Great success! (AKA baby steps)

So tonight I worked something out for myself. Well, not really, I worked out something from reading stuff any applying it myself. I still think that counts. Success story further down! Read on!

Warmups! Warmup run by Dale, who wears a white belt but appears to know what he's about. He also gets to play training dummy for John (who runs the class). Anyway, a few brisk laps around the mat, 20 pushups / situps / squats. Stretches. Bridging. Hip escapes (Dale forgot the single leg ones.) Stand ups. Laps down the mat of hip escapes / standups.

Not tired yet. Good. I must be getting just a little bit tougher. Make a point of stretching troublesome left calf while we break for water.

Standing up stuff? What up with that?! Pummelling drill (basically swapping underhooks). Awkward. Partner's shoulder is approximately level with my nose. Spend most of drill trying to get him to get a bit lower so he's not smashing my face.

Takedown? ooh ah! Simple one, get double underhooks, get good grip behind his back, yank his hips towards you and drive forwards to take down. Partner is trying not to get taken down. How inconvenient.

Another takedown? Get one underhook, shuck his arm upwards with it, duck under to his side / back, lock arms, lift with your hips and take him down. Partner is starting to relax. Hooray.

... Live takedowns? Seriously? Have you seen how crowded this mat is? Well Ok! This was actually pretty fun. Partner is a few inches taller and probably 10kgs heavier, but I managed to keep one underhook at least pretty much the whole time, and while I couldn't get anything going myself, I managed to stay off my back until the very end of the round when there was a 3 group collision and everyone fell down.

Intro to SIDE CONTROL. Woohoo. That's not mount! I don't even know the speech. Although I'm sure it'll be identical on Wednesday. Position drill (Person on top walks around through North/South, into side control on opposite side, switches base and mounts, then dismounts off the other side).

Kimura from side control? Not much new here, it's just like the one from mount, except not on mount. Training partner is on his first lesson, so I have to talk him through actually doing the Kimura because he doesn't know how, and nobody helpful is nearby. Eventually he does a couple of good ones.

What to do if they hook the arm you're trying to Kimura over your low side shoulder? Underhook with that arm, yank them up onto their side, step over and sit on their head, use your other arm to hold the arm you have while you find their wrist with that hand, form Kimura grip and fold it backwards. A little more complicated and neither of us managed to do a good one.

Specific position sparring. Yay. I elect to start underneath side control, because last time I tried that I ended up mostly dead. So. Goals.

• Try to not stay flat on my back.

Nobody told me this yet, but I've read it, and it makes sense.

• See what happens if I bridge. See if I can create enough space to get a leg under partner for guard or something.

Same deal. I'm thinking for myself if they won't tell me anything.

Goal number 1 went good with first partner, but I wasn't able to get enough space to do anything except survive. Can't say he ever looked like getting the Kimura. Switching to on top I figured I just wanted to try and hold the position. That proved quite difficult with partner who pretty much bench pressed me. Gotta work out what to do with that.

Swap partners. Found an Asian guy called Lee (wow I remembered a name) who's a bit taller, but probably not much heavier. Started underneath again. Much easier to get up on my side with Lee. Pop my hips out a bit, and damn look! Space! Slip a leg through and manage to capture one of his for what I gather is half-guard. Woot. Now what do I do with it? Oh wait, we stop and re-set. Second time out and I almost manage to sneak a leg through again before we run out of time.

On top for the last bit of class. Controlled this position pretty well, and eventually started to push his arm off towards the Kimura as time runs out.. and then at the last moment I suddenly find myself on top of mount. Wha... ? how did that happen? Kinda happened without me thinking about it, and it wasn't one of the things we were going for, but I'm going to assume that automatically taking a good position isn't a bad thing.

Really happy with class tonight. Some things seem to be sinking in.

Lessons 5 and 6

I missed 4 weeks - two with the flu, then with tonsillitis. How very inconvenient.

