Tag Archives: guillotine

Be Careful: Five Ways to Hurt Others in Jiu Jitsu Training

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To me, one of the biggest parts of jiu jitsu is staying healthy and avoiding injury. In some cases, being overly cautious in trying to avoid injury can actually have the opposite effect of putting you at greater risk of it. Jiu jitsu at times, like much of life, can be a cruel counter-intuitive mistress. The way I approach it: I try to relax, quiet my ego, and focus on not hurting my training partners, and hope that they return the favor.

There are some things I noticed that I do (and others do to me) that can lead to injury (large or small). So let’s all agree to be careful with those things and use common sense. Here are five of them:

  • Jump closed guard really suddenly from semi-standing exchanges such as when your partner comes up for a single. His lower back or legs might be a little relaxed and thus vulnerable to be hurt due to suddenly having to carry all your body weight. When training from the feet, most people (especially non-competitors) don’t expect you to jump guard or jump anything really. They expect you to either go for a takedown or to pull guard by sitting with a foot in the hip or some other variation of that.
  • Wristlocks: I know that footlocks get a bad rep in jiu jitsu for being potentially dangerous, but I find that people are actually TOO cautious with footlocks in gyms where their danger has been drilled into people’s heads since day 1. On the other hand, wristlocks are not taught very often (even though they are legal in most divisions of most tournaments in both gi and no-gi). And when they are taught, they are not talked about as something that could potentially lead to injury. I don’t know anyone who broke their wrist due to a wristlock, but I do know MANY people that had to be out for 1-2 weeks due to a wristlock and after that still had to take it easy with the wrist for a couple months. It’s a great submission, but be careful when you apply it in training.
  • Guillotines: This had to make the list, of course. The problem with the guillotine is that it has an evil brother: the neck crank. The other problem with the guillotine is that often times if you don’t finish it, you are putting yourself in a less-than-dominant position. So you really want to finish it! But sometimes the technique is a little off and you want to add a little “sauce” by pulling up. And guess what: that cranks the neck. This isn’t a problem really, except that a little tweak of the neck can often leads to pain for weeks. There’s no reason for this. On this one technique I’ll often tap a little early in training, even though I don’t like doing it. And when I’m applying the guillotine, I try hard NOT to crank the neck. If that means I don’t get the submission, I’m okay with that.
  • Pulling the Turtle Backwards: A tight turtle can be a frustrating position to break open, and one of the ways that seems to intuitively make sense to people is to pull the person directly backwards over his ankles. This can actually be an effective technique (with some important details) but it’s also an asshole technique that you should save for competition-style training when anything effective goes. Like most dangerous techniques, they are less likely to cause injury when your training partner is going close to 100% and thus are more physically and mentally primed for a wider range of possibilities.
  • Try Stuff You Don’t Know with the Spazzy Intensity of a Raging Bull: I would say that 90% of my training is about figuring out small details around techniques that I’m already very familiar with. That requires a little exploration: figuring out the timing, feel, and leverage of the technique. But sometimes, I explore beyond the confines of what I know, and their I proceed with caution. I know that I can hurt myself and others. I have the luxury to proceed with caution, because there are always things I can fall back on. Of course, folks that are just starting out don’t have that luxury, since most every technique and position is new. The right approach, therefore, when you start to jiu jitsu is to relax, learn, and explore with caution. The best way to halt your progress in jiu jitsu is to be forced off the mat for months due to a stupid injury.

One of the lessons I’ve learned about training is you have to be very good at reading your training partners. You have to consider their rank, their style, their current mental state, and whether they are preparing for a tournament. It’s a complicated social interaction that takes a long time to learn. This is why beginner white belts are usually the most dangerous: they are not very good at reading these subtle social cues.

Two Years Since Starting Jiu Jitsu

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Alright, time to look back a bit. Thanks to everyone that makes my life so rewarding. I hope I can give back even a fraction of that in the coming years.

I started training jiu jitsu (aka BJJ) two years ago, just over a year after starting judo, at the ripe old age of 26.

I actually first encountered BJJ three years ago, by doing a couple of weeks of classes, but thought that it was too expensive, and went instead for judo which was offered free at Drexel University.

Then, at the end of 2009, I decided to compete in a no-gi beginners division at Grapplers Quest. Like the typical “meathead”, I went in knowing basically nothing except a guillotine and a double leg takedown, and with that was able to win all four of my matches. How did I win? I took everyone down and held them there. Every part of my body was exhausted and sore for days. That’s how my journey began.

I would describe my approach to the sport of jiu jitsu as one similar to the way a chess player approaches the game of chess. I don’t look at it as a physical activity at all, but one that is mostly mental, requiring patience, clarity, knowledge, and a fearlessness.

I’ve gone a good way in the positive direction in these two years, both in my jiu jitsu, but also in the way I approach my work, my relationships, and my life in general. I’ve gained a more grounded perspective on all those things. It may sound a little cheesy, but I’ve gained an awareness of my body and my mind. More specifically, I’ve learned a lot about how to live a healthier life and how to face (and overcome) my fears and my ego.

I’ve had to sacrifice my social life for the most part, as well as certain other aspects of my life, to the point where quite often my days are just about work and training. But this makes me happy. I’ve never felt better, healthier, and more complete as a human being.

