Couchjitsu

This Saturday I’ll be competing at the Victory Grappling Championships Winter tournament.  As with other tournaments, I like to go in with a few goals set before hand.  For the last tournament, back in September, here’s what my final goals looked like:

1. NO losses by submission
2. Score Points
3. Get a sweep
4. Control the stand-up
5. Medal

I did the exact opposite of #1, each of my losses was by submission (but my win was by submission as well. Who needs points?)

So the two things I failed to accomplish will carry over.  But I’m also going to add a few more:

1. NO losses by submission
2. Decide when the match goes to the ground
3. Win by submission
4. Have a winning record for the tournament
5. Medal

I think #1 and #5 will probably always be goals, even if I don’t lose by submission this time, next time it will still be a goal of mine.

As for #3, I have a specific submission in mind, one I’ve been working the last few weeks, and will continue to work after the tournament. But why tip my hand in case any of my competitors read this beforehand? 🙂

For #4, so far my tournament records are: 0-4, 3-5, 1-3.  The 3-5 was the last Victory tournament. Ideally, I’d love to go 8-0 because that would give me a 12-12 mark for my “career” but we’ll see.

My prep this time was a little bit more relaxed, not on an intensity level, but rather on a anxiety level. I am excited for the tournament, and I’ve put in a lot of work since the Circle of Iron in September, but the first couple tournaments I was so anxious a week or more out.  This time I’ve been more relaxed. I did have a little bit of nervous energy when I saw the brackets yesterday, because my mind finally started to realize it’s happening this weekend.  I’ve put in a lot of work, since the last tournament, I’ve been on the mat for over 90 hours.  I’m prepared mentally. So now it’s just time to go out there and compete.

It’s been roughly 12 months since I learned the “arm-bar escape.” The reason I had learned this was I was consistently getting arm-barred in sparring, and even in our in-house tournament that year, I lost a few matches to arm-bar. So I asked one of the coaches how to escape. He showed me a couple, one stacking the attacker and the other doing a kind of Homer Simpson type escape, basically turning on your side until you escape the arm-bar:

 

Since that time I’ve gotten arm-barred a lot less. I still get arm-barred, but the frequency isn’t what it once was. And let’s be honest, if  a white belt could defend all arm-bar attempts after learning “one simple move” then BJJ wouldn’t be a super effective martial art.

This past week one of my readers asked me to do a blog post about the 10 most important moves to learn, from a white belt’s perspective.  I’ve thought about this off and on since he asked. For the most part, I’ve been hesitant to discuss moves on this blog.  In part because there are great resources online (like the Mendes brothers, Galvao’s site) or DVDs you can buy that will have high level guys demonstrating moves. Plus I’m a white belt, so my knowledge of moves is super basic, and honestly, at this point, isn’t something that hasn’t already been covered over and over again.

But then I started thinking about the arm-bar escape that I learned a year ago, and how the number of times I’ve dropped to arm-bar has gone down and I reconsidered.  I don’t have 10, but here are some of the best moves I’ve found to learn in my short 18 month journey.

 

Elbows In

This is the real reason I’ve been getting caught with fewer arm bars. Yes, I learned how to do a couple arm-bar escapes, and every once in a while I’ll escape an arm-bar attempt. But the difficult part of doing the arm-bar escape is that I have to hit it faster than my opponent can hit the submission. It’s like in the old westerns when they’d step out of the saloon and see who could draw their weapon faster. And to be honest, the guy attempting the submission has an advantage because they know it’s coming.

So instead of trying to execute a perfect escape, I’ve focused on not giving them an arm in the first place. Now, like I said above, I’m not at 0% taps to arm-bars. Because sometimes I have to defend a choke or defend a knee mount, or I get sloppy when I’m escaping something else, or sometimes my opponent tricks me and I willingly give up the arm.  But by far, my focus on keeping my elbows in has helped a ton.

Protect Your Neck

Or as one of my teammates says “Wu Tang.”  Which isn’t actually all that helpful, because it will make me think of 1 of 2 things, either Cash Rules Everything Around Me or that “I bomb atomically, Socrates philosophies and hy-poth-o-ses can’t define how I be droppin these mockeries, lyrically perform armed robberies, flee with the lottery, possibly they spotted me.” And honestly, if I’m thinking about lyrics during a match, I’m probably not doing a very good job in my BJJ.

But in all seriousness, protecting your neck is one of the most important moves you can have. It’s very easy to get distracted (at least for me) and lose focus that my neck is exposed. Thankfully, I roll with some really nice guys that are super eager to teach me to protect my neck. They do this by choking me every chance they get.  I’ve had guys have back control and start messing with their legs, I’ll lose focus and address that, and then all of a sudden there’s an arm across my throat. Two weeks ago I had someone knee mount and as I tried to defend that I was caught with a baseball choke.

