John class (and why I should lose some IQ or show up to class drunk)
Finally got to go to another John class tonight, which was great. It was a small class b/c it was last minute notice, which was good in some ways. I ended up partnering with goldengrove for the class, and we didn't beat each other up too much by accident, so it was all good. ;) Lots of class and martial arts descriptions so I don't forget all of it
At the start of the class, John sensibly pointed out that people will tend to focus on freeing the one limb they've just had entangled rather than using all the other limbs they've got to maneuver themselves into a better position. His analogy was that if you grab a cat's leg, it'll fight with the remaining three and bite. Grab two legs and it'll fight with two and bite, etc. So don't sit around crying that you've gotten a limb trapped, just use everything else.
He also explained that you have techniques and you have concepts. You might learn a bunch of techniques without necessarily seeing the underlying principle or concept behind them until later. Then he said we'd never had it so easy, because he was going to teach us the concept at the start without us having to do a bunch of techniques first and then realise what it was. :) Sounds like a good idea to me, especially seeing as I like to understand the "big picture" from the start, rather than at the end.
With that explanation done, he started us working on "cross-over guard", which went like this:
Lying down on your back although not in full guard, with your partner on their knees in front of you, "disable" your own right leg and don't move it. Your partner then wants to start circling around to pass guard on your right side. Reach out with your right hand and block into their left shoulder, keeping your arm locked straight. Turn on your right side and bring your left leg over their head at the same time, stopping it when it reaches half-way-ish down their left arm (your right). Now they're blocked on that side and can't really go much further with you holding them like that.
Your partner then starts circling around to your other side, at which point you bring your right hand back to your side, roll to your back again and bring your "crossed" leg back over their head and down on the outside of their right arm, blocking their right shoulder with your left hand (is that leg position and ordering right?), pretty much mirror image to what you did before. Partner starts shifting back around to the other side and you "reverse" back the other way again.
Simple (once you finally get the hang of it), clever, and effective. I liked it.
We then went on to do the exact same drill as before, but this time the person trying to "pass" got up on all fours, and the person guarding shifted backwards every time they brought their leg around (I think), with the "passer" coming forwards when they did. This is apparently a black belt level drill, but at the same time it's great practice.
At some point during this, he also got us to start actually "killing" the defender's right leg, to make it more realistic.
The next part we did tacked a "beginning" bit on to the same drill, pretty much. Lying on your back, with arms held to your chest, your partner goes into front control. Then, pushing (and not pulling!) with your fists to help you, use your legs to spin yourself around 90 degrees, so your head is out to the right and your legs are out to the left. The moment you get there, keep the momentum going and spin back and 'round the other way. You should ideally be putting a bit of distance between yourself and your opponent by doing this, which gives you enough room to come around and block into their chest with their leg. Continually shifting around and away like that also keeps them on their toes, and doesn't let them carry on with something else as much. Guard position can then go back into the same style as before.
An amusing side story John told us somewhere during this was that the Brazilian word for push sounds like "pull", so he used to do exactly that when they were actually meaning "push". This confused him a lot for a while. :) Apparently he also had gloves put on his hands so he couldn't pull on anything even if he tried.
Moving on from that sort of guard, we finished with another front control escape. Again lying on your back, your partner kneels upright in the front control position and starts coming down with their arms on either side of you. Instead of just letting them do that, you twist to the side and plant your right hand out at 1:00 near their knees, and on the inside (outside?) of their arm, defeating their front control.
The next, more realistic stage for this is for your partner to start in actual front control and for you to push up with your hips to give yourself space to twist and plant your hand the same way as before.
The finale for this move is to plant your hand, then reach out and grab their arm high up (near the shoulder?) with the planted hand/arm and roll yourself towards it. This rolls them over you and ends up with both of you flat on your backs, but with you having a tight hold on their arm(/shoulder?).
That was basically all the moves we learned in the class.
