he is both bigger and more skilled than I am. I was looking for the tripod and sickle sweep again when we were in open guard, but kept being blocked because Dave would crouch slightly and bring a knee forward. I need to develop a good follow-up sweep for when that happens, particularly as Dave was not the only person to do that to me today.

The next roll was with a green belt (an unusual rank for an adult in BJJ, but several schools use it, such as ATT and University of Jiu Jitsu), again a bit bigger than me. He also recently starred in a video where Saulo drains his cauliflower ear, which got a bit of traction on YouTube. They were talking about it before the lesson, although it appears Saulo did a good job as I didn't notice the green belt's ear being particularly messed up. I briefly had an attempt at the windscreen wiper sweep, but soon got passed.

He had little trouble squashing me under side control, where yet again I relied on the running escape to save me. My partner's response to it was stepping over the head, whereupon I went to turtle and tried to return to guard, but mostly just got stuck in the running escape. He would step back over to repeat the pattern, until the timer went. Like John said in Texas, I must develop a chain of escapes rather than 100% running escape, which has been an issue for a while now.

My final roll was with the six-month white belt who like me was visiting from out of town. Naturally I had an advantage given I've been training a lot longer than that, so could practice my top control and closed guard. For once I was able to successfully use the overhook from closed guard, then slowly work to a triangle. However, that again was very much down to the experience gap, not any skill on my part: in another six months, I am sure that roll would have been quite different as he wouldn't leave those gaps.

Saulo arrived after the class had finished: he is a lot bigger in person, with arms larger than my head. Saulo's passion for his latest project, the BJJ Library run by Dave, is clear. Saulo and Dave have a lot of plans for the site, which also came out in Saulo's interview, along with his thoughts on moving to America, teaching methodology, growing BJJ and numerous other topics. That will all be popping up in a future issue of Jiu Jitsu Style. (Update Feb 2015: The whole interview is now available here)

Thanks again to Saulo for the interview and to Dave for being such a great host. Dave welcomed me to San Diego from the Greyhound station, drove me around the city to show me the sights the next day, then brought me to Saulo's school for training a few hours before I flew out. :D

15/06/2013 - Fabio Santos BJJ (San Diego, USA)

Class #504
Fabio Santos (BJJ), Fabio Santos, San Diego, CA, USA - 15/06/2013

Like the Gracie Academy, Fabio Santos has also been present for much of BJJ's global expansion. His teaching in the US dates back to at least 1983. He was running classes in New York for strength and conditioning, but had a few mats off to the side where he would show a few moves at the end of class. He eventually found himself in San Diego after a brief stint in Utah, followed by a much longer period teaching at the Gracie Academy. Santos was the main instructor there when Royce was preparing for the first UFC.

Santos has taught in San Diego since 1998: he has seen the jiu jitsu scene there explode over the last decade and a half. His gym is of fairly modest dimensions, without the swish facilities of the Gracie Academy, but the training was excellent with some great sparring partners. I was not the only visitor: my drilling partner was a blue belt called Alex from Tristar up in Montreal, who teaches boxing and jiu jitsu at his club.

The main reason I was there (and indeed set off on my California trip in the first place), apart from interviewing Santos about his many years in jiu jitsu (you can now read it, here), was to meet up and train with two cool people I know from the internet. I have met Fightworks Podcast host Caleb before, during the ADCC 2011, but this was the first time I would get to train with him. The other person was Dagney, who I know via her excellent blog. She kindly picked me up from my hotel and gave me a lift to the school, so we had a chance to get in a good chat on the way.

Like Tatami Multi Arts, this academy was also on Julia's West Coast trip. I recognised a couple of settings for her pictures, such as the bench outside and indeed the person sitting on the bench in Julia's picture. In my case, Alex Brandao greeted me from his car instead. ;)

The class was even less formal than yesterday (the only formality I noticed was each person who came in shook everyone else's hand, which I last saw at Rilion's academy in Houston), with no real warm-up, going straight into a drill. Fabio is old school and believes in the importance of the original self defence curriculum. He therefore began with an escape from them bear hugging your arms. Brace your hands against their hips, move to the side and grab their far wrist, step in front then take them down with a hip throw.

