Wednesdays with Coach Tim: Side Control and Mount

We've had the same group of women training at Robot for about 6-8 months now, and they are really progressing -- even though several of them only train on Saturdays. Coach Tim is teaching them really high level positions (bullfighter to x pass to the back/side control) that have really started clicking in the last month or two.

Most of the FemmeBots have been training long enough that they are now able to get to side control and mount, but they are facing a very common problem: What do you DO from side control or mount? Submission? Advance to another position?

When I first started training, I hardly ever got side control, let alone mount. Once I started progressing (actually, once some newer white belts started training who knew less than I did), I would get to side control or mount, and instantly get dumped back to the bottom. When I say instantly, I mean within one or two seconds. I don't think I held mount for longer than 3 seconds until I'd been training almost two years. In my newbie brain, it was because I didn't know any submissions from mount or side control.

Nope. I got dumped off of mount and swept while trying to hold side control because I did not know enough about the basic principles of mount and side control in order to secure it and hold it properly.

Coach Tim and I came up with 5 pointers for side control and mount:  

(1) More Cross-Face: Always more cross-face. There is no such thing as too much cross-face. Your cross-face should be so solid that your opponent is seriously considering tapping from the pressure and can think of nothing other than getting that pressure to stop.  As a person with small arms and larger opponents to deal with, I learned that securing my cross-face with the gable grip under the shoulder improves the chances that I can hold it. Once I have the cross-face secured with the assistance of the gable-grip, I can hold it there with one arm and use the other to attack.

From a mechanical standpoint, Coach Tim says to remember that the power of the cross-face comes from creating a spinal fault - that is, twisting the cervical spine (upper spine) against the direction your opponent is trying to move.  With that in mind, it should become clear that moving your WHOLE body over your opponent to cross-face them is a common mistake and often results in what is discussed below in No. 4 (don't sweep yourself).  Instead, pull your opponent as close to you as you can AND THEN cross-face them.  It will only take a slight rotation from your shoulder to apply pressure and by keeping the rest of your weight back you will prevent yourself from getting rolled over by your opponent.

(2) Toes on the Mat: No matter where you are on the mat, your toes should be on the ground, flexed, and helping you drive in or push or make some sort of movement more solid or powerful. In side control, no matter what position your legs are in (both knees to the armpit or one knee in the hip and the other sprawled out), your toes should be on the mat driving you into your opponent.  In mount, unless you are grape-vining your opponent's legs, your toes should be on the mat, flexed, and pushing you up toward your opponent. In the last few months, Coach Tim and I have worked on adding this detail to my game, and everything has changed for the better.

If you are a student at Robot, you are in luck -- Coach Tim will always point out when it is beneficial to keep your feet flattened on the mat.  Coach Tim recommends a mental check that your toes are on the mat when you are on top.  Mechanically, keeping your toes on the mat allows your to have be simultaneously mobile and heavy, mobile because you can pivot and change direction as the situation dictates and heavy, because the driving force from your legs transfers into your upper body and then to your fixed point (for example, your shoulder is your fixed point when creating a cross-face) and delivering pressure where you want it to go.

(3) Base Out: When in mount, base is everything. The moment you get to mount, your knees should be working toward your opponent's armpits, your arms should be wide and flat, and your chest should be pushing their face to the side. My FemmeBots lovingly call my based out hold in mount the "boob-face" because of the position. But it works! I stopped getting reversed from mount when I was able to hold that base, and let go of whatever submission I was trying (usually an armbar) and go back to the base.

Coach Tim says that a common pitfall for a beginner is falling when they didn't have to.  As simple as it sounds, when you are on top, one of your #1 priorities is to not fall over!  If you feel yourself falling, try to use your arm/leg/head to catch yourself.  The first few times, your opponent will probably still escape from your position because often the way we have to base invariably gives our opponent other chances to escape/get ahead.  However, you will learn to prevent these follow-ups and also learn whether or not to base with your arm/leg/head depending on the circumstances.  On top of all of this, keeping yourself from falling will allow you to stay further ahead when your opponent is moving correctly.