Back Off the Mat

The first two moves listed lead directly to submissions. If you give up your arm or leave your neck exposed, you will most likely be submitted. This one is a bit more subtle than that. If your back is flat on the mat you’re going to have a hard time doing much of anything. If your opponent is on top, he’ll have 2 sides of your body to attack. If he’s in side control, he has a much higher chance of gaining a better position if you’re just hanging out laying flat on your back.

Additionally, if you’re on your flat on your back your ability to do a sweep is much smaller. Your ability to escape is also severely limited. Part of that is just physics. If your back is flat on the mat, there is more of your surface area, more surface area equals higher friction, higher friction means more work for you to escape. If instead, you’re on your side, it’s easier to shrimp out. If you’re not laying flat on your back, you have a better position to perform a sweep. Your hips are more mobile and will let you set up an arm-bar or triangle choke.

Teeter-Totter Rock

I don’t know if all gyms call it this or not, but we call it teeter-totter rocking. Basically, imagine you’re in guard, and you’re just rucking back and forth, basically on the small of your back. That is, your back is curved in a convex fashion and you’re a rocking horse, or a teeter-totter.  Why is this an important move? For one, it can off-balance your opponent. Much like trying to bridge while your opponent has mount will keep them off balance, so will rocking while you’re on the bottom.

But it also has the advantage of keeping you moving. How hard is it to steer when your car isn’t moving? It’s pretty hard, especially if your power steering is out. But once a car is in motion, it becomes much easier to get it to turn. The same principle is true here. How are you going to sweep your opponent, or get into a position to perform a triangle choke? If you are going from dead still to full exertion, you’ll never pull it off. But if you’re already moving, adjusting that movement is much easier.

Final Thoughts

Of the four moves listed, I’d say that for me, they are listed in easiest to hardest. I struggle to keep moving on the bottom. I find myself being flattened out more times than I’d like. I’m not incredibly proficient at any of them, really, but I think I’m better at keeping my arms in and protecting my neck than I am at moving.

Also note that for me, none of these moves involve attacking. That’s how I think of BJJ. I don’t know that I’m the one who came up with this, or if I read it somewhere else (I think it might actually be a Saul Ribiero thing.) But when it comes to sparring, my progression is:

1. Survive
2. Defend
3. Attack
4. Submit

That is, first things first I want to survive. If that means that you’re doing just about everything you want, but I’m not tapping, then it’s a good day (relatively speaking.) After I feel like I’m surviving, I’ll move to defending. That means, I know I’m safe where I’m at, so I will not let you put your hand there, or your knee where you want it. I will break grips etc. Once I’m sure I’m adequately defending this attack, THEN I will try to attack you. That means I’ll be looking for a better position, or moving myself to where I want to be, only then will I look for the submission.

So how might a match with me go? We start on our knees, and perhaps I try to get past your legs, and I fail. You hook my foot and start to move into side control. I immediately do what I need to survive. Elbows in and hands protecting my neck. I realize that I’m safe, and so as you continue your pass, I check your knee, or I pull your hand off of my sleeve. I start to shrimp away and get to my guard. I have now successfully survived and defended. I’m ready to attack. So maybe I go for a sweep and wind up in side control or mount. I’m starting to enforce my will against you. Once I’m in a good position, I will start looking for a submission.  But when you’re chucking my legs to the side and trying to get to side control, the last thing on my mind is “How do I submit this guy.”

So since that is my philosophy of doing BJJ right now, it makes sense why the 4 best moves I can think of have almost nothing to do with submitting someone. In order to submit someone, I have to still be awake and with no broken bones. To do that, I need to keep my elbows in, protect my neck, keep my back off the mat, and teeter totter rock.

My friend and teammate Mike is going to travel across Europe and try to study at different BJJ gyms.  He’s launched a blog as he discusses his planning and eventually will use it to communicate while he’s on his trip.  I’m looking forward to him being not being able to tap me out for 6-8 weeks.

Anyway, go check out his blog and follow along with his trip.

I’ve had a few people contact me through this blog. At least two people have told me they started BJJ in part because they read about me starting after being a couch potato for several years.  One guy in particular is starting to blog. He’s been a pretty active guy, and has just started training BJJ at the age of 41. Check out his blog (http://40yearoldjiujitsu.blogspot.com/).

Every Friday Mid-America has an open mat for about 1.5 hours after work. I make it most weeks as it’s a good chance to roll in either gi or no-gi, and it’s also a more laid back environment, so if there is something you want to work on, chances are there will be someone there to help you with it.