The two main techniques both related to rolling your partner over, preventing the pass, straight into a reversal. Grab their arm on the side they're passing and straighten out your arm, shoving it under their body towards your opposite hip. With your other arm, reach over their back and grab their belt. Use those grips to roll them over, shifting around in mid-air to end in side control

For the second technique, they are looking for the double underhook pass. Grasp one of their arms with both of yours, push it across and clamp it to your hip. Roll through in the direction their hand is pointing. That should flip them over, meaning you can establish side control, or alternatively you could go for a waki gatame armbar. Each technique was repeated three or four times without much talking, then it was down to us to drill.

It turned out that instruction does not really progress beyond that level of detail. I asked Santos about that later: he used to show techniques in a lot more depth, but interestingly he has since found that he prefers people to work through the technique in practice (there is therefore plenty of time allocated to drilling), rather than relying on him to make multiple corrections.

I can see the point of that (particularly as there were lots of black belts on the mats, due to the age of the gym), although my personal preference when learning is as much detail as possible. In teaching terms, I'm still not sure of the best approach. Right now, I'm trying to combine the two, starting with a simple movement, complicating it later.

Sparring was divided into groups, due to the limited mat space. That has the advantage of an automatic rest period, which for lazy people like me is handy, particularly given the humidity of the academy. I was dripping with sweat at the end of the class, despite having only rolled three times at a comparatively light pace.

Training with Caleb was interesting, as he doesn't have the game you might expect. It turns out that Caleb is very flexible, which completely changes side control. He is more than happy to let you pass, establish side control, then suddenly a pair of legs come from nowhere and you're fighting to avoid getting sucked into a crucifix. Side control goes from being a comfortable, dominant position to a risky prospect where you're constantly worried about limbs appearing at bizarre angles. I have sparred with people like that before, such as Trev from RGA Bucks, but Trev has long legs: Caleb does it without being all that tall, which is impressive.

Dagney was next, who as an experienced brown belt also went fairly light. We got into a pattern where I worked for the knee shield half guard but failed to set up a sweep. There are two I want to develop from that position, both of which Nick Brooks originally taught me and I've taught at GB Bristol in the past (with some pointers from Caio Terra's comprehensive half guard DVD). I'm clearly missing lots of details, so I need to review those. Dagney would then pass, I eventually escaped side control, then back to the knee shield.

My final round was with Alex, my drilling partner from earlier. He carefully controlled his pace, never pushing a position to the point of a struggle. If we were getting stuck at any point (e.g., when I kept going to the running escape), he simply disengaged and went for something else, which was refreshing. There are not many training partners who are that mature. Alternatively, it could just be he was so much better than me that it was no challenge for him to keep pushing. Either way, yet another good reminder to improve my back escapes, as I end up with my back taken far too often. ;D

I wasn't wearing my glasses, so was confused when everyone started applauding some guy in shorts and a t-shirt over by the entrance. I thought at first he might have been some long time member of the gym who had just come back from an injury or time off, like Caleb and Dagney. Once he sat down and started talking, all became clear: this wasn't just another member of the gym, it was Relson Gracie. He was running a seminar the next day, which I would have definitely tried to attend if I was on a solo holiday, but running off when my girlfriend had patiently let me train twice in a row would have been rather unfair.

After I finished my interview with Santos and took some photos, Caleb drove me to his house where he cooked a delicious meal for Dagney and I, with an amazing view from the back of his home. We chatted jiu jitsu, with a more extended recorded chat later, as Caleb asked if I wanted to change my usual role and be the interviewee.