For example, when you have the mount, your opponent will be using a combination of a bridge escape and a hip-escape (also called the elbow-knee escape).  If your opponent successfully bridges you over, you are on the bottom and have to work quite hard to get back on top.  However, if your opponent bridges, you base on your hand, and your opponent recovers guard with the hip-escape, then you are much closer to achieving the mount again than in our first scenario.  Although yes, your opponent did recover guard, they are now in the same predicament you would have been in, had they successfully bridged you over!

(4) Don't Sweep Yourself:  Learning how to use your weight and pressure effectively is one of the most difficult things to learn, and one of the most important. When holding side control, if your weight is too far across your opponent's center line (their sternum), they can easily lock around your chest, bridge, and sweep you. From mount, if your weight is too high (hips up in the air) and you are not sufficiently based out, a simple bridge by your opponent will turn mount into closed guard. Keep your hips down, toes on the mat, and secure the cross-face to reduce the likelihood that your weight can be used against you by your opponent.

When students are rolled over from the mount / side control position, often times it is because they are trying to hold their opponent in place. While it is definitely possible to hold someone and immobilize them, keep in mind that your opponent can feel which direction your weight is going and will often try and move all of your weight in that current direction.  For example, from side control, refrain from placing your weight towards the FAR side of your opponent's spine.  Treat their spine as a line that divides their body into two halves - you are on one half and you don't want to put your weight too far towards the other half or you risk being rolled right over.

The Take Away:  

5) Position before submission - We hear this often enough and it is a useful saying for a number of reasons. One of the important take-aways from "position before submission" is to remember that if you can maintain side control/mount/back control indefinitely, then you will ALWAYS get a submission. On a long enough timeline, your opponent will either expose themselves to a submission or submit from exhaustion. NEVER rush to get a submission (until you have the skill to know when this is appropriate), instead, spend your time adjusting your current position and making it as uncomfortable as possible. The resulting pressure you create is what will force your opponent to react in a sub-optimal way, opening the door for the inevitable submission.

Do's and Don'ts

One of my first posts this year was about the etiquette of BJJ.  That post focused primarily on how to be a good training partner, though it did have tips on hygiene and attitude.  This post, however, is focused solely on things each student should be mindful of while training, unrelated to technique.

(1) Do not be the smelly kid.

Wash your gi after every class.  No exceptions.  If you wore it and stepped one foot on the mat, do not ever come back to the academy with that gi on unless it has been washed in hot water, with soap, and fully dried.

No, hanging it up to dry in the sun after class is not the same thing.  Once you start to sweat on that thing again, all the stank from the prior training session will come pouring out.

Yes, I can tell.  You smell.  Everyone else can smell you.

Most importantly, you are unnecessarily putting your health and the health of your training partners at risk of contracting staph, ringworm, and other communicable diseases due to the petri dish you've decided to wear on the mat because (1) you didn't have time to wash it or (2) you don't have more than one gi.

If you have been training more than 6 months, you should have a gi for each day of the week you train.  Do some internet research and find a cheap gi.  Ask higher belts in your gym where they get their gis (they may even be willing to sell you a used gi on the cheap).  Hell, my academy is selling used gis for as low as $20 right now.  Gis are part of the cost of training.  Deal with it.

Finally, brush your teeth and put on some pit stick before you train.  Your training partners will love you forever.

(2) Trim your nails.  

Again, coming to class with untrimmed nails is an unnecessary risk to you and your training partners.  I've seen cheeks sliced open, nails ripped off, and chunks taken out of ankles, toes, and wrists because of untrimmed nails.  Some gyms are so serious about it they do a nail check at the beginning of class, and ask you to leave the mat and trim them before returning if they are too long.

If there is any nail above the nail bed, you and your training partner are at risk of injury.  Ladies, if you cannot live without gel tips, get off the mat.  Guys, your toenails are nails.  Trim them.  No one wants to get cut by your Howard Hughes-esque talons.  Carry clippers in your gear bag and check your nails before each class.

(3) No bare feet off the mat and no shoes on the mat.  

