[Bubble Boy]

Thanks for posting your vids Frodo.

You look very well rounded dude, and to me you look like a natural "upright" judoka in your standup. You seem like you want to stand up straight, which is good. The ONLY advice I might offer would be to loosen your grip and be less "jigotai", but you could be fine. It's hard to tell just from watching video. Maybe in training try to be more loosey goosey with your grips and see what happens.


The first match was fun to watch. I may have missed it in your early posts, but do you have a wrestling background? You move and think a lot like a wrestler IMO. You turn a lot of things into single legs. Good work in that match.

I loved the sweep / reversal you did at 2:30 in the match against Rasboragh. Textbook dude. I actually exclaimed "Niiiiiiiice!!!" loudly when you did it and my wife eyeballed me suspiciously from across the room.

You tooled the Napolean Dynamite karate guy. However, he appeared to be a double jointed freak. I think it might have been why you couldn't quite secure that first armbar (although everything looked like it was in place) and then later you had that chicken wing in and his arm was bent back very freakishly. Beautiful on the RNC.

I really want to see your no-gi Harai Makikomi soup boy.

So you injured your knee recently right? How many months before this event? And how badly did you injure it? Were you laid up for a few weeks?

[Bubble Boy]

Oh yeah, one more thing. In my opinion you should wear a rashguard. I don't know if it was just me, but your t-shirt seemed to be hampering your grappling to a certain degree. You looked like you occasionaly got tangled in it, and there's a couple of times where you actually momentarily stopped and moved it out of your way.
Just a thought.

[Frodo]

Originally Posted by Bubble Boy

Thanks for posting your vids Frodo.

You look very well rounded dude, and to me you look like a natural "upright" judoka in your standup. You seem like you want to stand up straight, which is good. The ONLY advice I might offer would be to loosen your grip and be less "jigotai", but you could be fine. It's hard to tell just from watching video. Maybe in training try to be more loosey goosey with your grips and see what happens.

The first match was fun to watch. I may have missed it in your early posts, but do you have a wrestling background? You move and think a lot like a wrestler IMO. You turn a lot of things into single legs. Good work in that match.

I loved the sweep / reversal you did at 2:30 in the match against Rasboragh. Textbook dude. I actually exclaimed "Niiiiiiiice!!!" loudly when you did it and my wife eyeballed me suspiciously from across the room.

You tooled the Napolean Dynamite karate guy. However, he appeared to be a double jointed freak. I think it might have been why you couldn't quite secure that first armbar (although everything looked like it was in place) and then later you had that chicken wing in and his arm was bent back very freakishly. Beautiful on the RNC.

I really want to see your no-gi Harai Makikomi soup boy.

So you injured your knee recently right? How many months before this event? And how badly did you injure it? Were you laid up for a few weeks?

Thank you Bubble Boy for all the comments. All the advice I got here and at the JiuJitsuGear forums helped me a lot. I found that I execute big judo throws more often in no-gi for some reason. Harai and uchi mata are usually very hard for me, but in no-gi instinct just took over and it seemed seamless.

I have a feeling the throw I actually was harai goshi and my friend is wrong. The JiuJitsuGear people seem to deny that harai makikomi can work in no-gi bjj. Unfortunately, I don't have a video of the throw. My idiot friend (just kidding Randy) forgot to tell me he only have 50 seconds left on the camera. So he didn't start recording until afterward.

I'll experiment a bit with my grips. I wrestled in high school for a very short time, but I wasn't very good (see here and here). Rex-kwon-do dude was a little weird.

I injured my knee on 4-12-2006. It felt like there was a huge bruise on it even though I didn't impact it against anything. It hurt a little when stablizing, but nothing worth much thought. I iced it for quite a while afterward, and I taped it up using a special sports medicine technique (simular to this). I stopped babying it 2-3 weels ago. You can read what exercisese I did in my log.

Originally Posted by Bubble Boy

Oh yeah, one more thing. In my opinion you should wear a rashguard. I don't know if it was just me, but your t-shirt seemed to be hampering your grappling to a certain degree. You looked like you occasionaly got tangled in it, and there's a couple of times where you actually momentarily stopped and moved it out of your way.
Just a thought.

I am superstitious. I have to wear that shirt and those pants to every competition. When I am not competing my my friends are, I wear those cloths underneath. I own a rash guard, but I perfer my crapy cloths. In fact, that gi I wore is pretty much crap. I bought it for $5 on ebay and is a little too small. However, it was my first gi and I have to compete with it or I'll feel weird...

P.S. Don't make me dig out the Bubble Boy Rashguard Experiement.

[Frodo]

5-28-2006

Relaxed.

[Frodo]

5-29-2006

Relaxed. Tried not to relax, but every school and gym was closed...