I don't think I'm particularly worthy of being interviewed, especially on Fightworks (still by far the best BJJ podcast out there), but it did give me another chance to plug the GrappleThon concept again, an opportunity I always try to take. Not to mention that to write a blog in the first place you have to have a certain degree of narcissism: I'm generally more than happy to talk about myself. :)

Caleb kindly also gave me some money towards the GrappleThon that took place back in May, in support of the charity RapeCrisis. My page is still open for donations here, in case anyone fancies following Caleb's example. ;D

The interview itself is now available here: if for some reason the download doesn't work, you can just click the 'play' button for the audio. My section starts about 35 minutes in.

14/06/2013 - Gracie Academy (Los Angeles, USA)

Class #503
Gracie Academy (BJJ), Rener Gracie, Torrance, CA, USA - 14/06/2013

Torrance has a special place in the history of international Brazilian jiu jitsu, because it is where the expansion truly began. It was not the first place on US soil to teach BJJ, but the Gracie Academy was undeniably the most important school in the initial growth of the art outside of Brazil. It was therefore really cool to finally walk through those doors and see all that history staring right back at me.

This is a building well aware of its significance, most obviously in the small Gracie Museum filled with artefacts from jiu jitsu's past. There are lots of tributes to Helio, as you would expect, newspaper clippings from the heyday of vale tudo and old gis from the middle of the last century. I was reminded once again that it would be extremely useful to read Portuguese: I've been through the Pimsleur course, but need to start practicing in some methodical way, perhaps by finally tackling that Carlos Gracie biography sitting on my bookshelf.

The museum display I found most interesting was the case containing original logbooks from the first year the Torrance Academy was operating, in 1989. I recognised several of the names as early US pioneers, like Chris Haueter, Bob Bass and Chris Saunders. Walking along the corridor, your route is lined with magazine covers depicting the jiu jitsu explosion ushered in by Rorion and his relatives, until eventually you catch sight of those famous green mats.

My guide was Ben, whose articulate online presence has provided a much-needed perspective on the Gracie Academy, posting as bjh13. I have been impressed with how he has conducted himself in places like Sherdog and reddit, always ready to offer up a rational argument and solid points. He manages to be pro-Gracie Academy without the marketing spiel, therefore playing a central role in moderating the excessive vitriol that often gets directed at Rorion and his sons.

The reason I was at the Academy was to meet one of those sons, Rener Gracie. Ben set up the interview and also drove me there: I can't thank him enough for all his help. Rener was teaching a private lesson when we arrived and invited us to watch the tail end, as he did some light sparring with his student. He was teaching a celebrity, but as the celebrity in question was from American Football, I wasn't familiar with him. Rener mentioned his name later: Tamba Hali, who plays for the Kansas City Chiefs. Sounds like he has an interesting story, judging by his Wikipedia profile. I didn't get to talk to him much, but seemed like a nice guy and clearly a talented athlete (Update July 2013: Hali features in his own episode of The Gracie Way webseries, here.)

Right after that private with Hali, we got into the interview, spending about fifty minutes discussing history and teaching methodology. It also meant I had my first in-person encounter with Rener's infamous sales patter, a polished piece of marketing machinery. Rorion himself briefly popped his head round the door, which was a bit of a shock. Despite his immense contributions to jiu jitsu, Rorion does not put on any airs and graces.

Update 2016: The interview is now up as a podcast.

It was then time for class, which was a lot less formal than you might expect. In fact, I would say it is one of the least formal classes I've been to. There was no bowing I can recall and I just jumped in during the warm-up. This wasn't the typical run around the room, face inwards, sit-ups and the like. Instead, Rener ran through several body movements. The main one I remember is swinging one leg slowly backwards, carefully balancing and bending forwards until your hands touch the floor. You then reverse direction, bringing the same leg forward and hugging that knee in towards your chest.

