Tuesday 5/22/18
BJJ 70 min
Another Tuesday night of being the uke for my brown belt instructor. He’s doing a class at a local karate school that a friend of his runs. A few more karate guys showed up today. We kept it no-gi again.
From standing, monkey paw the back of their head and make them look at the floor. Getting both hands gives you more control. Snap their neck down and forward. Just like in gi, but you’re grip is around their head, not the gi. If they duck out, shoot on them for a double.
If you hit a double you’re playing the stack and pass game, which is another class. If they hit the floor from the snap-down, step around and get your left knee behind their right elbow, then swing your right leg around and post, getting an over/under grip on their torso.
We looked at a few escape options here from the bottom. If you just got wrapped up as described above, blast forward like a sprinter out of the gate. This should be enough to get most people to let go. If not, you can push down (as in towards your own crotch) on the person’s locked hands and crab-walk around so your shoulders and head are smashing into his torso, then spin in and pummel for control of underhooks or head and go from there.
If they don’t work an escape you climb on to their back. Get your hooks in and drive their neck downwards by posting on it. If they drive upwards use this moment to sink a choke. If the rear naked isn’t quite there but you have the neck you can step over into a choke I forgot the name of. You’re almost popping their head off like a bottle top.
I rolled with my instructor once and got tapped pretty easily. I’m pretty crude with my no-gi stuff, that much is apparent to me.
I rolled with a big karate purple belt who was about my size and age. I’ve drilled with him several times but this is the first time he’s rolled after drilling. He goes really hard during drilling, which doesn’t bother me too much since he’s new to jiu jitsu and I’ve got no idea how you drill in a karate class. I’m just trying to lead by example and hope he catches on that drilling is in no way a competition. Anyway, I asked him if he’s rolled before, and he gave me a look that said “you’re in my house” and told me that he knows how to roll. I can only guess that his confidence came from the color of his silly karate belt compared to the color of my silly pajama wrestling belt. Maybe he somehow believed that the drills we did together gave him some insight into my ability that wasn’t rooted in reality. Who knows? That’s why we roll, to see how our shit works.
He wanted to start from standing, so I just let him work and put me down. After one unpleasant knee injury inflicted by an aggressive white belt, I’m not contesting anything hard with new guys. On to my back I went with this guy on top of me.
He had an idea of how to play side control, but not enough of one to know that sitting up as big as he did for whatever reason that he did was not the best idea, since I just sat up and gently nudged him on to his back and took side control on him. I let him flail and squirm and gas out. I took mount, got hooks and gave him a little taste of pressure. He responded predictably, trying to push me off with his arms, gassing himself even more. I had the luxury of needing to choose the submission path I’d take, and had enough control to take a moment to think about this. At my disposal were…
- Use my head to start the gift wrap, go to arm triangle from there.
- Flatten an arm and go for an Americana or figure 4.
- Swing an arm over and attack it with an armbar.
- Take high mount and go for a simple armbar.
- Endless other possibilities that I’ll need to level up at jits to unlock.
I chose option 2 because I’m lazy and it was right there. It was so easy. Like handling 300 pound children. They just don’t know any better. Jiu jitsu is so much fun when you can put it all together. He seemed to be a good sport about it too. I hope this is an eye opening moment for him and I hope he doesn’t try to kill me when we drill next time.
