In semi-related news, I’ll be down at Leo’s gym in Hollywood, FL this weekend. He’s asked me to teach class Saturday morning and I’m planning a lesson on butterfly guard.
Also related, I just got this email:
hey matt, i train with leo and he may have told you already but i got the reverse omaplata in competition this weekend. i was at the seminar you did in hollywood and just wanted to say thank you for adding that to my game. also, for feedback, everytime i get it i remember when you taught how do it slow and controled step by step. first pushing down the head, then reaching for the leg tucking your head under for the roll. in my match the guy tried to pull out or stop me mid roll and i kindof got stuck for a second, but i stayed tight and then forced him to roll then finished. so that teaching method definitely stuck for me. thanks again…i look forward to the next seminar.
Earlier this year, I thought it’d be an interesting experiment to start drawing concept or mind maps for BJJ. Last week, I finally got a white board and tonight I took my first crack at sketching.
This map is made up of four large sections: guard, top, escapes and passing. The red arrows represent the general flow and objective between them. Within these sections are the main positions I use or find myself in. These are connected by lines that show the most common transitions. Notes are in blue.
My plan is to reevaluate and redraw the map each week or month. It’ll be neat to see how to evolves over time.
As I’ve said repeatedly, this journal is a reflection of my personal interests. If there hasn’t been much new material posted, it’s because I’m not working on new techniques. Rather, I’m returning to “old” stuff and working on it again, a process I started months ago.
I’ve also been working on aspects more fundamental than revisiting techniques: the training methods themselves. I’ve been giving a lot of thought to how to train. I want to make the most out of the time I spend on the mats.
In a previous article, I talked about how to get the most out of drilling. But drilling will only get you so far. There is still a gulf between these static repetitions and using these moves in sparring. Making this connection, being able to get techniques in motion, can be one of the biggest problems faced in learning, especially in the beginner and intermediate levels.
Most leave it up to mat time, experience and determination to solve this. Keep showing up, drill and spar enough and it’ll sort out. That’s as it should be.
But is there an easier, smoother way to do this? Can you engineer and control this process? Make it less mysterious? Can you ease students into it without lowering standards of performance?
I think so. That’s what you’ll about read below.
But before we get into it, there are a few terms and ideas I want to review, since they’re important to understanding this topic.
Aliveness
Whether or not you use (or even like) the neologism coined by Matt Thornton, the concept of aliveness is one of the most important aspect of learning Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or any combat sports. And while I’m not a fan of making up new words by adding ”-ness” to them, I am willing to forgive it in this instance …
Six-time world champion Robson Moura is giving a 2 day seminar in Hollywood, FL in the beginning of September. He will be teaching gi, no-gi and even a kids only seminar. He’s also available for private and semi-private lessons.
I’m helping to promote this since it’s being held at the gym I just gave my seminar at. I was talking to Mike, the gym owner, and he said that last year almost no one showed up for Robson’s last one, which was terrible considering how great of a teacher and competitor he is. I’ve got a better handle on the internets so I told him I’d help out. Anyone who can go to this and doesn’t is seriously making a mistake. I’m going to try to make it to this seminar, and I think a couple of my training partners will too. I’d kill to take a private with Robson too.
I was talking to Leo Kirby, the head BJJ instructor, and he told me about the last time he trained with Robson. He said he’d always heard people talk about being “non-attribute based”, but this was the first time he’d ever really felt or seen it. He watched Robson kill everyone in the class with zero exertion—a totally effortless game. Leo said, “He’s one of these amazing black belts everyone hears about but no one sees.” He also told me that Robson is the one of the only people besides Marcelo Garcia that he’d really love to train under, which is saying a lot considering that Leo is running the first ever Marcelo Garcia affiliate.
Here’s the seminar info:
Thursday, September 6
Private lessons available starting in afternoon/evening.
I’ll be down in Miami next weekend and I’m going to be teaching as guest instructor at Leo Kirby’s school on Saturday morning. I’ll be giving a seminar on attacking the turtle with the reverse omoplata, taking the back and the brabo/d’arce choke.
I’ve been putting a ton of thought and effort into planning this, hammering out how to pack as much material in as possible without making it confusing or falling into the “here’s a neat move” trap. What’s been interesting to me has been figuring out how to condense the bulk of what I know about these techniques and positions into easily taught techniques and drills. Everyone I’ve shown so far has been really amazed at how well put together everything is and how it’s all based on simple but powerful concepts.
I’m starting to sound like a sales pitch. And maybe I am. But I really am excited. You should definitely make it if you’re in the area.
Here are the vital stats:
Attacking the Turtle
Reverse Omoplata, Taking the Back and Brabo/D’arce Choke
Including:
Controlling and attacking from sideride.
The crucifix as a stable position.