The class was part of the Master Cycle, which is what students at the Academy learn after Gracie Combatives. There was no mention of self defence: techniques were all well-taught and sparring felt just as challenging as anywhere else. The class format and content felt much the same as any other class I've been to elsewhere in the UK and US, if more structured and better resourced than most academies.

Ben told me that Rener has been concentrating on mount for the last two months (which is awesome: I wish more schools would focus on a single position for that long). Today, Rener wanted to share how to transition from mount to knee on belly. From mount, fishtail your leg over and move into knee on belly, then to switch to the other side, put both knees on their ribs , crossing your feet over and shifting to knee on belly in the opposite direction.

The drills continued in that vein, building onto that initial movement with another motion. If they turn towards you while you are in knee on belly, spin towards their head, moving directly into technical mount (the picture shows Xande doing it from mount rather than knee on belly, but gives you an idea of which position I'm talking about). Although I may have mixed up the direction: I got slightly confused when drilling at one point, probably because Rener was staring at me. ;)

Rener increased the complexity for the next stage, where he developed the sequence into taking the back. From that technical mount position (if they are blocking tightly with their knee, you can try shifting up their back then pushing your foot through), lock up the gift wrap, then roll to take the back. Switch your grips to go for the choke, which will normally make them reach with their free hand to pull on your forearm. Once that arm starts moving, bring your leg over the top and trap it, giving you free rein to attack. Push on the head and go for the armbar as they try to move their other arm. Again, I may have missed some details there.

Finally, from your knee on belly position, you can move into an armbar. Push their near side hand down to the mat. That should encourage them to turn towards the hand, because they don't want you to isolate it and attack. Disengage your knee to shift into side control, keeping them under pressure by driving all your weight through your chest, pressing just behind their shoulder. Switch your grips to gift wrap their other hand, grabbing your own wrist to secure a figure-four.

Lever up your non-gift wrapping arm to raise their elbow, making it even harder for them to turn (this was a tip from Rener's black belt demonstration partner Jordan, son of the well-known poster simply called '12' on the Underground. He's clearly a good instructor who has learned the methodology, judging by his helpful technical advice when he walked over to Ben and I). Bring your knees in, pulling your partner in tight.

The knee nearest their legs slides higher up their back, in order to act as a pivot for swinging your other leg over their head and straight into a sort of s-mount, with the foot towards their hip. From here you're set-up to attempt the armbar. In order to get that swinging motion, Rener quickly had us all do a drill similar to Nic Gregoriades' 'shin box' from last year, swinging the leg into place from the knees, then returning to the knees to repeat, all without using the hands.

Sparring reminded me initially of classes I've taught myself, strangely, as they also kicked off with no submissions, just maintaining, escaping and sweeping. Sticking with the positional theme, we began in mount every time. Each round was six minutes, starting off with Ben. Prior to training I had been interested to see just how relaxed sparring was going to be, given the encouragement to 'keep it playful' (to use Ryron's terminology) and the lack of emphasis on competition. Ben's approach fit that mould, staying calm and relaxed.

That's markedly different from most new blue belts, particularly when I hold mount on them: they tend to buck wildly to throw me off, especially as they are invariably bigger. Ben is bigger too, but remained thoughtful and technical. I had a go at knee on belly, in an effort to practice the techniques we just learned. That's the kind of pace I enjoy, where it is possible to focus on technique because neither person is viewing it as some kind of fight to the death.

Melissa, another blue belt, was a little more energetic. She tried to stand up as soon as we moved to guard, driving forwards. I as usual attempted to go for the windscreen wiper sweep (picture on the left: that sweep has various names), but without much success. That was also the case with Ben, who did a good job of using the kneeling break repeatedly, making the windscreen wiper sweep difficult. I tried to do the simple response from Henry Akins in that situation, where I think he just shifts to the other side of their knee, but I need to rewatch the Sandy Hook seminar video to double-check the details.