"Why I should lose 50 IQ points for a year or show up to class drunk"
Pretty early on in the class when we were doing the "killed leg" drill, John figured out what my particular problem with learning was. Put simply, I think too much, and need to see every little step and how it all goes together as I'm learning something, rather than just doing it and understanding it later. Apart from that, he had an interesting take that I hadn't really thought of before: Basically that I'm an auditory person when it comes to learning. I don't know if I agree with him completely on this one, but I'm not sure yet. That's a whole subject in itself though (what was that about me thinking a lot again? ;) ). The auditory bit aside, he pegged me exactly, so I was impressed. :) It's not often that an instructor knows enough about learning to spot different learning styles. He actually described it as a "learning disability", with the flip side of the coin being that sometimes people like me will understand things even better than others once we've learnt them.
He pointed all this out to Jeremy and then tried to explain some more of the "whys" and "wherefores" of the parts of the moves we were working on as we went. It was helpful in some cases.
Afterwards, he said he'd like to be able to drop my IQ by 50 points for a year while I was learning and put it back up again at the end so I could do the understanding bit then. He also suggested acting more like a drunk, who doesn't really think about what they're doing. :) I told Jeremy I'd show up drunk to the next class. ;)
One of the reasons I like John so much as a teacher is that he's practical, no-nonsense and we seem to think the same way on at least some things. Last night, he said that as far as he was concerned, the concept of a particular technique being "black belt" or some other level was rubbish really. They're convenient categorisations that are meant to lay things out but they don't really work. Someone at white belt level can learn a black belt technique without any problem. The difference comes in how many of the subtleties the different "levels" will understand. A black belt will see and understand a lot more of the finer points, whereas the white belt will have a much vaguer idea. Makes perfect sense to me (even if I hadn't considered the understanding more subtleties bit before).
"A black belt is a white belt who didn't give up", or something like that, I can't remember what he said exactly. Cliche, yes, but pretty good. :)
I've also signed up for a two-hour training seminar this Sunday with someone who's apparently one of -the- biggest names in Jiu-Jitsu. He's over from the US and apparently I'm paying peanuts to see him compared to what he normally charges. It'll be interesting to see how it goes.
At the start of the class, John sensibly pointed out that people will tend to focus on freeing the one limb they've just had entangled rather than using all the other limbs they've got to maneuver themselves into a better position. His analogy was that if you grab a cat's leg, it'll fight with the remaining three and bite. Grab two legs and it'll fight with two and bite, etc. So don't sit around crying that you've gotten a limb trapped, just use everything else.
He also explained that you have techniques and you have concepts. You might learn a bunch of techniques without necessarily seeing the underlying principle or concept behind them until later. Then he said we'd never had it so easy, because he was going to teach us the concept at the start without us having to do a bunch of techniques first and then realise what it was. :) Sounds like a good idea to me, especially seeing as I like to understand the "big picture" from the start, rather than at the end.
With that explanation done, he started us working on "cross-over guard", which went like this:
Lying down on your back although not in full guard, with your partner on their knees in front of you, "disable" your own right leg and don't move it. Your partner then wants to start circling around to pass guard on your right side. Reach out with your right hand and block into their left shoulder, keeping your arm locked straight. Turn on your right side and bring your left leg over their head at the same time, stopping it when it reaches half-way-ish down their left arm (your right). Now they're blocked on that side and can't really go much further with you holding them like that.
Your partner then starts circling around to your other side, at which point you bring your right hand back to your side, roll to your back again and bring your "crossed" leg back over their head and down on the outside of their right arm, blocking their right shoulder with your left hand (is that leg position and ordering right?), pretty much mirror image to what you did before. Partner starts shifting back around to the other side and you "reverse" back the other way again.
Simple (once you finally get the hang of it), clever, and effective. I liked it.
We then went on to do the exact same drill as before, but this time the person trying to "pass" got up on all fours, and the person guarding shifted backwards every time they brought their leg around (I think), with the "passer" coming forwards when they did. This is apparently a black belt level drill, but at the same time it's great practice.