This is my personal and ultimate pet peeve, because it is just unsanitary, rude, and thoughtless.  In BJJ, my face is likely about to be smashed into the mat.  MY FACE.  The last thing I want is for someone who's been walking around the gym without shoes on, on the same surface that people walk around with shoes from the outdoors (that have stepped in who knows what), to put those feet on the mat that my face is about to get smashed into.  Would you rub the bottom of your shoe on your face?  No?  Then do not ever put your bare feet off the mat.  Ever.  Not even right off the edge of the mat.  No.  Stop it.  STAPH IT. In a perfect world, you'd sit down on the edge of the mat and clean your feet with wet wipes before walking around on it, but nothing is perfect.

(4)  No make up on the mat.  

I'll admit to being in a hurry and forgetting this one, but ladies, take a moment to use a make-up removing towelette before you get on the mat to avoid staining your training partner's brand new white gi with your makeup.

(5)  Train with everyone.  

No one can learn BJJ alone.  It requires training partners of all different levels and sizes to truly learn the art.  It frustrates me when I see white belts refusing to roll with other newer white belts because the newer student is "too green" or "too spazzy" or doesn't know the drills and positions properly.  That attitude is upsetting, because the older student has gotten to where they are in their training because other students rolled with them despite their inexperience.

The only times you should ever turn down a roll are (1) when you know from experience the training partner asking goes too hard/puts you at risk or (2) you are injured (to clarify, an ouchie or boo-boo does not count as an injury).  If you think your training partner is going too hard, you must advocate for yourself and ask them to slow the pace and the pressure down.  If there is a training partner you know goes for a submission too quickly and risks injury, tell them.

Getting Tough

In materials science and metallurgy, toughness is the ability of a material to absorb energy and plastically deform without fracturing.  One definition of material toughness is the amount of energy per volume that a material can absorb before rupturing. It is also defined as the resistance to fracture of a material when stressed.  

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is hard.  It requires both mental and physical toughness of the sort most people in Western society have never had to deal with.  It requires the student to absorb the physical energy of his or her training partner and understand how much energy he or she can absorb before tapping out.  Knowing and learning your limits is a critical component of BJJ.  However, unlike techniques we learn on the mat, mental and physical toughness is something each student must learn for himself or herself -- it cannot be taught.  Your instructors can give you the tools to understand a technique and when it is dangerous, and they can encourage you to continue to train and grow, but the student is ultimately in charge of his or her level of toughness. 

For most beginners, the most important part of toughness is simply believing you are tough.  Coming on to the mat and believing that you can handle the physical pressure and mental pressure of being put in an uncomfortable position or submission.  However, some beginners can go too far in their belief about their toughness and end up injured.  Their ego, pride, and inexperience get in the way and they refuse to tap despite their body and mind telling them their ability to absorb energy without fracturing has been met.  

Mental and physical toughness go hand in hand.  As the beginner becomes an intermediate student, she learns that mental toughness is being able to handle defeat and tap early, and often, to ensure she can continue to train without injury.  She learns that physical toughness means accepting an offer to roll from a higher bent even when she is exhausted, because she knows her technique will be tested and pushed and she is in no physical danger.     

If a student does not learn mental toughness (by overcoming ego and anxiety) she will never learn true physical toughness (pushing herself to exceed the limits of what has been done before).  

Wednesdays with Coach Tim: Cross Training

Last week, Coach Tim and I talked about how to train off the mat in non-physical ways.  It was a pretty timely topic for me; as soon as we posted it, my work/life balance was nearly impossible to maintain and I missed class for 10 days.  Fortunately, even though I wasn't able to make class, I was able to set aside time to go through my training journals, my favorite BJJ blogs, and talk BJJ shop with my training partner for life (my husband).  I consciously set aside time each day to think about my game, visualize the issues I'd been having, and how to address them.

When I was finally able to make it to the gym on Saturday morning, I had the best class that I have had in a long time.  I'm not gauging "best" by submissions, passes, or sweeps that I got (though there were more of those than usual).  I'm gauging it by how I moved, how I felt my mind and body connecting, and how many times I had to check myself during a position and correct posture/form/technique.  All week long, I had reminded myself to keep my toes on the mat and move slow and smooth instead of quick and dirty, and when it came time to roll, it was a lot easier to remember those things.

