Monthly Archives: July 2011

Wrestling Mindset and The Perfect Practice

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Mike Denny ran a hell of a good (tough) wrestling practice Tuesday. Emphasis on pressure, always hands on the opponent, pushing him and yourself.

Live training didn’t have “sorry”, handshakes, rest breaks. Pushing the cardio, and yet (at least the guys I went with) didn’t use much muscle, all crisp technique.

Of course, my favorite part was the non-stop drilling, for about 30 minutes. Shot after shot. I went with Tom who is a tough no-bullshit guy, and again doesn’t use muscle, just clean technique. I don’t think he said a single word to me the whole time, which is perfect.

That brings me to the idea that I’ve been after for a while which is what makes a good (and even “perfect”) practice:

  1. A short warm up (not too taxing cardio-wise, but breaks a sweat), followed by a quick stretch. I usually do my own stretching before hand since I have a few specific problem area I need to loosen up (shoulders, neck, groin, lower back).
  2. Drills of fundamental techniques. Keep the pace up, but no muscle, technique has to be 100% perfect. No talking, no breaks, no questions (except if you’re completely lost).
  3. Live training. If I’m going hard, I like to keep this part short (only 3-4 matches of 6 minutes), but if I’m relaxing and focusing on learning then I can  just roll forever.

My criticism of any practice, even one Mike ran is not enough time for drills! I like to get high number of reps in. That’s where I start enjoying a technique, the more and more I understand every little details of it, the more it becomes effortless. For me, there’s nothing like the feeling of pulling off a technique without using any muscle, purely based on timing and leverage. That’s when I know I only have 10,000 reps to go ;-)

The Bull Fight Pass

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I’ve been focused on guard passing lately. Passing fast or slow, heavy or loose, exploring the possibilities, figuring out the details, and most of all: getting the drilling reps in.

This post is about a pass that I don’t utilize nearly enough in training or competition: the toreando pass. The basic idea of the pass is to get around the legs without letting the opponent defend by using his legs or hips. Too often I’ll let the opponent have one of my legs and work from there. Why do that, when I can just skip past all that exhausting and dangerous de la riva guard chaos?

Andre Galvao shows a version that I really like as it doesn’t just pin down the legs, it pins down the hips too. This should be my bread and butter:

Draculino shows the more traditional bull pass with both hands on the opponent’s pants just below the knees. He brings his hips forward to get the opponent to push back and use that force to bring the opponent’s leg down to the mat and pin them there. Xande shows a lot of variations of this push/pull idea on the guard passing series of his instructional. Here’s Draculino:

And here is a versatile variation of the Galvao pass above from Lucio Linhares where instead of posting his right hand on the hip he posts it on the ground in the underhook position:

And another variation from Demian Maia on the Galvao version above with a key unique detail where he flares out his elbow to restrict the movement of the opponent’s leg. Usually in jiu-jitsu the rule is elbows in but in this case clearly it’s an effective way to prevent the reguarding motion:

Another Rant On Drilling

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It’s remarkable to me how few people want to drill. I won’t claim to any expertise in jiu jitsu or judo (obviously), but I really believe if you want to win in competition you have to drill your A-game A LOT. I mean thousands of repetitions, regularly: every time you step on the mat.

What is drilling good for?

First, it develops confidence in the technique. I mean real confidence. For example, for passing guard, confidence is the belief that you can pass anyone’s guard. I don’t have this at all yet, but that’s the goal. This belief is essential to put the kind of power and drive behind a technique that’s required to make it work.

Second thing drilling does is fill your mind with the technique you’re drilling. If you drill enough, it’s all you think about. You start to understand all the intricate details of it. You start to visualize different possibilities of counters, counters to counters, counters to counters to counters, and so on. And so when you do live training, all of that information gets integrated into a complete system around the technique.

Third thing drilling does, as is commonly know, is it develops muscle memory so that you can execute it cleanly at a speed and with a timing that nullifies the possible counters and defenses. Moreover, it develops the strength, power, and endurance of the muscle required to execute the technique.

