Thursday, July 22, 2010

Sunday - 7/18/2010

Smallish group me and 6 others 3 men, 3 women, no other black belts. We worked on the matwork drills I am doing to replace the warmups. It was a little hit or miss. It was taking too long  and there was more instruction than I want there to be. I still want the warmups to be < 15 minutes. I think I have finalized my lineup for drills
1. Oma Plata
2. Arm Lock
3. Knee - sit out drill
4. Trap and roll (which I added for the first time this class)
Then 3 sets of forward rolls with a set of elbow escapes, a set of butt scoots and a set of arm drags. This should be very doable in 15 minutes, but we are at least 10 minutes from there.

So this was a little frustrating to everyone. Hindsight being 20/20, I should have gone to a drill or technique with a high percentage of success and competency to get them back on the positive roll. I did several foot sweep drills and some for them again struggled with the timing. My thoughts were that this was a fairly small sized group so it was a good time to work on some smaller person techniques. It went OK, but, not as well as I have felt about classes lately. But, as i have read recently one of an instructors jobs is to challenge the students to by getting them out of their comfort zone. This was clearly out of their comfort zone. We did De Ashi Harai, Kosoto Gari and Harai Tsurikomi Ashi. Then. for randori, each person worked with each of the others so there were 5 - 3 minutes sets. This they did well. Everyone fought hard where appropriate and slowed down where appropriate.

For Ne Waza, we ran the same sets, but after 2 Lori was a little banged up so i took her spot and did sets with Lex, Scott and Nick.They all did well and fought hard and tried some good technical Judo instead of just flailing around.  i continue to be impressed with the willingness Lex is showing to take a chance on losing by putting himself in a bad position to start. This is and will continue to pay-off for him.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Friday 7/16/2010

Open Mat at the Weston -

Small group, just 4 of us, so we did 5 6 minute sets, thought the fifth became a 5 and the last a 3 due to the class that was following us.
Me, Chris, Blue John and Craig... the usual Friday suspects.First set with Chris was a very good set for him. He scored and kept it even until the 5 minute mark, or so. The I was able to sweep and pass. Nothing of particular note in the other sets, though I think Craig is playing very well. Shows what commitment and being willing to go and get beaten by higher ranks can do for your game. He is improving much faster than the other white belts. He's studying Ronnie's web site  for some supplemental techniques and then using them.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Thursday 7/15/2010

Kettlebells - Hard workout - I switched to 16KGs when I got to Deck Squats, but switched back to the 20KG and finished the workout. I almost quit a couple of times before the end but i got through it. Having the workout written out and staring at me helps me get through it.

Open Mat - Greg came in and we worked on a few positions about which he had a question.

Judo - Little bit of a tough class. We were getting through the warmups slowly but improving (Oma Plata, Armlock, and the knee to back drill then rolls, elbow escapes, butt scoots and arm drags) when two of the members of the blind Judo team here in Philly came in. Both were big and inexperienced, one was huge (consensus of 350+) add the difficulty in teaching plus the potential for injury and it makes for a challenging class. with no notice it made it hard as I couldn't run the class I had intended. We did Sasae Tsurikomi Ashi, and then did Tokui Waza. Not a lot of size to put with them for randori. fortunately they played OK, just always a bit of danger with anyone that size who is new and an unknown in the class. I kept them with Lex and Chris S. Who both did well with them . When we did Ne Waza Greg joined in and gave me another big body to put with them. This helped quite a bit. All in all, it wasn't the best class I have taught but it all worked out OK, The two new guys indicated a desire to return as they are prepping for some of the big paralympic games. I think I will be better prepared for them next time, though teaching any complex matwork will be a challenge.

This has nothing to do with this post, but, there is so many monster technicques, it made me feel better just watching it.

Womens Judo High Lights

Monday, July 19, 2010

Thursday 7/15/2010

BJJ at the Weston - I covered class for John. We had 4 people. I covered Ouchi Gari and then jumping to a closed guard and then throwing the Kosoto Gari. these are high percentage techniques that don't require 1000s of repetitions to use. They mostly did well, though the newer white belts struggled with the idea of the jump to closed guard.
I sat out the training sets a the numbers were even.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Monday - 7/12/2010

Made it to Kettlebells - I like doing classes some of the time, but, I also get annoyed as it isn't always what i think I need. I like te focus on the power/lifting work and the cardio work. i don't like the protracted warm up and I don't like the joint mobility.  It's the right thing for this class, as it isn't geared for me, but, for the 9 paying housewives in the class. I might design my own Monday workout as I've designed my Thursday workout and do that. Not sure yet.