Worse than inconvenient. Turns out that while I was gone, the class went through "side control" and "guard" phases and now we're back to mount. Argh. John gives the same speech about mount. John suggests I've been around long enough to head down the other end of the mat with the slightly more advanced individuals. I note that I missed all of side control and all of guard. John retracts previous statement. Looks like I'm doing mount.

Vaguely frustrated, but getting the hang of Kimuras and RNCs and Armbars. Less so with armbars. I'm so clumsy. Obviously still not 100% because class 5 pretty much wrecked me. Class 6 was better. Actually got a tap with an armbar during 2 minute drills. Yay me. I know what to do if my partner waves his arm around. Escaping mount is a problem. We still haven't actually been 'taught' any ways to do that, which disturbs me. Also having difficulties getting sufficient height on the bridge against the bigger guys to get them to lose balance. Gotta think about that. Good enough underneath mount that complete newbies can't submit me in 2 minutes. That's not exactly a recommendation I guess, especially if I can't get out from underneath.

Current mission: Investigate ways to escape from mount. If I'm not being shown, I'll find out myself.

Office is moving away from this gym. How inconvenient. Current plan has me using up the rest of my 10 class pass and then switching to the gym that will be near the new office. They don't have a beginners class, so I'll be straight in with the big kids. That should be fun.

Lesson 2 (and 3, and 4)

Lesson 2!

This lesson bore a remarkable similarity to lesson 1. Warmup was identical.

Introduction to mount. John gives speech that seems eerily familiar. Class separates into two groups tonight and people who have been around 2 months or more run off to do other things. We do, in order, Armbars, Kimuras, and RNCs. Drilling with small guy again. Much cleaner, especially on armbars.

Reaction drill - person on the bottom randomly provides the setup for one of the moves, person on top has to do it correctly. Slow, but reasonably clean. Brain slowly working up to speed on this sort of thing.

1 minute rounds tonight. Still no escape. Come on, really, escaping mount is fundamental I say! I achieved very little while on mount. Small guy likes to bait armbars and then pull his arm back down. Interesting. Somehow gave up my back while on the bottom. Small guy had one hook in as time expired. Stopped, he sank the choke anyway. Bastard. Haha.

Find a new partner. Somehow selected Godzilla as partner. Guy says he has been here 2 weeks. Guy is larger and heavier than I originally thought. Started on top. Guy bench presses. Oh look, an armbar. Messed it up and he threw me halfway across the room. Oops. Re-set. Guy bench-presses. Oh look.. an Armbar. Better this time. Godzilla starts thrashing around like psycho. Time apparently? That didn't seem like very long.

On the bottom. Godzilla pries my arm up off my chest, gets one hand just below my elbow, the other just below my wrist, pulls up with one, pushes down with the other. My brain has a conversation with itself:

"What is THAT supposed to be? That doesn't hurt you know. Oh look he's doing it harder. I know, lets get rid of him!" *bridge* "shit, did he move at all? Hmm. I wonder if he can actually break my forearm like that? I really dont' think so, but lets not find out" *tap*.

Repeat twice more. Suggest guy actually tries to do the techniques we're learning in class. He grunts and says "why, I'm stronger than you?". Genius! Mental note, not training with this guy again.

Left calf cramped really badly during this round. Ow. Must sort that out.

Lesson 3!

Read lesson 2. Lesson 3 was identical. Almost tempted to give say John's speech along with him. It really was the same. Exactly.

Drilling same three moves from mount.
1 minute rounds with small guy. Still no escape. Really. Started on top. Small guy rolled onto his side after 10 seconds or so. Side mount. Tried to encourage him to go all the way over so I could take his back. He didn't want to. Felt like I should be able to armbar him, tried to get hold of his near side arm. 1 minute really isn't very long. Time. Doh.
On the bottom. Still no escape! Except I've read stuff. Like if I can trap an arm, hook his leg then bridge and roll to that side, he has nothing there to post on. Genius! It even worked twice. Left calf cramped really badly on the second one. Again. I might have to look at that.

Class over without a second partner. What? Already? Probably good. My leg hurts.

Lesson 4:

... Actually just read lesson 3, but add this bit first:

Guard! how exciting! Demonstration of simple closed guard. Demonstration of a way to break this guard and pass by stacking your partner up and slipping by to this arcane position called side control that we don't know yet. Brief drilling. Small guy is nowhere in sight. Found a guy on his first night who was probably only 10kgs heavier than me.

Looking forward to learning lots of guard stuff right? Wrong! It's mount time. Yay. Armbars. Kimuras. Rear naked chokes. Partner freaks out and taps instantly when choked. Mildly amusing. We did 1 minute rounds. I don't remember them. Left calf cramped. Really a problem. Note to self. Stretch left calf thoroughly from now on.

Lesson 5:

Was absolutely dead after warmup, which was the same as all the others. I don't get it. Mount stuff. 1 minute rounds. Small guy first, then the biggest guy in the room. How did that happen? Completely wrecked already. Big guy didn't manage to tap me. I think it was his first night. Grabbed John for quick hints on how to actually deal with the fact that other guy has arms about 5 inches longer than mine, and I can't get my weight down on his chest if he bench presses me. Get mount higher up his body, right under his armpits if possible. Good plan. Then I can just sit up, and pivot for the armbar.

Why am I so tired? Side control? What is this side control you speak of? 1 minute rounds? Don't you want to actually show us something first? No? Ok then!
On the bottom first. Can't. Breathe. Under. Huge. Guy. Seriously wanted to tap, could hardly move. Didn't, but only because 1 minute finished. Didn't take my turn on top. Legs wobbly, head spinning. What the?

Class finishes. Good.

Found out why the next day. I got the flu. Yay.

Starting a blog / starting BJJ

Hi! My name is Neil, I'm 28 years old and I live in Brisbane, Australia.

So here we are. I've been inspired to start a blog detailing my attempts to learn Brazilian Jiujitsu. The culprit for this is the blog of bjjgrrl which can be found here: http://bjjgrrl.wordpress.com - should be required reading for anyone starting out in BJJ, especially for little people like me. I'm around five foot six tall, and weigh around 60kgs, or roughly 130 pounds.

I'm bad at blogging and I'm bad with sticking with the things that catch my attention like BJJ has, so this should be an interesting and likely failed experiment. BJJ is more likely to stick than blogging, because I've definitely enjoyed my early classes.

So what are the threats to my continued BJJ-ness?

• I'm a lazy individual.

That has to stop, and it's perfectly within my capabilities to fix. Good.

• I don't live ANYWHERE near the gym.

Brisbane is not the easiest place in the world to find a class, I have to drive at least 40 minutes to find one. There is a pretty simple fix for that too. My current gym is on the same street as my office. Problem solved. Unfortunately my boss clearly hates my BJJ-ness, and the office is moving to Fortitude valley. That can be fixed too, as that should put me within about 3km of another gym.

• Full time work, Part time university.

This is an excuse. Shouldn't stop me. At the very least I can spare one night a week until I graduate. Aiming for two nights. Who needs sleep anyway?

So what have I done so far? I'm 6 or 7 classes into my journey, taking BJJ Fundamentals. Hour long classes, a pretty large group of people who have all been training less than 3 months, supervised by one purple belt named John. I like John, he's small like me and he seems like he knows his stuff. Unfortunately there's one of him, and there's lots of us. Not so conducive to actually getting help if you need it. That's ok, I've been in fundamentals class before a few years ago (was working nights, couldn't stick with it) and I've seen the absolute basics before. Headstart. Nice.

Vague recollections of lessons so far:

Lesson 1.

Warmup. 20 pushups / situps / squats. Not so bad, my fitness levels suck, but I can do those.
Bridging exercises.
Minor stretching.
Hip escapes (bring feet up to butt, bridge hips, roll to side onto shoulder, extend legs to shove hips out backwards)
Single leg hip escapes (same as above, but bring up only one foot. Roll away from that foot)
More stretching, then line up and do hip escapes, single leg hip escapes down the mat. These are probably useful for something right? Care to tell us what for? no? Ok then.
Ok, kinda tired, but not bad.

Grab a partner. Find the only guy about my size (possibly even smaller). He looks happy to have someone not 15 kgs heavier in class. Apparently he's been training 4 nights a week (2 beginners MMA classes) for the last 4 weeks. Good. He should know stuff.

Introduction to mount. John does a spiel on why mount is good. That's reasonably obvious. Demonstration of armbar from mount, specifically when partner sticks his arm up in the air, either to bench-press, choke or attack your face. I have seen this before. Hands on either side of target arm, then together in center of partners chest to lift weight up, Up onto your feet without lifting your weight off opponent, pivot to put your legs across your opponent, pin arm to chest and sit back, bridge hips to finish if necessary. This is a crap description of the armbar, but I know what I mean. Note that it's ideal if partners thumb is pointing upwards, otherwise it really doesn't work so good.

Drilling armbars. Small guy is helpful. My balance sucks. Eventually get a few decent ones.

Demonstration of Kimura from mount. Pick an arm, pin it down next to partners head, far side arm holds partners wrist, other arm slips under his arm to grab my own wrist, pull everything closer to partner's ribs, paint his wrist down the mat while slowly lifting his elbow. Pretty simple. Also a bad description.

Drilling Kimuras. Ow. Those hurt. Mental note, avoid being Kimura'd. Small guy has one very flexy shoulder and one that doesn't move at all. Good to know.

Demonstration of Rear naked choke. I've seen this before, but it's still impressive how effective this is. Basically, wrap arm around partners neck under their chin, grab your own shoulder. Other hand on back of opponent's head and pushing forwards, Squeeze.

Drilling those with partner sitting up.

Demonstration of how to take partners back from mount if they choose to roll. We're stopping at a position I believe John described as "side mount" (partner on side, one knee behind his head, other heel tight into his stomach). Sinking far side hook in as they continue to roll, sinking the other as they get up to hands and knees, then flatten them out. Apply RNC from the side which they didn't turn their head to.

Drilling those too. Awkward, but got the hang of it fairly quickly.

Next up, some position drills with resistance. One person starts on mount and has to try and stay on, or submit opponent. Person on the bottom has to escape. I'm starting on the bottom. Wait what? Wouldn't it be a good idea to learn how to escape mount first? No? Well ok then. Small guy says that he hasn't learnt to escape mount yet either. In four weeks. I would have thought that was kinda fundamental.

2 minutes is a fairly long time. Smaller guy likes Kimuras, mostly because I wasn't planning on waving my arms around for armbars, nor turning my back and getting choked. Plan is to keep arms close to chest, elbows close to ribs, and generally try and be as difficult as possible. Small guy managed to bully my arms off to the side for Kimuras several times, but every time he tried to actually lock it in, I bridged and he almost fell over, so I got my arm back. Nobody achieved much.

2 minutes on top. Small guy seems convinced that he can get his legs wrapped around me while I'm on mount. No. Lean forwards and shuffle as high up as possible. Working for a kimura, just generally trying to be heavy on top and see if I can get him to do something silly. Had an arm for an armbar, missed it badly. Eventually got a decent Kimura on the flexy arm. Small guy seems very gassed. Glad it's not just me. Slowly crank Kimura, hear a tap and slack it off a little to see if it was actually him. He says it was, I suggest maybe he's best of tapping me rather than the floor with so much noise and chaos going on.

Time. Find a new partner, someone roughly your own size. Hmm. I'm actually really small. This shouldn't really be such a revelation. Next partner is half a foot taller and probably 20 kgs heavier. We did 1 minute rounds this time, and I don't really remember much of it. I do know neither of us actually achieved anything while on mount. I couldn't get rid of this guy at all, and had some difficulties holding mount myself.

Wrapping up the lesson. Good and tired. Survived. Excellent.