I won’t say anything else. I’m pretty frustrated about my inability to get regular drilling going. I know when I played piano and guitar, practice was essential. Practice with a clear purpose. Which usually meant doing stuff that wasn’t at all pleasant, and would be considered incredibly boring by most folks. It’s the end result that I’m after, and I’m willing to pay the costs of hard work in order to win, in all aspects of my life.

Lloyd Irvin Interview: Drilling Transitions

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Just read this interview with Lloyd Irvin and am both inspired and motivated. There is a lot of truth in what he says here about what makes a good school and a good training regimen. Some key points he makes:

  • There is no winning or losing when rolling at the club, but only there, everywhere else (including in life) you’re either winning or losing.
  • The higher the level, the more important the mental game becomes.
  • “If the school wants to be a high level competition school, they have to ban excuse making, they have to ban letting their students make excuses, they have to ban sitting out rounds during sparring, they have to ban asking for water when live sparring is happening (you take water breaks when the instructor says so), you have to ban all of the BS happening on the floor in your school.”

I first came across this philosophy of training at BJJ United. It’s definitely tough, but worth it. As Lloyd Irvin says in the interview “when it’s all said and done the only thing that matters is the results.”

The most important reminder came in the answer to the question: “If you could only pick one thing that an individual could start today that would improve their Jiu-Jitsu what would it be?”

His answer: transition drilling. He probably means something specific, but in general, drilling is key. I think that includes:

  1. Drilling with perfect technique (which often means slow but stead) against a non-resisting opponent.
  2. Positional training against a resisting opponent
  3. Flow drills: flowing through positions in order to explore variations and possibilities

Here’s a very cool video of drilling judo throws:

“The God Damn Russians Are the Last Men on the Planet”

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The following is a public service announcement for all you American “pansies”. You didn’t hear it from me, you heard it from a man wearing an American flag and just about the most badass mustache on the face of the Earth:

I think I’m going to request that Shoyoroll release a red gi with a giant yellow hammer and sickle on the back. By the way Ivan Drago is not the face of Russia to the world:

Aleksandr Karelin, on the other hand, is:

Apparently, Chicago is for Lovers not Fighters

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Capone Chicago

The state that brought us Al Capone passed a bill (House Bill 1490) in June banning boxing and full-contact martial arts contests that are not explicitly approved “by the Department” or as it is commonly known “by the Man”.

The event organizers have to demonstrate that they conform to a strict set of rules defined by the government including the requirement that they pay %3 on the first $500,000 gross income and %4 on the rest.

This might not be a huge deal for large events, but for the smaller guys, it’s a major problem. One example is the IBJJF Chicago Open that was scheduled for August 21st and that I was planning to attend with several other people. The event is now on hold until further notice.

Will a respected IBJJF organization be willing to operate in a state that wants it to follow a complicated bureaucratic process in order to host an event that most other states give it the full freedom to do without it?

Chicago is the city where I grew up, in that I went from middle school to college there, and it saddens me to see it give so little love to those that fight. Al Capone would be sorely disappointed.

Fighting the Good Fight

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SouthJerseyChallenge_1

I competed at one the The Good Fight BJJ tournaments today. I went 4 and 2, losing to the same guy twice in the finals of my weight division and the absolute. That adds up to two silver medals.

Below is a picture of me being not very happy about receiving one of those silver medals. A positive way to look at my performance is to say that no one scored points on me the entire tournament (my losses were by submission), and I stayed on top the entire time. However, how I actually feel is that I lacked confidence on the feet and in passing guard, letting my opponent dictate how the match went. It’s good to be patient, but I wish I open up a lot more.

lex-not-happy-with-second-place

Overall, it was a good experience.

It certainly feels like I don’t compete enough. I put too much pressure on myself to win, and as a result sometimes I don’t get the necessary quantity of competition matches required to gain comfort with the level of intensity that is characteristic of competition.

