6.28.10 /Muay Thai 7 - 8 pm /BJJ 8 - 9:30 pm

Ok. Monday Class. Righht. Maybe I'll be a good girl and get Thurs up tonight as well after I go. It's almost necessary, considering this is 4th of July weekend and I'm gonna be way too busy with beaches, bikes, and beer to be posting.

7 - 8pm /Muay Thai

I've missed at least one week of this so far, maybe two. I still really like the teacher. MT is kinda hard for me. It's like when I started BJJ, I had no f-ing clue what I was doing. I hadn't even heard of jiu jitsu before. I showed up and that was the first time I learned what it was (and proceeded to fall in love, of course). So it's sort of like when your 5 or even 10 and draw something without knowing how much skill you lack in drawing. Now at 26, if I draw something I can see so much more than could have ever occurred to me back then. Well, with BJJ I sort of had that vision. I couldn't tell difference. Now that I have experience in a similar thing, MT I can tell. It's like in MT I'm all grown up.

That doesn't make it any easier. Mentally, I feel like I have to push more. Keep trying. Keep going to class. Don't give up. It feels like BJJ came easier, but that's because I didn't pay as much attention to my screw ups. I feel like I remember less than ever, but that's because most likely I didn't realize how many things I forgot or didn't pick up in the beginning of jiu jitsu.

But that's ok. I'm gonna keep pushing; keep going. I'm definitely not gonna give up!

Points of MT to Remember

1. Always aim for the center line of the body
2. In MT, there are 3 "levels" of a person's body, and you learn to incorporate all 3 while fighting.
3. Do NOT PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR FEET/THEIR FEET/ ANYONE'S DAMN FEET. That needed caps cause I find it mad hard. All the time, I want to watch myself as I do something. But you know where your body is. You can feel your limbs and every part of you. You DON'T need to see them to feel them. Gregg, our instructor, used the example of telling me to close my eyes and touch my nose. See! I know where my nose is. Oh. Right. Finnne. Look up. Look at the chin, chest.
4. Always protect yourself.
5. Always be moving
6. You need GOOD balance/flexibility. I might have to start yoga. Damn. (Cause it's so boring!)
7. Do not point your toes as you kick!

We went over basic hooks, crosses, and jabs. Which I really wish I could practice doing on someone once or twice out of class too, actually. No doubt if I did that a few times outside of class I would feel more confident with what the correct way of throwing one feels like. Oh wells.

We also did a take down, but there is a detail of it I can't remember and I'm going to text my friend Kelly who takes it also to go threw it with me. Be a delayed post.

8 - 9 pm /BJJ

Was a fun, but not all together productive class. I felt like everything I know I've been doing wrong kept happening, no matter how hard I tried this class to NOT do those things! It was def a little frustrating. That's how it goes, sometimes.

I'll give a few examples of my problems. I really like passing guard from standing, which means often I have to face open guard. This tends to be much harder on guys than girls, of course, and I usually get caught there eventually. I've been trying to get control of the grips, to stack them and not allow for space. But that's so much easier said than done. I know, keep on it. But Monday was exceptionally worse than normal. I think. Or maybe I just want to improve quicker than will actually happen. Who knows. Then there's that I tend to lean forward while in someone's guard, or trying to pass open guard or anything. I KNOW I'm not supposed to. I know that it sets me off balance, and makes it easier. And yet, just another thing I keep on forgetting as I actually roll! It makes it worse that if I saw someone else doing it, I would know to say something. I know what I'm doing, but sometimes it almost feels helpless to change it. Grrrrr.

I definitely need to work on grips and not keeping my arm open to armbars so much while in guard. But I'm gonna stop now, because the list of things I need to work on is endless.

Scarfhold Choke

We worked on a scarfhold choke in class. At least, I'm pretty sure it's called that. You get it from starting in scarfhold, so either way it's a good name.

