Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (& other) ramblings BJJ NZ GSW Wellington

GSW Martial Arts Wellington BJJ Black Belt

2008-01-01T16:13:00.001+13:00

Sorry all not a lot of time to post too much info but I just have to give a quick update. John's seminar was fantastic, unfortunatly I'm still dealing with Kidney stones and was unable to get on the mat. John covered the following points in the seminar

4 Omopalata drills
Get the elbow
Keep the elbow
From mount via reverse side mount (with bonus sweep)
From sidecontrol also via reverse side mount but finishing on the other side

4 Arm triangle choke (or head arm choke) setups/drills
From crossface
From sidecontrol
From head to head
From underneath

Before the seminar got under way we took the opportunity to promote a few of the GSW crew.

Congrats to new Purple Belts Jonny Bares and Jason Murphy and new Blues Brendan Pfahlert and Cain Harland. Well done boys. At the end of the session John ambushed me and awarded me with my BJJ Black Belt.

I would like to thank everyone for their kind words, emails and comments over the last few days. I'll have to admit that I'm still a bit dumbfounded and it hasn't actually sunk in yet I think. Thursdays class was the same as always but any time I caught a glimpse of the Black Belt it surprised me all over again. I'm sure it will take some time to get used to.

Here is a video of John ambushing me using a chocolate cake as a prop. I've edited my speech from the footage because I waffled like a raving idiot. :)

John Will in Wellington

2007-04-26T10:12:00.001+12:00

John hit Wellington for this round of seminars on Tuesday the 24th of April and immediately headed to the RNZPC in Porirua for his session with the PT staff based at the college. This session was special as it focused more on training methodologies and training the trainer rather than specific techniques.

The other milestone tied to this session is that in the next couple of months the new training package for all Police recruits with be put into action. The package is 2 years work by dedicated PT staff and is the culmination of the skill sets and techniques that John has passed onto the trainers over the last few years. The end result is that our new police will be better trained and more prepared that ever before.

After a gruelling 5 hour session we headed out for a bite to eat at Monsoon Poon (love u long time) where John consumed 4 lemon lime and bitters and enough beef Rendang to feed a small village. Then it was home for some much needed rest and relaxation. Wednesday morning was spent in preparation for the night seminar at GSW. Due to expected high numbers we added extra mat space to the floor and made sure all was ready before hitting Starbucks to test John’s iChat configuration so he could catch up with home and check in with the family.

We then spent some time at Mr Bun a local and international favourite before catching “Pathfinder” at the gold lounge (don’t bother it was bad) Then it was back home to finalise the preparations for the nights session. 7pm kick off at GSW saw 40 people on the mat to soak in the information that John had to offer. Before getting into the session John took the opportunity to promote several long term students. Due to injury and off the mat time some of the new Blues are actually some of my longest serving members of GSW. Blues were presented to Brent Lindsay, Carl Rex, Phil Stenhouse and Adrian Smith. Congratulations to the boys on there dedication and commitment to their training and development.

This session focused on more than just techniques and like the RNZPC staff, we were treated to some of the ideas and concepts behind the methodologies as well as plenty of technical data to process. As always the 3 hour session was over in a flash and John was entertaining and informative, with a story and anecdote for every position and situation that cropped up during the night. I would like to take the opportunity to thank John for his time and patience. I know his life is full on and his work load ever increasing. Thanks.

I trust everyone else had successful and informative sessions and we all look forward to John’s return in August.

Geoff G

New Zealand Will - Machado Nats 2006

2006-12-17T15:34:00.000+13:00

Overall a fantastic day was had by everyone who attended the Will - Machado Nationals in Wellington on the 9th of December. There was a great turnout from all the Will - Machado schools in New Zealand and it was a fantastic opportunity for everyone to come together in a fun friendly competition environment and test their skills.

With proper timekeeping, including a visible timer, seeded draws done before the competition day and one consistent referee running the mat, the day started out very well. After a quick introduction and thank you from competition host, Geoff Grant, acknowledgement was paid to Michael Gent for his contribution to the Will - Machado organisation in New Zealand.

Michael Gent was the first to bring John Will to New Zealand in 1999 and John traveled the rest of the country bringing BJJ seminars to Geoff Grant in Wellington and Geoff Aitken in Christchurch and the rest is history.

With the draws already in place only a few minor adjustments were needed and the day was underway by 9.30am and all finals finished by 2pm with just under 50 competitors working on one mat it was a very smooth day. With the early finish we were able to run both a White Belt and Blue Belt open. With all fights finished by 5pm it really was a full on day.

As with every competition not everything was plain sailing and there were a couple of hiccups with the draws and a small miss-understanding with one of the scores. 2 competitors were injured during the day with one having to make a trip to the hospital with cracked ribs, we wish Hayden a speedy recovery.

So without further ado, I give you the results from the BJJ NZ Will - Machado Nationals December 9th 2006 at GSW Wellington.

White 60-69.9kg
1st: ANTONY DEVER (TCMA)
2nd: Ray Massa (GSW)
3rd: Rhys Hanratty (TCMA)

White 70-79.9kg
1st: Steve Brasell (GSW)
2nd: Wynne Pirini (GSW)
3rd: Gary McLellan (TCMA)

White 80-89.9kg
1st: Carl Rex (GSW)
2nd: Fran Kora (GSW)
3rd: Marty Houghton (GSW)

White 90-99.9kg
1st: Adrian Smith (GSW)
2nd: Andrew Dynan (TCMA)

White 100+
1st: Morgan Wesche (TCMA)
2nd: Gareth Terry (GC)

Womens Division
1st: Diane Skudder (GC)
2nd: Jill Gower (GSW)
3rd: Inger Craven (GC)

Blue Belt Under 70kg
1st: Michael Hourigan (GSW)
2nd: Richard Wood (TCMA)

Blue Belt 80-89.9kg
1st: Daniel Digby (TCMA)
2nd: Gareth Burke (TCMA)
3rd: Andrew Craven (GC)

Blue Belt 90+kg
1st: Hemi Thomas Pou III (GSW)
2nd: Wayne Michael Perry (TCMA)
3rd: Michael Fooks (GC)

Purple Belt
1st: Shayne Cox (TCMA)
2nd: Scott Benson (Academy of Combat)
3rd: Jason Branks (Academy of Combat)

White belt open division
1st: Scott Lyons (GSW)
2nd: Brendan Pfahlert (GSW)
3rd: Adrian Smith (GSW)

Blue Belt Open Division
1st: Hemi Thomas Pou III (GSW)
2nd: Daniel Digby (TCMA)
3rd: Andrew Craven (GC)

Points awarded:
1st place 3 points
2nd place 2 points
3rd place 1 point

Team Results:
GSW: 33 (competitors 17)
TCMA: 24 (competitors 19)
GC: 9 (competitors 6)
Academy: 3 (competitors 3)

Christmas Break

2006-12-17T11:28:00.000+13:00

Ok, it's time for a break and recharge.

Our last class this year will be Thursday the 21st and we will restart on Sunday January the 7th 2007.

If I don't see you before then, have a safe and enjoyable Christmas and try not to RNC any of your relatives.

NAts, John Will, Alex MMA, Xmas do SJJNZ

2006-10-29T22:33:00.000+13:00

Once again I must start with an apology, classes have been full on as has work, so my time for posting on the blog is becoming less and less. Well here is a long overdue update for those who are interested.

SJJ NZ Nats Palmerston North
A couple of weeks ago a team from GSW decided to head to Palmerston for the SJJ Nationals. Only Miguel has participated in these comps before so it was a learning curve for the rest of the crew as the rules are a bit screwy.

The team consisted of, Sacha, Hemi, Miguel, Adrian, Kane, Ben, Ray, Wynne, Jarrod and Carl. Once we got our heads around the rules the day progressed well. Some of the boys had bad draws or just bad fights but there were several highlights. Crazy too out a couple of Blue Belts on his way to 3rd in the under 100 division. Miguel had some epic match's and defeated a Black Belt in his weight division. Wynne had a couple of stunner's, playing a great game to the rules.

Kane, as per usual, turned it on for the comp surprising a couple of his competitors before succumbing himself, Sacha, Ben and Ray were unlucky to be take out early in their divisions after waiting hours for their match's. Surprise of the day was Jarrod who plowed through his competition to take the 100-110kg division on the 110+ division against some monsters. Unfortunately in his second to last fight he suffered a bad injury to his left knee and has been off the mat.

Hemi continued his dominant form by sweeping his division (90-100kg) fighting Crazy in to 3rd place then defeating Adrian to take the win. Adrian, although severely hampered by the rules and unable to use his years of Judo training effectivly, was able to plow through his division, including fighting Munter of the day, before losing to Hemi for 2nd place.

