DRAC'S FORUM

I am going to get some more mats today, I am expanding my training area to 4M x 8M to 5M x 10M. It is starting to get too crowded, I am consistently getting 6-8 students to class. Also since a couple of nearby clubs are on school holidays, I am hoping to get a couple of drop-ins tonight... going to teach my DLR back take, among other things.

Not a problem. When I was a blue belt, my instructor asked my ideas on teaching and what I wanted to do, and I was honoured to even be asked to represent our school. He let me take warmups quite a few times, and occasionally teach technique... then when he left for Brazil for 3 weeks he had me take the monday and wednesday classes, with people reporting back on how the classes went.

I have always been a "teacher", in a way. I have instructed before on the IT side, teaching some IT courses, so I have experience with that. Also I have had lots of experience teaching Jiu-Jitsu techniques just by bringing in thing i wanted to work on and teaching them to someone so they could try the move on me and I could try the move on them to see what it feels like to troubleshoot the technique, before taking it to my instructor to get his ideas on my execution of the technique and seeing wether he has anything to add on the move.

Another factor has been my travel time. Where i train is 45 minutes drive each way from my home, and it costs a lot of money on fuel and loss of family time, when I add on the drive time. Me starting a school in my home town gives other people in my situation who can't afford to drive that far a local place to train, as well as expanding our schools profile.

8th April 2010
BJJ Class at My School Beenleigh Jiu-Jitsu Academy

Smaller class tonight, only 5 students. A couple of the guys have been having trouble escaping the mount, so I taught the Upa and the Elbow escape and then we worked them into the combination. Part way through the elbow escape back to full guard you can sometimes get stuck in a funky butterfly guard position, where you have one hook trapped. There is a good guard pass from there, so we went over that, backstepping one leg and bringing it back over the lower shin/ankle, then reachin the hand inside and grabbing the belt trapping the foot and then getting a grip on the lapel, and stepping up over the knee and underneath the leg into a switch base to pass.

12-Apr-2010 BJJ Gi Training Fight Club Miami

Really good class tonight. 2 Browns, 3 purples (inc. me), 4 blues and 2 whites.

We did the sidecontrol drill where you do the farside armbar and the guy does the hitchiker escape, take side control, and then repeat.

Then we did a more advanced variation where you do far side armbar -> hitchiker escape -> counter with omoplata -> opponent counters with dive under escape to take topside turtle, then the single lapel turnover, to take the back, sliding collar choke, to single wing choke, to bow and arrow choke, to armbar, opponent counters with hitchiker escape, and back to counter with omoplata, etc, etc. It sounds like a really complex drill, but once you get in the rhythm, it's really good.

Then for technique, because the drills went so long, we only did one tech. You attempt the single lapel turnover, and opp bases their hand out to block, so you dive under the armpit, gripping the far pants knee grip, and rolling them over with the single lapel. (I think i will teach this tech tommorrow, i really like it)

One thing I noticed in rolling, is I have really made progress on my passing of late. It is weird that you don't notice progress while progress is being made, you look back on yourself of a month ago, and see the marked improvement. I managed the knee slide pass with the near side collar grip and sleeve grip, i never normally go for this for fear of getting my back taken, but poppa rotzee has given me some confidence to go for it.

Also i have managed some really sweet reverse scarf half-guard passes, by using a far side collar grip to establish head control and keeping my head pushing into their chest/abdomen keeping them flat, coz i can really base far out wide to stop them rolling me and apply a lot of pressure for the pass. I felt like it was a really productive night of training.

you've demoted your self to white belt??? haha, better change that, lol

13th April 2010
BJJ Class at My School Beenleigh Jiu-Jitsu Academy

6 Students tonight, I decided to rip-off the monday class and do the same drills and technique as above, so not much really to report. Other than my own injury woes. I have injured knuckles 2 on on hand and one on the other. I have been taping my fingers but it doesn't really help, I am constantly injuring them doing stupid shit, like rolling over in bed, turning on a tap, or picking up my bag, it feels like it's never gonna heal because it is getting injured with stupid day to day stuff, frustrating.

Last edited by codemonkey76 (2010-04-15 07:17:11)

15th April 2010
BJJ Class at My School Beenleigh Jiu-Jitsu Academy

6 Students again tonight... a couple of my regular's have not been showing up, I think one is struggling with an ankle injury, so maybe he is giving it a break, and his friend needs him to motivate him to come. I need to remember to follow up with students when they don't show, especially students who have pre-paid to make sure they are OK, or if there is any problems.

I started the class with the far-side armbar to hitchiker escape drill for a few minutes on each arm to get them warmed up. For technique, I was initially going to show some guard passes, but instead went for the knee-ride to armride transition, which is a fav of mine. and got them to practice that for a while before teaching the figure 4 straight armlock on the far arm, and then showed the step over reverse armbar on the far arm.

Last edited by codemonkey76 (2010-04-15 07:21:35)

20th April 2010
BJJ Class at My School Beenleigh Jiu-Jitsu Academy
6 Students tonight

I decided to focus on escapes this lesson, I taught

• Escaping The Back - Climb the arm, clear a hook, come to your knees, climb and shake, then get the underhook

• Escaping The Back - Laying your weight over one leg, baiting the mount, and using the butterfly hook to return to butterfly guard

• Escaping Side Control - Elbow in the hip, reach to the trap, hip escape and then roll them over when they drive back

• Escaping Kesa Gatame - Squeeze floating rib, bridge up, place knee under hips, roll over

Then instead of free rolling for 5 minute's we did 2.5 minutes starting from under side control, then 2.5 minutes from on top of side control, then same for kesa gatame, then for back mount, finishing up with free roll.

27th April 2010
BJJ Class at My School Beenleigh Jiu-Jitsu Academy
6 Students tonight

Since we have been focusing on escapes as a warm up drill we paired up and did mount escapes with slowly increasing resistance, focusing on the 3 escapes i have shown deep half-guard to out the back door, elbow escape and upa.

Techniques of the day:

• Kimura from side control. Person on bottom grips around your body for dear life, and you circle to break their grip and cross their arm and set up the kimura.

• Lapel choke from side control. As the person on bottom gets the underhook and starts coming to their knees, you whizzer and pin the head and circle to the other side and then cross the lapel with a deep grip, then reach under the kneer arm to cup your bicep and squeeze.

• Lapel wrap cross choke from north south. Start in side control, pass the far lapel under the armpit and under the head to the near hand, circle to North south and use the knee to block the head, then reach in and block the shoulder.