BJJ 45 split, very small class with only 12 people braving the cold!.

Started with a bit of lite rolling tonight, and then went for some pretty random stuff.

First off we did the sitting rollover sweep from the JJM DVD “Becoming a Champion”: Controlling our opponents sleeve in a cross grip, we grab their pant leg and throw our leg over their head to end up on our knees beside them. From there we raise our hands and pull them off their base for the sweep. Keeping control of their arm we swing our free arm around to secure their head and then move to side control.

If we attempt the sweep and end up kneeling beside our opponent but they lean forward to stop the sweep, then we quickly tuck our shoulder and forward roll to the front, to transition into an omoplata. Keeping control of their arm and kicking our leg under their armpit to trap the shoulder for the submission.

If our opponent then reads our intent and before we can secure the sub, they forward roll themselves, we then again trap their arm and secure their head with our free arm and transition to side control.

Next we covered an arm bar from the same DVD. From guard we attack their right arm for a straight armbar, but we make a mistake that allows them to pull their arm free before we can apply the submission.

So we quickly control their opposite (left) sleeve and using our right foot push off their hip to allow our left leg to drop down so we can hook our left foot around their neck. From there we swing our right leg around in front of their face and apply the armbar to the left arm.

After a short break we then rolled for the remainder of class.

God, this thing is getting less and less attention every week.

I set up a small stats counter (Thanks Firesprite) and OH MY GOD in a couple of weeks there has been over 900 hits. That’s unique ips?!?!? That’s insane! And some of the places people are looking from? All a bit weird really. But hey welcome one and all.

Monday 13/06/2005: 13 in Class: Just grappled most of the night away.

Wednesday 15/06/2005: only 11 in the class today. Took a totally different tack today and covered some basic leg locks and knee bars. Started with an ankle lock from standing in our opponents guard, and then applied a knee bar starting from the same position.

We then did a knee bar from the reverse position, where we are on our back and our opponent breaks our guard by standing, so we control their leg and spin round, bridge our hips up and sit them on the mat to apply the knee bar.

Then we applied knee bars from knee ride both from that position and from a near armbar from there and we also covered a couple of options when our partner defends the armbar attempt.

Good basic start for the leg lock and a great base to build on.

Thursday 16/06/2005: Fundamentals 21 in class: Carried on the emphasis on positional dominance tonight. We pretty much covered as many ways of controlling from the top as we could.

Starting with Side control, covered ways of using our body weight to maintain control so we could free up our hands to apply submissions. We also covered ways of defeating our opponent’s under hook. Also went over the different ways to switch base to defeat our opponent’s attempts to escape.

Also covered controls and transitions to knee ride and controlling our opponent’s collar and using our forearm in their face to keep the position, which enables us to apply a number of subs including spinning choke.

Sunday 19/06/2005 MMA 14 in the class: Today we just covered Gi-less grappling with everyone spending the whole hour working on their grappling skills.

Fundamentals: 24 in the class: Covered basic guard skills in this class, as a carry on of the positional dominance theme. From the guard if you don’t have any “generic” guard skills then submitting your opponent would be impossible. So today we covered some basic guard skills including defensive and offensive skills. This all led into a small drill of pass or sweep, which we were able to expand as there were no new beginners in the class.

With Dion and Melissa returning to the mat today Melissa took the ladies for their regular class at 5.

Monday 20/06/2005 45 split: 18 in class: Grappled most of the class, but also covered and concentrated on our positional dominance theme again.

Wednesday 22/06/2005 45 split: only 12 in class today: once again we covered some leg locks. Quickly covering the basic ones from the week before but quickly advancing to some slightly more complex ones. Covered knee bars from arm bars – When we have the armbar from Knee ride and our partner defends, we slip down their body and attack the near leg.
When we have the armbar from mount, and our partner defends and starts to escape, we attack the far knee.

Also covered a simple knee bar from switch base on the hips: When our opponent hips away to try and escape, hook his bottom leg with our top leg and control the knee, bridge our hips to apply the pressure and gain the submission.