BJJ was almost shocking. 21 people in class, more than half of them are the new white belts that have been joining. The retention rate among students that try out classes is so much higher now, it's incredible. I may have been wrong in my earlier assessment. Perhaps both clubs can comfortably survive. That's as it should be, of course, but, I am always concerned about the competition for BJJ students in Philadelphia, which is fierce.

John did some stand up work. He covered the O Goshi hip throw, Osoto Gari, and Seoi Nage both from the self defense perspective for the newer people, and with a more competitive focus for the veterans. Most of them still needs lots of repetitions before I would call them competent takedown players, but, it's a start.

My neck was bothering me so I held myself out of the groundwork sets.

Judo - continued the matwork drills for warmups. They were better but still very hit or miss in execution.
We did Tsurikomi Goshi to Harai goshi to the Tani Otoshi switch for Tachi Waza. I think this is a good addition with everyone having success with the forward Harai Goshi/Uchi Mata.

We did 2-4 sets of randori. I took Eric. With Lee on the IR, Eric and Lex are my preferred training partners, and since I make the sets, I get to have them. Eric had a couple of good attacks that rocked me, but I was able to hip cut and block him. I hit a Soto Makikomi and a good Ouchi Gari, when he reacted away from the forward throw. Lex is forcing me to grip fight as if he dominates the grip he will be able to attack easily and I won't even be in good places to defend much less counter. I managed to get a soto makikomi, I think I hit a belt grop Osoto Gari, but I'm not certain. and a Yoko Tome Nage.

I went through the armdrag including the stand up and pull version so when they are working the armdrag drill as a warm up they can get the most from it. 2 sets of Ne Waza and we called it a night.

Great to see Lee in class, just have to hope his knee continues to improve. He is an excellent training partner, assistant instructor, and one of the guys that makes the club work. Losing him for a knee reconstruction would be a real blow.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Sunday 7/11/2010

Smallish class 7-8, but we worked hard and got a lot done. We continued the matwork drills for warmups. Oma Plata, armlock, arm drag and switched in the knee drill coming from under the turtle to the back.

Eric Johnson made it back to class. Great news for us as he is a good guy, and a good judoka and has excellent mat skills. He's just getting back into shape, but he will be a good training partner for me and the bigger guys, particularly factoring in the injury to Lee.
We did Osoto Gari, retreating 3 feet on a line style. Then did Tokui Waza.

Good amount of throwing to go with the Uchikomis.
A few sets of randori, though not too much, as the group was small, and it was hot. Lex and Sarah fought the previous day and had 12 or so matches between them (winning most) so there was no need to push them too hard.
We did more armdrag work for Ne Waza. I added the standing up pull for the armdrag which works well small against big. We did a few sets of Ne Waza and called it a day. Still waiting for news on Chris L.'s knee. Fingers crossed.

Friday 7/9/2010

BJJ open training at the Weston - 7 of us (Steve B, Me, Chris, Blue John, Marty, Craig and Jack) We did 6 - 5 minutes sets. I pulled against Steve and ended in Eric's cross spider position, but couldn't find the offense from the position. Need to look at it a little more to see what I can do from there. I switched to a more traditional open guard and hit a flip sweep and came up. I think I surprised him by going for it. Later he went for a desperation armlock and gave up another sweep. Overall, The training was good, but I need to push harder. I think I should put myself in worse positions to start the sets. My competitiveness is making me waste opportunities.

Thursday 7/8/2010

Kettlebells - I did my thursday Workout -  I switched to the 16 KG at the same place, but I made it through the workout.  It's tough and I was tired and drenched in sweat as the room was hotter than i like it to be between the heat wave and the minimal air conditioning. It felt like I was doing a Steve Maxwell, class before he added all of the joint mobility.

Open Mat - Lex and Eric were there and wanted to do some no-gi in preparation for the upcoming tournament. I'm interested in a little no go lately so I dressed out and joined them. After the workout I was already nice and slippery but I was starting from a pretty tired spot. All in all, it was both fun and frustrating.  It really confirms how limited my no go game is. My takedowns are not good. I can kind of defend and I can takedown if I am able to work to a clinch, but all in all it's not a pretty sight particularly when i am used to being at least competitive off of my feet.

