Greetings, I hope everyone has had a nice couple of days rest?

There will be classes on Wed and Thur at 8pm. They're open to everyone and will be quite small I think. So a good chance for some one on one tuition. :)

See you there

Geoff

This is certainly a post under the "(& other) ramblings" heading.

After spouting all week about telling your family how you feel about them, I found myself unable to tell my last remaining parental member how I felt about him! So I left my own home so I didn't choke the old prick out!!!

Can you imagine how far he had to push me for me to feel that way?? And in my own home? It's impossible for me to understand how I can loose the people who were so kind, loving, suportive and understanding and be left with this stupid, stupid old man!

So I left the house, (read: slammed the door's and fled) with no idea where I was going. Well I ended up heading up to my parents old home (my old home). You can imagine how that felt. Walking the same way I did when I used to come home from college. All these great (and very painful) memories flooding back.

When I finally got to the house it nearly broke my heart, 10 minutes of walking had given me enough time to work myself into a right state. So I walked right past the house with no idea of where I was going or what I was doing. 2 minutes later a car pulls up and it's Dorothie. She knew where I'd be.

How did she know? I don't know, she must know me better than I know myself. Anyway we sat for a while, then she took me home. And here I hide in my cave avoiding the world as always. And the focus of my ire? Well there's nothing wrong as far as he knows. Didn't even ask Dorothie where I'd been or why.

Fuck I hate Christmas!

Merry Christmas to you all.

Please take the time to let your loved ones know how much they mean to you. Now is the perfect opportunity to say the things that you would normally feel weird telling people.

Thanks to everyone who has made this year our best ever!

Check back over the break as I'm bound to find time to post some stuff during the holidays. :)

Take care.

Geoff
GSW Martial Arts
www.gsw.net.nz

Looks like the end of the year is coming.

Monday's class had only 8 people. Kinda disappointing but upon reflection it's really very positive! Of the 8 at class 4 of them were women. 2 blues and 2 Whites.

Really that's insane. When Ko and I started mucking around with BJJ all those years ago (1995) there were only 4 of us who had any interest in it. Since those early days 2 of them have dropped away to leave Ko and I on our own.

When we first started getting serious and when John started coming and doing seminars, it wasn't unusual to have 2 in a class or 6 in a seminar. Infact the first seminar with John only had 15 people in it!

So to find myself in a position where 8 is a small number, and of that 8, 4 are women, 2 of who are Blue Belts is an amazingly satisfying feeling.

Thanks to those who made the class and nice to see a new face in the grappling, even if she may have been slightly out of her depth. :)

Finally the DVD's from the Comp in November are ready.

If you have purchased one from me then bring the case to class and I'll give you one of the "professionally" duplicated and printed ones. :)

If you want one then bring $15.00 to cass and I'll fix you up. :)

Fundamentals, 19 in the class.

Today we continued with the theme started by Dion on Thursday. Lots of work from side control position. Started with basic controlling and movement, then progressed into a few simple attacks and submissions.

Also looked at switch base side control, both to the front and on the hip. Submissions were -

1. Far armbar. Switch base to the front, our partner grabs our near color and thrusts us away, we switch back to side control and attack the far arm by moving around to the top and applying an armbar.
2. Figure 4. Our partner attempts to make space by using their forearm on our neck, we react by switching base and claiming their wrist. We then turn back to side control and claim the arm in a figure 4 lock. Shifting our weight we then slide our knee across their stomach and apply the lock.
3. Forearm choke. Disrupting our partners defence by moving our body to top control and pushing their arm out of the way, before shifting back to side control and pinning their arm under our body. From this position we slide our hand up the back of their arm to secure the color. Then we place our oppersite thumb in their far color and drive our forearm across their neck attempting to get our elbow on the ground on our side.

Had several new people in class again today with 3 signing up with the club. Great to see the interest in what we do growing day by day. Hopefully it will carry over into the new year!.

Training over xmas will be slightly reduced, with only 2 nights a week till the new year. Keep checking here for more. For now the classes next week will be Monday, Wed, and Thursday but no class Sunday or Monday after Christmas!

My Wife, Dorothie, works for a Pharmacy owned by the RPG management group. They're a pretty fast growing co that has expanded rapidly over the last 12 months. To end the year they had a costume themed party. The only stipulation was the costume must be in the R, P or G letters.

Dorothie went as Pink the singer and I went as the Grim Reaper. There were prizes and everyone there got into the swing of things with some fantastic costumes!! I wore some white contacts that I got from Trade Me and freaked everyone out, also wore my Bro's boots which had a platform heels and made me about 6"5' tall. :)

Un-fortunately I forgot to take my camera so got no Photos! Hopefully some images will surface and I'll be able to put them up. :) But for now here are a few of us. :) Click the image for a bigger view.


Pink



Happy reaper



Un-Happy reaper



The eyes have it



CU in Hell

Dion took tonights class as I needed the time to sort out costumes and stuff with my wife for her work do. See above. :)

Here's what Dion had to say about class.

Good class. About 18 people.
Began with warm-ups and hip-outs.
Drilled side controls: short base, long base, shoulder underhook, neck underhook and keeping balance while opponent moves and bridges.

Finished up with half guard pass: tripod using head, bounce on balls of feet until knee is clear, bring knee through to kesa-gatame (scarf-hold position) and change to side control.
Good attitude from all in class.

Cheers,
Dion.

Great class, 16 in class tonight with the return of a few of the GSW stalwarts. Good to see Nick and Jason back after a short layoff. Grappled all night with everyone working together really well and a lot of discussion and problem solving going on. It all felt really positive.

Goal setting was the point I tried to get across after the session. With everything you do in your life goal setting is an extremely important part of progress. Without goals we cannot measure accurately how far we have travelled or even know where we are headed.

