Gassed

I don’t know if it’s the humidity, the heat, or just a bad time to be me. Lately I’ve been gassing super quick – needing a break after each roll, not being able to complete warm-ups, and needing an inhaler sooner in class than I think I should. Admittedly, I have been out for awhile and I don’t really push myself in judo like I do in BJJ because of a lack of structure and that I’ve been helping run class until Matt shows up lately. Still, it sucks to need to take a break or to slow down while drilling. Saying I’m out of shape or have asthma always feels like such a cop-out. I’m not lazy – I do want to put in the work, it’s just way harder than it used to be.

Class has changed up a bit lately. Instead of learning new techniques we’ve been drilling. Warm-ups are the normal half hour, then 30 minutes of alternating drills, and then the 30+ minutes of rolling like normal. The drills have been simple but important concepts – arm bar from guard, triangle from guard, kimura from guard, triangle escapes, hip bump sweep, flower sweep, knee bar from guard pass, and various passes. Three techniques will be shown, you’ll drill each one for two minutes, switch roles with your partner, repeat for the other two techniques and then three more are shown.

Last night was also an important lesson in defending leg locks. Lee goes for them as much or more than I do which led to positions where I was attacking and defending knee bars, toe holds, and straight ankle locks. He has phenomenal control and I don’t feel like he’s cranking on them at any point. It’s always nice to have someone like that to push you to work on the defenses you don’t have to use a lot.

Theme for judo this week: tilt line.

Draw a line horizontal to the ground that touches the top of both ears. This is the tilt line. If this line is not horizontal you’re off balance. In fact, there are a number of throws that illustrate this concept. The easiest two are o soto gari and koshi guruma. For this variant on o soto you start in a collar and elbow tie. As you step in let your arm slide past the head and hug it into your shoulder. Even if they’re still upright (they won’t be, but still) you can execute the throw from here because the head is locked into a position where that line we drew is now tilted down. For koshi you’ll start in the same collar and elbow tie. As you step across cut your arm so that their head gets forced down to their chest. Even if they’re still upright (again, if you’re pulling they won’t be) you can execute the throw here by popping your hip out. Once the head is locked into one direction or the other the person can be easily thrown. The phrase is something like “where the head goes the body follows”, but for throws I find it simpler to just draw that imaginary tilt line and think about displacing it.

Submission for BJJ this week: Calf slicer from failed knee bar.

You have a knee bar. Everything’s going great. Then they bend the leg. If they figure four it’s no big deal, just use your foot and push away on the locking knee. Their lock will slide off and you’ll have a bent leg that one arm is underhooking at the knee. Take the inside leg (the leg that is between their legs) and put your calf over their shin. Figure four your legs by locking down under your outside leg. Try to stay sitting up and hip in while squeezing your legs to finish. You don’t need to lift your arm or anything – it’s a fulcrum and can stay stationary, the power comes from applying force at the end of the lever arm (in this case as far down on their leg as you can get). Calf slicers tend to be hugely painful, but will actually attack the knee if they don’t tap from the pain first. Be considerate with this as you would with any leg locks. The escape is deceptively simple too – force your partner to their side and cut across the leg with your shin, pop their figure four open with your legs/hips (and hands if you need to), and then sprawl to pass to side control. This is why I emphasized trying to stay upright.

WOG Jiu Jitsu

I got a weird blog comment advertising WOG Jiu Jitsu (http://wogjiujitsu.com) has anyone heard of them? Are the products any good? It looks like they’re out of Pakistan, but to be honest, almost all gi’s are made in Pakistan so this seems like it may just be cutting out the middle man (or rather, being a different middle man somewhere in the process).

Sport Judo

Saturday was a lesson in sport judo. We had some guests who came and I ended up working out the entirety of the class with Junior. We mostly did the eight variations of seoi nage (ippon, morote, sode, eri, ko, o, reverse, and cross-sleeve). It was hard work, uncomfortably warm, and by the end of it I was too exhausted to do warm-ups for BJJ. It’s the kind of judo I haven’t done since I competed.

Those are the high points. There was also another discomfort. I was being treated like I knew nothing about the techniques. The off-hand comments like that I’d be going over my shoulder/head to take yoko wakari, the immediate correction of the variation of o soto that I have used in competition, or the surprise that I knew the names of the eight seoi variations… I’ve been at this since 2007. The discussion about the fact that I think the IJF is inherently wrong was also uncomfortable. I’m not in judo to compete in judo. I’m in judo to get better at grappling and the new rules don’t do that justice. Yes, I understand they’re for the safety of the athletes, the clarity of calls, and the preservation of a style of judo that is in vogue. Understanding that doesn’t mean it’s what interests me.

I don’t play politics. I grapple. It’s important to me that the environment I’m in fosters not only sport judo, but judo as it can be applied to grappling. We are in an environment where it’s important that people know how to shoot so their partners can learn how to sprawl, where students have to learn to perform and receive kani basami without damaging each others knees, and where we all have a life to live the next day. Sport judo has a place in teaching people which throws work in competition and giving people the experience of setting them up and executing them against other skilled players who know the throws and their counters. However, judo as it will be practiced in my environment will not be where the IJF stops it, and no individual saying “you can’t grab the leg anymore” will be welcome to work with me. Sport judo was great. I got my hardware there and may some day decide to do a couple of tournaments to pick up more. Right now, the emphasis is on being ready for grappling in general.

Metamoris II Announced.

