Training Assignments

SO WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON?

Here's a Monday training assignment for
you I picked up, I want you to pick one sweep
and one choke from positions that
you get to the most and only
use those 2 moves for the next
week, if you like it I want you to
push it out for 2 weeks.

So your assignment right now is
to write down what your one
sweep will be and what your one
choke will be.

Then think about the positions that
you need to get to for the move and
which of your teammates you're
able to attain these positions on.

Then make sure that you get to
work with them, you can also ask
your instructor if you can get
paired up with them because you
want to work on a specific technique
set and they are the best partner for
you.

That's it. And let
me know how the week went.

Have fun.

Micah

Politics seem to be a big part of Jiu-jitsu (unfortunately). It's odd as well that no matter how hard you try to avoid it, some-how it always rears it's head. Ive been fortunate to train with a lot of great instructors and been exposed to my share of ego and bull-shido politics.
Without this becoming a soap-box moment, what I feel has helped keep me training is TRYING to achieve the following:

Train hard and be ego-free. Guys should be able to come through the gym without worrying about some numbnuts running their mouth on the interweb about who tapped who.

For some reason, the martial arts sometimes tend to breed an atmosphere where people get really weird and almost deify their instructors. They will say, “You’re not doing this technique exactly how so-and-so said to.” It stops being about training, growth, and fun and it becomes an unhealthy cult of personality.

No environment like that can be a healthy one. I admire guys like Roger Gracie, Braulio Estima, Saulo Ribiero, Rafael Lovato,Nicolas Gregoriades, etc. who get out there and compete in front of their students. They have plenty of titles and name recognition to sit on the sidelines if they were so inclined, but that’s not the way they do things.

The big key is to avoid isolating yourself from others who can challenge you. So often, instructors develop the attitude that they have to be infallible or unbeatable in order to maintain the respect of their students (which i think they fear affects their bank account). Not only is that psychologically unhealthy and unrealistic, all it does is kill you in the long run. Everyone around you is developing daily. You may be an instructor for a few hours a day, but you are a student for your whole life. We should try and act like it.

In the end it’s just about the training, with the ultimate goal of enjoying your training and trying to get better every day.

"Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever. That surrender, even the smallest act of giving up, stays with me. So when I feel like quitting, I ask myself, which would I rather live with?"
Lance Armstrong

Head-locks

A really common problem in martial arts training is to assume that everybody else practices that same martial art. Let me explain what I mean by that... Boxers spend 99.9% of their time learning how to fight other boxers. Wrestlers train to attack with, and defend against, wrestling techniques. And Wing Chun kung fu practitioners mostly spar - you guessed it - with other Wing Chun practitioners. If your goal is to compete then training this way makes a certain amount of sense. There's not much point for a pro-boxer to use valuable training time honing his ability to sprawl against a double leg takedown, or defend a Muay Thai knee strike. But what about self defense? Nobody's obliged to stay within a certain set of parameters on the street, and completely ignoring certain common scenarios in training could lead to a very bad outcome in a real life self defense situation! Let's take a look at just one example of how this applies in BJJ: consider the garden variety schoolyard headlock. This is a super common low-tech attack. Youll even see this move happening repeatedly in less experienced grappling matches, amateur MMA events and even people with Judo and certain wrestling back-grounds will use the position to control and strike or as a throw and control position. This weekends UFC Fight Night saw Anthony Johnson controlling and trying to neck crank Dan Hardy with a headlock on the ground. (see picture at top of this post.) The head is a great big prize on the top of the body. When fists start flying, the temptation to grab ahold of it and start feeding punches to the other guy's face can be almost irresistible for some people. As a grappling position, the headlock has pretty much been discarded from the BJJ repertoire. Most jiu-jitsu teachers feel that clamping a headlock down on someone exposes your own back too much. I was lucky that my start in BJJ was basic basic basic old school Gracie Jiu-jitsu heavy with the original self defense program. I remember at the time thinking wow, this stuff is great and so practical! But then with time I started getting more and more into "grappling" and started negelecting this aspect of Jiu-jitsu. A lot of the clubs Ive been trained at, all really great Jiu-jitsu (or should that be grappling?) clubs never even touch on the self-defense programme anymore as everyone focuses on grappling tournaments against other Jiu-jitsu ("sport grapplers") and learning the latest slick 1/2 guard sweep or spider guard arm wrap with collar into roll over sweep for 2 points. Im not sure many people will ever face the threat of having to face a drunken attacker or home intruder who will attack them with their latest spider guard technique! Im not saying dont continue to learn and add to your positions. Definately stay abreast with new developements in the art to add to your game-plan or at least to know how to defend against it in a grappling match or competition but dont negelct the basics of which I believe the self-defense programme is a very important part. The techniques are definately not outdated-If Dan Hardy knew some of the head-lock counters in addition to his rubber guard attempts it may have helped. The self-defense programme isnt outdated 1925 technique, as the fights on Saturday 26th March, 2011, showed. The danger is that if you don't encounter a certain position on the mats then you're not going to get very much experience at defending against that position. So even if you don't use the headlock as an attack yourself, you still need to know how to defend against it.