[Frodo]

5-30-2006

Went to Hib's Pittsburgh Fight Club to get the skinny on a submission wrestling camp he is doing. It is for teens and kids. Oh well... Afterward Hib is having a tournament for everyone in August. Sweetness.

Then went to SCMA for practice. Arrived 20 minutes late due to an idiot on the parkway (who didn't get his car out of the travel lanes after it overheated), gridlock, and getting lost in Overbrook. That's unacceptable to me, so I went back to PFC to train there. Met Dave (instructor, wrestled 3 years - 2 in college - and did mma 4-2 with only 1 year grappling) and Josh (big dude and wrestler, used to train with Bill before Bill broke his back). Before practice I asked andrew to go over figure-4 toe holds:

• I push on the top of the toes not the sole.
• Other arm goes under achille's tendon and grips other arm, wrist, or hand like in a wristlock or kimura.
• Push and twist if you have to.

BTW Tyrone Glover's Toe Hold looks nice. As a class we did lots of active no-gi mma drills:

• Sasae tsurikomi ashi counter to kick in the ribs.
  • Tori is kicked in the ribs.
  • Tori grips around uke's leg and pins it to tori's side.
  • Tori punches uke's head. Uke probably dodges or blocks. In drill, uke uses open palm as target.
  • Tori gips near head/neck/lat and off-balances uke.
  • Tori executes sasae tsurikomi ashi and lands in side control.
• Single leg setup with 1-2 combo.
  • Throw 1-2 combo.
  • Shoot for a single leg. Keep head square in center.
  • Tori gets up. If uke holds tori's head, tori clears that. If uke hooks tori's leg with singled leg, tori frees that too using standard wrestling maneuvers.
  • Execute Sukui Nage, Kibisu Gaeshi, or a leg block or other attack.

Then we did live rolling from standing for a while. After rolling, we did some exercises then stretches to cool down. It was a hard practice and I almost got a cramp (but didn't).

[lockjaw211]

Originally Posted by Frodo

5-28-2006

Relaxed.

Thats my kind of training! Good job!

[Frodo]

Originally Posted by lockjaw211

Thats my kind of training! Good job!

Gotta get into as good shape as the dude who tried to fight Santino on Saturday.

[Frodo]

5-31-2006

OK, today I went to SCMA. Santino was teaching today. We had an insanely long warmup by newly promoted Brian (yesterday to yellow belt). Kris showed up today too (from Panther Grappling Club). He is the first person to actually follow my advice and come down!!! :-) We covered a few side control escapes:

• Upa side control escape.
  1. Start in side control with your low elbow/arm braced against uke's hip and high elbow/arm braced against his neck.
  2. Don't stay flat on your back. Bridge up/press up a little so that you can shrimp to your side.
  3. Move high hand to his hip to brace it.
  4. Slide knee in.
  5. Piviot/shrimp around. Get full guard.
• Sliding knee side control escape.
  1. Same start. Optional: You have double underhooks, but far underhook is trapped/not effective.
  2. Get knee in using same method. However, uke drives into you, which pins your knee do you.
  3. Slide pinned knee down. This pushes their leg on that side down too.
  4. Pull half guard. Piviot under uke to get full guard. I personally perfer a sweep.

After drilling those, we rolled for a while. I rolled with the guy who got 2nd in no-gi novice 185 lbs (lost first match with the gi). He said he learned a bunch fighting his friends at college and whatnot withoutthe gi, but he never had much formal training with the gi. So after practiced we rolled without it. I think it was the first time i ever rolled no-gi at SCMA.

[Frodo]

6-1-2006

Went to SCMA again. Brad taught today. We went over a few open guard sweeps when uke stands up:

• Tripod Sweep:
  1. Begin uke in tori's guard.
  2. Uke stands up with feet approx. square with tori. If feet are not square, tori can rotate slightly until they are.
  3. Tori breaks guard, pinches legs together on uke's hip. At same time, Tori grip uke's ankles.
  4. Tori tries to put feet on mat. At the same time he pulls on uke's ankles. This off-balances uke, who falls to the floor.
  5. Finishing Options:
     1. Uke doesn't post yet. Tori grabs hand that would post, then keeps going onto mount. He can rotate uke if he can (like hip bump movement sortof).
     2. Uke posts and puts other hand into tori to prevent him from sitting up into mount. Tori gets onto his side, throws an armbar. If uke rolls, Tori rolls with him.
• Rotating Tripod Sweep
  1. Begin uke in tori's guard.
  2. Uke stands up with feet approx. square with tori. If feet are not square, tori can rotate slightly until they are.
  3. Tori grabs around one ankle. Other hand goes inverted (with elbow in air, finger pointed towards body) next to tori's head.
  4. Tori drives hips into uke on that leg, while pushing off of the hand next to tori's head.
  5. Sit up to mount. Carry that leg as far/long as you can.

Then we rolled for a while before calling it a day.