Instructional video

OMG I just watched 17 min of Jiu Jitsu Revolution. It is an instructional DVD by Saulo Ribero. It is awesome. I had to stop watching it because he had already covered too many details. I felt like I wouldn't be able to retain very much of the information I had just seen, if I continued to watch. I am excited to continue to watch this DVD.

I am not going to class for the next two nights and I didn't go last night. Noe just left to go out of town, so we just hung out last night. I can never go to class on Tuesdays because my classes at school go to late. Tomorrow we have a speaker coming to the law school for the Native American Law School Association. I guess this is the kind of real life stuff that gets in the way of training.

I kind of need a few days to rest anyway. My back has been bothering me. It's not an injury or anything I just get a lot of tension from reading and then going to JJ sometimes makes it a little worse. I think taking days off to just reflect on training and get some extra studying in really helps though.

I am really up in the air about whether I will try to go down a weight class for the May 1 - NY Open tournament. I am not sure I have the discipline to lose like 7 pounds. I feel like if I can get down to that smaller weight though that I would be really fast and that I would be a lot stronger than most of the other people in my division. I know I'm not supposed to really be counting on strength in JJ but it will help me make it through more matches without being as tired. Plus I'm not good enough to not really muscle some moves yet. Oh but I am looking forward to the day that my technique is that good. :-)

5 - 5 MIn. Rounds?

Class last night was great. We got to work on some throws. I need to work on throws so badly. I get so uncomfortable when I practice throws and when I get thrown. The first time I got thrown last night I kind of tightened up and I ended up landing really badly. The more I practice my throws and being thrown the more comfortable I'll be.

We started of with the usual warm up. The warm up is not as difficult for me anymore, I think my body is starting to get used to it. I still get really winded and tired when we do shrimps. We basically do a lap around the mat, shrimping. I guess it should make you tired if you are shrimping correctly because the movement involves a lot of muscles but shit man, you would think I would start to get used to it at some point. We have been doing 100 more sit ups than before, which I am glad about. Here I come 6 pack.

We only worked on throws last night. Noe and Danny and I worked in a group. I was less nervous because I got to work with them, I knew no one was going to get all crazy and hurt me. The beginners got to use the crash mat but everyone with color in their belt had to just work on the regular mat. I didn't care though because in a match when someone throws me I am not going to be landing on a crash mat. We worked on Ippon Seoinage and Uchi Mata.

I found a really cool website that shows these take downs with animation and with animated pictures.

Here's the Ippon Seoinage:
http://judoinfo.com/images/animations/blue/ipponseoi.htm

Here's the Uchi Mata:
http://judoinfo.com/images/animations/blue/uchimata.htm

After we worked on the throws we did the usual rolling. Normally we will do either 2 5 min. rounds or 3 5 min. rounds depending on how much time we spent drilling techniques. Last night we did 3 rounds and lined up to bow out. Then after we bowed out Guybson said we could stay and do some more rounds if we wanted. About 6 of us stayed, which is nice to see, I like it that there are a good number of people who really want to train at the gym. We stayed and I rolled another 2 rounds. I got to roll with Guybson last. Man it is such a crazy experience when I roll with him. 1) He is a black belt and 2) he is freakin huge. I had a ton of fun though. When I got done with everything it took me about 20 min to stop feeling like I was going to vomit. I didn't even realize until we got home that I had rolled 5 - 5 min rounds, that made me not feel so bad about feeling pretty worn out after class.

I am not going to open mat today because of my tax paper. I am pretty disappointed because I feel like I haven't been able to train as much as I would like. Last night I was thinking about how excited I am to get back to KC. I can work on my throws with John when I get back.

Spring Break???

I wrote down all the class times in my planner for this week because I am on spring break. I thought I was going to do twice as much training as I do during a normal week. That has been far from what has actually happened. I don't know where my days have gone.

I am working on a tax paper for Mergers and Acquisitions Tax (M&A Tax). I have papers to grade for Real Estate Transactions, I'm a TA for that class. Those two things don't seem like much and actually they haven't taken up too much of my time until yesterday. I didn't get to train at all yesterday.

I read an article in GracieMag a little while back about a guy who was a medical student and a black belt, who helped teach classes. It made me rethink the excuse, I'm in law school, for why I have not been training as much. He said if you can't find an hour a day to do something you love there is something wrong. I have thought about that quite a bit since reading it a few months ago. I do love training, right now it is mostly BJJ but I also love training taekwondo, MMA, and Capoeira. Right now the problem with training BJJ for Noe and I is that it takes an hour and a half to get to Syracuse. We will go to the Cornell BJJ club sometimes but it's not the same as going to a class with a black belt.