Alex Richardson MMA "Ring Wars" Porirua

Alex had another fight on Saturday the 29th at the Kennel club, run by Rex Redden and Dave Hitchens it was the new incarnation of their successful shows. Relaunched under the name "Ring Wars". Alex faced Simon Dome from Eugene Hynsens school in Paraparaumu. This time I was finally able to attend the event and corner Alex. It was a great night and Alex and Simon put on a good show for the punters. One thing that struck me was the crowd actually seemed to understand some of the action and even appreciate the exchanges on the ground.

I think that change is thanks to Sky and their airing of the Ultimate Fighter series. It really seems to have had a educating effect on the populace. Alex and Simon's fight was a great display with each gaining the upper hand at different points through the fight. Simon came close to finishing Alex with a surprise arm bar, but Alex was able to escape, reverse and secure a choke forcing Simon to tap out.

Alex is now Ring Wars light heavy MMA champ. Congrats big guy. He is also off to Australia next week to fight on a show bearing Mark Hunt's name. This could be a great shot for Alex as there are rumors of Pride scouts being at the show Fingers crossed.

Will Machado BJJ NZ Nationals Dec 9th

We've hosting this years Machado Nats. At the MVD on the 9th of December, most of the information has been nutted out but there is a little bit of fine tuning to do in the next few weeks. All the information can be found at the BJJ NZ site
http://www.bjj.co.nz/news.html
This comp is open to all Will Machado Schools in NZ....

John Will at GSW

John is once again returning to GSW for a seminar session. John will be here on November 22nd from 8pm, cost is $60 for the night and with mat numbers being as they are the place will be packed. See you there!

GSW Christmas Do

2 Days after John's visit we are having our xmas do at the syn bar. Thanks to Phil for jacking up the venue for us. The night will be a great get together for the crew before the madness that is Christmas. So mark Friday November the 24th in your diary. Syn Bar Bond St.

2006-10-25T12:52:00.000+13:00

Sunday Night went to watch Fran play in the band KORA.
Damn they were good!!
Check out the video below and take a look at their other stuff on Myspace.
KORA Myspace
KORA Website

Get this video and more at MySpace.com

Another Funny.

2006-10-23T15:46:00.000+13:00

John Will and David Meyer have been filming some tips and tricks for BJJ and posting them to Google Video for use on John's blog.
I just had a quick look and came across this one.

This is the John Will I know and it clearly shows why he and Dave are such good friends.

Click the Google Video Link to see more of John and Dave

Funniest thing I've seen in a very long time.

2006-09-23T08:09:00.001+12:00

www.quietlibrary.com

Machado Nats Black Belt vid

2006-09-18T18:32:00.000+12:00

BJJ NZ's first "Home Grown" BJJ Black Belt

2006-09-18T11:45:00.000+12:00

On Saturday the 16th of September after a long day of competition at the Will Machado Nationals in Australia, John Will took the opportunity to promote New Zealand's own Geoff Aitken to the rank of Black Belt.

Geoff is the first BJJNZ Black Belt who has done almost all his training in New Zealand and is the first of the main BJJNZ instructors to attain the coveted Black Belt. Well done buddy and we look forward to having you on the mat in Wellington soon.

Results and more information from the competition can be found at the BJJ Australia Site: Click here >>

Alex Richardson MMA fight 3

2006-09-07T06:35:00.000+12:00

Just a quick update the let you know that Alex had another victory in the ring last weekend. At the second "Kiwi King of the square Ring" Alex faced one of Shayne Cox's boys from Napier.

Graeme Gidieon managed to last of whole 40 seconds in the ring against Alex, but was handled and tapped to a Figure four from side control.

Footage will be available in a few weeks via DVD from the promoters.

Is there life after competitive rugby?

2006-08-23T13:21:00.000+12:00

Former Wellington Lions player, Hemi Pou, believes he has found the answer.

When Hemi hung up his boots for the last time, he turned to Surfing to fill the gap in his sporting life. But after some encouragement from his business partner, Reefside Surf Shop owner Sacha Jackson, Hemi tried a new activity that stirred his sporting passion and inspired him to focus his skills in a completely different arena. Martial Arts.

Since his first introduction to the Martial Art of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ), Hemi has been 'hooked'. Joining Sacha at Wellingtons Specialists Grappling School, G.S.W. Hemi quickly picked up the necessary Fundamental skills and began training as many classes as he could possibly fit into a week.

Hemi's passion and dedication for BJJ recently paid dividends when he competed at a national Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Competition held in Auckland. Hemi, along with 5 other teammates from the G.S.W. club, traveled to Auckland to test their mettle against the best the country had to offer.

The result? Well Hemi describes it as the greatest sporting achievement in his life.

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is a Martial Art that is about controlling your opponent with grappling techniques and applying any number of different submissions forcing them to give up or 'Tap Out' and that is exactly what Hemi did. In his weight division, (novice under 95kg), Hemi submitted every opponent he faced, to take the first place trophy.

He then proceeded to repeat that feat in the open weight division. Storming through the competition Hemi again submitted every BJJ exponent that he faced, including, 'Kula', an Auckland competitor who weighed in at a whopping 160kg!!

That bout was a highlight of the day. After a tense 5-minute bout in which neither side was able to score any points, the referee called for extra time. In the dieing seconds of the two minute overtime the fight hit the floor and Hemi was able to gain the top position and secure an Armbar forcing 'Kula' to tap out. At which point the crowd went crazy in appreciation of the epic battle of wills and undoubtedly the day's best match.

Hemi's fellow G.S.W. teammates also held their own in the city of sails.

Michael Hourigan, defeated all in his division to take the under 75kg novice trophy. Jonathan Bares collected the Blue Belt under 75 kg title by defeating several of New Zealand's top Blue Belt competitors. The other members of the team had success as well, with the newest club members Kane Minogue and Scott Lyons both having a great showing in their first BJJ competition. Assistant instructor Dion Burns competed in the Purple Belt division and gave a good display of high-level skill narrowly loosing his bouts.

At the end of day prize-giving G.S.W. had earned 4 Gold Medals and was awarded the 2nd place teams trophy, which is outstanding as the team consisted of only 6 members in a field of 60 competitors.

And the final highlight of the day?

After an outstanding display of skill and prowess on the BJJ mats, Auckland's top ranked Brazilian Jiu Jitsu exponents voted Hemi Pou as most technical fighter of the day.

So Yes the is life after competitive Rugby just ask Hemi Pou, New Zealand Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Champion.

On a side not footage from Hemi's interview with Maori Tv is available:
http://www.gsw.co.nz/images/video/hemi_pou.mpg

Passing of a "Legend"

2006-07-29T17:13:00.000+12:00

Fantasy novelist dies after heart operation

Best-selling fantasy novelist David Gemmell has died, his publishers have said.

He was 57.

He underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery a fortnight ago and appeared to be making a good recovery before his death this morning.

Gemmell wrote 30 novels, starting in 1984 with Legend, a tale of a fortress under siege which has become an heroic fantasy classic and is still in print.

Born in west London in 1948, he was expelled from school for gambling in 1965 and worked as a labourer, driver`s assistant and nightclub bouncer before becoming a journalist and newspaper editor.

In a statement Transworld said: "For many years, David has been acknowledged as a master storyteller, one of the best-known and most highly regarded writers in his field.

"His themes of heroic adventure, leadership, personal heroism and the possibility of redemption for every one of us ring as true today as they did when he first published the novel that was to become a classic of heroic fantasy, Legend."

His most recent books were two historical novels about the siege of Troy, Lord of the Silver Bow and Shield of Thunder.

Larry Finlay, managing director of Transworld, said: "David was writing at the peak of his powers.

"He was a true pleasure to work with. We will sorely miss him, as will his thousands of devoted fans around the world.

"Our thoughts are with his wife Stella and his two children."

Bugger. :(

Alex Richardson

2006-07-20T12:22:00.000+12:00

Damn, just noticed that I haven't even updated Alex's fight result. Sorry Alex.

The result was exactly as we expected.
Alex wins R1: 1.30 tap out to punches from mount.
To view the fight check this page >>

Alex's opponent was a reputable Kickboxer with over 20 fights but very little ground game.

Well done Alex on getting another step closer to you dream. There are several other fighters that Alex is looking at in the near future and hopefully they can prove a little more of a test for Alex.

Well done.

Day Session - Mon 10th July

2006-07-10T14:29:00.000+12:00

Today we rolled and then spent some time working on how to escape sidecontrol when your opponent has you crushed down and flat on your back. Specifically we addressed the first step, which is to get yourself into the right position so that u can star to work and create space, we repped this out and then rolled some more with the focus on escaping that above situation. We also pent sometime working pillow defence and getting our hooks into play sot hat we can go on
the attack again.

Sunday 18 June 2006 BJJ fundamentals and Submission Grappling.

2006-06-19T18:50:00.000+12:00

Sunday was cold and dark and not at all a nice day. So naturally I was expecting a small class, you can imagine my surprise when we ended up with 37 on the mat!

Absolutely no room to move or drill as we normally would. So we had to quickly improvise some in the hole drills to keep everyone involved but not in danger of getting knocked by other people. Fantastic turnout for such a shit day.

Many stayed on for the Gi-less grappling and we ended up with about 20 on the mat rolling. Again far too many to safety roll, but everyone made it through all right.

Thanks to everyone for coming out on such a cold day and hopefully we'll be better prepared for that many again.

Class update.

2006-06-16T10:18:00.000+12:00

Injured my knee on Monday and getting information on whats wrong with it is proving difficult. I actually went to the Dr and even had X-rays done but still no idea whats wrong. So I'm pretty much going to do what I always do, ignore it and carry on as normal. :)

Classes have been fantastic and last night was no exception. There were about 28 people on the mat for Fundamentals and almost 20 stayed behind for the Gi-less class. Alex was on the mat polishing off his game and drilling some fitness stuff in final preparation for this fight on July 1st. in Porirua.

Lasts nights class had a great atmosphere to it and several people commented on it. Things seem to be really coming together on the mat for many of the crew. It's great to hear that sort of feedback and see the dedication of so many people.

Thanks

Last Women's Class

2006-06-12T18:16:00.000+12:00

The last women only class is next Sunday, 18 June.

After that - those who are keen will be joining in the Fundamentals class
if you haven't already.

I'm off to San Francisco soon
I'm sure you all will enjoy your training at GSW!

-Melissa

Open day poster

2006-06-08T18:30:00.000+12:00

Mt Victoria Dojo Open Day!

2006-06-04T09:45:00.000+12:00

Sunday the 11th of June every club training at the MVD will be participating in the open day.
GSW - BJJ
Budokan - Judo
MVD - Kyokushin Karate
and the new yoga lady.

GSW will have an area in the club with information about our Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Submission Grappling training. We will be giving away memberships and gear as well as other incentives to encourage new people to sign up and join GSW.

During the hours of the open day we will be demonstrating Grappling drills and techniques to show people what it is we do at GSW. These will not be flashy prearranged techniques or drills but rather just general grappling and Syllabus techniques.

Anyway, Sunday - 1pm till 3.30pm Demos are 15mins only. If you have friends or family who have previously expressed an interest then bring them down, get them on the mat and show them what we do.

13:00 BJJ
13:15 Kyokushin
13:30 Fight Gym Fitness
13:45 Judo
14:00 Yoga
14:15 BJJ
14:30 Kyokushin
14:45 Judo
15:00 Yoga
15:30 Close

Daytime Training - Wednesday 31 May

2006-05-31T13:41:00.000+12:00

Today we warmed up with the pummeling drill before carrying on with improving our positional controls, focussing on that single control that needed to pin our opponent to the mat, if we can pinpoint exactly whats required we can then free up our other resources to submit our opponent. We also spent sometime dealing with some common reactions from our opponent. We then looked at how to deal with passing our opponents guard once they have established their grips, once again we focussed on using what resources we have left to pass.

Daytime Training - Monday 29th May

2006-05-30T15:41:00.000+12:00

Today we continued on from last week session and we continued to work on ways to improve our positional control by being "soggy", we took it one step further and looked to capitalise on it by setting up some basic submissions. We also looked at some of our opponents common reactions when trapped underneath and how to take advantage of them by simply changing the angle and using our body weight to manipulate their limb to where we want it. If we can have these mini plans in place and well drilled we can really improve our control and dominance over our opponent. We also spent a small amout of time working on our guard passing.

Wednesday 24th May - Day Training

2006-05-24T16:53:00.000+12:00

Today we rolled with the emphasis on improving a couple of points with our games, the first was to keep your back off the mat when working your guard or generally when underneath, by not having our backs flat on the mat improves our positional control. Secondly we worked on being "soggy" when on top of our opponent and imposing our weight on them, we finished off by drilling some omoplatas from the guard.

Thursday 18th May New class times

2006-05-18T06:25:00.000+12:00

Don't forget tonights classes are switched around.
BJJ Fundamentals is now at 7pm followed by Gi-laess grappling at 8pm.

8pm is an open mat where you can roll or work through some techs but please make way for the grapplers! :)

See you at 7!

The New Sunday BJJ and Sub Grappling times

2006-05-01T12:20:00.000+12:00

Well Sunday was my first look at the new time slot for the BJJ and Sub Grappling classes. Last week I was in Auckland following John around and going to Pukekohe. Thanks to Dion for running last weeks sessions.

This week I made the 7pm slot more of an open mat session that a Gi less class. 4 pairs of people did some Gi grappling for about 20 mins but apart from them everyone else rolled no Gi.

6-7pm BJJ Fundamentals. Great to see that the time change from 4pm has not affected the class size or enthusiasm. There were 31 of us on the mat and it was a pretty tight squeeze. We started with a quick warm up including hip outs and 3 person hip escape drills. Then we covered the guard drill. Escape Sidecontrol to Guard then our partner passes.

From there we moved into the Basic circuit. I went through several pieces of it bit by bit to try and instill an understanding of all the fine points but several pairs still rushed through in a hap hazard way. We did the basic armbar from guard drill that John showed us at the seminar then quickly covered Triangle. Both we designed to show what can happen if we leave one arm in when passing their guard.

In Auckland John taught a basic armbar form side control but did it as if we were all black Belt perfectionists. Tiny little pieces each as good as we could possibly do. Great way to get every little bit of a technique 100% correct. Something I will be trying in future classes.

Sub Grappling. As I said it was a more open mat to try and encourage people to stay and roll. As we were already there it made sense to stay and roll while we had the opportunity. Well I must say it was a fantastic success. 22 on the mat for Sub Grappling is fantastic. A couple of the newer guys stayed and rolled as well, giving them an insight to what they're in for when they join the main class.

The down side is that now I wonder if we need to reverse the time slots for Thursday? Going to BJJ at 7pm and Sub Grappling at 8pm? Hmmm?

Sub Grappling and Fundamentals my ass.

2006-04-28T19:09:00.000+12:00

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.

Jean Jacques Machado online training

2006-04-28T17:01:00.000+12:00

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

RNZPC

2006-04-28T16:27:00.000+12:00

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!

John Will Seminars NZ

2006-04-28T16:16:00.000+12:00

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.

Some humor re Post Haste

2006-04-28T15:34:00.000+12:00

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!

Makeup?!?! Must have polished my head to well?

Now where did I leave that parcel?

Final casual "just look at the camera and smile" photo.

The end result. To be used to encourage people to become Couriers.. Bwhahahahaha

John Will Seminar GSW April 2006

2006-04-28T15:33:00.000+12:00

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.

Reminder of new Sunday class times starting today

2006-04-23T14:19:00.000+12:00

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

Fundamentals My Ass - 2nd April

2006-04-03T15:49:00.000+12:00

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.

Training update

2006-03-20T12:33:00.000+12:00

Sat Morning Session

We managed to get in a sat morning session, we rolled a few rounds with the focus on timing and movement, we then did a few rounds at a slower pace concentrating on reading our opponents movements. We then did some work ont he underhook defence and using your whole body in the movement as opposed to focussing ont he arm. We then did rounds of allowing our opponent to pass our guards but in the process we worked our way towards the underhook, the tidea here was to learn the timing. We then drilled a simple combo, whee we use the underhook escape to move to backcontrol, using the gable grip, we then finished our opponent with a rear naked. We finished off by drilling a few submissions

Friday Afternoon Session

This afternoon we just rolled and worked on improving our knee ride controls, we also focussed on using knee ride in both attack and defence aswell as using the pressure of the position to attack the opponets arms and legs and neck. The whole idea of the session was to concentrate on improving knee ride and its application.

Monday Arvo Training

2006-03-14T09:17:00.000+13:00

Apologies to all blogg readers, for some reason the last few weeks have been hectic and the ramblings of the day time sessions have not been posted, plus we have had a few injury woes in between.

On monday we rolled with the focuss on achieving our goal, whatever it is, we focussed on braking a certain move down into a number of smaller goals, once a smaller goal is reached we moved onto the next part of the move, if we could not achieve our goal then it meant that our opponent was giving us a problem that needed to be fixed first, this type of thinking and process can be applied to any part of ones game,a nd it priovides a good framework to really analyse what your doing and why things are not going to plan.

Thurs 2 March

2006-03-03T11:03:00.000+13:00

Geoff back on the mat and celebrated with great classes.

MMA class took a business as usual approach. Low numbers, so just rolling, rolling, rolling, with Geoff offering advice on working the half guard from underneath.

FMA class followed on from Sunday's class which had looked at the three basic escapes from side control: hip-out to take half guard, guard, or go to knees.
Class began with top player working side control, adjusting position to keep control of an actively moving partner. This was then extended to work the escapes from Sunday, switching each time.

Next we took a look at the underhook. - remember, underhook is your friend! - and shrimping down as the underhook is elevated; turning to our knees we escape to side-back control leaving partner in turtle position. This was quickly followed with the counter: from turtle, we snag the opponents arm under our bicep, straighten leg and roll, grabbing knees and switching base back to side control. Putting this into a circuit drill, we repped it out for high numbers: side control, escape, turtle, roll, side control.

We then used the roll from turtle as a set up for two cross-face holds. Firstly, rolling from turtle we land with our base switched to rear. Keeping our hips low, top player backs up, switches base and walks feet around to top control and continues to side control on the other side. As top player passes through top control, s/he takes a neck control trapping bottom players arm across the body in cross-face side control. Other hand secures the hips rolling player flat.

Secondly, from turtle rollout, bottom player hips away from top player, who responds by quickly 'swatting the fly', moving to mount, and 'smearing opponents arm across their body to take cross-face mount position.

Good numbers, great techniques, and amazingly, most people picked up the new techniques very quickly! Great class.

Wed 1st March Class

2006-03-02T15:56:00.000+13:00

Jase took class tonight in Geoffs absense, the class was basically an hour of wrestling, doing five minute rounds with a minutes break in between, at the end of class those with questions and problems spent some time getting the solutions from the higher grades.

Thurs 23 February

2006-02-27T18:16:00.000+13:00

Dion standing in for Geoff, while he has a well-earned night off.

Class began with warm-up and some drills including 'shrimping' (hip-outs), reverse shrimping, hooks 'elevator' (open-guard), and 'step-outs' (from turtle position underneath opponent's sprawl)).

The main focus was on working on the 'mount drill' (working through mount-side-top control positions). This was drilled first to perfect the technique with out opponent relatively static, and then drilled again with our opponent actively moving, bridging and defending, but working to our level and not negating the purpose of the exercise.

The purpose of taking and maintaining mount was illustrated with the cross-lapel choke from mount. We used JBW's entry to the choke from the seminar [(i) 'open' gi, (ii) 'zip' the other hand to the floor, (iii) track opponents foot by bringing knee up], then slid up to a high mount with left knee coming up to, and behind opponents shoulder to put us on a slight angle. The choke is finished by taking a deep cross grip with left hand, lowering out hips, putting head to floor, then raising our head up as we bring 'chest through the hole' between our elbows.

The cross-lapel choke from mount is, although we didn't get to cover it in this class, the first element of "Ichi's combo" in which the same side armbar is the submission option as the choke is defended.

Matt then took over the class and showed a variation of entry to the second part of the choke by using a hiplock on the opposing side.

He then finished up class with a few rounds of knee ride to give everyone a much-needed ab workout.

Big numbers in class, including a few new faces. Good to see so many keen players on the mat.

Wed 22 February

2006-02-23T11:11:00.000+13:00

Dion took class, giving Geoff a chance to rest up. A smallish class for a Wednesday but there was some good focussed sparring and good techniques.

Started with light sparring to warm up. The focus was on movement, warming up the brain as well as the body by using the rounds to work through as many positions as possible, and improve the flow of the game.

The majority of the class was spent rolling - based on sparring in 5-min rounds.

This was broken up though by including the following drills:

working the basic closed guard pass (partner increases resistance each time adding to the level of difficulty)
closed guard pass or sweep - very short rounds 30 seconds only to pass the guard (to discourage stalling tactics)
closed guard avoidance - starting from open guard partners must try to pass the open guard without allowing themselves to be drawn into a closed guard situation
Ichi's combo - from mount position used JBW's 'open-zip-knee up' method for initiating the choke. Using the deep collar grip, we slide up towards a high mount but moving towards one corner. Finish with cross-lapel choke or armbar.

The drills were short to keep the focus on sparring. Good class.

Monday Arvo Training

2006-02-13T16:49:00.000+13:00

Today we rolled a few rounds before spending some time drilling two different sidecontrol escapes that allow you to replace the guard when yr opponent has a control of your neck and head. From there we moved onto escaping knee-ride replacing the guard and moving straight into the butterfly sweep. Finally we worked on going to an open guard when our opponent is agressive and foces us back from head to head, from there we moved into the o/hook submissions from the open guard.

Saturday Morning Session

2006-02-12T21:58:00.000+13:00

Today we once again rolled a few rounds focussing on our movement and escapes, before we repped out some submissions, we then spent some time going over the double leg take-down from the knees, and then the Iranian as John calls it. We repped this out and looked at specific times when it should be used in wrestling. The second problem we worked on was escaping side back control, once again we repped this out to build it into our games. To finish off we spent some time drilling the arm-wrap or over-hook control from both open and closed guard, we finished off by working some submissions and sweeps from the o/hook control, specifically we covered the hook sweep from the o/h control, the reverse hooking sweep from the o/h control, the cutting armbar from the o/h control, the regular armbar from the o/h control, the omoplata from the o/h control, the triangle from the o/h control, and finally the basic choke from the o/hook control.

Friday Afternoon Training

2006-02-12T21:54:00.000+13:00

Today we rolled a few rounds focussing on our escapes once again, we then spent sometime doijng rounds of guard training, focussing on maintaining our distance and changing the angles on our partner, we then complimented this by introducing some controls, specifically the arm-wrap, or overhook control.

Wednesday - Daytime training

2006-02-10T12:55:00.000+13:00

Today we kicked off with a few rounds of rollin to warmup, once again focussing on our defensive skills, the whole idea here was that if they cannot control you then they have less confidence in subbing you. Next we spent some time on what to do when your sweep does not work, we focussed on maintaining the hooks and looking to sub or sweep them again depending on how our opponent blocked our original sweep attempt, this actually worked quite well and helped us develop a sense of timing with our guard games, it also added a bit more "depth"From there we moved onto doing rounds of escapes, once again working on our timing, finally we finished off by repping out some submissions.

Saturday Morning Training

2006-02-04T09:34:00.000+13:00

This morning we kicked by rolling a few rounds and focussing on our escapes once again, some improvement from yesterdays session, but we still need to get our "timing" back. From there we moved onto repping out some subs, the focuss here was on adding 10% intensity to the submissoion, to make it even worse for our opponent. We then carried on working on our guard passing, focussing on angles and posture to solve problems. Finally we repped out a few kneeride escapes that took us from escaping the knee-ride and moving to our half guard.

Friday Arvo Session

2006-02-03T17:07:00.000+13:00

Today we kicked off by rollin and focussing on our escapes, it was crap so we have a lot of work to do in the coming weeks. From there we drilled out a sub before hitting some more guard passing stuff. Today we loked at ways of controlling the guard players leg, we then drilled a version of the jump over pass, we then just rolled focussing on the guard pass, over and over again.

Monday Arvo Training

2006-02-02T09:00:00.000+13:00

A late post for Mondays session. We essentially made a committment to improving our guard passing, a high proportion of BJJ is about the Guard and Guard passing, so it makes sense to become very very good at passing the guard. We kicked off by rollin a few rounds to warm up, we then did rounds where one side actively looks to pass the guard whilst the other partner looks to sweep and finish their opponent. It was as hard work as we repeated this over and over again, but some great gains were made for our efforts, we also introduced the notion of changing direction when the guard player blocks your passing attempt, finally we moved into the area of using different pieces of a few different passes to solve the problems that guard players may throw at us.

30/01/2006 Submission grappling

2006-01-30T22:03:00.000+13:00

Ok Made a last minute decision to make the BJJ class a gi-less session. Most of the crew got the message but those that didn't were into it anyway. We had 31 on the mat! Monday is usually a 20-25 session so 31 was huge.

Not a lot of room to move so we had to split into 2 groups and have a turn about session. 5 minute rounds with a round to rest. Add to that the takedowns, some of it got a little hairy. But we came through the session with no injuries and a lot of mat time.

Great session. We'll repeat the AGi-less again on Wed, so be ready!

I know, I know.. So shoot me

2006-01-29T22:24:00.000+13:00

Been far too busy to update this portion of the sprawling site that is GSW, but there you go. I glad Ko has a chance to add bits or this thing would never change.

Anyway, what's been happening?? Training, rolling and more training. The new year has hit the ground running and looks like it'll be a beaut.

Today in the MMA / Sub Grappling class we had 12 which is a big improvement on last week, with several new people stepping onto the mat.

In the BJJ "Fundamentals" class, it was police night! We had some of the new recruit's, some RNZPC staff and a couple of sworn members. Added to this the class was big. So all in all a good day.

We covered figure fours in the BJJ class, applying them from Mount, Guard, Side Control and Top Control. These subs are great as they will work well for both Gi and Giless.

Stay cool see you tomorrow

Wednesday Arvo Training

2006-01-25T15:16:00.000+13:00

Today we kicked off by rolling a few rounds, looking for subs and escapes, we then spent some time setting up the figure 4 armlock from the half guard, we then rolled some more focussing on the timing of our escapes before we spent some time working on our guard passing.

Wednesday - Daytime training

2006-01-18T15:04:00.000+13:00

The weather was crap today but we still managed to get in a good session. We started off by rolling, focussing on the basics, we then introduced the concept of "attack intensity", essentially we turned up the heat when required at specific points of the roll, this concepts was applied to both our escapes and our submissions.

