Sunday, June 7, 2009

Study Group 6-7-09

Tonight my nephew Chase came over for some BJJ practice. We went through the entire first lesson of the Gracie Combatives DVD set. The lesson consisted of:

1. Basic Trap-and-Roll escape
2. Trap-and-Roll escape: Punch Block variation
3. Trap-and-Roll escape: Headlock variation
4. Open guard pass
5. Reflex Development Drill (drilling all the techniques above)

Here are a few of my observations:
- I need to get my hips more elevated in all variations of this escape
- Making the Punch Block variation look as smooth as the Gracie boys' demonstration of it is tough! I find I'm skipping pieces of it, and I'm having trouble making parts of it work without "bad guy" being overly compliant. That one will take the most work, I think.
- I think I will benefit from some solo drills of these techniques just to develop muscle memory.
- I think we did very well helping each other out rather than competing. We talked about the importance of being a good "bad guy" (giving good feedback, testing good guy's holds, techniques, etc).

We didn't do any randori tonight at all. We're going to commit to a more structured pattern of study. We'll still roll regularly, but we plan to prioritize our woodshedding time. It was a great time, and it lasted a little less than 2 hours. I think my hopes of having all 36 lessons down and ready to demonstrate by early next year were way too optimistic. This will take some time.

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