Thursday 23/06/2005 BJJ Fundamentals, 23 in the class:
Ko posted this on the forum, so I’ll just copy it to here. (Thanks Ko)

From head to head we covered some basic strategies, first of all pulling guard, make sure you got some sort of arm or collar control, or even both, shut down one side of your opponent and pull guard to that side, idea being that he cannot defend on that side. Also keep close to your opponent so he cannot start passing before you establish your position.

From there we did the basic takedown from head to head, going to knee ride and finishing with the near arm straight armbar, again the key here was get your controls, step at the right angle and push your opponent around, using your own knee as the reference pivot point. Once they are on their back you should have kneeride and the a good control on their near arm, the armbar finish is pretty easy from here. Controls, timing and angles are the keys to pulling this one off.

Next up was a slight variation that uses the same attack from head to head, this time your opponent resists and refuses to go over, so we use his resistance as a base and fall back for a straight armbar from guard, again the angle and controls are the keys to this one. Once we have established the armbar we can either finish from our back or grab their near leg and rotate them over onto their side and finish the arm bar from sitting on your butt.

Both of these techniques are in John's books as well for those that want to know the details

Sunday 26/06/2005 MMA Class 10 in the class today:

Finally with a good solid group of grapplers who also have a bit of standup skill, I was able to up the tempo of the class a bit today:

Started by gloving up and training striking (hands only) then moved onto striking with our opponent being defensive. From there we played an old game of “tag” where one side tries to score a good clean shot on their opponent, if successful then they switch.

Upped the tempo by allowing low leg kicks from the attacking side and also counter punching from the defending side. From there we worked on all of these things but added the clinch and encouraged the defending side to shut their opponent down and control from the clinch. Also encouraged the takedown, to help solidify the need to take the fight to a clinch and down to the matt. This went extremely well with everyone really getting into the swing of class and working hard for the session. Great class.

BJJ Fundamentals, 20 in the class. By the time I returned to the mat several groups were working skills or grappling to warm up. (It was cold!!) So I just allowed people to grapple and work through issues or skills, as they wanted. Almost everyone worked well, but a couple of people still need to be led by the hand, which is a shame as grappling and personal time on the mat is a perfect opportunity to work on the things that YOU need to work on, also with myself, Dion and Craig all available to help it was a great chance.

Dion took Firesprite for a personal lesson as the other girls were away at a Kyokushin camp in Taupo and, with the desert road closed, returning the long way around National Park.

Well that’s me up to date, thanks for looking in; hopefully I’ll be able to keep you up to date on a more regular basis in the future. (Yeah right)

Sorry guy’s I really don’t have a lot to say, as I’m dead tired. I spent all day yesterday helping the little bro move into his new house. I’m so stoked for the guy, I’m glad he’s finally heading down the path of financial ruin like the rest of us homeowners. It’s a really nice place and as a builder I’m sure it’ll only get better.

Today’s classes were great! There really is something about Sunday that seems to work for a lot of people. The MMA class had 15 again and I let everyone roll fro most of the session and added striking at the end again. Pretty hard work for all, including me. :)

Fundamentals were nothing of the sort! We had about 25 in the class, which is a little smaller than usual but still a big class. I started with the basic circuit then, a few hip outs followed by drilling the basic kneeride escape. We then went straight into Spinning Choke from knee ride. Starting with the basic application. Then defeating their defence, where they place their arm between ours and their hand behind their head. Then we covered some controlling moves including using our collar control and forearm to stall their escape attempts.

From there we progressed into a few other ways of controlling and finishing them from the kneeride position, including letting them escape from kneeride to allow us to sink the choke deeper. Then allowing them to escape and get the underhook on us, so we can control the arm and spin round to a far armbar. Like I said not at all fundamentals but it went down well.

In the women’s class, Nick was again unable to take the class so I stepped in. There were 6 of us and again I basically let everyone roll and then gave some pointers and guidance to each participant. We finished with a couple of concepts from the head 2 head position and covered off the clock choke.

Craig has pulled out of the upcoming MMA fight in Tauranga, he was unable to dedicate enough time for training and thought it would not be in his best interests to jump in the ring unprepared. On the other hand Alex has been hitting the mats hard in his preparations and has quit his job to train more during the day, with anyone who has the time to spare. So it sounds like he’ll be more than ready for his MMA debut. Phil is also on track with his training and should have a great first fight. Good luck guys and thanks to Jill for allowing them access to the MVD during the day!!