I’m hesitant to shoot in. I’m hesitant to pass the way I know I should, and the way I have many times before. Why? Because I don’t want to take the risk. But taking risks is part of learning and is an essential requisite of gaining confidence in the power of technique. For example, I am only now gaining confidence in the knee-cut pass that has for the longest time felt very vulnerable to me. I just didn’t believe it could work, even though it kept working over and over.

This post is already way to long… There are three competitions in August, but for the rest of July (as of now) there’s nothing! The last several tournaments have revealed a few problems in my game, so July is all about fixing those problems!

Black Belts and Fire Sprinklers

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My day started at 10am when I was woken up by the sound of running water. My landlord installed fire sprinklers in the building last week. Today, they were testing them by turning the pressure up to “200 pounds” and seeing if any of the sprinklers fail.

One of the ones in my apartment did fail, soaking the majority of the room. My first reaction was to yell “What the f***!” I’m not sure who I was addressing, but it seemed like the right thing to do. Then I heard a voice from downstairs yell back: “Sorry, dude!” Reminded me a lot of Office Space.

I grabbed a cup of coffee, my gi, and went out the door to go train at Jared’s. Every guy there was tougher than the next, including as Mike said: “the world’s two best blue belts”. He was just joking, but when he said that, I realized how much I wish I’d gone to Worlds, and that I’m definitely going next year. Of course, there are many high-level tournaments before then that I really need to start medaling at. Andrew is game for the Chicago Open in August. And I think Jared and a few others might be going to the Boston Open.

In training, I opened up (as I have more and more recently) and tried different guard passes. Even tried lefty passes to help make sure my base is strong no matter what grip I have. X-pass is working well. The part I struggle with is stabilizing side control. I’m most successful when I really force a strong knee-on-belly right from the x-pass.

Healthy Foods: Keep Your Enemies Close

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I guess that if you were to look at my “diet” in the context of how most people eat, you would say that I follow a very strict boring diet. I eat the same thing over and over. It’s simple to make, it tastes good to me, so I see no reason to change. The diet includes:

  • Steel-cut oats
  • Veggies with lean ground turkey/chicken
  • Tuna from a can with veggies or salsa
  • Protein shake

To me, the most important part of any diet is portion control, or just control in general. Eating anything in excess is bad. I have an addictive personality and I find that there are certain foods that I just can’t successfully control portions with.

Of course, there’s delicious food that has a ton of sugar, fat, and usually both. But because I know that they are clearly bad, I tend to have much less trouble staying away from them (examples: ice cream, fast food, beer, wings, etc). These are the “enemies” that I refer to. I don’t mind keeping them close.

It’s the healthy “friends” like fruit that cause the most trouble for me. Because they are “healthy”, I tend to overeat them. There is literally no limit to how many lbs of cherries I can eat. This basically applies to all carb-heavy foods that one would consider healthy. Oatmeal or whole grain cereal is a good example. In fact, I have to separate the oatmeal I eat into measured portions in order to help avoid the all destructive decision of “should I have more?”

It’s all a little OCD, but it works for me, at least better than the alternatives.

Submission Only Finals

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Saw this poll on FightWorks Podcast and thought that this is a great idea for tournaments: make the finals match submission only.

The poll suggests this for black belt divisions at IBJJF events. However, I think it would be a great idea for finals of any division except maybe the most novice ones (kids, white belt, etc).

An alternative is to make it an opt-in option. So, if both competitors agree, then it’s submission only, otherwise if either disagrees, then just do a regular points match. Although obviously this alternative has some unfairness issues.

I won far too many matches by 2 points or even on advantages. When the time runs out and I’m only up by 2 points, I feel like I was saved by the bell, like I never was put to the test. I do see jiu jitsu as a chess match, and respect the game for its technical merit, but in the end it (especially a finals match) is a battle. To win a battle you have to make the opponent give up, no excuses, no referee close calls, etc.

All that said, I don’t think I would want every match to be submission only, lol. Or would I? I’m doing the US Grappling submission-only tournament in September. If it’s anything like what people say it is, it’ll be a great experience. Here’s a highlight from one of their submission-only events:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMUcrpJxki8