Thanks! It sounds like some of the big boys from the school my instructor trains at may be in as well. I’m really hoping for a good field of 236+ competitors.
I’ve made it work on bar chumps, now it is time to see how I do in sport competition.
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You got this! Go kick some ass!
CK is not your only fan here. Go for it.
Thanks @biker. You’ve both been with me in this log for a long time!
You’re making me nostalgic for lifting barbells. I keep telling myself to go do it, but I just haven’t found the gear. In all likelihood, it will probably only take one trip before I remember why I loved it and start doing more productive lifting.
Maybe in mid-December. Right now I’m getting ready for this competition. Takedowns and conditioning are on the menu. I’m already as strong as I’m going to be come tournament day.
I need some iron medicine though. The log entries for lifting are probably a lot easier to read through than my jits ramblings. That’s why I’m amazed when someone gives me the impression that they’ve even read part of it!
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Tuesday 11/5/19
BJJ 120 min
A couple of white belts showed up at staggered times, so we just drilled and rolled. First was an older gal who is new and very nice so we spent the time doing basic drills to hold mount, moving from low, to mid and then high. I’m a little cautious with doing anything that can be perceived as coaching, but I am comfortable explaining some very basic concepts in meaningful terms and drilling them.
Make them carry your weight in low mount and have your arms wide and high to act as kickstands, but don’t put weight on them unless you need to. Get your grapevines in and hold them. Make the person on bottom carry 100 percent of your weight in low mount. It is stable, safe, but not many good attacks. Swim your arms to keep them active as kickstands if they try to trap them. Let them push on you if they want to. Swim if you have to get out for some reason, but let them gas on what is most likely a futile attempt that will get them nowhere.
Be ready to post wide and high in mid mount when hips get active. Be a wet blanket draped on the poor person trapped underneath you. Swim your arms to keep your base wide and high.
In high mount we played the game of riding the hip bucks without using your hands to base. We talked a little bit about beating them to death from high mount unless you want to be nice, in which case you merely smother their airways, put massive pressure on their jaw or fuck with their arms until they do something foolish, like turning over to get access to oxygen.
I didn’t cover technical mount, which is very important to holding mount. I know the idea fairly well and do it reliably in live rolls, but I’m not confident in my ability to explain it well to another person.
If I’m going to explain any sort of jiu jitsu stuff to new white belts who show up on my home mats to train, I’m going to adhere to the principle of "Do no harm."
Hence, we just worked on holding mount and some basic jits vocabulary.
The other white belt is a fellow bouncer who I’ve never trained with before, but has been doing jits for over a year now. We just trained, and it was fun. He was a handful, but I found it somewhat reassuring to make a 24 year old 230 lb tank tap out to exhaustion. There are no timers in my basement, and he wanted to play safety positions on our first roll. Okie dokie! He brought a lot of pressure but I played lazy man jits and rode out the pressure, exchanged a few positions and just kinda felt the guy out. He was smashing me in low mount for probably a minute or so before I made an escape with a heave to one side and then a momentum heave to the other while trapping his arm. He tapped out as soon as I made the roll into his guard. It was probably a 7-9 minute roll.
Damn, that felt good. My conditioning still sucks, but I had plenty left. I didn’t do much, after all. Just stayed safe, probed carefully and rode out his pressure until he fucked up.
Unfortunately, that strategy won’t win me a tournament with 4 minute rounds.
We rolled a few more times after that and he caught me in the most painful Ezekiel I’ve ever had done on me when he was in my half-guard. My jaw still hurts. Good job, buddy.
This guys also has a hard time making class, so I’m hoping he shows up for more. We’ll see. He seemed to dig it.
I’ve been lazy with my logging but I managed to train on Friday, Saturday and yesterday.
Some of my towns most rugged white belts continue to show, and my instructor and I have been working on mount escapes.
I wish I logged each night because I forget the details we covered. Lots of mount escape work, including hunting a single when you bridge big and hip out to the side.
We also went over a back control escape, exploring the concept on the feet and on the ground. The key detail I took away was the importance of controlling the under arm in a standard seatbelt grip. The arm makes it all work.
Key part of attacking turtle is to block their armpit with your near knee. That’s the first race, but I forget what comes next.
Tons of rolling, and one of the young white belts tapped me out. I have him mount to start, but he still got me. Good job, buddy. I need big white belts who can give me problems!
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Friday 11/15/19
BJJ 240 min
I had roughly one minute of mat time.