I said it earlier but I didn't do anything yesterday. I did go to class the day before, on Wed. Danny and I carpooled out there. I am glad Noe and I have someone to carpool with because it is so expensive filling up the car all the time. Anyway, the class was good we worked on some sweeps from guard. I got to roll with a woman that is actually smaller than me. Usually, the only female that I work with, who is smaller than me, is a girl who is 14. It was cool, we rolled all three rounds together. I got the opportunity to check my technique, because I was concentrating on not muscling every move I did.

Tonight we are planning on going to class in Syracuse. I better get to work on grading these papers.

Day Off - From Regular Class

Yesterday I didn't go out to Syracuse for class. I figured this was a good day to work on some resistance training. I lifted some weights in the morning. I didn't get to do that much because I started later than I had planned. I basically only got to work all my shoulder muscles, my biceps and some legs.

I did a pretty short warm-up. Then I did, bicep curls to press with the kettle bells. Normally, I would do 4 sets of 25 but I was in a hurry so I only did 3 sets of 25. In between each of the curl/press sets I did 30 squats with a weight vest, that I'm pretty sure weighs 25 pounds. I like to go straight from one exercise to the next so that I basically feel like I'm not going to make it during the whole workout.

Then I did bent rows and some shoulder exercises that I don't know the name of. I did the same routine with those and the curl/press. I ended with some push-ups, shrimps and candlesticks (to work on the armbar motion). Then before I knew it I had to get ready to go so that I could go with Noe to her PT.

Noe and I went over to Danny's last night. He and I worked on some problem spots that I have been having. I have recently learned the bull fighting technique but I wasn't exactly doing it right the other night when I tried it so we covered that. We also went over one of my throws. I really need to get better with take downs, I just haven't worked on them that much yet, so I am going to make it a point to do some work on my takedowns before the tournament in May.

First Class After the Belt Promotions

On the way out to Syracuse last night I was wondering how many people would be in class for the first class since the belt test on Saturday. There weren't really that many people there, who participated in the belt test. It was pretty nice getting back to the usual training. We have been gearing up for the test for the last week and a half or so. We primarily worked on specific types of techniques we needed to perform on the test.

We worked on a new sweep from half guard. I really need to work on the half guard sweeps too so I was very excited. The sweep went straight into taking the back. I like being on the back. I feel like I have a decent amount of control.

We rolled 3 rounds. I went once with a guy who started very recently. I believe this might be like his 5th or 6th class. Then I rolled with my friend Danny, formerly D. I really like rolling with Danny because he has been training for a while and I think he is really good. Then I went with Mike. He also was promoted to blue belt at the Long Island tournament. I really like rolling with Mike too because I don't feel like he just totally muscles me like some guys do. He uses a lot of the techniques we learn so it's always nice to get to roll with him.

I was so gassed after I rolled with Danny and Mike. I don't know what was wrong with me. It was like I hadn't eaten or something. I think some times that just happens. I suppose I might have been a little tired from staying up too late during the whole time my family was here visiting. Plus I ate like shit the whole time they were here. Note to self: don't eat like shit for 4 days in a row.

Belt Test - Blue Belt!! Officially Officially

We had our belt test yesterday. My mom, brother, and our good friend Marina came to the test. It was so nice for them to spend so much time there, watching. The test lasted around 4 hours. :-0 That's a long time for people who don't do jiujitsu to watch a bunch of people they don't know doing jiujitsu.

The "warm up" was actually a conditioning test. Guybson kept saying he was trying to see if he could make some people quit. lol. I never thought I was going to quit but it was pretty tough.

It was kind of like our usual warm up but on red bull. We started off with the usual running. We did a bunch of side steps, high knees, heel flips, jumping with our feet together, running and jumping as high as we can on Guybson's count, finishing off the running type stuff with sprinting. Then we moved on to the shrimping, arm crawls (military crawls), wheel barrows. We usually stay in a big circle for the push ups and sit ups but today we lined up, in like 5 lines. Today we did a bunch of push ups, I'm not sure why I started off with knuckle push ups because I don't normally do knuckle push ups. We finished the first set of push ups and I switched to regular hand push ups, and then for the last set he made up do knuckle push ups, lol. We did a bunch of sit ups.

Thank goodness Maggie came to the belt test. We did all of our positions together. I am glad I worked with her because we have worked together a lot in class and so I am familiar with how she moves and everything. I have some pictures from the test that I'll add later.

Belt Testing T-minus 2 days

My mom and my brother, Josh are here visiting. Josh joined me at the gym last night. It was nice. Josh did the no-gi class but decided not to do the BJJ class. I was disappointed that he didn't participate in the BJJ class. He was nervous about the number of beginners in the class. We are not even close in size so I probably wouldn't have been able to work with him.