This past Friday night I went as normal. However, instead of the normal people, there was only 1 other guy that was there to roll (there were about 4 guys there helping one of the MMA fighters get ready for his next fight. But they were on the other half of the mat.) So this other BJJ guy and I start rolling in no-gi. It was nothing spectacular really. I’ve rolled with him countless times. I’ve yet to get a submission on him, but he’s really fun to roll with because of his skill level.

The MMA guys had a round timer going, but there was no reason for us to stop because there was nobody waiting to roll with either of us. As we rolled, more and more rounds beeped off. It got to the point that I didn’t even hear the timer any more. Finally, I tapped to a D’arce choke. As I looked up I noticed that we had been rolling for about 30 minutes, without stopping once. I was tired, and I knew it had been a long roll. It wasn’t at the intensity level of a tournament, but it wasn’t just doing a technique for 30 minutes either.

As I left the gym, I realized that I had been coming to sparring class for 12 months now. So I thought about sparring 12 months ago. At the end of a night of sparring last year I was just about dead. Breathing hard with all my muscles exhausted.  I was a typical white belt when I rolled.  Somewhere over the past 12 months I learned to relax while rolling. There were times in this roll that I actually smiled to myself as I got a sweep or wound up in side control. There were other times I laughed to myself as I once again wound up with my opponent on my back.

But the fact is, grappling has started to slow down a little bit for me. I can notice positions now. I can see what’s going on. I can even think to myself  “I don’t think I’ve ever been in this position before” while rolling. I’m starting to not spaz out so much and starting to actually roll.

Have you ever watched a BJJ or MMA match and seen someone try to execute a submission and not be able to?  Perhaps the guy tried a triangle choke, or an arm-bar and his opponent didn’t tap. When that happens, what’s usually discussed is that the guy attacking didn’t have it locked in right, or possibly that he just didn’t have very good technique. Both of those might be true, but I think there’s another option, what if his opponent was just exercising really good defense?

For example, if you know how to do an armbar, you know that for it to work, your elbow has to be exposed so that the other guy can use his hips as a lever to hyper extend it. Or in a triangle, your shoulder is used to cut off blood supply on one side of your neck. This means that if you can defend by scooting your elbow below your opponent’s neck, or you can prevent one artery from being cutoff you have a chance of surviving.

This dawned on me last week in sparring class. At one point, I was rolling with another white belt, and we’d been going back and forth (covered about 1/2 the mat in our previous roll.) While we’re rolling, my instructor is shouting at me “If you tap him, I’ll give you another stripe.”  That did motivate me a little, but truth be told, I was more focused on being competitive than I was the stripe. That is, I was trying to give him everything I had, and if I happened to get a stripe out of the deal, then that was all the better.  The timer sounded as I was trying to work an armbar from back.  As I was talking with my teammate later, we were discussing the efficacy of BJJ. He said that he wasn’t just going to give me the submission, to which I replied, “If BJJ works, then it should work, and I don’t need welfare.”  My point being, I don’t ever want someone to “give” me a choke or an armbar. I want to get my technique right and execute it.  But his response stuck with me. He said “It does work. Which is why you didn’t get me.”

The reason he’s right in saying that is I had his back, I couldn’t get a choke, he was defending it too well. However, he stuck out his elbow, as I wrapped it up and tried to spin to the side to get the armbar, he smartly smashed down on my bottom leg. The leg I needed to throw over his face to complete the armbar. I had my right leg over his chest, my arms firmly gripping his arm, it was away from his body, he wasn’t grabbing his other hand, but I couldn’t move my left leg. My mobility was limited, which meant I couldn’t squeeze his arm with my knees. At best I was stretching his arm, but I wasn’t really even doing that. If he’d been a brand new white belt, he might have tapped. Maybe. But he wasn’t, he knew he wasn’t really in any danger. Without that left leg across his face, he had way too much room to move.

He used BJJ to defend me using BJJ to attack. He executed his BJJ better. He created space, he took away something essential I needed for the attack (my leg.)  His defense using BJJ beat my offense using BJJ.

I think sometimes we get caught up on the offensive side of BJJ, that it’s all about chokes and submissions, and we forget that there is a defensive side as well. In order to prevent you from attacking there are fundamental things I need to do as well. It may or may not win you matches in a tournament, but defense, done correctly, can mitigate an attack.

This past week I headed to our Lincoln school with our blackbelt and another white belt. It was a small class, I think all told there were 6 of us there. This week was triangle week at the gym, and that was true out in Lincoln as well. Our workout Monday went like this:

10 minutes: One man down, partner in his guard. Without using hands, the man on bottom had to throw his legs in a triangle position. The guy who was in guard tried to apply different grips as if he was passing guard.

