Monday 15^th August 2005

BJJ, 24 in the class tonight, which is huge for a Monday. Tonight we warmed up with some lite rolling, then played a few rounds of pass or sweep and finished the night grappling.

Wednesday 17^th August 2005

BJJ 21 in the class tonight. We started with lite rolling then played pass or sweep. From there I covered off some ideas from guard and addressed some of the problems I’d seen during the session.

Taught basic sitting roll over sweep from closed guard. Now that everyone is getting their grips straight away there is a lot more effort in posturing by our opponent. So when they finally gain posture more often than not they over balance for a split second and this sweep is perfect to help us capitalize on their mistake.

From there if we stuff it up and they post out their hand, we shoot our body around to the right and trap the left arm with our left over their shoulder. From there we transition into a figure four from guard.

Then we covered a couple of techniques for when our opponent completely disengages from our guard. Firstly we sit up and post on our right hand, then scoot in and sit on their foot. Wrap our left arm around their right leg and roll back. As our opponent tries to bring their weight to bare by knee riding our chest, we shrug our shoulder and redirect their knee to the mat and escape out to their back.

From there we add several variations, if our partner turns to follow us (because we have slipped out to the side of their knee) we shoot our left hand behinds their right leg and around in front of their left knee, to trip them up.

Thursday Fundamentals 18^th August 2005

27 on the mat tonight. Once again we really didn’t do any Fundamentals but covered some stuff that many people were having trouble with over the week. Started with the sitting rollover sweep again just so everyone got a second shot at it.

Then we covered some simple stuff from each position. From side control, using basic skills to hold our opponent down and control them with our weight allowing us to use our hands to submit them.

From mount, allowing our opponent to reach for our arms to attempt the bridging escape. When they move their elbow to reach for our arm we shoot our knee into the gap and encourage them to turn on their side so we can set up an armbar or choke.

Finished with Thursday night Pizza!! Straight from Hell. Thanks to Dion and Melissa for getting some beer for those that wanted it. :) They dissapeared pretty quickly.

Sunday 21^st August 2005 MMA class. Day of UFC 54 and still we had 15 on the mat. J

Today we did a lot of work from the clinch. Starting with some basic pummeling from the clinch. Each partner has one underhook on their opponent and tries to switch to two underhooks. So the drill continues with each side swapping underhooks until one secures a double underhook.

From there we worked the clinch with our right hand behind our opponents neck and our head driving into the opposite side of their neck. With our left hand we controlled their right wrist and pinned it to their body. From their we did the following techniques.

• When our opponent raises their right arm to try and break our grip, we take the opportunity to perform a duck-under go-behind and secure the clinch from the back.
• If they hold their arm close to their body so we can’t duck under, then we simply push their arm to our right and slid past to secure the back.
• If we have a little space between their body and arm, we shift our right grip to their right bicep/elbow and perform an arm-drag to go-behind and secure the back. Remember to use the head to control our opponent when we shift grips or they will turn towards us and defeat our attempt.
• Finally if our opponent secures an underhook on our left arm we need to shift our stance slightly to the left and pummel for the underhook. From there we raise our arm high and use our shoulder to lift their arm out of the way. We then duck-under and secure the back.

We finished the class with everyone working the above techniques against a resisting opponent and then added to it by starting from the pummel for double underhooks.

Sunday 21^st August 2005 BJJ Fundamentals. 22 on the mat.

Started with the basic sweep speed drill. The everyone worked through their next syllabus stuff. Firstly going through slowly to cement the techniques then ripping through as speed drill.