1. You start in scarfhold position let's say on their left side.
2. Your left hand is going to be gripping their collar on their left side. (So arm under their head).
3. They try to shrimp out, which is when you take a BIG stomp with your right leg over their left arm. Should go up in the air like an arc, because otherwise it might not clear their arm!
4. Immediately go onto your knees to secure side control, keeping tight with their arm between your legs now.
5. Your right hand should grip the collar on their right side, and your left hand is going to go under their left shoulder and grip the collar from underneath.
6. Your right hand is gripping on the right side, and you are going to bring your arm around and across their neck tight.
7. Extend your body down towards the floor, and also make your right leg completely straight. (The leg that is straight is always the one on the outside near your opponent's head/shoulder.)
8. Squeeze tight! And they tap.

Some notes: I felt as this was being done to me, that when they go to switch the collar grips one getting side control, my right arm was free to use as I please. Thus I could have possibly tried to get free. This might not make a difference depending on who is doing it against you, or if someone did it to me in a live rolling situation since no one gives 100% while learning a technique. However, I did feel it was something I might bring up next class (oh shit, that's tonight haha).

All in all, I really like the choke. I have gotten scarf hold (ish) positions in the past a few times after passing guard, and then be like, ok, I'm here, now what. There were def a few times when I had the position, went to side control, then went back because I felt scarf was more secure in stopping their hips (at least for those particular opponents and moments and me!). So my goal in the future will be to hopefully try this choke out while rolling a few times.

Alright. I need some food. Plus, that's all to write. Now I will just send a little prayer to the Blogger Gods that this email-posty thing will not screw me and my layout. For the third time.

6.24.10 /BJJ Women's Only 7 - 8pm /BJJ Reg 8 - 9:30 pm

Me again. I’ve noticed rather annoyingly that the layout for this blog was all outta whack. Yet for the new page I created, About Me (who knew you could have multiple pages!), it’s exactly as it should be. What the hell?? I haven’t edited it at all unless something with the email-to-post-thingy messed it up. Very. Not. Nice. (Editing note: I figured out that it had something to do with emailing creating div layout code into the posts, which messed it up.)


Pffft. Moving on, for the women’s only class Kristel Roxas teaches she had some business things to take care of so we didn’t get started till about 7:30 really. We did only drills the whole time, but I liked them. Drills with armbar from mount and having guard, standing up while in guard, ect.


Thursday regular class is sort of different than every other day. Originally, it was for white belts with 2 stripes and up, but now anyone can pretty much go. He lets you practice anything you want. I went over things with the two other girls there, Marissa and Kristel. I wanted to go over passing open guard, and escaping half guard while on the bottom. I also drilled escaping when someone has mount position on you, which was something the other two girls wanted to work on. Let’s see. Out of everything I really like the escape from mount and half guard.


I wanted to drill open guard because I tend to like standing up while in guard in order to pass. I feel I do it best for whatever reasons. However, there are a few guys that I get stick with so it still needs some work. I also am super bad and mostly only go to pass on the right, with everything in BJJ being easier when my dominate right side comes in to play. 


As I'm editing this (a few days later ha), I can't remember the whole techniques for the life of me for the half guard I learned. :( I do remember him saying, don't let them get to the point where the have any kind of hold on you. To make sure you keep that space between their face/chest and you there.  I'm definitely going to have to ask him how to do it again, sadly.


Moving on.


Open Guard Passing

1. Firstly, you want to make sure there is as little as space as possible between you and your opponent when they have any kind of open guard. 
2. Try to keep control of their sleeves, even if they still have control of yours, as long as you do too. But try to break their grips.
3. You want to stack into them. Get the grips, then push their legs up towards their head.
4. Flat out sit on them. Yup. Sit on top their legs which should now be up towards their head, keeping all your weight on them. 
5. Gradually move towards the left side, making sure to not take the weight off until you can secure side control. 

Escaping Mount Position

1. Grab their left arm (for this example or right really), underneath at their elbow with your right hand. 
2. Grab the top of their left wrist with your left hand.
3. Make sure your foot is on the outside of their leg, keeping it back.
4. You are going to hip up, bumping them up and causing space, and over diagonal to the left. 
5. We do exercises that are similar to this movement in our class. Remember, you aren't going straight up and then to the side. It's one fluid movement.

