Reflections Of Training This Week

Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2013 - Advanced Class at GB San Diego

Professor Dominic Parker taught two (own) lapel chokes from side control.

1. The first choke uses your own lapel closest to your opponent's hip. You cross feed it to the other side of your opponent's neck. The most important part is to pull them close to you to make the choke tight and then you quarter stop to North South and straight your arm while trying to put your shoulder to your opponent's hip.
2. The second choke uses your own lapel closest to your opponent's neck. You feed it across their throat then you behind. Same as the previous choke, you want to pull them close to make the choke tight. Then you want to use your other hand and grab your own wrist/forearm and then straight the arm gripping the lapel to choke.

Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2013 - "Super" Class at GB Encinitas

Professor Rafael "Foca" Ramos was disappointed in the "Super" Class turn out, but taught 3 techniques for while your opponent is in Turtle before having internal sparring. I really learned a lot rolling with new guys.

1. Armbar from top of turtle. The key is to bait your opponent to stick out their arm by tugging them. Then trap the arm using your legs. If their arm is on your far leg, you can hip into their elbow for the armbar.
2. Omoplata roll your opponent into side control while having their arm trapped. The setup is different from the previous because your opponent's arm will be in your close leg. When your opponent ends up on their side, you must pressure them with your arm across them so they can't get up. To finish, hip out and up. It's basically a Kimura using your leg.
3. Taking your opponent's back by rolling them back so that you're sitting and trapping their close arm. Then finish with a choke.

Things I learned from internal sparring.

1. Purple Belt Miles likes to foot lock. I learned that to defend the foot lock you need to grab their lapel and then put on the "boot" by sticking in through their arm so that they're hugging your calf.
2. Purple Belt Fernando tapped me by a choke from behind.
3. Black Belt Brian Franklin swept me all over the place.
4. Blue Belt Jack tapped me 3 times, 2 were from the baseball bat choke from the BOTTOM! I know the choke from the top, but he got me over and over from the bottom with that choke. He says even if you don't finish the choke, you can end up sweep your opponent over. It's a great setup from half because if they pass, the choke tightens itself.

Thursday, Jan. 24, 2013 - Advanced Class at GB San Diego

Prof. Dominic continued the 2 (own) lapel chokes. Someone tapped me using the close to the neck lapel choke. His pressure was so intense even when I saw the lapel choke coming, I couldn't move from his pressure. Dominic also went into maintaining side control.

1. Don't just maintain control of their upper body but also keep your knee close to your opponent's butt to block their knee from getting back in.
2. Going to knee on belly when your opponent bench presses you. Use their push to go to knee on belly. The key is to use your foot to block their knee from coming back in by having it close to where their leg meets their hip.

Things learned while rolling:

1. Almost got an upside down invert triangle. I couldn't finish it. I couldn't see my leg setup or my opponent's arm, but I just couldn't close my leg. I asked Dominic afterwards and he said to pull their arm over next time or pull up with both arms to go to a mounted inverted triangle.
2. I need to learn how to maintain mount on bigger guys. I need to not give up reverses and sweeps so easily.

Visited Gracie Barra Encinitas

Last Saturday, Wayne and I headed to GB Encinitas for a charity seminar. The charity was for a young girl named Jacklyn who is having her lip surgically repaired by GB Encinitas student. I was feeling pretty lazy when Alby cancelled and Wayne wanted to meet there instead of carpooling. Luckily, Wayne changed his mind and we met up and carpooled, good thing too because the E-light for my gas tank came on.

The seminar started off with about 4 black belts each teaching a technique. A lot of people showed up for the seminar. I'm thinking at least 50 people because the mat was packed! There wasn't much room at all to do some of the techniques, especially the ones involving takedowns and rolls.

Techniques:

1. Standing opponent headlocking you from the back.
2. Knee slide on turtled opponent's back to roll, then finish with an armbar. I like this one, the setup involves an underhook cross-collar grip
3. Opponent headlocking you bent forward. (Dominic's)
4. Rolling an opponent when they are in top and you are turtle to side control.

After technique, we did pass the guard "King of the Hill" and it started with the black belt's guards. So there were about 7 black belts down and ~50 students waiting in line to pass their guard. It started off slow because we lined up in ranked order so the brown and purple belts were up first. They were more slow and technical. After sometime, as expected, it got faster and faster because belt and white belts were much easier for the black belts.

I was in there 3 times and each time with a black belt. Those guys capitalize on every mistake. The first one I was going to try a stack pass, but he threw up a triangle. I was able to defend it to just end up back in his guard. Eventually, he opened his guard and I was trying to do a knee slicer pass, but then he kicked my legged and took my back. This was the most memorable attempt. My 2 other failed attempts: another back take and ended up in turtle position.

After 3 failed attempts at passing a black belt's guard, I called it quits and talked to Dominic off the mats for a little bit. He said he was teaching Tues/Thursday classes now. After that Wayne and I walked around the facilities before leaving.

Their facility is huge! There's a boxing and workout gym downstairs! Raquetball and basketball courts down the hall. Passed what it seemed like another private gym, there was a fusion yoga class. It was like a physical workout Mecca!