At some point during this, he also got us to start actually "killing" the defender's right leg, to make it more realistic.
The next part we did tacked a "beginning" bit on to the same drill, pretty much. Lying on your back, with arms held to your chest, your partner goes into front control. Then, pushing (and not pulling!) with your fists to help you, use your legs to spin yourself around 90 degrees, so your head is out to the right and your legs are out to the left. The moment you get there, keep the momentum going and spin back and 'round the other way. You should ideally be putting a bit of distance between yourself and your opponent by doing this, which gives you enough room to come around and block into their chest with their leg. Continually shifting around and away like that also keeps them on their toes, and doesn't let them carry on with something else as much. Guard position can then go back into the same style as before.
An amusing side story John told us somewhere during this was that the Brazilian word for push sounds like "pull", so he used to do exactly that when they were actually meaning "push". This confused him a lot for a while. :) Apparently he also had gloves put on his hands so he couldn't pull on anything even if he tried.
Moving on from that sort of guard, we finished with another front control escape. Again lying on your back, your partner kneels upright in the front control position and starts coming down with their arms on either side of you. Instead of just letting them do that, you twist to the side and plant your right hand out at 1:00 near their knees, and on the inside (outside?) of their arm, defeating their front control.
The next, more realistic stage for this is for your partner to start in actual front control and for you to push up with your hips to give yourself space to twist and plant your hand the same way as before.
The finale for this move is to plant your hand, then reach out and grab their arm high up (near the shoulder?) with the planted hand/arm and roll yourself towards it. This rolls them over you and ends up with both of you flat on your backs, but with you having a tight hold on their arm(/shoulder?).
That was basically all the moves we learned in the class.
"Why I should lose 50 IQ points for a year or show up to class drunk"
Pretty early on in the class when we were doing the "killed leg" drill, John figured out what my particular problem with learning was. Put simply, I think too much, and need to see every little step and how it all goes together as I'm learning something, rather than just doing it and understanding it later. Apart from that, he had an interesting take that I hadn't really thought of before: Basically that I'm an auditory person when it comes to learning. I don't know if I agree with him completely on this one, but I'm not sure yet. That's a whole subject in itself though (what was that about me thinking a lot again? ;) ). The auditory bit aside, he pegged me exactly, so I was impressed. :) It's not often that an instructor knows enough about learning to spot different learning styles. He actually described it as a "learning disability", with the flip side of the coin being that sometimes people like me will understand things even better than others once we've learnt them.
He pointed all this out to Jeremy and then tried to explain some more of the "whys" and "wherefores" of the parts of the moves we were working on as we went. It was helpful in some cases.
Afterwards, he said he'd like to be able to drop my IQ by 50 points for a year while I was learning and put it back up again at the end so I could do the understanding bit then. He also suggested acting more like a drunk, who doesn't really think about what they're doing. :) I told Jeremy I'd show up drunk to the next class. ;)
One of the reasons I like John so much as a teacher is that he's practical, no-nonsense and we seem to think the same way on at least some things. Last night, he said that as far as he was concerned, the concept of a particular technique being "black belt" or some other level was rubbish really. They're convenient categorisations that are meant to lay things out but they don't really work. Someone at white belt level can learn a black belt technique without any problem. The difference comes in how many of the subtleties the different "levels" will understand. A black belt will see and understand a lot more of the finer points, whereas the white belt will have a much vaguer idea. Makes perfect sense to me (even if I hadn't considered the understanding more subtleties bit before).
"A black belt is a white belt who didn't give up", or something like that, I can't remember what he said exactly. Cliche, yes, but pretty good. :)
I've also signed up for a two-hour training seminar this Sunday with someone who's apparently one of -the- biggest names in Jiu-Jitsu. He's over from the US and apparently I'm paying peanuts to see him compared to what he normally charges. It'll be interesting to see how it goes.