I'll get back to ya all about the halfguard. Next post up is Monday's of this week. ^.^

/6.14.10 /Monday /BJJ /8 - 9pm

I was late today thanks to needing gas and the lovely 287. As a result, no time to get to Muay Thai @ 7pm. So sad. This is the first class I've missed since we started with the new instructor, Greg, two weeks ago. My goal with MT was to not miss any of the classes for the first month or so, at least.

Shit happens, right. Ok, so I lost a week of training.

The regular BJJ class went pretty well. Our instructor Jay decided to step it up a notch this class compared to some of the drills he usually has us do pre-class. Today we did the regular routine first: jog normal, shuffle in and out, jog knees up, jog legs kicking back, and normal again. Then instead of rolls and shrimping (a fundamental drill/move in BJJ whose purpose is to create space between the player and the opponent, which will make room for movement to a better position) we all got in a circle and did leg circles, sprawls, and pushups until he decided we were done. Fun stuff. In a way more tiring than normal sort of fun.

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Today he went over being in open guard . First we drilled switching the hips just like the leg cirlces, except witha partner each having a turn having open guard. Moving on from that we went over passing open guard. We did two variations but I liked the second one best.

In this variation, we grip our opponent's pants on the inside of the legs near the knees. You quickly push the right leg/knee down, stepping over with your right leg and extending out near his/her side. Your left leg skips up and over his leg as well, but does so without moving backwards at all. Once it's over, you put your knee on his chest/stomach to get knee on belly. At this time you could still have both grips on his/her pants, and you could push his legs over to the left more to make it harder for him/her to escape.

It sounds mad confusing and takes some practice, but I love the control you end up with. You end up still having a very strong grip on your opponent plus have the oh-so-fun knee on belly, which is a damn uncomfortable position for them to be in. I have experienced this too many times (thanks Kristel), and I can honestly say I rather someone do anything - choke me, armbar, whatever. Knee on belly literally makes you feel like everything is crushing down on your and you can't breathe.

(Somewhat) techincal jargon aside, this class I felt pretty happy with. We did guard passing ceremonies before live training (most often called "rolling"). They're a bitch, but they make sense. It forces people to learn something. To practice a technique in an at least partially live setting where they can focus only on that technique. A lot of times, I don't end up completing the goal of these "ceremonies" our instructor likes to have. In this one, he had all blue belts go on the mat and people had to pair up with them. The rest waited in a line. The goal was to "pass" their open guard. Passing is what it sounds like. You get pass something, in this case open guard. The goal of the person with open guard is to block them from passing or to submit them. As soon as anyone did either of these, those waiting in line have to fill in. In this way, you can end up with anyone. This makes it more difficult for me sometimes because I can get someone who is nowhere near my belt or size, but it's good practice. When you have no choice but to learn something, you generally do.

What I learned about Open Guard

If your opponent has open guard, you do not want space between them and you; likewise, if you have open guard you want space between you and your opponent.

Live rolling was different as well. Jay had us do 1 minute rolls, switching to the first person you can find when the minute was over. Every minute, new person. I kinda lost track of how many people I rolled with, but once again I did have the opportunity to roll with a lot of people I don't normally as a result of this. Normally, we roll with around 3 or so people for 4-5 minute rounds depending on how many people come to that class (more people = less time for everyone to roll, or less often you get to roll). He had us continually do this until the end of class. This is actually more difficult, because you're always putting in a lot of energy right away for that minute, except now it's for every minute and every new person.We only had one of the other girls in class today, Kristel, so I mostly rolled with the guys and some of them were ones Jay will usually purposely not match me up with (because of their weight). So I was pretty damn tired in the end.

I was pretty happy even still in the end. I've been working of thinking less while rolling and being more aggressive and instinctive. Also, trying to push myself to stay at that level even after I have rolled with people already and start to get tired. Hesitation is a big weakness for me while rolling live. I often forget that as soon as I see someone about to transition into a sweep or a pass (ect), I need to act right away. Still, I definately have been progressing with this.