I attended a black belt test at the school my instructor trains at. All I can say is… HOLY SHIT.
The first three hours were a guided tour through the curriculum and long-term training methodology applied at this school. The brown belt had to begin by demonstrating every single technique on the white belt curriculum. This took about an hour, moving at a fairly rapid clip.
This was a good eye-opener for me. The entire white belt curriculum was laid out and demonstrated in front of me, stripe by stripe. I have stripe 1 and 2 covered easily, and can do any of those techniques on command. Stripe 3 is the Judo stripe, and I’ve got about half of those down and basic familiarity with the rest. Stripe 4 was also stuff I was mostly familiar with, but plenty of things I need to practice a little bit more before I can demonstrate them on command.
I’m mostly deficient in turtle offense AND defense and a little bit of the stand-up. I’m missing details on lots of headlock escape variations. All easily digestible and trained. I’m just talking about my knowledge and ability to demonstrate the technique, not necessarily incorporating everything into my game. I’m right about where I should be by this school’s standards, a three stripe white belt. But that’s only if I get a little extra credit for stuff I know that’s blue belt level or off of the curriculum.
The techniques on the white belt curriculum are re-visited continuously as the students here progress. The idea conveyed by the head instructor is that they are so valuable that they are worth revisiting as you progress, even if you couldn’t make it work the first time around. This seems entirely sensible to me.
Next up was the blue belt curriculum, where the techniques laid down in the white belt curriculum are chained together. Give-and-take drills are explored as are start-to-finish. If/then responses are laid out and explored, still keeping rooted in the techniques of the basic white belt curriculum. Turns out my instructor’s been feeding me a lot of the blue belt curriculum lately.
Purple belt is where the students here are required to pursue techniques suited to them that are not part of the white belt curriculum. These can be learned in the gym, off of youtube, at other schools, the source does not matter. What matters is your ability to incorporate new techniques suited to you that are not part of the white belt curriculum. This means pulling them off in live training, not simply demonstrating them.
The same idea at blue belt is expanded upon here, with give-and-take and start-to-finish drills being explored with your techniques, along with having an answer to a variety of conditional responses to the new movements you’ve incorporated into your game.
The emphasis at brown belt is teaching. The head instructor explained that teaching will make you better at this level. More details will be explored and discovered, and your ability to teach, perform and pull off the entire curriculum will be further developed.
I suppose this explains why my instructor has seemingly been going out of his way to teach at every opportunity. This also explains why at one time or another, my instructor’s done nearly everything on the basic curriculum to me in live training.
I’m an opportunity, and a very grateful one.
What an eye-opener. I just sat through a three hour-long guided tour of technique demonstration and methodology explanation. What an incredibly detailed insight into how a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu black belt is developed. Incredible.
After three hours of nearly continuous technique demonstration, drilling, and teaching, the shark tank begins.
The shark tank is no joke. The brown belt must roll with the entire room. He must not mishandle white belts, and he must not stop fighting as he moves up from white to black. White belts got about 30 seconds to one minute each, and there were probably around 20 of us. Blue belts got a little more time, but not much more, Purples and browns were a battle. The brown belt showed incredible endurance and willingness to fight. He got tapped a few times, but defended many more.
When the brown belt had rolled with all of the white, blue, purple and brown belts in the room, roughly 40 minutes had passed. No breaks at all. Continuous rolling with fresh bodies growing increasingly skilled.
The six black belts residing at this school were next, and it was a sight to behold. The brown belt fought like hell. He still got manhandled, but that seems to be the point of the exercise. How deep can you dig when you’re at your margins, and what kind of shit can you pull off in that state? This man pulled off some incredible stuff, especially considering the state he was in at the time.
The head instructor rolled last, and it looked grueling. He wasn’t going 100 percent, but he made sure the brown belt worked like hell at the very fringes of his abilities, before tapping out to one of the brown belt’s signature moves.
You don’t see this kind of thing every day.
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Got lazy with logging again. Trained a few times since my last post, just open mats. I also competed on Saturday. There was only one other SHW white belt, a guy who trains at the same school my instructor does and is a 375 lb former college wrestler.
Long story short, all four matches ended in a tie. I got the better of him on two of them but couldn’t finish a submission. He smashed the hell out of me on one and the last one we were so tired it took all but 30 seconds of the round for me to put him on the ground and my tank was so empty at that point that I couldn’t get anything going.