Back control, the harness and “monkey feet”.
The brabo choke in depth.
All Skill Levels Welcome – Gi + No-gi
Date: Saturday, August 18, 2007
Time: 8:00-10:30 AM
Cost: Free ($10 mat fee for non-members of the gym)
Address:
5450 South State Road 7, Suite 27-28
Hollywood, FL 33314
Street level on 54th Ct
It can be hard to find the gym, so check out these directions before you go (it used to be ATT Hollywood).
Phone: 786-295-7227 (Leo Kirby)
I’ll also be available for private and semi-private lessons after the seminar. I’ve got a lesson on breaking posture and attacking from the closed guard that I’d love to teach, but I’ll go over anything you’re interested in. …
Your dream has been realized: I’ve got a video camera.
And after fighting with cables and software, I now have the means and knowhow to edit and share movies.
One of the subscribers to my journal had emailed me some questions and I’d been offering advice. He asked if I could film any of it and I said I don’t have a camera. So he sent me one. Big thanks to Dale.
While I’ll get to shooting techniques soon, I wanted to shoot test footage first. I’d already been planning on keeping a video training log, filming myself sparring so I could review it later.
I like to put in a lot of isolation training of escapes and bad positions, working out of worst case scenarios. I figured that’d make a good test video.
Me and two training partners got together to run these drills on Sunday. We ran it with rotating partners like this:
Person A starts under rear mount. Person B starts on top. They go for 3 minutes. Then Person C switches in on top for another 3 minutes. Now Person B lays down and Person A starts on his back… And so on. This way, we each spent 6 minutes in the inferior position and the other two training partners spent 3 minutes in the superior position.
We ran through mount and rear mount this way. We filmed each round, for a total of 36 minutes of footage below. I wrote notes for what I did in each video, since I’m watching to see myself spar, which I’ve never done until now.
Round 1
John was the first person to spend a round in rear mount while Ray and I each got a chance on his back.
I have too many goals at the moment. Maybe one of them should be to have fewer goals.
Here’s the grand list:
– Improve my conditioning, endurance and strength. – Focus on generating momentum from my core and using my entire body in unison. – Train transitions instead of just static positions. – Train combinations instead of isolated techniques. – Be fully committed to my movements, transitions and techniques. – Drill the crazy scrambles until I can come out on top (literally or figuratively). – Work on my takedowns and wrestling skills. – Get a mean armdrag from standing, even left-handed. – Use the duck under and Russian 2-on-1 in combination with the armdrag. – Fight to come to my knees and stand up more, especially from under side control. – Make wrestling sit-outs instinctual. – Acquire better base and balance, especially while passing. – Develop supernaturally heavy hips for passing guard. – Build an aggressive guard passing game from standing and knees. – Improve my standing guard breaks from good posture and safety position (AKA stalling posture). – Make the Margarida my money pass. – Fight for underhooks more from everywhere. – Finally get a decent underhook-take-the-back half guard game. – Also work on the out-the-back-door deep half guard. – Refine my core game as I continue to expand it by incorporating new strategies, positions and techniques. – Revisit things I thought didn’t suit me before and see if they do now. – Spot bad habits and eliminate them. – Be aggressive. – Compete in the next Pan Ams.
I could think of a few more, and I’m always coming up with more, but that’s always true. So many spinning plates to keep up.
That’s awful lot of goals. There’s no way of working on them all at once without losing direction. Part of handling that will be consolidating them and seeing which ones fall under the same theme so I can address them collectively.
Back in the days of MMALibrary.com, Jeff Rockwell had put up a series of half guard sweeps. He taught starting from a sitting guard and diving in deep as a counter to combat base. I’ve used my internet sleuthing to recover them so I could add them to my notes here. I’m currently focusing on half guard and want to work on these.
It’s all Jeff below:
Sweep #1
I got the first of these from watching Shaolin Ribero and the last two from watching the Noguiera brothers in the last Pride. When you put them all together, it is a formidable series of sweeps and reversals, I’ve been having a lot of success with them recently. While the main place I’ve been applying them is vs. Combat Base (knee up inside guard), there are LOTS of places to aquire this position from, ie. escaping mount, escaping quarter mount, escaping backmount, etc.
Alright, here I am facing an opponent who has taken a “Combat Base” posture (knee up inside my guard), to defend against standard attacks. As you can see, I am sitting up, not laying flat on my back, and my right hand is on the ground for base. My left hand checks his shoulder to moniter his movement. In this picture, there is a lot of space between his knee and his butt for me to work with; however, even if there is only a few inches of space, I have still found this entry to work.
My right leg is going to shoot inside the space between his right leg and his butt. Sometimes I will momentarily grab his right leg with my left hand to hold it in place. Here I am starting to dive my right leg in between his right calf and …