If you don't think you have time to focus on your mental game, Coach Tim and I challenge you to use the time it takes to get to the academy and return home to visualize.  Use the time in the car headed to the academy to think about the things from the last class you need to remember, and the drive home to process the class you just had.  Coach Tim believes that the longer we can extend the tail ends of our training, the less "down time" we actually have between training sessions, and the more productive our overall training will be.

This week, I asked Coach Tim to talk about what sort of exercises I can do off the mat to improve my strength and technique on the mat.  In particular, I'm becoming a little obsessed with identifying the main movements in BJJ and how to work those muscles outside the gym and get stronger.

Coach Tim's Advice: 

There are seven major movement patterns that humans utilize: Squat, Lunge, Push, Pull, Bend (Hinge at the hip as you would during a deadlift), Twist, and Gait (walking pattern).  It is useful to break down the movements in your sport into the movement patterns being utilized; for example, throwing a baseball would be a lunge, followed by a twist, finalized with a push.

Improving movement patterns and techniques in BJJ requires making sure you know how to properly execute these seven movement patterns in a strength & conditioning environment.  Then we start to break down our BJJ movements into these movement patterns and start tightening up the mechanics of each pattern and smoothing out the transitions between each pattern.

One of the interesting parts of BJJ is that it relies on many permutations of these combined movement patterns - the tricky part is you often execute these movements with your back braced against the floor (instead of your feet braced against the floor) or you are pushing/pulling/etc. from angles that are foreign to us.

To examine this principal, we'll look at playing guard.  The most important movement pattern for playing guard is the leg press (squat) and being able to re-align your hip so that you can press your opponent with one or both legs at any time (this is the mechanism at play whenever someone talks about being able to "control the distance" from the guard). The main way we do this in BJJ is with the hip-escape: your opponent was in front of you and you could leg press them at will (control the distance and keep your guard safe), as they approach a 90-degree angle to your current position (wherein their spine would be perpendicular to yours), your ability to leg press is diminished. The closer your opponent is to you, the harder it is to simply turn along the floor and get that leg press back in front of you, so we use the hip escape to press against the floor, scoot the pelvis back and then use this newly-found space between you and your opponent to bring at least your heel in between you and the fixed-point your partner is trying to place on you, and voila! You just performed a leg-press that allowed you to prevent the guard pass.

The Take Away:

When you find yourself struggling with a technique, break it down into the movement patterns necessary for the technique, and train exercises off the mat that emphasize those movements.  Leg presses, deadlifts, and core work are critical movements for BJJ -- and a healthy body!

Wednesdays with Coach Tim: Training Outside Class

Time on the mat sparring and drilling is important, but it isn't the only way to train.  Often times life throws me injuries, illnesses, crazy work schedules, or family emergencies that keep me from being able to get to class on time consistently.  I've asked Coach Tim for suggestions on what I can do to train off the mat.  

Coach Tim's Advice:  

On a practical note, it is easiest for me as an instructor to assist students with developing outside of class study and/or drilling routines.  Since I can answer e-mails, recommend videos, etc. when I'm not trying to be 100% focused on a class full of students, those few students who do e-mail me often get an answer more extensive than I think they anticipated.  (You should see what Veronica edits out of these posts!)  On top of that, any student that actively takes their learning into their own hands will always receive more attention from me because these students tend to share information with others very well - this is a way of creating "nodes" in the class room that students can look to for advice if I happen to be working a with a group when a question arises.

Take Notes on Techniques Taught in Class:

Taking notes is a great practice.   Simply writing things will help improve retention and recall.  For those that do take notes, often the struggle is that these notes are rarely reviewed.

If you do not currently take notes, you must make note-taking a habit and regular part of your training.  Start slowly; don't try and write every step to a technique, instead just try and write down all the techniques and movements you practiced that day.  Write down one thing that worked well for you and one thing that did not work well.  Slowly add in details to these overall ideas, then start adding the individual steps that apply to the individual techniques. Soon enough, you will have your own way of taking notes specifically for grappling.

