tonight i went to check out a jiu jitsu school that started very close to where I live (I let Sensei Mariedke know before I went). It's a very modern school and the classes are taught with no gi. The focus is freestyle jiu jitsu.

The bad: the instructor teaches out of another school. Said school is a total McDojo. I walked in and the school sempai immediately walked up to me and gave me a price sheet and explained how i need to buy a school t-shirt and the school logo must be worn on at least one item of clothing. I was about ready to walk out the door at that point, but seeing as i had nothing else to do i stuck around.

I'm glad I did because the instructor was great. there were 5 students in total. Tonight was essentially request night and working some basic drills: passing the guard, escape from the mount, sweeping, and some knee bars for about 45 minutes and then 15 minutes of grappling at 30% power and speed.

I learned a LOT just from the one class and the ability to roll with someone was great.

Two techniques that really stuck with me are
1. escaping the guard and transitioning to an achilles lock, and
2. passing the guard into a knee bar

Summary:

1. uke has full mount. tori puts both hands on uke's right knee and shrimps. the shrimp is "outward" so tori's butt pushes uke's left knee out, forcing him to re-posture. from here, uke straightens his torso out so that it is ~90 degrees to uke while taking his right leg and bringing it up over the top of uke's left leg and bending his left knee under him. Tori ends up in a fetal-type position with uke's leg trapped. Tori can then apply a figure 4 lock with his arms to the achilles or heel hook.

2. Tori is in uke's guard. Tori postures up and braces his hands on uke's hips and pushes them into the ground to keep his hips in place. tori shifts a bit to the right and drives his elbow into uke's anterior femoral, forcing uke's leg to the mat. once the leg is down and the guard opened up, tori brings his left foot up so the knee is poking out over uke's center line to prevent uke from rolling. Tori hooks under uke's left leg with his right hand. While doing this, tori places his left knee across uke's left thigh and onto the mat. Tori then hops over uke whlie holding the leg so that uke is lying @ 90 degrees to uke with tori's back to uke;s head in the fetal position. Uke's leg is between tori's legs (left leg on mat, right leg over uke's leg). Tori then pulls back on uke's foot and pushes out with his hips to hyperextend uke's knee.

Trevor's back was spasming, so for the adults it was just Colby and me again. During the warmups, I helped Sensei Mariedke with doing breakfall 4 and breakfall 8 with the juniors and adults.

After, Colby and I did a portion of the high stress warm up. 2x skipping, 2x overhead medicine ball toss, 2x standing medicine ball into the abs, 25 supine medicine ball drops, and then finished with 2x10 front/groin kicks and 2x10 shin kicks on the medicine ball.

We then reviewed wrist grabs: one hand on each wrist straight and across, 2 hands on 1 wrist, 1 hand on each wrist high and low.

We finished off with a ground defense technique: 2 hands on the throat while in the full mount. We worked in some anterior femoral strikes with the elbows after tori gained release and turned uke over onto his back.

Tonight Sensei Mariedke worked with Carolyn to prep her for her Yellow Belt test on Wednesday. Kyle and I worked with the other two juniors; Michael and Jonathan. We reviewed wrist grabs: one hand on one wrist inline and cross, one hand on each wrist, and two hands on one wrist. After we worked a bit on a bully sitting on your chest (full mount).