We then did rounds of attack, where one partner just all out attacked, whilst the other partner tries to defend for as long as possible.

We then finished off by repping out the toreanda pass, which is a pass that JJM does in his latest book, we then took it one step further and looked for the underhook or the crossface once the pass was completed and depending on our opponents reaction. Finally we repped out our favourite finish from the pass.

Ko

Monday Arvo Training

2006-01-16T15:19:00.000+13:00

Today we rolled in an attempt to dust off the cobb webs, we also spent some time revising the basics like our grips and keeping our arms close to our bodies, we also spent some time working on the mental side of our grappling game by reviewing the "No" filter, which Geoff posted about last week.

Sunday 15/01/2006 BJJ MMA Submission Grappling

2006-01-15T18:41:00.000+13:00

Submission Grappling / MMA

Good size mat today. A couple of different faces on the mat for a roll, which is really cool. Warm up and then 5 X 10min rounds. Thanks to Crazy for a nice roll. Thanks to Jase of base for the no strikes, woops sorry, session. Nicely placed elbow between the eyes, I'm sure I deserved it. Welcome back D good to have you back on the mat for 2006, also good to see your time off hasn't blunted your attacking style.

BJJ Fundamentals (My ASS!!)

Over 25 on the mat today. Some of the old skool coming out of the woodwork for their first session of the year. While I was catching up with Shano, whos just returned from his honeymoon in Hawaii, everyone just started rolling. So that's how the class went. Hot, sweaty and hard work in the sun. Well done to everyone for making it through the session injury free.

See you all on Monday.

Post Haste re-branding

2006-01-14T19:16:00.000+13:00

Ok so I mentioned this some months ago and its been an ongoing drama for some of the guys since then. Personally I've always said it was a good thing, but the image is now better than the service! I cannot understand how these morons can do their job is such a haphazzard fashion. But enough of that. Here is the new look of Post Haste.

I went ahead and brought a new Toyota Hiace just to be the only one in the fleet and it's paid off as the new van, although seriously ugly, is without doubt the best looking van in the fleet now. The deal that King Toyota in Lower Hutt gave me was outstanding. I purchased an 2002 model off them and the deal sucked. They screwed it up completely and I ended up walking away with out the van. Untill they sorted it out and finalised the purchase.

This time they were unbelevable! They did all the spade work and gave me a fantastic deal on the new van and an amazing trade in on the old van. Here's the old van and the old Post Haste look

I wasn't even thinking of buying a new van but the deal was too good to miss. And now that I've been driving the new Hiace for a while I do not regret the purchase. The new Hiace is all new! And is sooo much better than the models before thats its almost unreal! This van is amazing, I simply cannot express how good the new Hiace is. I love this Van!! :)

Wed 11 and Thursday 12 01 2006

2006-01-14T19:14:00.000+13:00

Wed 11/01/2006 BJJ
Another good turnout for the first week, with 21 on the mat tonight. Decided, after the big effort on Monday, that I’ll push the envelope a bit and see who could hack the pace. So we grappled all night again but running 10 min rounds. Worked very well with no one dieing or breaking anything. Well done everyone good effort!

Thursday 12/01/2006 MMA / Sub Grappling 7pm

This class is more and more heading down the Sub Grappling road, as many of the class have no interest in the MMA aspect of what we do. This means we may need to review exactly where this class is heading and whom it is catering for?

Tonight there were 12 on the mat and again we just rolled the night away with 10 min rounds. Unfortunately during the session Cain popped his knee while attempting to avoid a takedown by Jason. I did see Cain the next day on the street and while he was walking along quite well he thinks itll be a while before he hits the mat again. Get well soon buddy.

BJJ Fundamentals 8pm

Another great turn out capping off a brilliant return to classes. Over 25 on the mat for tonights Fundamentals my ass class. Tonight I covered a couple of things that I had seen people having trouble with during the week.

Started with going over the basic bridging escape from mount. I needed to make sure everyone was award of the things that they need to have in place for this to work properly. Then we moved onto the elbow escape from Mount. Adding this as an alternative to the previous escape.

Finished the session with a drill combining the two escapes to full effect. Starting the bridging escape only to have our opponent counter it, or for us to hash it and loose a key component. Then quickly recognizing the opportunity has gone and changing to the elbow escape. As you become more familiar with this drill you will eventually be able to combine the 2 escapes into a single motion. Thus removing any need for reaction from your opponent.

Switching

2006-01-14T17:54:00.000+13:00

I mentioned this at the end of the class and Id like to post it here for you to read. One of the key things to develop in your grappling is the ability to recognize change. John calls it Snap Shots where you are aware of the progress of the grappling by taking snap shots of any given moment and assessing whats next. As you become more advanced your Snap Shots happen far more frequently.

As an additive to this I believe you need to know when someone has flicked your switch. For example you must know when the limit of you guard has been reached and transition into your next move. If someone has crashed past your guard the last thing you want to do is realize its happened when they have you pinned flat on your back.

If you analyse you guard game and know when your limit has been reached then you can recognize when it’s time to start defending side control or escaping from there. Now I’m certainly not advocating giving up the fight when you feel like you’ve reached you limit, but it’s important that you know where your limit may be, so you don’t miss when that limit has been breached.

Take your snap shots and analyse them in reference to your game. Know when your reaching your limit and adapt accordingly!

BJJ is the gayest sport around

2006-01-14T13:07:00.000+13:00

Got this link posted on our forum and just had to share.

BJJ is the gayest!

Monday Arvo Training

2006-01-11T14:07:00.000+13:00

We kicked off our first daytime session today, rolled a few rounds foccussing on our escapes and movEment, then onto drilling some subs, we then spent sometime rollin some more, this time focussing on our elbow-knee defence, followed by drillin a sweep, we then spent sometime working on the leg-grab rollover sweep and also the John Jensen version which he showed at his seminar last November.

Welcome back to Steve, who has been off after a long injury break.

Monday 09 /01 /2006 BJJ

2006-01-10T12:15:00.000+13:00

First class of the new year and what a great turn out.

Once again I'm left stunned at what a great bunch of totally addicted people you all are. On the first class of the year we had 26 on the mat. Now while that made for some tight grappling space it was really cool to see so many getting back into it so early!

Started with a bit of a bleat about gradings and admin stuff. Not really relevant to you but I wanted everyone to know that I realise that people are starting to slip between the cracks and that I hope to rectify that problem this year. Finished the night by rectifying some of the problems that I had seen in the stripe department. So congrats to those that were awarded another stripe, particularly Crazy who was awarded 2 new stripes to bring him up to the correct level for his skill. Well done.

For the class we started with our 2 fav sweep drill. One partner gets to perform their favorite sweep 2 times before joining the long cue to wait for another go. We then added sweep and sub. This time we perform the sweep then quickly apply a submission form the top. Good to get into the habit of using the sweep for getting not only a reversal to a dominant position but then capitalising on it.

From there we did a few rounds of pass or sweep and then ended the night with some rolling. Had to split everyone into 2 groups to make a bit more room for everyone. I finished the night with a 30 min grapple with Jas. Thanks bud I needed the blow out!!

A couple of points from the class. Take ownership of your game. While I make every effort to assess your skill and direction and offer advise that I think you need, it vital that you also assess you own games. You need to know why things aren't working and find the problems to solve. Or look for ways to improve on what you're doing. That way you can ask relevant questions who's answers have a good chance of sticking in your head. Instead of me offering another piece of advise that you quickly forget. Take ownership!!

Sunday 8th Jan - last day of break

2006-01-08T21:43:00.000+13:00

Training not due to start until Monday, but held an informal session for those BJJ addicts that couldn't wait.

Worked on some techniques that are useful for both the gi and no-gi versions of the game.
(i) Arm-under-body guard pass ;
(ii) Double leg takedown, with ura-nage variation;
(iii) Switched-stance high single leg takedown (a la Marcelo Garcia)

Also worked on movement drills for retaining open guard.

Women's class
Larger class today with some newer members.
Revised the fundamentals of movement including bridging and hip-outs, and application to basic side control escape to guard.
Also worked the side control with both neck and shoulder control variations. Performed top control drill with partner giving mild resistance.

(Now only one more sleep til training officially starts for 2006...)

The Game filter

2006-01-07T11:28:00.000+13:00

Ok, I don't normally do this type of post but I noticed a couple of things during training over the holidays and I'd like to address them here. John has mentioned it before and I've certainly seen it on my mat so this is something that needs to be put down for everyone to read.

As we progress through training there are certain things that get taught in class once then are not repeated for several months. Now this is my mat I'm talking about here, so I can only imagine it gets worse on a mat like Johns or even the Machado's in the US.

John has in fact mentioned something like this in the past. Imagine how much information Rigan Machado knows on BJJ for example, can you imagine if he taught every technique he knew one after the other, how many classes that would cover. Now I'm no Rigan but I can see it happening on my mat already. Something you remember teaching a little while ago is suddenly only being done by one person. And everyone else is really keen to learn this technique and are asking about it..