Rener then beckoned me over for a roll. I wasn't surprised to see him tuck a hand into his belt or when I noticed a camera: there have been a few "Rener spars purple belt with both hands tied" videos bouncing around the internet. In this case, I think he was injured rather than simply handicapping himself, but either way, it's a good training approach when there is a large skill disparity. I'm a mediocre purple belt, while Rener is a high level black belt. He would still be able to beat me up even if both hands and feet were tied.

I took my usual passive approach, interested to see what he did: I don't get to spar black belts very often. Moving to my favoured running escape, he drove his knee across my trailing leg, which I think is the same method Sahid uses to smash that defence. The lack of a hand didn't stop him from easily submitting me (I remember an armbar, there were probably a few others).

That also reminded me to review my triangle defence. I tend to default to driving their knee to the mat and trying to open up space that way, but often get stuck there, at best getting into a war of attrition. There's also the stepping over the head method I occasionally attempt, though I think last time I did that I just got armbarred instead. ;)

For my final roll, Rener put me with one of the purple belts (I think his name was Alex, but I'm not sure). He started off light, letting me get position. Once he got into a dominant position, he upped the pace, to the point where it felt like sparring any other competitive higher belt. I was being defensive, spending a good chunk of the roll with my back taken.

At this point there was a revealing example of the Gracie Academy's relaxed and positive vibe. Alex had a rear naked choke almost locked, which I was defending (poorly) with my chin and arm. In some schools, you would get your jaw crushed, with the RNC choke applied directly to your face. Fortunately that did not happen here, as instead Alex took his time and waited to transition to a clean technique. Right as I thought I was slipping free, I suddenly found myself inside a head and arm triangle, smoothly set-up by Alex.

Training at the Academy and speaking to Rener was a cool experience. I still have the same reservations as before, but I now also know first-hand that (at least judging by that one class) training at the Gracie Academy is no different than training anywhere else. You're going to learn the same kind of techniques and get the same experience sparring. Hopefully I'll be able to check out a Gracie Combatives class some day, or something like the 'Reflex Development' class, as I would guess those are both less typical.

Update August 2013: The first part of the interview is now up on the Jiu Jitsu Style website, here. Part Two will be appearing in Issue #16 of the magazine.

Thanks again to Ben for not only driving me to the Academy and setting up the interview, but then taking me to the Greyhound station, letting me use his phone to contact my friend in San Diego to let him know I would be late, then drive me back to the Greyhound and double-check everything was ok. He even agreed to collect several packages for me at his home. I'd also like to thank Dave Kim, who waited patiently in San Diego without complaint, despite my arrival four hours later than expected. Cheers Dave!

Unfortunately I was in a hurry after training (as it turned out I didn't need to be, seeing as the bus was cancelled, resulting in a two hour wait) so didn't get to take any pictures. Bleh. Next time! Though that did at least help me remember to get pictures at the next two places I trained, Fabio Santos BJJ and the University of Jiu Jitsu, both in San Diego. As with Texas last year, I'll be sticking all the California training under the same label, with a general write-up of the whole trip here. :)

09/06/2013 - Tatami Multi Arts (San Francisco, USA)

Class #502
Tatami Multi Arts (BJJ), Dave Shin, El Cerrito, CA, USA - 09/06/2013

I first 'met' Dave on the JiuJitsuForums website a couple of years ago. We've been chatting on the forum, in PMs and on Facebook for a few years now. When he read I was heading to his neck of the woods on my California trip, he immediately suggested meeting up (I'm not the first blogger to have met up with Dave, as Julia also got to train with him during her amazing trip a couple of years ago. Coincidentally, she also recently put up an article based on some of Dave's JJF posts). We had a few drinks at Thirsty Bear in San Francisco, where he mentioned that his friend Adam at Tatami Multi Arts had an open mat the next day, after watching Metamoris II.