I wouldn’t trade this experience for the world. It has given me the chance to meet some  incredibly tough and genuinely caring people.

By competing as often as my workload allows for, I continue to challenge myself physically and mentally. For those of you that compete, you know how difficult it is to go out there into the pressure, the uncertainty, the overwhelming physical challenge of it all. But it’s precisely what sharpens my mind, reminds me to appreciate every day, every breath, and every person in my fortunate little pursuit of happiness.

Marco Perazzo

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Yesterday, I wrote about a 5x world champion Robson Moura, so it seems only appropriate that I continue with the theme of greatness and talk about the head instructor of NJMA, the one and only: Marco Perazzo.

He is a good friend of my judo instructor (Ray Huxen) and likes to stop by a judo class every once in a while to terrorize the unsuspecting victims. In all seriousness, he is a very knowledgeable instructor. He recently showed us a few very interesting ideas from the spider guard at Osagame. And I also still remember a few critical adjustments he made to my x-guard a long time ago that have helped me in my development.

Here’s a video blog from a tournament hosted at his academy:

He is truly one of the good guys in the BJJ community. It’s definitely an honor to know him.

Some other memories of Marco for me include him attempting to run me down in his car a couple times as I was happily riding my bike enjoying the cool fresh city air just so he can make fun of me. Another time is when I got a chance to roll with him (seems like forever ago) and he guillotined me what seemed like a couple dozen times in a 6 minute time period. I’m still recovering physically and emotionally from that experience.

One Hundred Guillotines with My New Best Friend

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To the left is a picture of a fellow grappler I recently met. He doesn’t read poetry. He doesn’t have a blog where he airs out his emotions. He doesn’t take s*** from anyone. He is a man of few words. And if I want to practice 100 guillotines on him, he is game. He has the heart of a champion, and if only he had arms and legs, he would be unstoppable.

In all seriousness though, getting a lot of reps of the Marcelo Garcia style guillotine (shown below) on this dummy has really helped me figure it out. I’m not a fan of guillotines, foot locks, wrist locks and other staples of the no gi game, but I’m trying to learn them (mostly with the help of books, instructionals, and competition footage) in order to have descent answers when others attack me with these techniques.

My general approach to jiu jitsu is to be gentle and not use much strength for 99% of cases. That makes learning certain techniques tougher. The guillotine in particular (along with its uncle the read naked choke) is one such technique. Once I get good at it, I’m sure I can make it crisp and mostly painless, but the initial learning process requires some ugly playing around. That’s where the dummy comes in, since he doesn’t seem to mind much.

Here’s the guillotine I’m working (shown in the second part of the video):

Back Take with Wilson Reis

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wilson-reis-back-take-guillotineI trained no-gi at BJJ United last night. As always, good instruction and tough training. Wilson Reis was running the class. He keeps the intensity up, from warm up to drills to live training.

As part of the warm up, one thing that stood out is the single leg defense drill that I remember doing a lot in wrestling. The opponent gets a single leg on you, and then you hop around for about 20-30 seconds. The surprising thing was how easy it was for the first 10 seconds, and how tough it was after that. Once the calves started burning, my will to continue hopping around quickly diminished.

He showed a cool (acrobatic) back take where you open up a guy’s turtle by flipping over to a bridge and bringing him along. In Wilson’s match against Bruno Tostes (included below), you can see him attempt it at the 0:55 mark. This is a great way to open up a defensive turtle.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ORClb8829w

We finished from there with a guillotine. He reminded me to do all the steps and to do them well as I was getting lazy on the hooks and the wrist control. It was great to have an instructor after me. As a result I kept the pace up and the technique sharp.

BJJ United are good people (Jared, Wilson, Sharon, etc). Email bjjunited@comcast.net or friend on Facebook.

Chewing Gum

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I sometimes get heartburn when training. It’s unpleasant, distracting, and prevents me from really pushing myself. I would say the worst part of it is that it prevents me from enjoying a long training session, but not enough where I have to stop. So I just go on, annoyed.

I’ve heard a few other folks complain about heartburn on the mat, and their solution is not to eat for several hours before training. That’s just not an option for me. I eat small meals about every two hours and wouldn’t be able to last through a hard practice if I didn’t eat at least an hour before hand.

Anyway, for me, for some reason chewing gum helps with heartburn. I don’t know the physiology of this, nor do I care, it just works (for me). So, I’ve gotten into the habit of popping in a piece of gum before training. Plus, it helps make me smell a little less like a pot of coffee, since by the time I actually get to training, I’ve probably consumed 1-2 pots. Yes, I’m an addict. And yes, I know, coffee is terrible for heartburn.

That’s a lot of writing to get to the comment that I actually wanted to make, which is: I feel that chewing gum helps me in training by reminding me to relax and breath. For example, I was guillotined today in training for about 2 minutes with very little ability to breath, and as crazy as it sounds, chewing gum helped put my mind into that relaxed “I’m just chilling” state and I was able to ride it out. Later, a 250 lbs guy was on my back and had a body triangle on tight for 2-3 minutes while working a choke. I was able to relax through that also. It’s all psychological, but gum seems to be a useful catalyst, as absurd as that sounds.