Week 43: centre control

3 escapes from side control.

1: elbow to knee to creat space and get to shin in ground control. Wrap other leg around their back and manipulate your hips to recover to full ground control.
2: lower hand drives and squeezes through his armpit gap and get double shoulder control. As you hip up and drive extend the scooped arm and roll him over.
3: pin his head high knee by placing your elbow on the floor and trying to squeeze it to your own hip. Manipulate your body so to elongate and narrow his base. Bridge and roll him over into side control.

Centre control detail:

soles of the feet touching right near his arse, spine long and slightly concave, head higher than his, arms out wide as if free falling and just off the floor. This will put tremendous pressure on his torso. Feet are in tight as this prevents him from really being able to use them to escape the position. Hands out wide to counter any bridging he attempts. Chest relaxed and pressing down on his face. The hands and forearms can be used to re-centre his head under you chest.
Having all this simple detail was something of another revelation tonight. 3 years of BJJ and never was this position and how to maintain it fully explained. It was a position I used to loose as quickly as I found it. With this new learning tonight I know that I will be much more aware of the key points of staying in this position longer with more control and more attacking options. Normally I a, not a fan of hyperbole but this learning tonight has had a significant effect on me. Should one person read this blog and come to training because of it then it must be due to the high quality teaching. Being a teacher myself I have trained in the past with many questionable teachers in martial arts. All were very good at their particular skills but none as capable as Lee at imparting said knowledge. This is why I am never bored, never plateauing or never not learning. 

Next we practised simply riding in and maintaining this position. Person underneath gives plenty of pressure. Remarkable learning curve tonight.

Upward and downward shoulder rotation.

We looked at both these positions from centre control then transitioning into side control to complete the submission.
From centre control if his arms come high to the head then attack with upward shoulder rotation, if he looks to control your posture with under hooks then look for the downward shoulder rotation. The key point of learning for me tonight was the angle of the arm under. I discovered by practise and observation that it needs to be nearer the elbow than the shoulder for tight and effective results.

Small glove freedom sparring on the ground with strikes (eyes closed). First murdered by Milzy who opened with the joyful question "you have not an interview tomorrow?" meaning my face was in for a pounding. It was. 

Big glove continual striking v grappling.

Big glove to keep constant pressure through striking and grappler can position. The drill is designed to give the grappler lots of pressure and opportunities for submissions. I was working with Craig and please so say ow well his ground game is coming along.

Top quality session tonight. The centre control detail has been a tremendous revelation.

Week 42: inverted side control

No grip grappling warm up: great fun grappling this way as I found ways to use my legs and the back of my wrists to enable control without the use of the inner parts of the hands.

Main technical part of the class:

Inverted side control:

Key points: leg side leg sweeps under own hips, weight on his chest, tight bicep grip and elbow clamp, no gap between you and his armpit so he can't escape, hips off the floor and weight driving into his chest.

Knee extension: he goes to hook a leg in escaping from the inverted side control so dive for the foot and pull it into to the side of your neck. Feet on his arse, knees clamped together, one hand control his foot as the other wraps the lower leg to your chest. Extend and arch backwards with tight tight control for the sub.

Forearm with shoulder suppression: Let him escape by trying to push the face. As his arm straightens push past it and throw the head to the floor as you get your hips to the floor quickly too. Palm to palm grip and drive down with the shoulder hopefully closing the sub off.

I need much more time with both of these as I found them quite difficult to pull off swiftly and cleanly.

Reversal sweep: Keep him moving and disrupt his base, feel for the gap and roll him over (timing not strength).

Free form grappling with Neil and Milzy. Milzy was hell on earth and spent the eternity escaping and trying to prevent his numerous submissions. Thankfully he was kind and commented on my defensive grappling and improvements in addition to saying nice things about me as a teacher!!! Seriously hard work grappling him. Control and positional awareness is excellent as is his variety of attacks. In addition when he caught me in upward and downward shoulder rotation he knew how much pressure to apply to let me attempt to escape before finishing. Appreciated the consideration of his training partner's welfare.

