This arvo we drilled the commando walk, in an effort to improve our cutting armbars from sidecontrol. From there we also drilled the counter to if your opponent tries to roll you over as you setup the cutting armbar. After that we just rolled rounds focussing on gettign the finish.

This morning we did a few warm up rounds, wrestling at a slower pace, the theme here was to observe and study what our partner was doing, so we can get a better understanding of what we need to counter, when to do it etc. It also gives us a chnace to be more technical, ensuring that everything is right, as oopsed to going hell for leather and missing a few important details.

We then fixed a few problems which we observed from the above, this included some specifics on passing the guard and also the cuttign armbar. We then did some rounds of finishing, one partner just goes for there finishes, whilst the other defends, this type of training is now starting to pay dividends as our games are startign to become more intense and focussed on the finish.

Next up we drilled a counter to the basic choke, as our opponent get his choking grips in place, we pull guard, from here we did 2 things:
(1) we broke the grip, placed their arm across our chests, reached around their backs, grapped their lat and swept them to there backs, immediately we took kneeride and finished with the armbar.
(2) we don't bother breaking the grip, we just go to our open guard, and triangle choke our opponent.

We drilled the above to make it a quick reactive and fluid movement.Finally we finished off with a few rounds of elbow-knee.

Today we just rolled some rounds, focussing on using our body as a unit and finishing our opponent once we had achieved the required controls. The emphasis today was to impose our game on our partner and finish them.

We also worked our head to head posture (the gorilla back posture) and looking to take our partner down from our knees, pass his guard, using the rigan pass and finishing with the basic armbar. We aso repped out 50 snap armbars so we can get a good feeling for the technique befotre we add it into our games.

A late afternoon session today, due to a busy day at the office, today we rolled a few rounds and then worked on some specific stuff. Firstly we drilled the counter to the sidemount, following up with a choke from the guard, secondly we drilled the sidecontrol escape when our opponent has the underhook and the crossface grip, firstly we work to get our escape posture with the hands, then we create some space and then straight into the underhook escape, we did rounds of this to build the reaction. We then worked it in sparring to get it going. Finally we looked at how the lockdown worked in terms of mechanics in preperatino for next weeks sessions.

Hi All

There has been a few enquires re the daytime training, so heres the deal. We generally train Monday, Wednesday and Friday at the club in our lunch hours, or when we can find a mutually benefical time, lately we have also hit the matt on monday and wednesday mornings (6:30am). Everyone that is a GSW memeber is welcome to train, its basically a 30-40min intense session of work (drilling and rollin) to make our wrestling better, we don't cover any flashy moves, u can learn that from Geoff and Dion in the night classes.

If you want to train you need to pay Jill and Chris $20 a month for the use of the club during the day, and you need to buy me a pack of nappies each week for my expert tuition !.

If anyone is interested then talk to shano or jase at class or send me a message via the forum.

ko

More rollin, this time lookin to incorporate the rigan rock chair into our games, we then spent some time working an armdrag combination, basically get the armdrag, then we can:
(1) Sweep and go into an armbar from sidecontrol, or finish with a triangle from sidecontrol.
(2) Use our reverse hook and sweep to sidecontrol and finish as above
(3) Go to the back and finish with a rear naked choke.

Finished off with another round of rollin.

This morning we rolled once again focussing on the escapes, our elbow-knee defence, pillow defence,armtracing and also head and armpit pushes. From there we worked the Rigan "rock chair" setting up a sweep and a legbar from our open half guards. We then spent a bit of time studying the foot in bicep guard, focussing on maintaining a tight control on the arm and making sure our opponents shoulder line is well tilted. We then worked a few rounds of playing guard with the foot in the bicep control. We finished off the session by drilling our favourite choke from our guards.

We rolled some more rounds, focussing on the aspects covered in the morning session. We then spent some time working on the knee-thru guard pass, getting our base, posture and body positioning correct. Finally we worked a counter to the reverse spinning choke before the lunch bell rang and we had to head back to our offices.

MMA class, 14 on the mat
I arrived late after being held up by Wellingotns Santa Parade. When I arrived Dion had kicked of with some striking drills so I let him run through to the end of the set. I then took the class in a slightly different direction. After a scuffle involving some of our guys in the weekend I decided to cover a simple standing rear naked choke.

