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)