In case you’ve been under a rock Metamoris II has been announced. The full fight card and details are up at http://metamoris.com. To save you some time, here’s the list of all six fights as they are right now (subject to change):

Shinya Aoki vs. Kron Gracie
Braulio Estima vs. Rodolfo Vieira
Roberto “Cyborg” Abreu vs. Brendan Schaub
Mackenzie Dern vs. Michelle Nicolini
Andre Galvao vs. Rafael Lovato Jr.
Bill “The Grill” Cooper vs. Ryan Hall

Can I just note how excited I am to see these matches? Every match holds the promise to be exciting, and based on the names I don’t expect to see anyone lay on their back and stall for 20 minutes… I definitely have my favorites in each match, but if I’ve learned anything from watching this sport it’s that sometimes the best matches are the upsets.

Be sure to keep an eye on http://lapelchoke.com as the date draws near. Jesse always live tweets the events for those of us who can’t manage to watch and is pretty good about providing updates for all the tournaments in one location.

Long Time No Post

I’ve been in and out of judo and BJJ lately. Two weeks ago Anders visited from Sweden so I went to judo to visit with him and everyone else. I hadn’t been there in almost seven months. More on that later. Then last week I was out on a work trip. So this week I was back in the swing of things.

Mosquito is back and teaching no-gi classes. Last night we had some guests who do Combat Sambo down in Janesville. Two were teenagers and the third was their instructor. They definitely knew their stuff. I had a blast rolling with them.

So, back to judo. I’m going to be trying to make it there at least once a month. I’ll probably have to work out with Leslie and Ian some kind of a payment plan. There’s also a lot of political turmoil. In a way I’m glad I’ve been gone – I’ve heard the stories, but by being gone I’ve still gotten to keep from being involved in all the shake up that’s been happening. I think Junior summed it up best “I just want to show up and fight.”

Leg Locks and The Basics

I’ve gotten really good at finding leg locks recently. They’re once again everywhere. In practice I’m taking the setup and then releasing the lock to see where we go if I can’t finish it. I’m not even trying to finish them mind you, so there’s a lot of practice to be done on actual execution once I get into the correct position. I’m still trying to work the basics instead of leg locks. In my experience they’re the easy way out – most people of my skill level don’t know them or how to defend them. Having them is a boon in competition.

So, the basics… You know that moment when you tell a black belt that you’re having trouble with X, they have you show them how you do X, and then they tell you the most obvious advice that makes you feel like a complete idiot? Yeah… Sweeps from open guard – I wasn’t popping them forward with my legs first so I was always trying to fight their arms using only my hands. It’s one of those first week details that I really should have known, but it’s the difference between grip fighting until I get passed and an instant flower sweep.

Inverted De La Riva guard and Berimbolos may be nice, but when you’re having problems with closed guard and mount there are simpler concerns which are much more pressing.

It’s good to be in an environment where you can bring up a problem you’re having and any of five black belts will jump in to help, none of them judging your for not knowing.

Rules

Matt and Tim recently went to a coaching clinic in Milwaukee and came back with the explicit interpretations of the rules that will be used in USJA and USJI tournaments in Wisconsin. We’ve been discussing the rules and trying to work within their confines, but to be honest, no one likes these new rules. AAU judo and AAU freestyle judo become more appealing every time I learn about something else I can’t do.

I like to joke that judo is heading toward Collar-and-elbow as far as the gripping rules go – you’ll have to start gripped and won’t be allowed to break the standard grip unless your opponent absolutely forces you to in which case you must catch any grip you can and throw from there. What’s pretty cool about that analogy is that the techniques the new rules are pushing to encourage are actually the techniques most common to styles like Gouren and Collar-and-elbow. This brings up a topic that I’ve covered a lot, but is always worth going over again – the rules matter.

Let me spell it out – the rules dictate which techniques are allowed and within the allowed techniques which ones work best. Those techniques which work best will be the ones people continue to learn, teach, and use. The sport will evolve around that set of core techniques and something different will come out of the crucible than what you put in. Probably most interesting is that rules and culture can fuse to create the approach individuals will have. It’s no secret that styles of play in judo are regional and that the leg grab rules were very biased against Eastern European teams who were winning by leg grabs. It’s also no secret that there is an American style of judo, the traditional Japanese style of judo, and a Russian style of judo (among others). Each of them contains slight variations on the same techniques and an individual will be described based on their approach and variations. For example, Mike Swain is often credited as having a very traditional Japanese style of judo compared to other Americans.

Training in different rules will give you different perspectives. It’s not even as cut and dry as the “turtling is okay because the ref will stand me up” stance that leads judoka to have their backs taken when they first get into BJJ. Half-guard gets a little closer – to a judoka it’s a stalling position, but to a jiujitsero it’s a viable attacking position. In judo you’ll learn to pass it, reguard, and even a few submissions from it, but the general stance will be that it’s just a stalling position. It’s certainly allowed in both rule sets, but in BJJ you can spend all day there and in judo you’ll get stood up in 3-5 seconds (if that because the position generally means the ground work is going no where).

Chokes are a great example. Freestyle wrestling doesn’t have them. BJJ does. The result is that a wrestler and a jiujitsero have different approaches to how someone is to be taken down, what should be done once they are on the ground, and how to react when someone has your back. The style of play is completely different. Fundamentally sports are implementations of the use of grappling techniques to gain a superior position and win a match from there. Implementation-wise the introduction of submissions changes everything.

Rules matter. They determine the direction a sport will take and how it will evolve. Viability against other similar sport styles matters. The fact is something won’t always be in vogue and being able to easily adapt to another rule set will mean you can keep playing long after the name of the sport has changed.