I really like it when other women come to the no-gi class. Our friend M was in class last night. Since Noe didn't come to class last night I was especially happy to see M in class. Josh had to work with a young man that just started classes a few months ago. Josh really hasn't done much grappling type of work yet so I was pretty nervous that he was working with such a young and fairly inexperienced person. Josh did great though.

We worked on some single leg take-downs and some submissions from there. I get so nervous that I am going to hurt my knees when we are doing take-downs. I don't know why I have never gotten hurt doing take-downs before. I always take extra precaution when working on take-downs.

We got to work on the take-downs in live rolling at the end of class. I was glad because usually when we are rolling we start on the ground and consequently we don't get to work on take-downs much. I definitely felt like my take-downs were lacking in the Long Island tournament. I don't want to always be pulling guard when I'm competing.

The BJJ class was pretty good. I ended up working with a guy who was there for the first time last night. He wasn't very big so I was not that nervous about working with him. I get scared sometimes when I have to work with men who are huge when they have only been to 1 or 2 classes. We used to always talk about how beginners are the ones who can really hurt you, when I trained capoeira. I think that must translate to all martial arts. Anyway, I did get nervous when I was going with the new guy after I asked him if he had done any type of wrestling or martial arts before and his response was "I streetfight." :-T LOL

Guybson has been having us, the blue belts, show new people how to do some techniques. He says its part of his evaluation of our skill level. It feels weird because so often I feel like I am in no way qualified to correct or show anybody anything.

Club training

I decided to go to the Cornell BJJ Club tonight instead of driving out to Syracuse. Actually, I ended up having a meeting with a student in a class I am a teaching assistant for so I'm not really sure if I'm the one who decided that I couldn't go to Syracuse. I am kind of glad Noe and I didn't make the trek all the way out there though. I was not feeling myself tonight.

I am sure it happens to everyone sometimes. I felt very lethargic and just had a lack of motivation tonight. Sometimes when I start moving around that feeling goes away but it didn't tonight. I didn't roll with anyone after the technique portion of club tonight.

We worked on some basic techniques from the mount. We did an arm bar after the person does upa and gets an elbow in, then the person on tops switches to technical mount. Second, we worked on an americana from mount. Then the scarf choke from mount. I like working on basic movements, especially at the club. Sometimes at the club I have noticed we work on things that are a little too advanced because most of the people there don't really know the very basic positions, like how to properly be in guard.

I think I am just where a new blue belt should be. I am starting to notice some smaller details that I never noticed or paid attention to before. I think I am also feeling a little intimidated I guess. I am not sure if that is the right word to use but I am feeling probably like a lot of newly promoted people feel. I know I deserve my belt but I am just going through the initial stage of insecurities.

Danny Ives Seminar Day 2

I got the opportunity to do a semi-private lesson with Danny Ives. My friend D and I worked on a short list of issues he felt like he was having. I was really glad D had a list of things to ask. I didn't think that far ahead. I should have also came with specific questions to ask. I don't really feel like I am even in a place where I would know what I need to specifically work on, because I need to work on so many things. I think that I am going to be getting to the phase of my training where I start being more introspective soon. I am trying to think more about what I am doing each time I train, where am I always getting caught, what positions are always eluding me, that sort of thing.

Anyway, our semi-private lesson was so amazing. We went over how to break a spider guard. He showed us about 3 techniques, two breaks and one sweep. This was a completely new concept for me because I haven't had too much experience with the spider guard yet. Then we worked on side mount escapes. The side mount escape was also very helpful because Danny gave me a whole new insight on how to get out of side mount. I had been focusing on the usual upa.

The seminar ended up starting about 15 min. late because the wrestlers were on the mat. I have to admit I was kind of glad to have a min. to catch my breath after our private lesson. I worked with my friend C, the one who comes over to work out with me sometimes. It was interesting because he is like 6 ft. tall and weighs 190 pounds. He has good control though and I wasn't scared at all of him hurting me or anything.

Man that 2 hours we spent working on techniques was so intense. My brain hurt after the seminar on both days. Danny went over so many techniques. I am really glad that he lets us record the entire seminar and all the participants get a copy. He covered some awesome guard passes. We worked closed guard breaks, open guard passes and half guard passes. I was so tired and hungry by the time we got to the last technique I didn't think I was going to be able to roll.

I did end up rolling one round. I went with a guy from the club who slightly outweighs me. I really like rolling with him because we are so similar in size and I feel like he is very technical. He and I had a pretty good roll, he has improved a good deal since the last time I rolled with him. He is planning on doing a tournament this weekend. The Grappler's Quest in NJ I believe. I think he is going to do very well.

