Author Archive
So, we’re driving to dinner last night and my daughter was asking a question. Couldn’t figure out what she was asking. We were headed to dinner and it sounded like she was wanting to have dinner elsewhere. Well, she was saying she wanted to see “Dinner with the Schmuckles”. She meant to say “Dinner for Schmucks“.
I know, I know, I know… I shouldn’t do this, but I do. I like to bait people with my arm bar escape from side or technical mount. I’ll turn away from my opponent, onto my side so that they can get the arm bar. But rather than let them sink it in, I immediately roll into them, stack them and get side control. It’s a dangerous game I’ve been playing. But more so since I realized how sloppy my escape really was. It might have been effective, but it was also sloppy.
This discovery came about the night I received my 3rd stripe. I was working with a couple of other white belts and we were drilling escapes and attacks. I tried to show them how to escape the arm bar, but I couldn’t teach them what I was doing. They’d go from a bad to worse position.
I called one of our professors over to help us understand what was going on. Well, as it turned out, I was missing a crucial step. Sure, I was getting the escape and stack, but I was combining way too many moves. It must have been sheer coincidence that I was getting the escape.
Anyway, I’m documenting a few things now so that I can return later, if I happen to forget.
There’s another option from this position that I can do, which should increase my chance of escaping. When I circle my feet around, I can guide his arm towards my feet. The goal is to trap his arm so that I neutralize his ability to attack again as I sit up into him.
I should have documented this when I first went over it as I’m failing to visualize which arm I’m trying to trap. But I’ll work on it a bit and then add more to this post.
So it’s been a while since my last update. Life has just been so hectic lately, which is a very good thing– just hectic. As a result of this, I decided to hold off competing on the 24th. I just didn’t feel like I could handle one more thing on my plate. And truth be told, I have been struggling to get past a certain plateau in my training.
Since I’ve started training in BJJ, my journey has had notable milestones. The first was when I started surviving attacks from all of the blue belts. The second was when I went from surviving to escaping and passing. And now, my attacks are starting to come in.
On Wednesday, July 21, I was given my 3rd stripe on my white belt. This was huge for me. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if or when I’d really ever get it. I was frustrated with myself and I felt as if I was frustrating my professors. I’d get the dominant position on folks I’d roll with, but I simply wasn’t capitalizing on it. I wasn’t getting any submissions. And a lot of the time, I probably looked as if I was stalling and just trying to control.
Well, I’ve been training hard and getting more open mat time in. On Monday, I ended up messing my knee up. I was rolling with a guy that had a 70lb advantage on me and who started from the top of mount. Well, I went for an elbow escape, but needed a little extra something. So I decided to turn onto my left hip and do a foot drag. Got the foot and trapped it. I then went to switch my hips and go for my half guard/pummel sweep from the bottom. That’s when things went wrong. Rather than get the sweep, my knee decided to pop as I was going to my knees and pulling his leg out.
It’s been a long week of no training for me. I have to admit that I’m feeling quite restless. But I just don’t want to be sidelined longer due to a major injury. My knee has been feeling fine since around Thursday. It still pops a little and feels loose. But overall, it’s doing much better.
Monday’s my anniversary, so I will probably not train that night. But you can bet I’ll be back on Tuesday.
I should have written this one down right after class. The details are quite fuzzy right now as I’m trying to recall the steps leading up to the choke.
I am guessing that the setup for this choke is gonna come from when we have our opponent in side control and he executes a bridge into us in an effort to escape.
Our head-side arm is gonna come from the back side and shoot in under the neck. The key gonna be in driving the hand as far in as it can go. So it literally must shoot as opposed to trying to gradually slide in.
Once our hand has come out the other side, we’re gonna grab it with our other hand and help pull it through a little further as we then take our elbow and bring it up and wrap it over our opponent’s shoulder/back.
Think of the movement as similar to what we do for a palm to palm version of the rear naked choke, where our the pressure comes from wrapping our elbow behind the back. Well, in that same way, our elbow is what’s gonna really tighten up this choke.
Thursday during our noon class, I had the opportunity to try this choke on my partner. But I didn’t finish it. Apparently, I had a really good neck crank on him as my arm slipped above his chin. I couldn’t feel that and I certainly couldn’t see what was going on since our two bodies cover up everything. So I’ve gotta get better at feeling whether the choke is fully set. I don’t want to rough up my training partner.
So, a couple of weeks ago I tried using the bread cutter choke on my opponent and had zero luck with it. I could have sworn my elbow was on the ground on one side of the neck while my wrist was on the ground on the other side. And it very well could have been the case, because the choke is apparently not finished with the forearm.
We revisited this choke the other day in class and I had the opportunity to clean things up a bit and to make it actually effective.
From standard side control, I want take my leg-side arm and trap my opponent’s near-side elbow. But in doing this, I need to shift my body so I’m placing pressure on him still, but with my body, not by my arm blocking his hip.
My choking arm is gonna come down so that my elbow is on the mat, close to his neck. At this point, I’m not grabbing the lapel. I want to make sure the elbow is down so that he cannot block it and hence block my choke. Once my elbow is to the mat, I want to slip my hand across the neck and grab the collar. Again, the choke isn’t going come from this action. It’s going to come from what follows.
Trapping the elbow should now have opponent so that he cannot roll away from us. But we need to keep good pressure on him as we’re finishing the choke so that he cannot roll into us. This is going to come as we drive our head to the mat and keep our body tight on him.
Now the choke should be easy to finish as we rotate our elbow toward his head. This will very quickly tighten up the slack in the choke.