Strength and conditioning: Range of press ups, v ups, more press ups ending with good old fashioned static mat holds.

Bizarre injury of the session is some pleasant purpling of my right big toe nail.

Week 41: striking

Bulldogs warm up. Lots of fun despite the high risk of toe nail tearing potential of our mats!!

Side control battle: pass the leg over or bottom player secure a leg

Ground offence and defence

• correct defensive posture and positioning: 2 points of contact – the hip and elbow same side of the body, soles of feet together knees splayed.

• round kick attack: grab the heel and straighten the leg to attack with round kick.

• downward heel kick: an axe kick to those who know this name. The kick that made Andy Hug famous in K-1 in the 90’s.

• knee to the hamstring.

• escape from single grab: turn the foot towards the thumb and the grip will break.

• escape from double grab on one leg: turn the foot to the outside of his forearm to apply pressure to his grip.

Free form striking rounds.

Fast hands on the lead hand: throwing 3 fast punches off one hand then the other with the aim of making each set faster, more relaxed and simply better than the last set.

Fast hand combo: body – body – head and same starting with other hand. Maintain the rhythm until an error and start again.

Phone box sparring: Toe to toe with Craig. This was a mix of covering and opening to get used to strikes coming into the face.

Week 40:: Striking

Knee grab warm up with tidy hands. Good drill to train the correct level change for takedowns aimed to the lower level.

Clinch fighting: starting from boxing range the idea was to engage and tie up the arms or do arm drags or indeed whatever to get the clinch. When a secure clinch was got, hold for 10 seconds then push him away. On pushing him away do not simply think reset, think attack with a punch as you are in balance, he is not. In addition it is good practise to attack and keep the mind and body in the moment.

Hold down or stand up: On my second round I had Seb which was a horrible experience for every second. He has relentless control and thus it is always great psychological training when paired with him.

Stare down striking sparring rounds: key word practise. Tonight my two were forward pressure. After reading an article recently in an MMA mag I worked on the focus of my stare down on the side on the neck of my opponent. Hard at first as my brain was crying out to engage in eye contact. Looking at the neck enabled me to be emotionally removed from the eye contact until we stepped away when I then chose to engage eye contact.

Round kick when going backwards: this is a useful option when under forward pressure from hands. At some point he will throw a rear hand, when he does this will expose the ribs and thus be more vulnerable for a round kick. It was surprising how much power and psychological denting this can do in terms of if done several times he will become tighter with his defense and less likely to throw that rear hand knowing a kick is viable counter. Lee talked about using the head to define which side of the body the kicks comes from, something I posted about previously in this blog on the work of Steve Morris. In addition Lee talked about how to generate speed and thus power through kicks and later elbow strikes. Essentially folding the lower part of limb tight will accelerate the larger joint to move quicker.

Heavy bag with partner impeding: Striking the heavy bag on the ground as your partner makes this very hard. In round 1 I was trying very hard as I was fighting against the pressure Craig was giving me. Lee then stopped us all and reminded us about lose heavy and relaxed hitting. Keep the shoulders and arms relaxed then contract at the point of contact. On my second round I felt much more capable of going for longer.

Heavy bag conditioning plus mirror work: This followed whereby we were working the bag individually as our partners worked in the mirrors (striking combo, sprawl, two press ups and repeat). I focussed on hitting body head left, body head right whilst hitting relaxed (delivering). Despite the awkwardness of the huge bag I felt good. I felt more tired on the mirror work.

Grappling with Ptas and Craig: First time ever grappling bare chested. Actually after Ptas caught me in 2 relatively simple submissions I joined him in bare chested combat. Rolling with a sweaty body is certainly different from a control perspective. I managed to slip out of some control points he had and managed to establish centre back control. Ptas went off for some high intensity sparring to prepare Charlie for his fight so I rolled with Craig. Developing and improving really well. Tighter defence, becoming softer and more relaxed too. A high quality 2.5 hours of learning, challenge and fun.