Jiu-jitsu On The Farm
I haven’t written in a while because frankly training has been on the back burner for the last few weeks. Not by choice – circumstances have just prevented me from attending classes. When you’ve go the jiu-jitsu bug, having to sit it out for three weeks is like wearing socks made out of sandpaper.
It looks like I’ll be able to resume next week. Here’s hoping.
The only rolling I’ve done in the last few weeks was over Memorial Day, on the grandparent’s farm up in Idaho, with my in-your-face military brother-in-law. It actually turned out to be a lot of fun.
My bro-in-law is a fan of all things combat, and although he doesn’t get a chance to train consistently in BJJ, he has no problem diving in for a spar. I even gifted him my old Gameness gi earlier this year with the hope that he’d find a chance to train…and knowing that when I visit he can throw it on and we can roll.
The last time we really full-on sparred was probably a year ago. I’ve shown him a technique here and there since, but it’s been a while since we’ve gone all out. I could beat him after a few months of jiu-jitsu, but it was hard fought. That said, because he trains very little he is a good benchmark for me to measure my progress against and I was anxious to see if I could handle him with greater ease than last time. He’s a big boy, by the way – probably has 35 pounds on me, is my height and barrel-chested.
We trained through a number of positions I wanted to work on, I helped him solidify some of his technique. I also experimented with a sweep I picked up from a series of videos from Small Axe Jiu-jitsu regarding balance (kuzushi) and BJJ sweeps. There is a small window during the hip switch to mount where the combatant on bottom can reverse the sweep, counter the mount and end in side control. This counter really works, and I think it’s a really great tool to keep in the arsenal. Here’s the video:
We then had a free-for-all spar, right there at the farm. The results made me happy.
It’s hard to measure progress when you’re constantly rolling with the same people and you’re moving forward together. But sparring with someone who doesn’t train consistently can really show you where you’ve improved. He was very gracious to let me know that in the last year he can tell I’ve made a huge leap in technique.
I used very little muscle, tried to rely solely on technique, and had him start from any position. He was unable to stay on top of me or escape from under me, and I literally had him in a submission every 30 seconds. After a few minutes of that, I stopped submitting him and started setting up controls and submissions, but not actually applying them. After a few minutes of that, I eased up and started letting him work for submissions.
That led to an interesting place – which was me helping him exploit holes in my game.
I found a gap in my mount that would allow me to be rolled easily; also a propensity to leave my head vulnerable when I am in side control rather than keeping it tucked to avoid leg sweeps.
In helping him I was very pleased to find that much of the BJJ knowledge I have been storing has not been lost, even though I don’t use it every day. Small technicalities that we had gone through in class were resurfacing and shaking off the dust. That’s a great feeling.
Our little BJJ lesson the farm had a surprise ending. As more family showed up for Memorial Day dinner, I became acquainted with one of my wife’s cousins who is a huge nogi enthusiast. I asked him to show me one of his favorite techniques, and he showed me an interesting wristlock escape from a rear naked choke. We’re talking an aikido-style wristlock, folks, and although I haven’t tried it in sparring yet, I really think this one will work. I found it so amusing, I think I’ll make a video of it and post it.
On that note, I’ve been thinking…being a white belt and relatively new to the BJJ blogging world, I don’t want to come across as trying to coach anyone through videos. Believe me, I’m the last person to be doing that. On the other hand, I would like to experiment with using video as a means of tracking progress and remembering / sharing things I’ve learned. I figure as long as I don’t try to pretend to be more than I am, I should be OK.
Morning training will with any luck resume next week. I’ll be a little more consistent with posting at that time.
Image is a screen capture from a YouTube upload of Kung Pow
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The next step is rolling in the mud. On another note, there are great things to learn from all the different martial arts for sure.