Fight Class

Food writing now, eh? Well, now there will be a heavy Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu element. Better than nothing.

I am a white belt (beginner) in my now favorite hobby, and I train 2-3 times/week. Every time I leave class I walk away thinking: "damn, I have to wait a couple more days? An hour and a half is all I get?" I feel an addiction brewing.

I know that walking out of such classes you can learn a lot by taking notes and chronicling what you're working on, what you're having trouble with, etc. Well, whaddya know, I have a rapt readership just waiting, so why keep such a thought process to myself?

Today was a no-gi class and we worked on being in side control and maintaining control when someone tries to roll away from you. Normally someone would try to "shrimp," or try to buck you up to create space then try to curl their body toward you like a shrimp (lots of cool lingo in this stuff, just like anything else. Word lover Aak want to hear more?). But that's not what we were doing today. Today we were working on if someone wants to roll their hips away from you and turn their bodies over and get their knees on the ground, establish a "base" (just as it sounds: have a minimum 3 points on the ground from which you can maneuver), and from there buck you off or give you a host of troubles. If they get to their knees and you keep them face down you still have the advantage but not as good of one and they've improved.

Now, as the guy on top you want to put all your weight onto their hips so that they will have to roll themselves plus your weight - VERY hard to do. I want, as always, to keep my back straight so that he can't just headlock me and flip me over his body. I also want with my southernmost arm (closest to their feet) to put my elbow on the outside of their hips so they can't scoot away from me, and if they do successfully get any rolling done with their hips I can block the process. In the first drill for the day we let the bottom guy roll away, but keep our arm on their hip and our weight on theirs so we travel with them and end up on their backs - an even more dominant position. Then the instructor tweaked the drill then we drilled one how to finish from the back. I'd love to go into that but I have to go study.

Today's drill was good for me. Some ones I get better than others. I was drilling with a blue belt who was far, far better than me and he'd do some advanced thing with his arms somewhere along the way that would just slide me right off him, and I'm like "wtf?" Stuff like that is very helpful in making adjustments, though, because I then learn a new move and how to counter if someone does that to me.

I also learned a new rule of thumb that one of the teachers told us. Sometimes you're on top with him facing down but you're not locked in and scrambling for position. In such cases if you're in a position where you could easily punch the other guy in the face, you're in a good spot. If not, you're not. Even though there's no punching in BJJ, them's some wise words.