Carlson Gracie Hammersmith - stop 10! tour is 7.5% complete!

Just came back from Carlson Gracie Hammersmith. Had a great time and was made to feel very welcome, good session run by Wilson junior. That place is hot!. On walking in you ascend up a set of stairs lined with photo's from the last 8 years, the place is well worn and I can the jiu jitsu. Funnily enough noticed a picture of one of the instructers and my instructer reffing his fight.

Got in very early but it gave me a chance to observe their basics class and to talk to some of their guys, including a canadian called Vince who seemed to be a member of staff. I say hello to Wilson junior their main instructer. Then I get to meet Dickie their other blackbelt instructer who with Simon Hayes (another blackbelt)sorted my faixa rua gi's. Simon gives me a very warm welcome and I feel good about training here.

Class was pretty busy, met some very cool people and had some enjoyable conversations. Covered the toreando and a bunch of counters, including some crazy knee on head bow and arrow type choke from top turtle. As is my custom I wanted to roll with the instructer. So I got to roll with Simon Hayes, Dickie AND Wilson. Only the 2nd time Ive seen 3 bjj blackbelts in the same room never mind getting to spar with them. Was great fun though and each of them gave me some different and really usefull pointers.

First up Simon Hayes:

Big guy and tough. Initially pulled guard a few times but couldnt stop his pass for toffee, he did the single lapel stack choke on me which I love. Picked up on a new detail on gripping the trouser legs. At some point I got figure four footlocked. In his guard I never got a chance to pass and was defending collar chokes and scissor sweeps plenty and getting caught plenty. Defended a few moves but got caught in some subs I cant even describe.Simon gave me some praise for my hip movement which made me feel good about myself, as its easy to get down when being totally outclassed.

Next Dickie Martin:

Flexable and triangly. Was in his guard mostly, and found myself getting caught in to many triangles. I did have one hand in and one out (a bad habit of mine) but the hand that was in was by his thigh so in my mind should be safe. Dickie demonstrated how it was not and that if I moved it to his knee I could then block the elbow coming out, but would be better off just using 2 in or 2 out. Another fun roll.

The boss - Wilson junior:

PRESSURE. Arg man...seriously, pressure!. He let me make the first moves but he made sure always to have a good grip. He commented on the importance of grip fighting and how it gets them to play your game. Also got triangled here plenty, trying to work on what Dickie had shown me. But if Wilson got a grip, it was game over straight away - he as able to pull my arm right through. At one point he was just holding side control on me and I couldnt move much so I just waited for a gap. 15 or so seconds go by and Im finding it hard to breath and am thinking about tapping, 5 more seconds and Im feeling very claustrophobic and short of air. I thrash about abit and luckily he changes position before kimuring me from a very odd angle. Another 5-10 seconds and I would of been extremely uncomfortable. He shows me how he put on the extra pressure by getting hip to hip and putting his weight on my diapragm. Great roll and learnt alot inbetween tapping every 5 seconds.

Another guy I dont know asks to go no-gi with me. Simon says something about him being very old friends with Braulio. Simon tells him to go easy which worries me more. Was fun rolling with this guy, think I should of been more attacking though I was putting myself into needless guillotines and could of imposed myself more. He covers my mouth BJ Penn style, neck cranks me and goes for a heel hook - but to be fair he does them with control and does not crank or use to much strength.

I was to be truthfull expecting a very different experience and Im glad I had the oppertunity to correct my assumptions. They dont care where you are from, everyone is welcome and they treat visitors very well. I felt proud to recieve a class Osssss meant for me. Very friendly bunch.

Thank you Carlson Gracie Hammersmith for the good training.

Judo and new things at Andy Roberts Farnborough

Couldnt make the stop in Birmingham in the end, so gonna try do another London excursion and hopefully make 2 in a day.

Due to myself and some of the other blue's helping as assistant instructers at the club we have been able to expand the timetable. One of the benefits (besides being able to train more) is that we can vary the training for the wednesday session. For instance James Hardy is a physical trainer and is going to be doing a conditioning class. Andy is going to be doing no gi training (I learnt to pummel!). And Kieran Rice will be doing a judo class (his a 2nd dan). The only downside is with peoples schedules these classes arnt as often as I would like, especially the judo. Kieran is looking to do a BJA coaching course so that he can then formally grade in judo as things are much more tightly controlled than in BJJ.

Main thing I wanted to talk about was Kierans Judo lesson which I attended last night. My first martial art was judo but it was a long long time ago and its only with BJJ that things are coming back to me and the spark of interest has returned. Really really good class. As a teacher Kieran is very informal and flexable, he made an effort to teach judo for BJJ rather than just pure judo. Kierans competed a fair few times in bjj so his learnt alot on adapting it. For example he told us that when gripping the arm judoka preffered to grip lower down on the sleeve, but for BJJ he reccomended higher up near the bicep so as to be able to control the arm once finished the throw. To give you the option of a armbar, as most judoka wont think passed the throw.

I have a tendency to go down with my opponent after a throw, as I like to follow through with the momentum and knock the wind out of them. But in a BJJ sense this occasionally means my momentum carries me to far and I end up giving up back as a reward for the throw!

The biggest problem I have when standing with my opponent (and I think everyone runs into this) is when they hunch low and straight arm me, as is default in BJJ. Kieran got us training specifically for this. He taught us 2 grip breaks and got us doing them with some resistance, he also got us lifting our opponent up onto their toes and opening there arms. Without these 2 things you are giving your opponent to many advantages and your more likely to get thrown or definitely stuffed when attempting a takedown. Decided I will start training the pull up technique with some resistance bands.

Throw wise we did seio nage,otoshi, some version of otoshi with the arm over the head, tai otoshi and 2 counters when they step out to defend the tai otoshi.

Enjoyed the class a massively and would be happy to go back to brand new spanking white if we could get the class going atleast once a week.

I give you sexy judo!:

ZT fight skool Crawley

Found this club completely out the blue, currently it isnt on slideyfoots map which Im using. Probaly as its only 2 weeks old. I wasnt doing anything so decided to go down last night.

Walked 30 mins down a road heading for Brighton before having to enter a forrest! the club venue was one of the 30 odd huts located here, oddly enough quite a few of them being martial arts clubs. Met Yousuf Nabi a purple who was taking the class (head instructer is Ivam Maciel), really nice guy and around my build. Did a good warm up, aspects of which I plan to steal as I like to vary the warm ups alot. Since the club was so new the classes were still small but a few blues had come up from their main Brighton club. Yousuf and another blue had both trained under Marcio Gomes who I met at RGA wimbledon.

Zt fight skool have a curriculum system Ive not heard of before. They teach techniques on a single position for the whole week across all their schools. This week was north south and we did 2 chokes from there. Both were technical and used alot of pressure, nothing flashy but I think perhaps difficult for the beginners. Yousuf was attentive though and walked around giving everyone pointers and helping us out if we ran into problems. We then did some sparring, worked my current laid back style and no one tried to rip my head off. Well someone did try to finish an arm triangle on me after I had mounted them but they were new. Unfortuantly didnt have time to roll with Yousuf as we were running late and another class was starting.

All in all, enjoyed myself alot and really got on well with Yousuf. The crawley club is run by Saied Golamine who is their wrestling coach, and by the look of his ears a very good asset. They also offer MMA which is the main focus of fight skool but the BJJ is strong with them.

Their main school is their Brighton venue, which I will hit as well. I must admit I had reservations about a place that used the word "skool", but I think they are trying to form a strong brand and are using it more for advertising purposes. Check their website here:

http://www.ztfightskool.com/