If you currently take notes, but find that you rarely review them, my advice is to work on reviewing these notes and incorporating the movements you have logged into your game.  Here is what I do: anytime there is a particular technique or detail I want to incorporate, I write it down on a small post-it note (to limit how much I can ramble) and then stick that note to the edge of my computer screen. By spending a few minutes a day unintentionally looking at this post-it note, I slowly start to remember the movement during drilling and sparring.  Once the movement is an inseparable part of my game, I will take the post-it note down and replace it with another; the first note gets copied into my notebook, which serves as an archive.

This is what all those notes end up looking like:

Websites / Books / Etc:

There are a number of useful books and websites committed to deciphering Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Saulo Ribeiro's Jiu Jitsu University is a great book for all levels, although Saulo's emphasis on defense might not appeal to more impatient students. I always advise learning to attack first, then defend, since learning to defend already places you at a disadvantage (something beginners have an ample supply of) and knowing what dangers you face is a great primer for thwarting them.

In recent years, the number of useful Jiu Jitsu websites / YouTube channels available has exploded.  Marcelo Garcia in Action (mginaction.com) and the Mendes Brothers Online Training (artofjiujitsu.com) are the two websites I have found most useful.  BJJ Scout, Bishop BJJ, BJJ Hacks, and our very own Robot BJJ are some of the more useful YouTube channels out there.

Whatever combination of books and websites you choose to utilize for off-the-mat study, keep this in mind: It is important to do what high-level competitors do, not do what high-level competitors SAY. 

Even the best practitioners in the world (at any sport) will, at times, unintentionally teach their techniques differently than the way they actually perform them when it's show time. A classic example from outside BJJ: Tennis instructors have often taught to "turn the hand over" as they make contact with the ball, in an attempt to give a favorable spin to the tennis ball.  However, through the use of high-speed cameras it has been shown that these same players actually turn their hand over much later than was thought, usually after they hit the ball!

Veronica's Side Note:  I like to watch high level BJJ competitions and tutorials with the sound off-- at least until I have an understanding of what I am looking at.  If I'm not listening to a commentator or instructor, I have no choice but to pay close visual attention and play the technique over and over again.  I listen with the sound at least once at the end, just in case there is a discussion of pressure or leverage that I may not be able to fully grasp with just visuals.    

The Take Away:  

Even if you can't make it to the academy for class, you can brush up on technique by reading, watching videos, and going over your notes from class.  It is the very rare student of any discipline who needs no outside study to improve.  BJJ is no exception.

The People You Roll With

This post from Gracie Chatswood in Australia about "The Guys You Roll With" has been making the rounds in the women's BJJ forums.  The post outlines 6 kinds of guys that women in BJJ encounter on a regular basis.

The post is meant to be funny, and to acknowledge the issues women in BJJ deal with at some point.  I'm the first one to laugh at a joke, but this post stuck with me after I read it because it wasn't comprehensive.  The post forgot a few categories of the guys I have encountered on the mat.  And so, I amend the list:

(7)  The Motivator:  This guy is so excited to have women joining the academy, he goes out of his way to help.  He's always finding a way to compliment your technique and point out what you've improved on.  This guy has zero ego, and is genuinely excited when a smaller training partner catches him.

(8)  The Big Brother/Father Figure:  This guy watches very carefully to make sure that the guys you are rolling with aren't accidentally dangerous.  If a particularly spazzy white belt wants to roll with you, this guy will be sure to take a moment to give you a pointer on how to beat the spazz.  He makes sure to check in on you off the mat, notices when you aren't in class, and and gives you pointers on things to read outside class, where to buy a great gi, and tells you the stories about when he was starting out and how often he wanted to quit.

(9)  The Class Clown:  This guy is epically fun to roll with.  He's trying new things, letting you try new things, with zero ego about whether or not it works.  When he gets caught, he cracks a joke or compliments you while he's being tapped out.

I'm happy to report that my training partners at Robot fall in the above categories -- rather than the categories Gracie Chatswood came up with.  Sure, in three years of rolling I've come into contact with some guys who had issues, but they are the exception -- not the rule.