HOW TO CHOOSE A SAFE REUSEABLE WATERBOTTLE
(by thegoodhuman.com)

Aside from staying home and drinking tap water out of a washable glass, the best way to be “green” while on the go is choosing your water bottle wisely. From the lowly single-use-only bottle you can buy at your local gas station to the stainless steel and aluminum options, making the right choice is important in maintaining both your health and the health of the environment!
petbottles How To Choose A Safe Reusable Water Bottle.

The worst kind of bottle is the kind that you only use once – the PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottle that you find in grocery stores, gas stations, etc, that is used for water, soda and juice. This kind of plastic has been proven to leach DEHP (Bis(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate) after repeated use and is a probable carcinogen. They can also harbor bacterial growth inside any cracks and crevices inside the bottle, which cannot be too good for your health either!

Next to the regular old plastic bottles we see everywhere, probably the most common would be your typical bottle as seen here. These plastic bottles, commonly used by exercise buffs and campers, are made out of thermoplastic polymers that usually goes by the name polycarbonate. However, it’s not just water bottles that are made out of polycarbonate; CD’s, iPods, sunglasses, and computer shells are also made of the material. Thankfully though, we don’t normally chew on CD’s or computers because polycarbonates have been proven to leach BPA, a synthetic hormone that can mimic estrogen and cause prostate cancer. Even scarier is the fact that most baby bottles are made out of polycarbonate, and when you heat up milk in them to feed your baby, the BPA could be leaching in at an even higher rate than normal. Not good at all, if you ask me!

A much better option than either of the above two would be an aluminum bottle. A big manufacturer of aluminum water bottles is Sigg (which you can get at Reusable Bags, where we got ours), which claims to make environmentally friendly products. While their older liner was questionable, the new liners are the BPA free EcoCare ones.

The best way to get your daily dose of water on the go, in my opinion, is a stainless steel reusable container. Kleen Kanteen is a large manufacturer of these type of bottles, and you can get them from Reusable Bags. They are made entirely out of stainless steel, which does not leach, is difficult to break or crack, and does not easily stain or interact with whatever product you are consuming. The water always tastes good out of it (at least ours does, and it is Los Angeles tap water!) and it keeps it reasonably cold for a little while when we go hiking or out in the sun. They don’t recommend using them for hot beverages, which is understandable – that’s what a thermos is for.

Ideally, the best way to drink water on the go would be an aluminum or stainless steel water bottle, as they seem to exhibit the least amount of health concerns out of all the choices. Add in the fact that they can be used over and over again with no degradation and do not need to be recycled each time you use one, they really are the “green” choice. And since upwards of 40% of bottled water is actually just tap water in disguise, buying it seems like not only a health risk due to the plastic leaching possibilities, but also a wallet risk due to wasting money on something you already have at home!

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Mark Twain

Grip Fighting!

Grip fighting is one of the most under looked aspects of Brazilian jiu jitsu.

The grips on the gi can give one opponent a huge advantage not only on the feet, but the ground as well. Its well known that grip fighting is important for judo throws but the same control can be used on the ground as well.

One of the key concepts in wrestling/Judo/or jiu jitsu is hip control. Controlling your opponent’s grips will give him a hard time getting inside and being able to dominate your hips. In addition to this defensive advantage, your opponent being dominated by your grips will not be able to prevent you from attacking his hips.

This is especially relevant when dealing with the guard. When playing the guard position open or closed one needs dominate grips. If you’re able to control your opponent’s sleeves and arms and maintain inside control he will have a very hard time passing. Also, by controlling my partner’s body I can then set up all my sweeps and submission attacks. One of the most critical areas for this is the seated guard. It is in this guard that you must control grips or your opponent will quickly pass. A good grip in this situation is a deep lapel grip and a same side sleeve grip.

If on the other hand you’re passing your training partners guard it is also critical to have dominate grips. A good example of dominant control for the passing man is a lapel grip and an inside the knee pant grip on the opposite leg. This grip combination on the inside allows one to pin an opponent’s leg to the mat and set up the knee through the middle pass or the bull-fighting pass. Even if the pass attempt fails this grip combo places the passing man in a dominant position safe from most sweeps and submissions.

If you take the time to work on little overlooked areas like grip fighting, you will see drastic improvements in your jiu jitsu game.