Great experience, and a real eye-opener for me. I’ve never trained with someone who weighs almost 100 pounds more than me. It was good to make a few escapes work and I learned how miserable side control can be when your escapes don’t work. Everything works differently on someone who is that massive.
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Monday 12/9/19
Squat
135x5
225x5
275x5
315x5
DB Bench
5 sets of 10
Lat PD
5 sets of 10
Facepulls and bands
Sauna and hot tub.
Notes:
After thinking about maybe considering lifting weights again, I decided to go through with it. Today was basically a systems check. I was still beat up from the BJJ tournament, but everything felt good. Weak, but good.
3 day/week full body 5/3/1 ish type of scheme is what I’m thinking. I need barbells again, so lifting will be my priority and I’ll fit whatever BJJ I can in on the side.
Feeling good right now!
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Wednesday 12/11/19
Deadlift
135x5
225x5
315x3
405x1
455x1
495x1
Strict Press
95x5
115x5
135x5
135x5
135x5
Sauna and hot tub.
Notes: Holy fuck was I sore from those squats on Monday. I’m seriously de-conditioned to lifting.
Easy fix though.
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Monday 12/16/19
Squat
135x5
225x5
275x3
315x3
225x5
Bench Press
95x5
135x5
185x5
205x5
135x10
Chest supported row
3 sets of 10
Notes: Quick workout today, still basically doing a systems check before I push anything hard. Squats feel good, bench feels mostly good but I’ll need to pay attention to my shoulders and find time to do more rotator cuff work with bands.
Otherwise I’m feeling pretty good!
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Congratulations on getting in there and mixing it up… Sounds like time well spent.
@burien_top_team THANK YOU!
My biggest anxiety before signing up for this tournament was a lack of competition at SHW white belt. I would have been happy to compete up in belts with HW blues/purples but would have felt terrible if they had me compete with smaller white belts. Luckily that wasn’t a problem.
I only had one competitor, but I’d rather have one of this guy than three of any other SHW white belt I’ve ever trained with. Not that they’re bad or anything, just that this guy was such a tank of a dude who totally out-classed me in both size and strength. I’m really glad the first time we banged was in competition. We’re buddies now and should have plenty of open mat encounters after the holidays. He’s been killing it on a number of levels and will probably overtake me within a year if I don’t start finding a way to train more frequently.
This guy was by far the largest man I’ve ever rolled with and the hardest I’ve ever gone. It was a totally new puzzle box for me. Americana from side control seemed to be mechanically impossible due to his width. Holding mount was like riding a boulder. Technical mount was also like riding a boulder that’s turned on his side. Americana from mount was stuffed by his brute strength, a first for me.
I couldn’t find his neck for a kung fu, Ezekiel, bow-and-arrow or collar choke. I don’t think my kung-fu was sunk properly and the other chokes felt totally alien to me because his neck was so large in circumference and his gi was so tight that I couldn’t even figure out the grips.
NONE OF MY SHIT WORKED.
I did well positionally 2 out of 3. Worked out of him winning the takedown and both times and got to mount and held mount, but couldn’t finish a submission. I was absolutely smashed worse than I’ve ever been for almost the entirety of round 2. He didn’t tap me out, but I just got CRUSHED!!!
I could see the clock for my last 10 seconds and they were probably the longest 10 seconds of my life. I would have totally tapped to pressure at some point, but I was saved by the bell this time!
It was definitely time well spent!
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The other eye opener is that my stand-up didn’t work for shit on this guy! I only won the takedown in round four, which was basically two exhausted bears leaning and pulling on each other for most of the round until he crossed his feet.
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I’m sure you’ll write better material someday.
On a serious note it’s cool you’re lifting a little again. Your BJJ stories are always nice to read but I can’t relate to them quite as well!
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My Holocaust joke fell flat and my Down Syndrome joke didn’t get the reaction I was hoping for either.
At least I can still pull five plates.
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Wednesday 12/18/19
Deadlift
135x5
225x5
315x3
405x3
455x3
Strict press
95x10
115x8
125x8
95x10
95x10
95x8
Facepulls
Notes: Feeling GOOD. Ready to step on the gas a little more, but not quite ready for pedal-to-the-metal.
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Good mindset.
@biker Thanks! I got my first reminder to move more mindfully last night. Strained my left bicep with sloppy setup on my deadlift.
Next week it’s back to straps and a better setup.
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Twojarslave belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you.