The Gracie Chatswood post also started me thinking about the different women I've rolled with at Robot, at SoCal Women's Open Mats, and competitions:

(1) The Diva:  Ah, The Diva.  I started out as The Diva.  I had something to prove, but I didn't even know what it was.  I took every single tap personally.  I was convinced no one wanted to roll with me because I was a girl (not because I was terrible at the sport -- which was probably the case).  The Diva is so certain no one wants a girl on the mat, she becomes hyper-feminine; her gis are pink, purple, sparkly confections that give her traditional Brazilian coaches heartburn.  Fortunately, The Diva doesn't stick around for long.  Eventually she becomes comfortable in her own skin, confident of her skills, and happy to help new students get up to speed.  Be kind to her, because you were her.

(2) The Athlete: This woman has played sports her entire life.  She lifts.  She does Cross Fit.  She was a cross-country runner/pole vaulter/cheerleader/gymnast in college.  She wants to roll with the guys more than the girls, because the guys are the real challenge.  And she wants to roll hard.  She rolls with injuries because that's what athletes do, bitches!

(3) The Damsel in Distress:  This woman seems to have forgotten she's signed up for a combat sport.  She gets "injured" nearly every class, and there are almost always tears involved.  She thinks everyone goes "too hard" on her, but refuses to acknowledge that it is because she is rolling like she's in the finals at the Pyramid.  Everyone is surprised she keeps showing up to class, but she does, and she grows on you.  Magically, one day, she turns into one of the most vicious creatures on the mat.

(4) The Legacy: This woman has been doing martial arts since she was old enough to tie a belt.  Her father or older brother got her into the sport, and she also cross-trains in Judo.  She is 13, she weighs 90 pounds, but when she rolls with you it's like she generates a gravity field that makes her weigh 300 pounds.  She knows all the rules without having to give them much thought, and when you ask her what it means to be in someone's guard, she looks at you like you may be brain damaged.  She is your inspiration.

(5) The Veteran:  She's been there, done that.  She's been the only woman on the mat, she's seen women come and go, and she stays because she loves to roll.  She encourages other women to train, to stick it out, but she knows that if they don't love the game, there's nothing she can do.  She's had shoulder injuries, knee injuries, wrist injuries, back injuries...but if she stays away from the mat for more than a week, she feels like a part of her soul is missing.  She dreams about BJJ and wakes up with a RNC hold on her body pillow.  

Wednesdays with Coach Tim: Consistency is Key

I'm a big philosophy nerd, and one of my very favorite quotes is one a lot of trainers use to encourage their students.




Since I started training jiu jitsu, I've found this to be particularly true. At our academy, we focus as much (perhaps more) on drilling as sparring. We try to get reps in. Over and over and over. I've been through the curriculum so many times that I've lost count. I've never had a moment where I noticed things suddenly click, but I have had moments where I realize I am doing things without thinking that used to cause me a lot of problems; arm-across sweeps, holding mount, and lately omoplatas. 

So, the more we train the better we get. This is not an earth-shattering concept. But BJJ is a rough sport, even when you are learning it at a courteous and friendly gym -- there's really no way around how sore you are going to be after being cross-faced repeatedly. I've talked about learning the difference between an ouchie and an injury, but seriously, Coach Tim, how often should someone starting out train? How much training time should be devoted to sparring? How much to drilling?

In addition to trying to figure out exactly how much training I should be doing weekly, I've noticed that my issues with being consistent/inconsistent seem to center around the following:

(1) I can only train at night, because of my work schedule. I often find myself completely gassed out or starving by the time class starts. If I've had one of my really bad days, I will forgo training in order to eat. I've yet to figure out the how/what/when to eat before I get on the mat. In general, I (and lots of students) have a hard time figuring out how to train consistently when work is going nuts.

(2) Soreness. If I am sore, I just do not want to do it. I've sort of solved this by having the 3-5 week rule, since that puts about one day in between sessions, but I still struggle with it.

(3) Learning plateau. There will be months where I feel like I'm not getting better at anything at all, and that tends to discourage me from getting on the mat. I usually get over it by reminding myself that if I'm not having fun, I'm not doing BJJ.