Suddenly you realize it was taught 6 months ago and only about 10 people from that class are still consistently on the mat. No wonder most people have no idea what the technique is?! So how do we overcome this problem? For most serious stuff it ok because there are usually resources. Eg: the syllabus is in writing so no one will miss the core techniques. But what about the other stuff? The yes / no filter, the switch theory, all those little pointers you've given to specific people to aid the development of their game and ultimately the mat?

I don't know the answer, short of writing down everyone of those things as I remember them and posting them here... So I'll make a start with this:

The Game Filter: (The Yes / No filter)

Essentially this is about focusing your game to the smallest part. When you start to roll in class as a newby there is usually too much to remember and your not at all sure what your supposed to be doing. So your mind is going in 100 different directions at once. After a few sessions you get the hang of it and have a better understanding of where you trying to go and what you're trying to achieve.

That's great, but you mind is now only thinking about 50 things instead of 100. This is where the game filter comes in. When you have a general idea of what's going on in grappling it's important to narrow your view and focus on some aspects. It could be something simple like escaping a certain position, or securing a position or setting up your favorite sub. Anything that you want can be applied to this theory.

So here's an example.:
"Every time I fight Jonny he pins me flat on my back and subs me with an arm bar from side control."

So to over come this using the Game filter I would suggest never getting caught flat on your back!

So next time you roll with Jonny at the front of your mind is that little mantra:
"No! I will not let my back be flat on the mat"
With that thought in the front of your mind you'll find that you no longer get caught on your back, until it becomes part of your game and you don't have to focus on it any more..

John explained this theory and being a filter over a jar with all this BJJ knowledge trying to drive it's way into your jar of skills. This causes a bottleneck and as a result nothing gets through! By placing this filter over the jar and focusing on 1 or 2 things at a time they then have an opportunity to be worked into your game until they drop through!

This theory can be applied to any aspect of your game. And Yes or No can be applied.
"No I will not go flat on my back"
"Yes I will maintain posture in guard"
"No I will not allow anyone to close their guard on me"
"Yes I will keep the mount no matter what they do"

and so on. So next time you hit the mat place something hard against the game filter and focus on it until it drops into your jar!

Good luck

Thursday 05/01/2006

2006-01-07T10:21:00.000+13:00

Thanks to all thoses who made the 2 sessions on Thursday night.

It was a great turn out for this early in the year.
MMA / Sub Grappling had 9 on the mat for the rolling and the BJJ session had 19!

Fantastic numbers and bodes well for the rest of 2006.

There will be no class on Sunday but normal class times will resume on Monday the 9th. See the GSW info page for class times. >>

Grapplers Street Wear online store

2006-01-07T10:14:00.000+13:00

Ok for want of a better name that's what I've gone with.

I've tweaked and fiddled till my eyes are sore, I've tested and upgraded and brought every item in me store 10 times and it all seams to be working ok?

So I've taken the plunge and made it live.....
Hopefully all the kinks have been ironed out and all the payment options will work out ok, I guess there's only one way to find out. :)

Anyway for those that are interested GSW now has a New Zealand Based online store, you can find the store by clicking on the "shop" image in the navigation above or by clicking here >> http://www.secure.gsw.net.nz/catalog/

There are only a few things in there at the moment but I'm expecting some goodies in the next few weeks so have a look and check back later.

Thanks

Geoff

Thursday 05/01/2006

2006-01-05T14:28:00.000+13:00

We'll be running a low key session tonight.
7-8pm Gi-less grappling
8-9pm Gi Grappling

Just rolling and problem solving again, hope you can make it?

Sunday 01/01/2006 Grappling Blow Out

2006-01-01T18:23:00.000+13:00

Big props to those that made the session. Great turn out of complete addicts!!!

Good little 2 hour roll. Everyone on the mat has made significant progress and clearly there is some great game focus come into play over the christmas break.

Really cool to see some of the stuff people were trying and succeeding with today.

Very happy to be caught by some of you today, it's really cool when the things I say and the tips I give, come back to bite me on the arse!! Great stuff.

Sunday 1st Jan 2006

2006-01-01T09:25:00.000+13:00

Happy new year everyone. I hope the excesses of the night weren't too bad. :)

For those in town and interested we're going to have a couple of classes today.

3pm Gi-less and 4 pm Gi

Pretty much just going to roll and solve problems so pop on down if you're keen.

Geoff

The new look grappling.us Update

2005-12-27T10:43:00.000+13:00

* I should get paid for this shit!!! :) Google has grabed the links below and run with them. Many of the keyword sets that I used have given top ten listings and several are number one!!. Some of the information needs to be adjusted and tweaked a bit, which is a bit freaky really considering how high some of these domain extentions have placed with minimal meta tag work.

Some of the best are:

BJJ Teachers

BJJ Curriculum

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Tapes

BJJ DVD

So all in all pretty sucssesful again with google. Anyone got any ideas how to convert this skill into money? :)*

I spent some time working with Dave Meyer yesterday on the new Grappling.us site.

Basically it's had a ground up rebuild and a new more effecent shopping cart added.

www.grappling.us

So if your looking for a grappling BJJ syllabus to add some Brazilian Jiu Jitsu skills to your classes then take a look at the new site and check out what Dave and John Will have to offer.

BJJ Teachers / schools
BJJ video Tapes
BJJ seminars
BJJ schools / clubs
BJJ curriculum syllabus
BJJ classes
BJJ books
BJJ dvd 's tapes video samples
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu books
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu curriculum
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu DVD 's
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu instructors
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Schools
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu seminars
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tapes
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu teachers
Machado Brazilian Jiu Jitsu techniques

Merry Xmas and thanks

2005-12-25T07:48:00.000+13:00

Hello everyone.

Now I know I've been slack on posting and it's been made worse by the fact that Ko has been posting 6 times a week but I promise I'll do better next year. :)

Anyway to the 100's of you that read this blog on a daily basis I would like to wish you all a very merry Christmas and I hope you have a special time with your loved ones.

Classes have officially ceased for 2005 and will start again on Monday the 9th of January 2006. Have a safe holiday season and I hope to see you on the mat again next year.

I want to give special thanks to the boys and girls that train at G.S.W. It's you that make our club such a special place to train and grow. Thanks for backing up my dream with your dedication and enthusiasm.

Look for big things from the G.S.W. crew in 2006 as we consolidate on the gains we made this year and forge ahead with our bold plans next year.

Stay safe

Geoff
G.S.W.

Friday Morning Training

2005-12-23T08:32:00.000+13:00

A fairly low key session today due to Shano's injured hand, we kicked off by practicing the counter to the spinning choke, which was covered in last nights FMA class, we then did some rounds of guard, where the guard player is not allowed to use there hands, very similar to what John Jensen covered in his seminar last month. To finish off our guard work we covered a technique where we go from our long range open guard to our opponents back, we then choke them out with the rear naked. We also covered the omoplata sweep from the long range open guard. We then spent sometime focussing on the guard pass, repping out a version of the bullfighters pass. To finish we covered a version of the armless triangle choke, a very simple finish to slap on from open guard.

All the best to Shano who leaves for sunny Aloha land on boxing day !

Wednesday Morning Training

2005-12-21T10:59:00.000+13:00

This morning we kicked off by rolling rounds of guard, the ideas here is to build an agressive guard game that will either finish or lead to a sweep, we did rounds of this until we were knackered, we then drilled the double leg hook sweep, which is a sweep that i dreamt up whilst doing the rounds of guard training. We then spent some time drilling a sitting half guard sweep that can be used to sweep yr opponent and then obtain yr opponent s back, from there we took the back and finished with the rear-naked as John covered in his last seminar. To finish off we spent sometime fine tuning our switchbase sidecontrols, understanding the role of each limb, our head and our hips, we then executed a simple armbar from that position.

Monday Arvo Training

2005-12-19T15:41:00.000+13:00

A fairly hot afternoon, even hotter at the club, so we just rolled and worked our games looking for the tap, we then worked some of our hook sweeps playing around with the controls focussing on blocking off one side so the sweep becomes easier, also worked on scooting the ass to develop some power for the hook, finally we worked the x-guard again, it was as lame as this morning !...but we will continue with it till it starts to feel good.

Monday Morning Training

2005-12-19T11:28:00.000+13:00

This morning we worked an entry into the x-guard from standing up, it was pretty lame so we will have to continue working this until we become more fluid with the entry. We then did rounds of rollin focussing on our escpes, we then drilled some finishes before rollin some more rounds this time focussing on our defence, as an aside we began to discuss the reverse butterfly sweep as the situation is now cropping up. Finally we drilled some more finishes before rollin a few more rounds, we finished the session off by working our favourite sweep.

