Musings from the BJJ Gi #11, Lesson 12; body fold takedown, & positional control - mount
My first repeat lesson! As in, the second time I've done this lesson at this new academy, and the first time I've repeated a lesson there. As I've said previously, given that I've described these techniques to the best of my ability the first time I posted about them, I won't go through it all again.
We drilled the body fold takedown a little bit more this time, not just going through the steps of the technique 1 by 1, but also attaining the clinch, maintaining it while our opponent resists a little bit, and then responding to the indicator with the takedown, the indicator being when they draw an arm back to attempt to strike you with, at which point you do a quarter squat, mainatain super tight clinch squeeze, lift them slightly, bend them back using your torso to push, and the arms locked around their lower back to pull, let them go to the ground, and then attain full mount with hooks in.
We drilled the positional control - mount a little more than last time too, switching from side to side a little bit more rapidly and with some extra force used by our partners. My partner for this lesson was significantly heavier than me, which made it a great test for me to have to get the technique right while on top, and also a great workout from underneath when trying to push and give resistance for him to respond to.
I've been partnered up with a broad range of body sizes and shapes so far, as well as people of different ages and levels of experience. It seems to be quite advantageous in your BJJ training to not become too familiar with training with any particular body size and shape. Switching it up constantly forces you to learn how to modify your movements to be optimal for the height, weight, age, experience and athleticism of your partner/opponent.
Cheers,
- David.
you definitely want a variety of types of partners to train with, both in terms of size and bodystyle BUT also getting used to the different games of bjj. it is also great if you get to train with some folks who's grappling base is not bjj. catch wrestlers, judoka, sambo dudes and luta livre types all feel different to roll with. pure wreslters as well but in a way not so much as the wrestling base does not have submissions so as wrestlers train more and more in bjj they become less and less alien to the pure bjj guy.
in my experience anyway
Thanks for the comment man! I'd love to mix it up with different grappling styles sometime in the future for sure, but at the moment I'm a little restricted with my resources (time and money), and also just getting the hang of the essential basics of BJJ self defence. I'm super keen and curious to discover the universe of ways that I can currently get my ass kicked though, haha! A solid series of lessons in humility is healthy for the ol' ego.
yes you can be learning and growing in bjj all your life if you chose to, so there is no rush to find others
but it is interesting when other people come in, I actually can often tell what someone else trained in before they came to us.
you will have to be careful when wrestlers and judoka come in, it isn't that they are naturally like with a bad attitude but what happens is they have very limited time so they get very used to doing things with a lot of force and they often cause injuries when they first come to bjj.
it was mindbogglingly frustrating to me until I figured it out because the most dangerous guy in the room was not the most skilled guy in the room but at the same time he was one of the nicer guys in the room. so it was very difficult to reconcile all of that in my mind until I got it figured out. The Judoka wasn't trying to hurt anyone, he was just used to years of grappling where you have a small handful of seconds to get your submission in and working or be stood back up. he was only moving as he had been trained to move.
Interesting read. I don't know if you don't have any images or I cant see them at the moment but, it would be cool to see some pictures to go along with your post.
Thanks man! Yes I agree, my intention at the start was to include a photo with each post, but I currently just don't have any new ones haha. Our classes are kind of straight to business for an hour, and then I head straight home afterwards as a reflex development class or Master Cycle class commences on the mats immediately after my Combatives class finishes, so there hasn't been much opportunity for action shots or selfies yet. But I'll endeavour to photo-document some more aspects of my training experiences and include them in my future posts, thanks heaps for your feedback :)
No problem. Thank you for the post. I'm going to enjoy seeing your progress. I understand it gets time consuming to get posts out their. Definitely look forward to the photos you'll post too. Good luck.