(3) Mental block. I've struggled with depression and anxiety my whole life, and sometimes it is just plain hard for me to get myself out there. Some days the last thing I want is to be in close proximity to another person -- let alone being smashed by one. I've managed to get past this hurdle by reminding myself how good I feel after a roll, that I can sit out if I'm starting to panic, and that often just getting on the gi and stepping on the mat is the hardest part.

Since I've had such a hard time with consistency lately, I asked Coach Tim to weigh-in and give some tips on the optimum amount of training for a newbie and how to stay consistent.

Coach Tim's Advice:

To quickly address one end of the spectrum - can one train too much?

You cannot over-train, only under-recover. If diet, sleep, and stress are under control, do not fear two or three training sessions per day.

One caveat: often students are very enthusiastic about their training from the beginning and set lofty goals for themselves. They train twice a day, everyday, for two weeks. This is great, except that if they miss a class during week 3, they feel like a loser. Had they set a more modest tempo to their training, this would have never been an issue.

Managing Expectations:

The issues Veronica set out above are related to this key component of training: expectations. If we don't meet our own expectations, we are more likely to stop, giving in to the fear of failure. Instead of measuring training in number of days per week, it is often more productive to measure it in number of hours.

The solution: set a number of hours you would like to commit to training at the beginning of the week and stick to it. Let's say we want to commit to six hours per week. This is approximately 3 classes, if we include the time spent lingering around after class (sitting in traffic doesn't count! Otherwise we all effectively train full-time just living in Los Angeles!).

Now, lets say you are extra sore from a hard session, or a work issue comes up, or you become ill, etc. Instead of meeting that six hour goal in class alone, come to a open mat and make up a hour drilling, watch a hour of high-level competition footage, take notes during a class instead of training that day, and try and fit in two 30-minute sessions of conditioning (obviously this varies depending on what is preventing you from coming to class). These are just examples of how we can adjust very quickly when we modify our expectation to measure hours, not classes.

Of course, not all hours spent are equally productive, but the same can be said of class time. The crux of this method is to remember that when life shifts our priorities, the dedicated individual sees a new challenge to be overcome - how to make use of the 24 hours in a day that we are allotted, and tries to find a workable path.

Find a Way to Train

The worst injury I have incurred in grappling was to my left shoulder - it so painful that I could not get out of bed without using my leg as a pendulum to swing up, clench my teeth and accept the pain. I could not spar for approximately 3 months. I was competing at every tournament in California and trying to accelerate my progress so I could move up to the black belt level, and here I was, stuck. At this point I was a brown belt and I had no understanding or application of the leg drag. I was determined to not let the injury stifle me, so I began drilling a technique that I could do without further injuring my shoulder: the leg drag. Over and over. And then some more. Then, some more. Then, more. More. I timed myself and I could complete 100 leg drags in 7 and a half minutes. I would aim for 500 a day, then 750, then 1000. By the time I could spar I was leg dragging like it was my best guard pass!

Inspirational Resources

Once again, Tim and I didn't manage to get our shit together for the Wednesday post, but that's OK.  I'm having a minor kitty cat crisis at home, and my head hasn't really been focused on BJJ.  However, these resources came across my desk in the last few days, and I just had to share.

Check out this blog post on what it's like to start BJJ as an overweight person -- and get ripped! Though she is writing from the point of view of someone who started out very overweight and out of shape, her points apply to everyone starting out in BJJ.

I thought this blog post was incredibly informative about the dangers of unrealistic and dangerous expectations about our bodies and what they are capable of.

Happy Thursday! Tomorrow is Friday! Hooray!!

Wednesdays with Coach Tim: You Can Breathe

Coach Tim and I were both insanely busy last week, and I couldn't think of anything to write about, so we skipped it.  I've been asking the new white belts at my academy what they want to learn more about and this week the request was unanimous:  How do I breathe?

It seems like a really silly question, right?  I like to joke that I was so bad for the first year or so that I was training that one of my coaches only had one tip for me:  Breathe.  We'd be rolling, and afterward, he would look at me very seriously, lean in, put his hand on my shoulder and say (in his awesome Brazilian accent):  "Veronica, is okay.  You can breathe.  You must breathe."

