John's turn to POP

“Ask me about my bruises.”

Lunchtime BJJ Gracie Belle.

Wrist was okay except for pushups. Pushups were not happening.

I showed John that choke before class... the one I got the white belt with last night... regretted it later, ha ha!

Same pass from butterfly guard that we did yesterday. Note that the knees much be on the mat during the sprawl and tiptoe, otherwise the opponent may replace guard.

Another variation, with the same beginning: After you get the opponent's shin glued to hir own thigh and you grab the foot and the lapel, step over that pinned leg and straddle it, clamping it between your thighs. Now let go of the foot and reach UNDER opponent's far thigh (make sure you trap that foot while you're at it), and try to get the belt. The best I could do on a much larger drilling partner was the gi tail. Now sit out (facing opponent's feet) and go to front mount. I struggled with this one, as far as getting the steps in the correct order. I'm really glad I was in class yesterday and had seen the first technique, otherwise I would have struggled even harder with both. Felt bad for the brand-new white belt, who was as lost as a wide-eyed toddler all alone in the forest.

Notes on the upa: don't let the guy get all settled in on top of you before you go for it; buck him off WHILE he's mounting. As soon as he goes to hug your head, wrap your arm around his upper arm and grab your own lapel. This takes a little advance planning, as you often need to feed the lapel with your other hand. Resist the urge to grab his shoulder or gi with the other hand. That hand should be punching hard into the air right under his armpit.  I am being way too slow with this technique. Prof kept coming over to stand behind my head and call mount points for Dave because I wasn't bouncing him off in under three seconds.

One roll with John. I mostly stayed off the bottom. I tried to not get too locked up with him (which tends to end in strength-on-strength struggles, which I usually lose), and instead sort of skate and bounce around on top. In the cases where I did find myself on the bottom or in turtle, I forced myself to move and try to get out. Yes, it did open me up to worse- trying to get out of turtle almost always ends with me either in bottom side control (damn!) or back mounted, with those hooks in nice and deep- which is frustrating. But I have to try to get out, and just resign myself to tapping a lot more often while I'm doing it. I need to congratulate myself more for trying to get out- and tapping- than for fetal-positioning and avoiding the sub.  Maybe I just need to try to imagine we're on the street- and if I fetal-position, the assailant is just going to stand up and kick me in the head with his steel-toed boots. This may be one case where the "sport" aspect of this BJJ school is messing up my self-defense mindset. Lord knows I never fetal-positioned in Kung Fu. That's a good way to get the shit beaten out of you. You're not trying to avoid a sub in Kung Fu. You're trying to avoid getting slaughtered.

I set up that choke on him, but when I tried to do the roll, he fought it and ended up in top side control. Rats! I said, "I would have finished that if I hadn't shown you my cards before class!"

Something John is doing really well- and I told him this after we were finished- is that he conserves his energy and waits for me to make a move to sub. As soon as I do, he exploits either the space I created to make the move, or the energy I'm using to power it- or both! to do his own thing. It resulted in me getting intimidated to commit to an attack, because I knew as soon as I did, he'd explode into action and use me against myself (Cindy does that a lot too). He was also doing the "exploding" part really well- you could feel him relax, and suddenly, "POP!!!" He's of an age with me, and I observed to him that this is a really good old-folks' game for us to be playing instead of going strength vs strength on these young-uns.  I'd like to incorporate these lessons from John's game into my own game. I also really enjoy being able to say to some of my favorite high-blue-belt peers, "Here's something specific you're doing that seems to be really working well for you."  I think that's really valuable feedback (not to mention ego-pumps), and I hope more people will do that for me in the future.

There was also a one-stripe blue in there that I've never seen before; mental note to stay far away from that one. He made Glenn yelp during drills, and he was going balls-to-the-wall on Dave later during sparring- really rough.