10 minutes: Swap positions.

10 minutes: Original guy down again, this time, his feet were on his partner’s quads or hips. As his partner moved in towards him, he again throws his legs up to catch his partner. Then with his hips still off the ground, he cut his leg across his partner’s neck. Then he’d reach up to grab the ankle, and drop his hips and complete the triangle.

10 minutes: Swap positions.

10 reps: Executing a triangle from a classic open guard, then swap with a partner.

It was far-and-away more triangle motions than I had ever done in a single class. In fact, we set the interval timer for 10 minutes, when it beeped at 1 minute, my first thought was “Thank goodness, it’s his turn now.”  I was quickly corrected and told that I was to go for the entire 10 minutes, then my partner would go for the entire 10 minutes.  By the end of the time, my legs and lower back were beyond sore from the movement. In a lot of ways, that was good. I’d say I could do about 1 minute before I got tired, so I actually had 9 minutes where I was already tired. As we got closer to running out of time, it slowed down.

Then in the Tuesday class, we did something similar, although we didn’t go for 10 minutes straight, but rather 10 reps at a time.  By the end of the day Tuesday, I finally felt like I was starting to understand the triangle. It was something that I had learned within the first month of training, but I think in sparring I’ve probably only attempted it a handful of times. I’m by  no means an expert now, but I feel like I’m finally to the point where I can say I understand how it’s supposed to work. From talking with the instructor, that’s exactly what he was going for. He said that basically each 100 you do in close repetition help move you up to the next level. The danger is doing 10 triangles, then moving to 10 arm bars, then to 10 mount escapes. It’s only with repetition that you actually start to learn and master a move.

In major BJJ tournaments, there are certain moves that aren’t allowed, or aren’t allowed until a certain belt level is achieved.  For the most part, this is related to safety. There are moves that can cause damage before the person feels the pain of the move. For me, as a white belt, I have almost zero attacks below the waist (although it appears with the 2013 release of the rules for IBJJF tournaments, white belts can now perform ankle locks.) The reasoning is typically that white  belts are not skilled enough to do the move in a safe way. It would be like letting a toddler carry a pot of boiling water.

The thing is, the moves aren’t illegal in BJJ, they’re illegal in tournaments governed by IBJJF (or the tournaments that just take the IBJJF rule set.) As a result, I’ve been caught in ankle locks on a few occasions. Early on, the people that would catch me would have a very loose hold and then instruct me on ways to escape. They weren’t really looking for the submission, but rather saw that I put myself in a dangerous position and were looking to show me how to deal with that.

As I’ve practiced BJJ for the past year, I’ve wound up reading other people’s blogs, and forums talking about BJJ. One topic that comes up over and over again, is how to deal with “illegal” moves, or even “mean” moves.  For example, there are multiple ways of turning someone’s head away from you when you are in side-control top. Some are a bit rougher than others.  There are typically 2 camps for these questions. The first will focus on how that same move would be illegal in most tournaments, and therefore should be avoided. The second group focuses on the fact that while the move may be mean or illegal in certain circumstances, it is still a valid move.

I find myself aligning more with the group that considers the moves valid, and therefore I need to be able to handle that situation. The reason is, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is a combat sport, it’s a contact sport. The goal of BJJ is to incapacitate your opponent. From the first month of my training, I learned how to perform an arm-bar that can break someone’s arm, as well as chokes that can make them lose consciousness. These aren’t special advanced moves to be used if everything else fails, these are the bread and butter of BJJ. This means if you start to put me in an arm-bar, I have a responsibility. I am responsible for defending as much as I can, and tapping when I realize that I cannot escape.

For me, this extends beyond the actual submissions that someone is attempting. As I said above, it’s a contact sport, sometimes things happen when you’re going for a submission. For example, if you are executing an arm-bar from mount, there is a chance that you can knee your opponent in the head when you move into position. I’ve done it to people, and it’s been done to me. In fact, this last week I took a heel to the side of my head as someone was setting up an arm-bar. As much as that hurts, I chalk it up to part of training.   I also know that when I go to a tournament, my opponent across from me is not going to worry about did his knee hit my head when he brought is leg over. If anything, he’ll probably be thinking “Good, now he won’t be focused on his arm, he’ll be thinking about his head.”  Or, if I were to ever have to use BJJ in real life, my opponent will not be worrying about if he grabs my fingers, or if his hands went inside my sleeve (something else not allowed by IBJJF rules.)