We got to go to late lunch with Danny after the seminar. It was really cool to pick his brain about various BJJ and non-BJJ related topics. Also, we got to talk to him about our trip to Brasil. Noe and I are planning to go to Brasil for about 2 weeks after I take the bar exam. We, mostly me, want to train a ton while we are down there. I am very excited to train at schools where there are a bunch of more advanced students. I want to get to roll with them and watch them roll with each other. Anyway, overall the seminar was a blast. I think we will go visit Danny Ives school before we drive back to Kansas City.

Danny Ives Seminar Day 1

I was so tired last night after the first day of the Danny Ives Seminar, hosted by the Cornell BJJ club. The club hosts about 2 seminars a semester. It is awesome because the school pays for the seminar, or at least most of it, I paid $10 this time. Anyway, Danny Ives is awesome. He comes in from Maryland. Here's a link to his website:

http://www.iveyleaguemma.com/

The seminar so really cool. We worked on a ton of positions, but they were related so it didn't seem overwhelming. We started off working on a basic armbar and then did a triangle and then worked the two of them together. It was a chain, I love doing chains. Person A attempts the armbar, person B pulls the arm out, then person A goes right into the triangle. I like that combo, I don't use it as much as I used to.

We also worked on 2 sweeps. OMG I need to work on my sweeps. I know everyone needs to work on everything but I think I might concentrate on my sweeps for a little while. Anyway, the sweeps he showed us were pretty sweet. One was from full guard and the other was from half-guard. I tend to get stuck in half-guard a lot so this portion was of particular interest to me.

We did about 3 variation that ended up with us doing a take down. I really suck at those. For some reason I don't use angles as well as I used to. When I first started training for MMA I think I used angles better than I do now but I was still doing capoeira at that time and I think that made a big difference.

I rolled with my buddy D and with Danny Ives last night. Geez I got so gassed when I was rolling with D. I don't know why I get so gassed when I go with him. He is a blue belt, I think he is very close to being purple, but I feel like when I roll with him I tend to get overly excited. I think its just because I think he is really good and I know he's going to pick up more on every mistake I make and that makes it more fun to roll with him but it also makes me feel like I have to work harder. I still haven't figured out how to work harder, where work harder doesn't mean use more muscles. LOL. I tend to try to muscle more when I'm rolling with him, I noticed last night.

I had a good amount of time to recover before I rolled with Danny Ives. It is so funny rolling with black belts because they aren't even close to being tired when you are done going with them for 10 min. I am excited for that day. Anyway, he was awesome to roll with, he opened up some good positions for me to get submissions. He would give me pointers at the perfect time, like when he could tell that I didn't know what the hell to do from a certain position. That's one of the main reasons I like rolling with advanced people, because they aren't going full blast trying to submit you, to the point where you aren't even learning anything. At the end of it I was tired as hell, thought I was going to vomit but overall happy with how the round went.

We are training from 12 to 3 today. I'm looking forward to it.

Time Off

I guess I needed a few days to recover after this weekend's tournament and the lead up to it. But, I don't feel that great about not training for the last two days. Last night Noe and I watch some TV and just hung out, which was great. We basically did the same thing on Wed. night also.

On Tues. night I went to my friend D's house. We did some really light work. We played a game that was really awesome. Basically, each of us was only allowed to do one movement at a time. Each movement could consist of a couple of steps but you basically could only go from one position to the next. It was so cool. My brain hurt after we got done with that. It was insane to see how few concepts and moves I know. This was a tremendous exercise to highlight areas that I can work on immediately and probably make some significant progress.

During the game, I accidently made some shit up. It was hilarious. I had only glanced at the most recent graciemag. We got into a position similar to one I "remembered" seeing in the magazine, I got all excited. I said "ohhh this is just like what I just saw in the magazine." Then I proceeded to do a choke. A little while later D said, oh this is that position, how did that choke go again. I basically couldn't recreate it. I said it's in the new graciemag, he gave me a very confused look because he didn't recall seeing it in there. When he came back with the mag I showed him the choke I thought I did. Apparently I had almost none of the steps the same. LOL - I'm still such a beginner.

LI Pride (Cont.)

My 3rd match was extremely tough. Unfortunately, we didn't get video of it. The woman I went against, I think her name was Michelle Maldonado, was very strong. She had great posture. I was a little scared when I locked a triangle in and she postured up and picked me up off the ground. Anyway, after what felt like an eternity, I managed to finally finish the triangle. All the people from my gym who were watching were screaming "grab the back of her head" and it took about 30 seconds for it to register. When I finally grabbed the back of her head she tapped. Whew. That was a tough one.