The goal setting idea is perfectly suited to BJJ! Goals set in regards to your progress can give your game focus, give you something to strive for when it all seems too much and can also help guide you to the ultimate goal – Black Belt. From class to class, simple, small goals can help fine tune aspects of your game:
Eg: your guard. Simply setting small goals that focus only on your guard can help immensely with your entire game plan and improve your progress. With out goals what are you trying to achieve, and how will you know if you ever achieve it?

I thought it was going to be very quiet tonight, at 8pm there were only 4 of us waiting to get into it, but by 10 past we had 14 on the mat.

Grappled all night with everyone helping each partner where and when they could. Really good to see everyone working out so well this late in the year. Keep it up.

Ok I know I've been slack but too bad. :)

Here's some class updates.
Thursday 02/12/2004: Fundamentals. 21 in Class: Tahi's first class with GSW, everyone just rolled or did 1 step while Tahi went around giving advise. He then showed some stuff to the Blue belts at the side of the mat.

Sunday 05/12/200: Fundamentals: 21 in Class: Same format as Thursday with the class working 1 step and Tahi helping some of the higher grades with some techniques.

Monday 06/12/2004: only 8 in class tonight and we pretty much rolled all night.

Wed 08/12/2004: 14 in class tonight. Covered some of the things Tahi had given us and rolled for the rest of the night.

Thursday 09/12/2004: Fundamentals 16 in class: almost half the class were new students so we covered basice escape from side control, then basic guard pass. We then combined the 2 for a simple drill.

Sunday 12/12/2004: Fundamentals 15 in class: Again a high percentage of new guys in class so we again covered the basic side control escape and guard pass combo. We then added a couple of more advanced passes to give the students a couple of different ideas and concepts for passing the guard. Dion took the womens class today.

A few weeks back our Izi got married. Finally She has sent me some images from the day. All I can say is WOW. Brought a tear to my eye it did. They look great together and it looks like it was a fantastic day.

I've added the pics to the gallery from the drinky's we had in October. Click the link at the bottom for the gallery.

Tahi came and went. In a few short days he had a huge impact on many of the crew at GSW. Tahi hit the mats several times in the few short days he was in Wellington and his input and tips were well received by everyone.

I managed to get a few shots of Tahi on the mat at GSW, unfortunately they suk and most of them are of his arse!
So here are Tahi's blurry arse shots for anyone who's interested. :)

Tahi Gallery>>

Sux!

Too busy at work. Not enough sleep and missing my parents like hell. Mum was very big on Christmas, she'd always go all out and make a really big day of it. So we've tried several different things as a family but it'll never be the same again, and that hurts.

So if I'm a bit weird at class just tell me to snap out of it!!!

Thanks

Geoff

About 12 people in class.

Started with warm-up exercises, including 'hip-outs' and 'reverse shrimping'.

Did some basic movement drills related to triangle and arm-bar from guard.

Reviewed two of the four techniques for opponent in 'turtle' position learned at John's seminar last week.

Paired up and drilled those two techniques. Starting position is defender hipping-out from side control to knees. Attacker quickly moves to side-back control and performs one of those two techniques to turn them back over to side control. Repeated as many times as necessary until it became 'automatic'.

Sparring from knees in three-minute rounds.

Comments:
Was good to revisit seminar techniques while they were still fresh in our minds. Class was very good, however some seemed to still miss the main point of the drilled exercise, so let me elaborate…

The focus was NOT "how to kimura your opponent beginning from turtle position".

The focus was on how to slot this kind of movement into your game to sustain the attacking momentum. Or to spell it out: as your opponent is still hipping-out from side control to knees, you are already moving to side-back control - when your opponent arrives in turtle, you are already moving to roll him/her over again; you don't suffer 'brain-freeze' in your game and your opponent is always 'on the back foot', never getting time to settle in their game.

An observation: some people still trying to "rip their arm out" to escape arm-bar from guard. This is a risky way to escape. It relies on your opponent being sufficiently aware of your movement to be able to release the arm in time. If they do the arm-bar properly, the arm will straighten and you risk injury to yourself. It is safer to keep the arm bent, temporarily stacking your oppenent to work the elbow free and pass their guard.

Cheers,
Dion.

By the look of the blog there has been nothing going on. Well that couldn't be further from the truth.

Classes classes and more classes, seminars, work, web stuff and now more rolling and classes with a BJJ Brown Belt from the US.

Classes have carried on as normal, but with the weather and people feeling better about the season more have stayed behind after class to ask questions and roll. This means I don't get home till after 10.00pm (that's when the monsters come out). Now I'm not complaining about the enthusiasm of the students all it means is that I can't update this blog after class.

Work is insanely busy at this time of year so there is usually only 45min to 1 hour between work and class. Also not enough time to post.

After John's seminars I had hoped to post the content for everyone but again no time, however Daniel has added comments to the image post here. I have no words
Good revision.

Currently several of us have been privileged to spend some mat time with Tahi Burns. Tahi is a BJJ Brown Belt from the US, he trains at Beverly Hills Jiu Jitsu, which is where Melissa met up with him. Tahi has used the web to keep an eye on GSW as he occasionally returns to visit his family in NZ. Melissa convinced him to visit next time he was home and he has obliged this time.

Tahi competed in the Pam Ams this year and won his division and the absolute. Pic here>>

So we are extremely lucky to have him stop by and give us so much information. Tahi has been outstanding, he has openly shared information and tips to GSW students without holding back. He has taken time away from his family to help develop our BJJ game and skills, although his brothers support him and sit at the side of the mat while he teaches, for up to 4 hours at a time.

Thanks Tahi, we owe you big time.!!!

Check back for images and an update soon.