Sub Grappling on Thursday was pretty poor, I take full responsibility for this and hopefully it can be rectified over the next few weeks. Starting Sunday I'll open the session up to anyone who wants to stay on after the 6pm Fundamentals class and do some rolling.

The class will still be Submission Grappling but for a couple of sessions it'll be more of an open mat while we encourage more people to attend. Thursday saw only 6 on the mat and everyone quickly tired of it and in the end only Johnny and Miguel were left to battle it out. (With Kat sitting watching in disgust)

Fundamentals had about 25 in the class including several new people.

We started with hip out and moved into basic sidecontrol escapes. Starting with Hip escape bringing our knee through controlling their right arm and left leg and performing a lift and roll sweep.

We then did the basic hip out and regain guard. Then we moved onto Underhook escape to our knees. And as a basic transition from the top it to take the head in a switch base headlock control, we did the rolling headlock escape as well.

Finally we finished off by starting with our opponent passing our guard as we obtain the underhook and pillow defence, allowing us to hip down and go out the back to sideback control to finish out the class.

Ok last one for the day. :)

I recently signed up for JJM's online training.

OMG best $24.99 us I have ever invested! I buy a lot of instructional DVDs and in one month I have from that site more than enough stuff to fill 6 DVD's. There are almost 200 clips on moves and counters and general BJJ tips and advice.

There is an interactive forum and Jean Jacques makes video clips to answer questions posted by memebers. Now I don't know how long JJM is going to be able to continue to answer questions like this because with the rate the site is growing there will be far too much going on I'm sure.

As a BJJ Brown Belt I can tell you that some of the stuff is gold. JJM's teaching style and attention to detail is very cool. I have shown a few of the moves to my guys and instantly changed they way the deal with positions and even changed the way they grapple.

So hop on over and sign up and get a jump on the competition.

JJM's online training.

Ok here you go, here's a couple of samples direct from the program for you.:
Passing open guard
Passing guard to armlock
Breaking closed guard

I'm surprised with the number of martial arts schools that claim to teach Police groups or have taught the Police at one time or another. If you look at it in that light then John Will is just another one in the multitudes of Martial Artists who has taught Police and Armed forces at one time or another.

Well personally I don't look at it that way. I have had the pleasure of being on site when John works with the staff and officers on the RNZPC and I can say without a doubt they would not continue to use his services if he was not contributing to the upskilling of the programs.

I have seen the police training of old and I have seen the things John has helped them implement and I can safely say that the recruits of this new administration are getting the best training and skills of any intake in the last 10 years.


John was again at the facility teaching for a full day. Eight 50 min sessions through the day. And it was content rich and cutting edge. The course was extremely well received by everyone and as always was standing room only, with special groups flying in especially to do the course so as not to miss what John has to offer.


The course was essentially John's new Radix Training package that he has taught throughout Australia to Armed forces and Police as well as the elite trainers at the Quantico base in the US. Cutting edge!

I once again had the pleasure of traveling to Auckland to do a couple of seminars with the Ground Control crew in Howick. They hosted John Will for Saturday and ran two 3 hour sessions on the day.

The morning session was for Mike Fooks and his crew and covered basic concepts in BJJ including open guard skills which lead onto several submissions from the foot in bicep position. John showed ways of dealing with several different reactions from our opponent. Including Triangle if they don't do anything and moving into a couple of second level standing sweeps. Leg reap and hook sweep, depending which foot they have in range to grab. John also covered general concepts of open guard sweeps and motion.

We then moved onto Standing Guard sweep and a basic Half guard pass. Essentially covering off the last escapes in the blue belt syllabus. We then adjourned for lunch for 1 hour.

The second session was directed at Glen Tarrants crew and covered some very cool armbars from side back control. Some of the armbars were quite advanced and had everyone thinking hard about what each limb was supposed to be doing to contribute to the move. Most of the moves from this session were taken directly from John and Dave's DVD "Mastering Arm Bars".

All in all a fantastic day, one that culminated in John awarding Mike Fooks with his Blue Belt. Thanks to the Ground Control crew for your hospitality and for allowing me to join in your sessions.

Ok so I've been set up big time....
With the new image that Post Haste have adopted, I grabbed a new Toyota Hiace.



So I'm pretty chuffed with how the van turned out and I know it's the best looking van in the Wellington fleet and possibly the best looking Post Haste van in NZ. So when they asked me to do some publicity shots I was very happy.

So I polished the van and on the appointed day I went along to the Photographer ready for some action. Well it turned out they didn't want the van! They just wanted the only female courier and me to pose for the shots.

Gutted!!

So for your humor here are some of the shots taken and the final brochure. Enjoy!

Seminar content.:

Single leg stack guard pass.

Partner uses a "wiper" motion to roll the hips so we take the other leg. (drill)

We get the pass by switching our hips to switch base on their hips or running round to front control or onto sidecontrol with cross face.

They defend by blocking our hip, so we run the flag pole for a foot lock

They defend by blocking our hip, so we run the flag pole and step through for the knee bar.

They defend by blocking our hip, so we run the flag pole, miss their leg so we sprawl to sidecontrol taking the defending arm away.

From head to head sprawl. (A result of escaping side control to our knees.)

An answer for every hand position they can use.

Round our torso, standard sit out escape.

Underhook from the front. Claim the elbow and sit out to the front 45, spin back to the front.

Hand under the chin (going for Anaconda?) Instant Action. As you feel the hand touch your ear, look into the elbow and slide your body to the right while bringing your right knee across in front of their knees to touch their left knee.

Their response - pull the arm back: We punch our left arm across their middle, trapping they right arm in our elbow. As they try to free their arm we can apply an arm drag and going to our knees, secure side back control.

5 to 6 pm Womens class
6 to 7 pm BJJ Fundamentals
7 to 8 pm MMA

Here's a run down of the fundamentals class for the 2nd April:

Another packed class, probably 30 or so, kicked off with some hip outs, before getting into some specific counters from cross face sidecontrol. Geoff then spent the remainder of the class focussing on the caught on your back in sidecontrol situation. The first escape and reversal was to create space with the forearm and slide your knee across yr opponents belly, with your far arm grab their far elbow and hug it to your body, effectively blocking that side, with the other hand reach down and grab the leg, from there we use the knee across the belly to create the leverage as we lift the opponets leg up and sweep him over his blocked arm, we then come up into a knee ride and finish with the armbar.

The second variaition was a counter to when they block your leg across their belly by pushing with their hand, in this scenario we rolled to our side, sat up and setup the figure 4, we then had a couple of options, one was to go for the finish, or if they raise their base then we blocked their pass with our left leg before going to half guard and rolling over to a top control position where we finished again with ther armbar.

Finally to finish we worked that combination over and over again before culminating with a few mat jokes.