The emphasis was simply getting behind the guy and off balancing him enough to start him stumbling backwards. From there we had several options including, straight away choking him out. Dropping him directly on the ground / running him backwards out of the area or taking him down and applying the RNC.

BJJ Fundamentals 24 on the mat.
Started with the basic circuit and it quickly became apparent that we needed to spend some time tiding up the loose ends. From there I set everyone to doing their syllabus stuff. As always many people took the time to do anything but what they were supposed to. So from now on syllabus stuff will be done on a stripe by stripe basis rather than allowing everyone to make their own way through what they need to know.

Could the wind get any worse ?. This morning we rolled some more rounds, firstly focussing on escapes as we always do, in between rounds we repped out 10 shoots on the heavy bag, focussing on maintaining our posture, as The Rev outlined in his seminar, we also focussed on closing the distance as quickly as possible. Next up we did rounds of elbow-knee defence, this time also using it in our open guards. We finished up by doing a little guntlet, one person would take open guard, another would attempt to pass there guard, the defending person would then work the elbow-knee defence, and arm-trackingt o stop the pass, finally we would take the arm across our body, push on the armpit to either turn them over or setup a legbar, this was repeated 10 times for every person...then a quick shower, wip on the suit and go to work for a well deserved rest !!

John Will is returning to New Zealand for a group of seminars this month. He will start in Auckland with Michael Fooks Shinryukan Aikido crew before moving to Michael Gent's Ninjas. The next day John will spend with Glen Tarrant and the Kiaido Ryu group before heading down to Hamilton for a session at Paula Ludwicki and Ian Waite's school.

John is then headed for Napier and a session with Shayne Cox at Twin City Martial Arts before moving to Wellington where he will spend Wednesday morning at the RNZPC teach DT's to the PT instructors. GSW will host John later that night at the MVD. Before John heads down to Geoff Aitken in Christchurch where he will finish his seminar circuit for another year.

Don't forget. John Will @ GSW Wed 30th November 2005 8pm sharp! See you all there

What a fantastic turnout for The Rev's seminar. John Jensen teaches Kids Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Adults Mixed Martial Arts classes at Dominance Jiu Jitsu in Richmond Melbourne and we were extremely luck to be able to host him for a seminar at GSW last Sunday.

John has a blog (reverendjohn.blogspot.com)where his posts his thoughts on life, training and the church, it's through this blog that I got to know John a little better and decided to bring him over for a session. I had previously seen him on Jeremy Takody's Masters Of Grappling DVD http://www.blackbeltdigitalvideo.com/doing a small segment on leg locks. I liked what he was doing and the way he explained it all. Since then he has worked with Jeremy to produce a set of DVD's called "Forbidden Locks"

The Rev arrived in Wellington with his lovely wife on Friday morning at about 1am and I took them to their hotel. Then picked up the rev at 9am for a private lesson with on of the GSW crew who couldn't make the seminar. From there we pretty much allowed John and his wife free reign to do whatever they liked and rove our city and countryside for a couple of days. You can read more about what they did on Johns blog.

Sunday morning due to a slight communication breakdown The Rev had already left the hotel when I turned up to pick him up... So I headed to the club where he was waiting outside sitting in the sun. :) John took 2 private lessons both covered takedowns and MMA style grappling. We then had a short break and a quick bite before getting into the seminar.

As always with events at GSW the mat was packed.. There were over 30 on the mat for Johns session with people coming from, Palmerston North, New Plymouth and Auckland. It was really cool to have a couple of the Gracie Barra New Plymouth guys on the mat and also Hamish from Infinite MMA as well.

After introducing himself and giving us a bit of his background The Rev covered a set of takedowns to begin the session. Then we moved into several Guard drills and techniques and finished with his trademark foot locks. The session went for just over 3 hours and everyone had worked hard by the end of it. A great set of skills and drills and The Rev was thorough and thoughtful in his delivery, allowing everyone plenty of time to get a grip of what was being covered.