I noticed that everyones sidecontrol was about 3 times tighter than usual....good stuff the training is starting to pay dividends !!

women's class update

2005-12-19T08:55:00.000+13:00

There will be no womens class for the next two Sundays (25th Dec, and 1st Jan). The womens class will start again 8th January.

Yesterday there were 7 of us on the mat in the womens class. We had 3 new people that all promise to come back in the new year! We practiced hip-outs, “the butt-scoot walk”, technical stand-up, escape from side control to guard, off balancing your partner in your guard and even finished with the basic arm bar from guard. Then we turned it into a bit of a game, moving around and giving our partners a little resistance. Homework over the holidays is to practice hip-outs and technical stand-ups. See you all on the 8th of January. Happy holidays.

Sunday18 Dec

2005-12-19T08:45:00.000+13:00

MMA
Rev took class today. There were a variety of backgrounds and skill levels present, so class was based around rounds of sparring, with rules by mutual agreement. Some pairs focussed on stand-up, others on submission grappling. Sparring rounds were kept fairly long, to test our cardio.
Still small numbers present though. (Where were the rest of you?)

FMA
Geoff away, so Rev and Mel stepped up to take a great class.

Big numbers as usual for this class. (So why not do MMA also?)
Melissa warmed the class up with various hip-outs and drills to get everyone moving.
Rev then led the class through a few rounds of 'Seek and Destroy'. In this exercise, partners move and defend freely providing low-moderate resistance while we work a variety of submissions. A good chance to work attacks from different positions without the full pressure of sparring.

Next we moved into a variation, where in each round we attack using only a subset of our submission techniques - focussing on, for example, only lapel chokes or only straight armbars; partners still offering some resistance but not fully working their escapes. Was great to see everyone broadening their game by testing their submissions from a variety of transitions and positions. Mel and Rev moved around the class offering suggestions and options for new pathways to access the same submission technique.

We moved on to incorporating this into our game with a few rounds of light sparring, where both players move freely but with moderate resistance so that each gets to work the new submissions practised earlier. At least half the class did this very well, without it degenerating into full-on sparring.

Finally, we finished off with a few minutes of yoga to warm down. A great class with lots of movement, great variety of submissions, and a chance for FMA only students to try an intermediate step in preparation for sparring.

Women's class
Good numbers in class today with three new beginners. Melissa took the class through the fundamentals of escapes (hipouts, bridging), positional exercises including top control drill, and a submission (armbar from guard). Class was rounded off by combining these into a single drill working a hipout to escape from side control to guard and submission by armbar.
Class looks promising for 2006.

Friday Morning Training

2005-12-16T08:13:00.000+13:00

This morning we kept it light as the boys had a hard MMA session last night, we kicked off by working two sideback control escape, one for when yr opponent has his weight on you and the second when they do not have their weight on you, we then rolled as per usual focussing on using thoase escapes, finally we combined the two escapes to form an escape combination, if escape A does not work then we go straight into escape B.

Next we went over an armless triangle choke from guard and we continued to drill the rev choke, before spending some time fixing up the cutting armbar, today we just focussed on killing the head, tightening the grip on the arm and doing the commando walk.

We finished off by doing some rounds of guard training, bascially one person takes an open guard he has to then deal with every situation his partner throws at him, eg the guard player has to do something when the opponent is on a hook, gets off a hook, stands up, moves to the left, moves to the right, postures up, grabs your head, etc etc...idea here was that the guard player has to attack everything his partner throws at him, for the guard passer, although we were training our partners to improve there guards, by rapidly moving up, down, left right, chnaging our grips and posture etc, we were working our agaility and also the basic fundamental movements that are needed to be a good guard passer.

Wednesday Morning Training

2005-12-14T08:38:00.000+13:00

This morning was a good session, we started off by rollin, once again focussing on the timing of our escapes, we do each and every session to improve our defence. We then continued with the pummelling drill, repping out a good 100 on each other, we then spent some time lookin at improving our sidecontrol tightness, we did this by applying the principals of what is each limb doing and how do we add potency to each component, once that was down we then just, pass the guard to sidecontrol, we then expanded the above to pass the guard to sidecontrol and finish.

WAe then spent sometime lookin at the finer points of the pass that everyone was workin and then we looked at some problems that people were having with the cutting armbar, to finish the session we did rounds of pass-sweep or finish, the idea here is that one side wants to pass and obtain sidecontrol with potency, whilst the otherside wants to just finish their oppoent in guard.

Finally we drilled some sprawls, one side came in for the takedown and the otherside sprawled, the idea here was to get used to the sprawl and get a sense of timing before we really start to rep these out in future sessions. The last thing for the day was to drill the basic sidecontrol escape to the knees, once i partner did this we once again sprawled and gettin ready to attack, once again we will be repping these out in future sessions to improve our sprawling skills and also our sidecontrol escape to the knees.

Monday Arvo Training

2005-12-12T14:46:00.000+13:00

This arvo we just rolled looking for the sub as per our games, we also spent some time covering a few methods of making your opponent go to all fours and turtle up, where we will finish them with a choke. To finish off we drilled the Geoff mount escape a few more times, and also covered off a second version of the hook sweep from (1) double underhooks control and (2) the tango death grip.

Monday Morning Training

2005-12-12T08:31:00.000+13:00

A great session to kick off the week, we got started by rollin, once again focussing on the timing of our escapes, from there we drilled the pummeling drill banging out a good 100 reps on each other, we then spent a small amount of time looking at how it improves our controls on the mat. We then drilled our favourite finish before rollin some more, this time one partner was just lookin for a particular finish. Finally we did some work on the mount escape that Geoff covered in sundays 'fundamentals my ass' class, we worked rounds of one partner starting in guard and executing their guard pass, the other side defends the pass, we continue until one partner gets sidecontrol and mounts, as soon as they mount, we execute the Geoff Mount escape and set up our sweep and finish from the double underhooks.

Wednesday Arvo Training

2005-12-07T15:17:00.000+13:00

Today we rolled a few rounds to warm up, but due to the warm weather we were actually sweating like pigs, we then drilled our favourite finish before rolling a few more rounds.

For the remainder of the session we worked on the omoplata, studying the entry from the guard, contolling the arm, using our cutting leg correctly and drilling how to move our body into position, we then rolled a few rounds where one partner just tried to give us problems whilst we looked for the omoplata from our open guard.

We finished off by looking at ways to apply the omoplata from a failed takedown, from the sprawl position, from switchbase sidecontrol, from head to head and finally from the mount.

Tuesday Morning Training

2005-12-06T08:12:00.000+13:00

This morning we all rolled some rounds focussing on escapes, we spent some time fixing up our sideback control escapes, this included conrolling our opponents legs as we roll them over, if we do this then it means that they cannot setup their defence once they hit their backs on the mat, we also focussed on our posting leg, so we cannot be countered by the bridge-rollover sweep, this stuff really emphasises the importance of our fundamentals. Next we drilled some back controls, looking to finish with the good old backchoke. Finally we spent some time working on the double overhook sweep that John Will covered in his seminar last week, we extended the theme by rolling a few rounds where one partner worked their guard, with the focuss bring on ensuring that our opponent never establishes a base, once this is achieved the sweep, or finish came a lot easier.

Monday Arvo Training

2005-12-05T15:04:00.000+13:00

Today it was back to business after a huge week last week. Today we warmed up by wrestling a few rounds before working a choke from the mount, we then worked on clearing out our opponents hand when they attempt to block our choke. From there we wrestled for the remainder of the session, focussing on keeping up the intensity of our attacks. We warmed down by drilling the rear naked choke from the back.

Post Haste Rebranding

2005-12-04T13:06:00.000+13:00

Finally, it's happening. You should start to see the new look Post Hast Vans about this week. Here's what they look like.

GSW Martial Arts Wellington Press Release: December 2005

2005-12-04T13:05:00.000+13:00

Promotions Bring Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Club to the Top.

Geoff Grant, instructor of Wellington’s specialist grappling school, G.S.W, recently became the regions highest ranked Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) instructor.

Wellington November 30th 2005 – The Grappling Specialists Wellington (GSW) recently hosted Australian BJJ legend, John Will. Mr. Will was in New Zealand on a seminar tour teaching at his affiliate schools in Auckland, Hamilton, Napier, Wellington and Christchurch. At a packed session at the GSW club in Wellington Mr. Will took the opportunity to promote Geoff Grant, his long time student, to the rank of Brown Belt.

In the world of BJJ, Brown Belt signals a significant promotion and there is only one other BJJ Brown Belt in New Zealand. In Mr. Grant’s case the promotion represents 10 years of training and association with Mr. Will. Mr. Grant also holds a 5th Dan Black Belt in the Martial Art of Zen Do Kai.

“The promotion came as a huge surprise, at the time I was focusing on the seminar and the promotion of my own students. I have trained in the Martial Arts for over 20 years and this promotion would be one of my best moments.” Mr. Grant said

On the same day John Will and Geoff Grant also promoted two other members of the GSW club. Koshick Ranchhod was graded to Purple belt and Alex Richardson to Blue Belt. The clubs promotions make it one of the biggest in the country. The promotions come at the end of an extremely successful year at GSW.