It wasn't too difficult to get over to the club from where I was staying in San Francisco. I walked down to the Powell St BART station (if like me you stay at the HI Hostel Downtown, that's the closest one), then bought a $3.95 ticket. The machines randomly go out of order, which was confusing, but buying the ticket is easy enough. The main strange part is that you have to know the value of the ticket beforehand, rather than the usual method of typing in your destination.

I took the train for Pittsburgh/Bay St, then changed at 19th St Station in order to travel towards Richmond (as Dave said in his handy directions, the trains are synchronised, which makes it simple). Getting off at El Cerrito Plaza, I was ready to walk to the club with the GPS on my phone, but Dave was already there waiting for me in his car. He also very kindly lent me a gi (I had my Gimono with me, but it's handy not having to wash it). First time I had worn a Fuji, which always gets good reviews: seemed comfy and I like how plain it is. It was just Dave, Adam and me, resulting in a relaxed open mat where we exchanged a few techniques.

Dave was the most experienced, with 15 years under his brown belt. He wanted to show Adam and I a few 'small guy' techniques (Adam is roughly the same size as me), initially from side control. We started with what I was most interested in, a method for maintaining side control Dave had mentioned at the Thirsty Bear last night, learned from a 130lbs training partner of his.

You're holding side control in the usual way with a cross-face. Bring your chest low to the ground, then aim to slide the upper part of your chest just under the exposed side of their pectoral muscle. Keep sliding forwards, maintaining a crushing pressure. Done right, this makes it hard for them to breathe. The difficulty is finding the right spot. If you think of tectonic plates sliding over each other, it's a bit like that.

Next up was a way of transitioning to knee on belly. From side control, move your arm on top of their throat, gripping the far collar, then shift your hips to point towards their head. This is reminiscent of reverse scarf hold. Your other arm is over by their far hip.

Use that far hand to post slightly, clamping in tight to the hip. Shove your hips into theirs, then pushing off your outside leg, slide your near leg right into knee on belly. Your back, hips and bum are blocking their knee from getting in the way.

Finally, Dave went through a straight ankle lock set-up, moving away from side control. In a guard passing position, you notice they don't have any grips and have a foot on the outside of your hip. Immediately fall back, trapping that foot on the way. Don't telegraph what you're about to do by wrapping up their foot first, or they'll move to prepare their escape.

Once you've fallen back, put your foot on the attacking side on their hip, to prevent them sitting up and coming forward. Your other shin presses into the back of their same side knee, again to stop them sitting up. When you can, shift from using your shin to pushing with your foot.

To attack the ankle, bring your outside arm around it, using your other hand to feed your same side collar to that first hand. Grip as high as you can. You can then twist the blade of your arm into their achilles tendon and lean back for the submission. Dave prefers to just use that collar grip rather than moving into a figure four grip, as he finds having just the one hand their better facilitates cutting into their tendon with the blade of our arm.

Then it was my turn to show some stuff. I picked the guard pass and sweep I've been working on with Dónal: it was handy to try and teach it again (I've taught both at GB Bristol, here and here, in simplified versions) to help me work out the important details. The full write ups are in my private lesson notes, which is split into multiple parts for the pass (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) and just a single entry for the sweep (here).

Sparring was fairly brief, as I needed to get back to my hostel, going a round with Dave and then Adam. Both times the spar went in a fairly similar pattern, which tends to be how a lot of my rolls at drop-ins go. I flopped to my back and worked spider guard, trying to retain my position and also looking for an opportunity to tripod and/or sickle sweep. I almost hit it a couple of times, but made the common error of not coming up fast enough to secure the position.

I briefly went to the running escape when Dave passed, then recovered my guard, but I think that was only because Dave was giong quite light. With Adam, I had a brief pass attempt, but failed to get chest to chest contact. That meant that although I had some control of his arm and was moving round to north south, he had enough space to spin and escape.

It was cool to finally hit the mats in California: thanks again to Adam and Dave for their hospitality! If you want to get in some good training in the El Cerrito area, be sure to check out Tatami Multi Arts. :D