Daily Submission

After a really long couple of weeks which saw me spend 6 days in Yakima Training Center in Washington state with the Army, I finished up the week at the open gym period on Friday night. I rolled with a fellow soldier who is a member of the Canadian Special Operations regiment. They are very similar in to the US Army rangers/ Special Forces Teams. They are highly trained and incredible tough guys. He was a little smaller than me (maybe 10 pounds) but in incredible shape. I would have to say his BJJ was a little better than mine, technically. He was a really tough roll but very good for me. We went back and forth a few times. He tapped me early on with an interesting bicep slicer from inside the guard. I probably could have fought it and in a competion, I may have but the only way I would have got out of it was to brute force it and I usually tap to that kind of stuff in the gym. As a general rule, if I can't get out of it was a technique of some kind, I chalk it up to a learning experience, tap and move on.

He was really tough and constantly moving, so I had to stay real tight with my transitions. After that first sub, there were no more submissions. I almost got a kimura from top side, (which I have been focusing on) and he almost got me in an armbar from guard, but we both managed to reverse them at the last minute. We rolled for about twenty minutes. It was a great roll. My cardio held up, which is good. Every time I take a break from training, I have to re build my cardio.

I also got some tips from one of our blue belts on defending the deep half guard. Once I have it down a bit more I will post it here.

On a side note, my gym is really starting to attrack some great athletes. I recognized Dustin Oliphant, who I did judo with years ago at the gym on friday. Dustin won a bronze at the 03 national judo championships. We also have tarek gebali, who is now 3-0 in MMA who competed at the National level in Judo. We also have at least 1 national level wrestler whose name I can't remember for some reason. It is great having these elite level athletes at the gym.

Three thing to improve your boxing

Here are three things you can do that will improve your boxing by your next sparring session:

1. Focus on your platform. Your striking platform is your foundation. Just like a house, if the foundation is weak everything will fall apart. I use Crazy Monkey as my striking platform. I conciously focus on keeping my hands high and moving, elbows tight to my ribs, hunchback stance, and hips square. Everything else flows from there.

2. Concentrate on what you want to do. Rather than reacting to what your opponent gives you, be proactive. This is important even if you are a counter fighter. If you want to counter his right hand, look for it, try to force it but don't jsut try to react when it comes.

3. Don't get in a fight. This is especially true in sparring. The point of sparring isn't to win. If it was you would have a ref and judges. It is to perfect your craft under pressure. To often people get their adrenaline flowing and start trying to beat the other guy. When this happens, your platform falls to hell and you start reacting. Sure maybe you can out tough the guy or out punch him but are you learning anything?

Try this the next time you spar. I think you will find that you feel much better about your performance and you will tighten up your game.

Daily Submission

This week I learned two pretty cool combos while boxing. The first is a Floyd Mayweather favorite that I had to modify for south paw. The combo starts jab, cross, take a big step to the right to get the angle, left hook to the body, right cross, jab out. Because I am a lefty if I simply swapped left for right, I would be stepping right in to his power. For me the combo goes like this: cross, right hook as I step to the right (it is almost like a right cross), left hook to the body, right hook, left cross, spin out. The other went like this. Jab, parry the return jab and immediately throw the right cross, left hook to the body, right cross, jab out. I ended up with two combinations when switching it to south paw. The first was slip a cross, left cross, right hook to the kidney, right hook to the head (the angle was wrong for another cross), cross, jab out. The other was to jab, parry his return jab down and throw and overhand left, and then finish as per the other combo. Both looked very promising and I will try to work them into my sparring sessions.

For jits, we learned to half guard passes which I have post videos of. They are not exactly the same but pretty similar. The tripod video stands out the most. Against a decent half guard player it won't be as easy as in the video. If you take his hips away from you, he loses the power so you can get the knee out then finish the pass.

Rolling went well. I rolled against a karate black belt who was adding some BJJ to his game while is in town for school. He was really fit and had good balance. He was very tough to finish but I got a really solid 20 minute roll in and got to work on a lot of my sweeps.