The final reason I don’t get mad in these situations is because of who I train with. To the best of my knowledge, there is nobody at Mid-America that grappling with evil intentions. That is, they’re not trying to send me to the hospital. It may happen some time, but I know that if I get injured it was not a result of someone trying to injure me.  As I’ve talked about before, it’s important to find a good gym, and I’ve found one. I can trust the guys that I’m training with. W’re there to help each other get better.

Overall, I realize that for BJJ to be effective, and for me to grow in my game, I can’t be upset when legit moves are used against me. I also have to give my training partners the benefit of the doubt, that they’re not actively trying to injure me.  That’s why if you get me in an ankle lock in rolling, or you do some unconventional arm-lock, I’m not going to get mad. I’m going to tap, and try to figure out how not to get in that position again.

 

Standard Disclaimer: When I first started BJJ I didn’t even know there were BJJ tournaments. When I found out, I didn’t think I’d compete, now I’m going into my 3rd tournament.

I’m entering the Circle of Iron BJJ tournament this weekend. I decided to not cut weight, and instead, go up a class.  I walk around at about 185, so I would have had to cut about 8 pounds to get to the 181 division (it’s with the gi on) so I went up to the 195 division.  That has made this week not too bad, I’m not stressing about weight or what food I’m eating.

As with my last tournament, I’ve got a few goals for this one. The first 3 are goals that were not met last time:

1. NO losses by submission
2. Score Points
3. Get a sweep
4. Control the stand-up
5. Medal

Update – 9/14/2013

1. NO losses by submission
2. Score Points
3. Get a sweep
4. Control the stand-up
5. Medal

All 3 losses were to the same guy, all 3 by submission. The first two losses in my division were by choke from the back. The third loss was in the open division and I lost by flying arm-bar. I was up on points about 1/2 way through the match.  Tough kid. He took 1st in no-gi absolute at victory.

I did get a medal (second).

In the first match, I scored a sweep, and so got my first ever points.

I also was able to score points today. In the match I won I was able to sweep and take mount, I wound up with 8 points before I ended up choking him with an Ezekiel.

I didn’t control the stand-up, but I did do better than I expected. First match I pulled guard. Second match my opponent pulled guard. Third match I got thrown. Fourth match we danced for a while, went to the ground, stood back up and that’s when he got the flying arm bar.

I did better than I expected, and I still haven’t made it through a tournament without being tapped, but I’ll keep working and keep getting better.

Back in April, I released an app that I was using to help me track the amount of time I spent at the gym training BJJ. I’ve been using that for the past 5 months to log all of my time. I’ve also assumed for the past 5 months I was the ONLY one using it. There were features I wanted, but I didn’t implement. For example, while my technique & sparring classes are both 1 hour, my conditioning classes are only 1 hour.  This means that if I had 3 activities in a week, it looked like I spent 3 hours, even though I really spent 2.5.  Or if I went a 4 hour seminar, it looked like it was only 1 hour.

It was a minor annoyance, but it was an annoyance. Then this week, one of my readers (Arni) noted that he used the tracker and the only thing that he thought it was missing was the ability to enter hours.  This was enough of a kick-in-the-pants for me to take a look at it.

Yesterday, while I was off from work, I sat down and realized the problem was pretty simple. Most of the time, you’ll probably have the same class time. So I let you set a “default.” To do this, simply go the User Activity section (You can get there by clicking on your name in the upper right). When you get there, it will list all of the activities you’ve defined. Here’s the start of how mine looks:

 

So for Sparring and Technique, I’d enter 1 hour, and continue for all of my activity types. Then at the bottom I’d hit save.

After saving, it will take you back to the main page, and now the numbers you see on the front screen represent the hours you’ve trained, not the number of times you’ve trained. (If you don’t enter any time, it assumes each activity is 1 hour.)

But what about the case where class is different? For example, Mid-America has 2 locations, my main one is in Omaha. But this past week I went out to Lincoln to train. Lincoln doesn’t have a 1 hour technique class and a 1 hour sparring class. Instead, they have a 1.5 hour class that has a little bit of both, and then free rolling afterwards. So every time I go out there, I need to put it in as 1.5 hours. (Or 1 hour technique class and 0.5 hour sparring class.)

Just as you can use “:” to indicate a note, you can now use “!” to indicate time (in hours.) So, when I go to enter my class from Lincoln, I could type “Technique !1.5” and it would log it as a technique class and set the time FOR THAT class as 1.5 hours.

Finally, if you want to enter a brand new activity that will always be a set amount of time, you can use the ! to indicate it. So if I did “OpenMat !1.5” It would set up open mat, and set the default time to be 1.5 hours.

Check it out, and enjoy.