Mr. Grant went on to say: “Koshick’s promotion is a very special one for me, as I have known him for a very long time, since we started training Zen Do Kai together in the late 80’s. After a successful year for Alex Richardson his promotion was “the icing on the cake”. Alex has trained long and hard this year and combined with his tournament success and winning his Mixed Martial Arts fight, his promotion was inevitable”

GSW is one of the biggest Brazilian Jiu Jitsu schools in the country and Mr. Will describes it as “one of the best Mats anywhere.” With the promotions GSW expects to make several changes to its format next year. Mr. Grant say’s the club will expand to accommodate the new growth expected in 2006 but will continue to bring quality BJJ and Grappling training to Wellingtons community.

For more information visit www.gsw.co.nz

John Will Seminar Wellington November 2005

2005-12-03T12:36:00.000+13:00

Ok a few things to get through in this post so please bare with me.

Firstly thanks to John Will for once again showing us why we're so lucky to be part of his global organisation. John's skills are unmatched and always inspire.

I had the opportunity to watch John in action helping the NZP develop a safe program for vehicle entry. What made this special for me was watching John analyse something he has virtually no experience with, and then proceed to break it down and develop a solid usable method for instant use.

But that's not all, John then went on to show the people present how to go on and teach the new system in a structured and straightforward manner. It was fantastic to see John at work in this way and once again confirmed my complete admiration of the guy!

Wednesday 30th November 2005 John Will BJJ Seminar:
The seminar was absolutely packed!! Seriously at this rate next time we may need to limit the numbers on the mat!? The content was gold, with John covering Potency or how to maximise the use and potency of each and every limb/action/movement and apply it to moves you know currently. This leads to going back over moves you currently have success with and applying the same potency principals to each move.

Although the content was advanced John once again taught it in a way that even the newest members of GSW could follow. Even if they didnt understand the purpose of the potency application, they came away with a Killer Hooking Sweep. :)

On the night there were a couple of surprises in store for some of the crew. Alex was awarded his Blue Belt, as you all know Alex has been a force on the GSW mat since his first day. I have a great deal of respect for Alex and the way he conducts himself on and off the mat. His work ethic is astounding and with the help of Johnny, Alex has accelerated his learning by getting on the mats at every opportunity. Well-done buddy.

My good friend Ko was also surprised and awarded his Purple Belt. This was a very special moment for me as Ko and I have been in this journey together from the beginning. I first met Ko it so long ago I cannot recall exactly when it was. I do know it was in the late 80's at a Zen Do Kai Grading held in New Plymouth. Ko had just passed his green belt (Green is a belt that comes with special powers, at Green belt Martial Artists become bullet proof), Ko had been awarded the top Green belt prize.

Needless to say I took an instant dislike to this skinny, loud mouthed, Indian boy! Several months after this Ko started attending classes with me under Bret Kimmins and very slowly we became friends. Pretty soon we were good mates and everything we did, we did together. We both took up Japanese Jujitsu under John Hanstra, we took to Shoot Wrestling under Steve Nedelkos and when it came time to shift to BJJ training, well we did it as a team.

Ko traveled to Australia with me to train with John Will in 1995, we were actually traveling to Melbourne for a Zen Do Kai function but took the opportunity to travel to Geelong to do a private with John. We then went to Aus again the next year to train with John Will and Jean Jacques Machado. Since then we have been virtually inseparable, traveling to seminars and competitions whenever we were able.

Over the last couple of years Ko has suffered some injuries that have kept him for the GSW mat and I personally have felt that absence deeply. Now Ko's life has taken another turn with the arrival of his children thankfully this is a turn for the better. Ko has been and will always be a huge part of my life and awarding him his Purple Belt was a very special moment. Well done buddy, I hope we can continue our journey to Black together.

The last big surprise of the night was John awarding me my Brown Belt. Total shock is all I can say. This belt means so many things to me personally and trying to explain it to people who don't know what BJJ is, is beyond a joke.

"Brown Belt??!! I thought you were a Black Belt?"

When you tell people your 5th Dan Black Belt means less to you than the new Brown Belt they just give you a funny look and say things like:

"You're a 5th Dan?!?!?"

Too hard to explain. But yes, that's how I feel, the Brown Belt represents 10 years of BJJ training, some good some not so good, but 10 years it is. I got my Brown Belt in Zen Do Kai in 4 months! And My Black in 12 months and my second Dan in 18 months.. So yes I'm proud of the BJJ Brown Belt. I still don't think I deserve it but who am I to question this regions premier BJJ coach?

So thank you John for your continued faith in my skills, thanks to all the guys and girls at GSW for their support and dedication. Without the club there would be no ranks, no advancement and no BJJ community in Wellington.

Friday Arvo Session

2005-12-02T14:16:00.000+13:00

A few people hitting the mat today, which is great to see. We did some general rounds of wrestling, had a chat re the seminar content, wrestled some more, worked on the finer points of side control, drilled a few escapes and then meandered back to the office.

Tuesday Afternoon Session

2005-11-29T14:35:00.000+13:00

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.

Tuesday Morning roll

2005-11-29T08:29:00.000+13:00

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.

Monday Arvo Training

2005-11-28T15:49:00.000+13:00

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.

Late Friday Arvo training

2005-11-25T17:18:00.000+13:00

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.

Daytime training

2005-11-24T12:53:00.000+13:00

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

Wednesday Arvo Training

2005-11-23T16:16:00.000+13:00

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.

Wednesday Morning Training

2005-11-23T07:49:00.000+13:00

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.

Monday Arvo training

2005-11-21T14:32:00.000+13:00

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.

Sunday 20/11/2005

2005-11-21T12:16:00.000+13:00

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.

Monday morning training

2005-11-21T08:31:00.000+13:00

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 Seminar.

2005-11-20T13:42:00.000+13:00

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

John "The Rev" Jensen Dominance Jiu Jitsu

2005-11-20T13:11:00.000+13:00

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>>

Friday Arvo training session

2005-11-18T16:17:00.000+13:00

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.

Wednesday - Daytime training

2005-11-16T13:53:00.000+13:00

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.

Tuesday Morning Training

2005-11-15T08:33:00.000+13:00

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.

Sunday 13th November Classes

2005-11-12T12:16:00.000+13:00

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.

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (& other) ramblings BJJ NZ GSW Wellington

GSW Martial Arts Wellington BJJ Black Belt

John Will in Wellington

New Zealand Will - Machado Nats 2006

Christmas Break

NAts, John Will, Alex MMA, Xmas do SJJNZ

Another Funny.

Funniest thing I've seen in a very long time.

Machado Nats Black Belt vid

BJJ NZ's first "Home Grown" BJJ Black Belt

Alex Richardson MMA fight 3

Is there life after competitive rugby?

Passing of a "Legend"

Alex Richardson

Day Session - Mon 10th July

Sunday 18 June 2006 BJJ fundamentals and Submission Grappling.

Class update.

Last Women's Class

Open day poster

Mt Victoria Dojo Open Day!

Daytime Training - Wednesday 31 May

Daytime Training - Monday 29th May

Wednesday 24th May - Day Training

Thursday 18th May New class times

The New Sunday BJJ and Sub Grappling times

Sub Grappling and Fundamentals my ass.

Jean Jacques Machado online training

RNZPC

John Will Seminars NZ

Some humor re Post Haste

John Will Seminar GSW April 2006

Reminder of new Sunday class times starting today

Fundamentals My Ass - 2nd April

Training update

Monday Arvo Training

Thurs 2 March

Wed 1st March Class

Thurs 23 February

Wed 22 February

Monday Arvo Training

Saturday Morning Session

Friday Afternoon Training

Wednesday - Daytime training

Saturday Morning Training

Friday Arvo Session

Monday Arvo Training

30/01/2006 Submission grappling

I know, I know.. So shoot me

Wednesday Arvo Training

Wednesday - Daytime training

Monday Arvo Training

Sunday 15/01/2006 BJJ MMA Submission Grappling

Post Haste re-branding

Wed 11 and Thursday 12 01 2006

Switching

BJJ is the gayest sport around

Monday Arvo Training

Monday 09 /01 /2006 BJJ

Sunday 8th Jan - last day of break

The Game filter

Thursday 05/01/2006

Grapplers Street Wear online store

Thursday 05/01/2006

Sunday 01/01/2006 Grappling Blow Out

Sunday 1st Jan 2006

The new look grappling.us *Update*

Merry Xmas and thanks

Friday Morning Training

Wednesday Morning Training

Monday Arvo Training

Monday Morning Training

women's class update

Sunday18 Dec

Friday Morning Training

Wednesday Morning Training

Monday Arvo Training

Monday Morning Training

Wednesday Arvo Training

Tuesday Morning Training

Monday Arvo Training

The new look grappling.us Update