That’s all for now,

See you on the mat!!

Stop looking here, its not going to change till Sunday night!

My updating is getting worse and worse! I just realized that I didn't even comment on last weeks classes at all. So enough of the silly pictures and on with the words.

Firstly Dion and Melissa are in the states for a few weeks and while they're there, they are trying to get to some different schools to roll. Dion unfortunately had a bad experience with one school and ended up sporting several stiches on a cut through his bottom lip. I'll leave it to him to fill in the details on the forum if he feels up to it.

With Melissa away, Nick has been taking the women's classes, but yesterday he came down with he same flu that has hit a few of the guys lately and couldn't make it. Which left me to take my first women's only class. Firespirte says that makes me an honorary lady? Not so sure on that one, but at least I did ok in the class. :)

MMA class: smaller numbers this week but still a good 14, still only doing bits and pieces though and it's starting to get a little frustrating. So I think well just have to start stringing some things together and also get everyone into hitting some bags/pads to get the striking up to a better standard.

Today we started lite rolling again, which seems to be impossible to do Gi-less, we then did some simple drilling side control which was bit more controlled. Finally we covered a few ideas on back control. Giving us full control of our opponent and allowing us time to sink the RNC.

BJJ Fundamentals: As always the Sunday class was huge! (Glad we added another row of mats) Sunday in the middle of Queens birthday and there are over 25 people in the class. Today we covered the mount controls we've done previously and a couple of the forced armbars from that position. But then we went onto a slightly harder version of the basic knee-ride armbars. This time instead of our opponent giving us their arms we had to force the armbars.

The first one went well, simply control your opponent and grab his near arm with both our hands and force it to his opposite shoulder. Spin our top leg over his head and apply the arm bar. ok: But then it all went bad.

From knee-ride we grab their far arm and spin to knee-ride on the opposite side and apply the armbar from there. Then as we become more proficient at it we simply spin into the hole we create when we force their arm to the mat on our side. This is the point that it went bad, the grips need to be sorted before we force the arm to the mat between our feet. As, by the time we spin to the other side if the grips are wrong we become tangled. Very funny to watch.

It was fantastic to have Ko on the mat again. A huge relief for me, also funny that he was the only Blue belt there. In a class of 25+ only 2 coloured was very strange.

Women’s only class: Only a few of the ladies today so it was a very intimate class but it gave me a great chance to see what each person was doing or doing wrong and offering some solutions.

I let them roll for a while then covered opening the closed guard, passing with knee through and 2 armbar variations from side control. Pretty good class but it made for a very long day. :)

Earlier in the day Matty and I ripped up the matt support on the street side and placed a new row of mats down, giving us another 10 odd meters of mat space, which we needed desperately. Thanks heaps to Matty for giving up his time and skills once again to help me out and also thanks to Peter and Shane for running around after us and helping. Also thanks to Alex for shifting the weights into a more orderly array and giving us a clear access down the side of the mats to the changing rooms.

Arnie rules the roost!

Ok we've been taking the piss on the forums so I thought I'd show you all that I'm not above laughing at myself. I have some really bad pictures that I can't seem to find but I'll keep looking. For now here are a few shots from my past,


Bob Jones, founder of Zen Do Kai. With me :) and my instructor who hand made the celtic sword being weilded by Bob Jones.


Me taking a fall for the cause. My instructor doing his 5th dan grading with me as his partner/opponent.


Old school photo. Zen Do kai, 5 generations. Bob Jones founder, Paul Jeffries NZ founder, Bret Kimmins NZ head instructor, Me and My student, Bernie.


Zen Do Kai founder and Me just after "loosing" the hair


Some of the first attempts at ground work. Note the Black Belt, bad technique and the thing you cant see, a pony tail.


Don't mess with me man, I ain't affraid to wear boofy yellow costumes in public!!


See boofy yellow costume in public, and if you look closely to my right (your left) Theres Ian from GSW.


Now we're getting there. Me and Ko in our early shoot days. Look no hair, Still got the damn Black Belt on though.