CARLOS GRACIE, SR. SAYS

SATURDAY BJJ

SATURDAY, 12 JULY 2014 Saturday's class consisted of a lot of people. We had a "rainbow" of BJJ belts, meaning that all of the ranks from white through black were represented. So, we had one black belt (me), one brown belt (Nick), one purple belt (Jason), two blue belts (John J. and David), and three white belts (J.G., Kyle, and Josh). For a small, non-advertised academy, I find that to be very successful. It is even more telling when you consider that we start at 8:00 a.m., so the dedication of the guys to get up and participate is incredible. The main theme of Saturday's class was working from half-guard and not being stuck. I taught a back take, how to get full guard on someone through lifting the lower body, and things to do to keep the opponent from applying crushing pressure.

SATURDAY BJJ & JUDO

SATURDAY, 5 JULY 2014 This past Saturday was a large class at AFR. Though my brown belt was MIA at work, my purple belt, two blue belts, and three white belts were in attendance, which made a total of seven participants overall. That is a good number for an 8:00 a.m. class, plus it gave even numbers for students to partner up. The focus of the BJJ class was dealing with the Bravo lockdown, which I showed a few ways to escape. In judo, there were only four participants (me, Jason C., John J., and Kyle S.) since one student went to the beach, another went to brunch with his in-laws, and the third did not participate. Sasae tsuri-komi-ashi is still the flavor of the month, though I worked on ko-uchi-gari to tomoe nage.

SATURDAY BJJ & JUDO

SATURDAY, 14 JUNE 2014 This past weekend's class consisted of me, Jason C., and John J. We worked closely on a series of attacks from guard, focusing on same side and cross armbars while drilling both for a long period of time. In judo, we actually started with a round-robin randori. Each of us went for a total of 12 minutes, with four three-minute rounds, two rounds against each person. When randori was finished, we took out the crash pad and worked on sasae tsuri komi ashi and sumi gaeshi.

SATURDAY BJJ

SATURDAY, 7 JUNE 2014 Today's class was small, consisting of me, Jason C., and John J. We worked on "prevention and triage" for Ezequiel choke attempts from mount, a couple of modified mount escapes (trap and arm/trap a leg, and an odd swim-like escape to get to half-guard), and a couple of odds and ends at the very end of class that we will revisit at a future date in greater depth. Of course, we spent a long period of time in round-robin randori with each other.

TUESDAY BJJ & NO-GI

TUESDAY, 3 JUNE 2014 In the no-gi class, we went over a transition in guard to achieve a kimura, a standing guard pass, and a double-under smash pass. In judo, we went over sasae-tsuri-komi-ashi while standing. Moving to the ground, went over an armbar from the opponent's back and also three gi chokes from the opponent's back.

SATURDAY BJJ

SATURDAY, 31 MAY 2014 Practice consisted of me, Jason C., and John J. We covered the 10th Planet "Electric Chair" so we would have some experience with performing the lockdown and the elementary sweeps from the position. The main part of the class dealt with ways of breaking the lockdown position and dealing with the "Electric Chair" when someone attempts (or successfully achieves) the position. We then had a round robin rolling session.