Aesopian’s Totally Awesome Journal

Passing along seminar footage my e-friend Boyd shot. Here it is:

Attention white belts of the world: put down your copy of Mastering the Rubber Guard for about an hour and watch this video. I realize it may be hard to pull yourself away from all the bright colors and exotic nomenclature, but trust my judgment on this. What follows is a seminar I shot for my first BJJ instructor, Bryan Harper, recently promoted to black belt. He is very very good. In particular, he is very very good at passing the guard and choking people, which is great because I’ve included ten choking and passing techniques that I think will be extremely beneficial to your collective games. Best of all, they’re all tailor-made to be applicable to that most elusive of creatures: MMA-specific grappling techniques.

So check it out. This was my first time shooting a seminar, and yes, I’m well aware that the camera gets a little…dynamic at times. I was constantly fighting for a good angle without getting in front of the seminar attendees or losing audio, so sometimes I had to adjust at inopportune moments.

Attention colored belts and no-gi wrestlers: Same thing, but with a tone less smarmy and condescending, and more enthusiastic.

Also, question for anyone knowledgable in the field of video encoding: this was only my second time uploading to Youtube. I shot all of this on very, very expensive miniDV and exported it from Final Cut as MPEG4 files. On my computer it looks pristine. On Youtube it looks and sounds like everyone’s being attacked by a swarm of killer bees disguised as MPEG artifacts. Is there any way around this, or is this just Youtube’s stupid fault?

Click through to see all of the videos. »

As I said in my first batch of notes, what made this Marcelo seminar special was that he was given a chance to teach aspects of his game that aren’t already covered on his instructionals or previous seminars.
I’ve seen Marcelo criticized for teaching the same seminars wherever he goes, so that if you’ve been to [...]

I got back yesterday from a two day Marcelo Garcia seminar down at American Top Team in Hollywood, FL. It was a great experience, learned a ton of great techniques and had a lot of fun.
The theme for the whole seminar was giving Marcelo a chance to teach the material he uses in his everyday [...]

Leo Kirby is hosting Marcelo Garcia for a two day no-gi seminar at American Top Team Hollywood.

I went to a surprise Pe de Pano seminar tonight. He was in town for just a week to support David Vieira, another Gracie Barra black belt, open a new school. The seminar was 2 hours long and cost only $30. I’ll write a review of it later but for now I’m just posting my [...]

As you’ll find repeated by anyone who has trained with Marcelo, he stresses very heavily the importance of imposing your game, fighting on your terms and always initiating the action. The lessons from the seminar where to built around aggressively and purposefully engaging the opponent, starting with pulling guard (day 1) or going for the [...]

I attended the Marcelo Garcia seminar at St. Augustine Combat Club this weekend of August 26-27, 2006. It was 3 hours per day, with gi on Saturday and no-gi on Sunday.
I had the flu and a fever for the entire week leading up to the seminar, but I started anti-biotics on Friday and felt well [...]

I attended the Eddie Bravo seminar at Pinecrest Training Center in Miami, FL today and thought I’d write a quick review.
The seminar started late because the weather and traffic were horrible and Eddie had trouble getting to the gym. He was only going to be able to teach for 1 1/2 hours instead of 2 [...]

Leo Kirby showed me a way Marcelo gets x-guard from half that I found really interesting. It takes a movement that I never really liked doing from half guard (though sometimes do anyway when in the position) and gave it a good tweak.

You have half guard on their left leg. Your right hand is ready [...]

At our meet up, Leo taught me a guard that Marcelo showed at his last seminar. He calls it the “one-legged x-guard” since it ties into the normal x-guard game. It’s a really strong position for sweeping and has obvious leglock potential.
Marcelo taught it as what he has been doing now that people are wise [...]