I did match with Eric. We worked back and forth and he went for the takedown. I avoided it and maintained the top position. Once there, I was able to pass and use my BJJ fundamentals to do OK, but, it's still frustrating as I realize how much there is in the no gi game I'm missing. If I was 15 years younger I would worry about it more, but, I can only do what my life allows me to do. So I think I'm going to do some no gi when I can, have some fun with it but, not get obsessed. At least that will be the plan.

Judo -
I began adding some matwork drills in place of the warmup. We need to maximize our useful time, and with the additional standup we have been doing, I need to find more time for Ne Waza. I also like the Lloyd Irving style of making the warmups repetitions of basic positions, so we get loose and at the same time work on skills.
I did the Oma Plata drill, the armlock drill, going down the mat from the butterfly armdrag and coming up with the butterfly. They all went OK, and showed how useful some of the drills will be. I wasn't satisfied with the butterfly guard coming up drill and might punt it.

We did Uchi Mata (inside)  for 20-30 minutes, then some tokui waza and then randori. The only note I am going to make is that chris L was hurt while doing randori. The same knee she injured and had repaied was hurt again. she was looking brilliant for the past few classes in randori, so this is very disheartening. I'm hoping it's only a sprain.

We talked about the arm drag so they will understand the purpose of the drill and then did Ne Waza. I took Cecelia and wanted to see her skill level. She has some basics but has some gaps in what she has learned. She is a very good athlete with excellent fighting spirit, so she will improve her mat work skills quickly if she's willing to be open and have some fun with the Ne Waza. She is almost too competitive, wanting to be in a good position rather than risking a bad one for the chance to improve other techniques. I was guilty of this and still am, so I can understand it. She is so young with such a bright future she could get past this easily.

Thursday 7/8/2010

BJJ at the Weston. Another blue belt, Marty was back in class and seems like he is going to make more. He's an aset as he will round out the group, give a different body type and perspective and continues the trend of very solid good people that has been building. We did more standing pass work.

We did two sets. I took Marty first. I worked for the half butterfly sweep and managed to get him to go over but he was big enough and with good enough base so that he ended turtling. I attacked it and managed to get a clock choke. Next set I swept again and was working from the top when time expired. 

The set with blue John was good. It was mostly pretty typical but I did manage to get a Mata Leo/rear naked choke, something I rarely get when playing gi. As he turned away i managed to get such a deep grip it was easier to attack the rear naked than switch to my preferred collar choke.

Tuesday 7/6/2010

BJJ at the Weston - Falling behind so will note that the weston group has only grown very slowly but the members are very consistent and are improving. With a few more people this club could really turn the corner.
Worked on the standing pass, and then did 2 sets of  groundwork.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Monday - 7/5/2010

No class on the 4th so this was the first class for me since Friday. I missed Kettlebells, but made it to BJJ. Pretty good sized class particularly for the holiday - 12 people or so. John covered standing passes, which is a hood choice as many of them haven't had the reps they need on this technique. Pretty basic though he started to work on attacking the open guard from split with a few variations.

Pretty good training Mike B, who is still having trouble defending the stand up from the De La Riva position. I swept him this away the rest of the set was solid. I took Max who has enormous potential, but could use some Judo to round out his game a bit. His idea of wanting to get his purple before starting Judo seems both counterproductive and a waste of opportunity to me, but, to each his own. His game was pretty good, but he tried a sweep from butterfly with both knees open and then sweep them to the side. he needs to put some more time into it, as it led to a couple of easy passes. I also took Jason who has really made strides now that he is playing like a heavyweight, taking advantage of his size rather than hiding from it, and trying to play like a middle weight. I managed to reverse him, and then he actually tried the same sweep Max had just tried with similar results.

Judo - Good class for the holiday with 10 or so people. We worked hard and did some of the one handed Tsurikomi Goshi drills. This led to some good progress  for all of us. I worked in with lex and had some very productive fits and throws.

We had a pretty advanced class so i took advantage of it to go through my 5 X-Guard sweeps. They mostly did fine as it was a review for many, but, there was some difficulty with the details of the later sweeps. Then we did a few sets of Ne Waza and called it a day.

Thursday, July 08, 2010

Friday - 7/2/2010

BJJ open mat at the Weston
Me, Chris, Blue John, Craig and Jack
We used Craigs suggestion for organizing an odd number of people to get the correct sets and it worked perfectly. Now I have my design for even and odd numbers to get the correct sets.