I was extremely pleased with the turnout, especially considering we have John Will at the club in a couple of weeks. I was also glad I got to spend some time with The Rev and his wife. They're great people and will be lifelong friends, of that I have no doubt. I hope they will do as they said and bring their girls back with them for a holiday soon.

Thanks to everyone who made it to the mat for the day and thanks to John "The Rev" Jensen for sharing his passion for grappling with us at GSW.

Pictures from the session can be found here>>

Only the dedicated trained today, the day was far to nice to be inside, however those that trained were well rewarded, today we mainly just rolled firstly we rolled a few rounds focussing on finishing with the snap armbar, this worked well as it allows us to really just focus on any opportunity we had to slap it on. Next we rolled some more, but this time focussing on our grips, what grips do we need, why do we need them, if we don't have them how do we get them, if our opponent has his grips, then how do we get rid of it etc etc etc....we finished off by rollin with the emphasis of getting our required grips and finishing our opponent.

Today we warmed up by rolling some rounds, once again focussing on the escape, we then rolled some more rounds, focussing on working our defensive skills when we were required to and then working at "splitting" our opponents defence when we were on the offensive. We concluded by drilling a guard choke and what to do if our opponent continues to pass, we finished off by examining the figure four armlock from the half guard position.

We hit the mat this morning at 6:30am,( yes we are mad !). Anyway we kicked off by doing some rounds once again focussing on escapes, this sort of training assumes that you know the mechanics of the escapes, so we can focus on timing and identifying the "critical moment" (see John Wills blogg for more on that concept). From there we did rounds of arm-tracking to defend as our opponent passes our guard, we then added in the use of our legs, finishing up with a sweep or replacing them into our guards, where we can finish our opponent. Next up we worked some rounds of elbow-knee, the idea here is that one partner basically rolls with you attempting to get a position, the other partner just defends using the elbow-knee, the idea is that u have your elbow-knee defence organised its actually very difficult for your opponent to cement a position on you, hence they its harder to sub you. Next we did some quick drilling, 10 passes, on the 1oth one we foccused on what each limb was doing, as John tells us to do everytime he comes. We finished up doing some rounds of defending the guard pass, reversing the situation and finishing or just defending the pass and finishing our opponent.

With "The Rev" here in town for a Seminar on Sunday, there will be no classes at GSW tomorrow (Sunday 13th) afternoon.

So no MMA, BJJ or women's only classes tomorrow. I hope to see everyone there for the seminar at 12 noon.

I was lucky enough to see Steve in an internet cafe yesterday, he said he's pretty busy with his show and stuff but may have some spare time to train on friday. He has Jonny's number so will call him if he can train. Jonny will give me a call if he hears anything and i will post it, so whoever is around can get a chanace to get on the matt. In the meantime....we sit and wait

Ko

Fighting for the underhook. (From the Ko archives) Number 3 is apparently out of shot .. Reffing

My brain couldn't comprehend the information that my eyes were sending it.
It looked like Steve but there was no way in hell it was him! How could it be? He's in the USA, and even if he wasn't then why was he here and how did he find us?




Well it was him and he is here and those that were on the mat will be talking about it for a very looong time. Steve Silva is in the house and will grace us with his presence again this week.



He is performing and running dance workshops while he is in Wellington and he will appear on morning TV on Wed 09th Nov, look out for him. Now don't miss class this week!



Steve (sugar pop) was on goodmorning today. Pretty cool segment..






And don't forget The Rev Seminar Sunday 12noon!!

Geoff has asked me to post what we get up to in the daytime sessions, so i will attempt to blogg after each session. Most of us that train in the day do so in our lunch hour, so the sessions have tended to be short and sharp as we have limited time.

Today we kicked off by rolling a few rounds and focussing on our escapes, we do this each and every session to build up our escape skills and to develop a sense of timing. We then drilled some switches from kneeride, and worked our choking combination. Today we added some depth to our choking combination by switching to the otherside when our opponents attempts to escape and then setting the same choke from the otherside. Seemed to worked well.

We also spent a small amout of time drilling the arm-track defense to sidecontrol, as a means to improving our guards.

We finished off with a few rounds where one partner focusses on getting a sub from any position, whilst the other partner just defends and escapes.

Ko