Match 4 - Open division finals.

This match was freakin crazy. The woman I competed against was quite a bit bigger than me. She probably had 25 or 30 pounds on me. Almost immediately she took me down with a very basic throw. Then she took the side mount, man was she heavy on me. I remember thinking I have to get out of this position, however watching the video makes it look like it took me a while to think that. I was definitely making mistakes. At the end when I was trying to sink an armbar, I stopped her from kicking her leg over my head. If I had let her continue what she was doing I would have been able to get on top of her. I managed to finish the armbar but I still made a lot of mistakes.

Here's the Youtube video of Match 4:

The Long Island Pride tournament went really well. I won all four of the matches I had. I won my division and the open weight white belt division.

My first match was with a woman in my weight division. She was a little bit taller than me but not by much. I was pretty nervous when the match started out. You can tell I am a bit jumpy, or spastic, at the beginning of the match. She ended up pulling guard because neither of us was able to take the other down, not that we tried for very long. I ended up in half-guard. That only lasted a short while and I ended up standing up and backing out. The same thing happened after we had a time out so she could re-tie her belt. Except I ended up in side control and took the mount. I started working on an americana and quickly switched to an arm bar submission. The whole thing took about 2:15.

Here's the youtube clip:

The Second match was also with a woman in my weight class. I felt kind of bad for her because the organizers of the tournament did a poor job on the planning and she was left off the brackets when she arrived to the venue earlier that morning. Then they stuck her in with the blue belts. It was a pretty tough match and in some ways more tough than the first match. She ended up getting more points that's for sure.

Here's Match 2:

More later.

Expensive

This jiujitsu thing is starting to get a bit expensive. Noe and I entered into this tournament on the 7th, $105 each. We drive 1.5 hours each way to class 3 to 4 times a week, $50 gas a week at least. Now we just found out its $100 for belt testing. I am excited about belt testing but I don't know if we can afford to keep up this jiujitsu habit.

I am sure that many people are having the same experience as we are. I love training, especially jiujitsu, but it becomes so expensive. Luckily when we move back to Kansas City, I'll be working shortly thereafter. We will be training at the gym we used to train at and things will be back to normal.

Enough with my bitching about money problems. Last night my friend C came over and we did some light drilling. We worked on basic sweeps and a couple of other moves. It was nice because we probably did each sweep from guard like 50 times each. I love just drilling stuff. I mean I love rolling too but sometimes I feel like I will much more out of drilling the same move, like an armbar, 100 times. I need to do that more often. Hopefully Noe's injury will get better soon and we can do more drilling like we used to before we started going out to EW.

We are leaving in the morning for NYC. The website for Long Island Pride says that brackets will be up sometime today. I'll put some pics and potentially some video up of the events from this weekend on Monday.

Mount Escapes

Class last night was really good. We worked on escaping/reversing when someone has the mount. I am really bad at that so I was pretty excited when G said that's what we were going to work on.

My friend D started coming to the EWCC this week. I am really excited. He is the only blue belt in class, as of right now. D and I worked together last night on on the techniques. It was nice because I am not scared of working with him. Sometimes I am worried about getting hurt when I am training with some of the guys.

Instead of regular rolling last night we did situational rolling. I really like doing situational rolling because you get the chance to work on the positions you might not be in very often, and thus don't have good escapes/reversals/submissions from those positions. We did about 8 rounds of various positions, such as mount, full guard, half guard and from the back. We would start with one person already in the dominate position, then if we got the sweep or the dominate person got a sub we would stop and start over. We would do 2 rounds with the same person, alternating who was in the dominate position, and then switch partners.

Gearing up

I will be participating in the Long Island Pride JJ tournament in Flushing, NY at Queens College on March 7th.

This will be my first jiujitsu tournament. I am excited and nervous. I registered in the women's white belt under 141 lbs. and white belt open classes. Generally, the women's classes end up getting combined because of the small number of female participants. I think there is at least one other woman who registered in my weight class.

I participated in a no-gi grappling tournament a few years ago. There were no other women entered in the tournament, so I ended up competing against a man. I lost by triangle about four minutes in. I was disappointed but it was a good learning experience.

I have been preparing for the tournament daily. Yesterday, Noe and I went to our friend's house, he's a blue belt, and we worked on some specific positions. We were thinking we would be taking it easy and just running through some stuff. Of course, I ended up rolling 2 rounds with my friend. Noe ended up tweaking an injury she got last week, so she didn't get to roll. :-(

Sharice's BJJ Blog