4 - 7 minutes sets. The training was solid and a good work out, nothing particularly of note, but it would be good to see either or both Steve's back in this class.

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

7/1/2010 - Thursday

Kettlebells - I made it through my workout, though i had to drop from a 20kg., to a 16kg, about 2/3s of the way through it. It was good and fatigued me. I'm satisfied with as it is for awhile. i think I will stick with this one and modify it later, but this will be my core workout. 

Open Mat - i was ready for some No-Gi but it didn't happen. I did some Ouchi Gari work with Peter and Lex showed me some of the Brabo techniques Fredson covered. I'm going to make an effort to do some reps on several of these and incorporate them into my game.

Judo - We did some warmups including the partner squats. I am considering doing more practical repetition drills for a warmup. I have to decide which drills and how long they will take.

We did one handed throwing drills,  and then randori.

For Ne Waza, we returned to the Kesa Gatame escapes. I started with the bridge drills and that helped get them where I needed them to be a it sooner. But, when I continued to see mediocre execution of the escape. Too many people drop their hips on the escape. I gave the speech about the necessity of being an A level escape artist for execution if there is to be any hope of escaping a good player. We did a few sets of Ne Waza and called it a night. We did a few beers across the street to celebrate Eric being older.

Friday, July 02, 2010

Thursday 7/1/2010

BJJ at the Weston- More X-guard work we continued with #1 and #2 (not quite the way I do #2 but the same technique). The recap was good for everyone as they needed the reps on the techniques.

Pretty good roll with Chris, I worked to the owrong legged spider guard John likes and from there walked my way down to and X-Guard. Then when he pushed in i hit the #5 X-Guad sweep, that I like so much. Fun to get it in training against a purple belt. Rest of the set was pretty straight forward.
Training with Blue John, He continues to post the cross grip from his guard and try to sit up and push me back. I'm not accepting this any more and blew his grip and crossed his arm from the position and used it to pass. Caught him from the mount a couple of times. he has a bad habit of letting one arm get trapped when he gets mounted, then he is just food for the gun against the choke.

Tuesday 6/29/2010

BJJ at the Weston - We did more X-Guard work focusing on #1 and #2 with just one entry. John realized he lost the class a bit the night before by moving too fast and corrected it with this group. They did much better with the information and improved quite a bit. Still some fundamentals they also need but it can be tough to cover the right material for white belts and purple belts.

2 sets of training - Chris and Azeez.

Thursday, July 01, 2010

Monday 6/28/2010

Kettlebells - Johns class- Good workout - He did a couple of things that aren't my favorite, i.e. alternating Turkish getups and some two bell exercises, but he strung them together in a very challenging wrap up that made up for it.

BJJ - surprisingly big group - 5 people I had never seen in a gi before were in the class and several have already joined so that's good. With the regulars there were 14 people or so. John took some of the new guys word on the prior experience and stuck with his plan to do some X-Guard work.  Many of them struggled with it and really could have used some more fundamentals. It threw the dynamic of the class off with such disparate learning curves. He showed the pulling entrance I use the butterfly entrance, then showed #1, #7 and # 2.
3 sets of training - Not really good matches for me, so I will save it for Judo.

Judo - Good class, not huge but big enough and they worked hard. Greg returned on a limited basis. I added the partner squats to the warmups, I am in the minority but I like this drill and will continue it. We covered the belt grip Osoto Gari, Ouchi Gari and Harai Goshi. I held the Hikikomi Gaeshi/belt grip Sumi Gaeshi in reserve, as I want to focus on throwing and landing on people rather than sacrifices.
2 sets of randori - I took Lex and Josh. Lex is a good randori partner for me as he grip fights effectively, and plays to throw not to not be thrown. Josh is trying way too many tani otoshis, so amny and so poorly that I would have scored on him repeatedly with his own attack. He only tried one really aggressive forward attack (left sided Uchi Mata) and rocked me. He needs to get more aggressive and offensive and take the fight to the other guy instead of looking to counter.

I spent the entire Ne Waza time on the bridge escape from Kesa gatame. We had to work to correct the bridge repeatedly. I broke it down and then finally had them doing it without an Uke to focus on the bridge. It improved but there is still work to do. I intended to get to the Ancona roll but the escape had to be done correctly before I was willing to move forward. 3 rounds of Ne Waza and we called it a night.