He was right.  I was concentrating so hard on not being choked, not being arm-barred, not being swept, and -- let's be honest here -- not being outright KILLED (because that's what rolling feels like when you first start out) that I had forgotten to do the most basic thing:  Breathe.

I'm not ashamed to say I spent a good deal of time during that first year making sure I was breathing.  I'd been on the sidelines when Coach Tim was giving a post-match talk to my husband, and Coach Tim told me my job was to remind my husband to exhale.  He told me the important thing was for him to exhale in order to calm down and cool down between matches.  He explained that the body will always inhale enough to keep going, but sometimes we forget to exhale.

Now when I'm rolling, I sound like a leaky tire.  I'm constantly making a sscchhhhhhhhh sound -- a really steady exhale.  When I'm caught in a submission attempt or a tight hold and I feel my body starting to freak out and my mind starting to believe that feeling, I focus on a slow inhale and slow exhale.  If I can breathe, I'm alright (unless we are talking about an arm-bar, but that's for another day).  If I can breathe, there is no need to panic and I can get back to the business of defeating the submission attempt.

Coach Tim's Advice on Learning to Breathe in BJJ:

Holding your breath is problematic during grappling because the lack of respiration deprives your energy systems of oxygen. Further, since many breathing issues in grappling are associated with excessive muscular tension, holding your breath will impede your movement. Lastly, this one fabricated off of pure speculation - holding your breath probably makes it more difficult to process the problems we encounter during grappling.

Generally, students hold their breath less during drilling than sparring. This is because holding your breath is a signal of another problem - lack of adequate tension and torque and inefficient movement patterns (more vaguely and commonly called "incorrect technique").

This is why more experienced students will generally have better breathing patterns - a more effective movement pattern will enable you to more predictably create and remove tension/torque during your sparring and this efficient use of energy gives you more breathing room than less experienced students are permitted.  Dominant positions are also a great place to stop and catch your breath, provided you have the right movement pattern and positioning to precisely stifle your opponent's escapes.

So, how do we fix breathing problems? Awareness that you are not breathing is the first step.  The second step is to exhale; not breathe in and out, just exhale. Your brain and lungs have a pretty good thing going - they tend to fill with as much oxygen as needed when we inhale. If you focus on somewhat forcefully expelling your breath, your breathing pattern will become more regulated.  Also, be sure to incorporate an awareness of breathing into your drilling - start with your best positions and attacks and try to drill with your breaths happening at the same, appropriate step - the moments during a technique that you are allowed to release the tension in the grappling system between you and your partner.

Wednesdays with Coach Tim: Tap Early, Tap Often

Last week, I was rolling with a new white belt.  He doesn't have a lot of technique yet, but he's strong.  I've been struggling with being too passive lately, and he got me in positions that would have ended me if another blue belt or higher had gotten them.  He was trying really hard to beat me with awful chokes that were uncomfortable (my cheekbones hurt the next day), but not dangerous.  At one point, he was trying to secure my back and he crossed his ankles in front of my waist.

Never, ever, ever cross your ankles directly in front of your opponent's waist if you have their back.  This is why: 

The moment I realized he had crossed his ankles in front of me, I scooted my butt down, and crossed my legs over his ankles.  I kept the hold tight, and modified the hold so that I was in a figure-four lock (his ankles were in the crook of my left knee, and my right knee was securing my left ankle).  The instant I secured the figure-four lock, he stopped trying to choke me.  He stopped really moving.

But even though it hurt enough for him to stop trying to choke me, he did not tap.  I know how to finish that ankle lock, but he's new, and this particular lock is dangerous.  So, instead of finishing it, I made it tighter.  He still did not tap.

I was torn on whether to let it go, tell him it was dangerous, or finish it because finishing that ankle lock can break the ankle.

I decided to finish it by lifting my hips.  He tapped.  And then he limped off the mat.  I talked to him on the way out, checked to make sure he was alright, and told him to be careful about where ankles are crossed when you have someone's back.

I felt awful.  Had I done the right thing?  Was I just being a bully blue belt teaching a young, strong, white belt a lesson?

I still don't know.  But the whole thing got me thinking about the mentality of tapping, and I asked Coach Tim to give advice to new BJJ practitioners on knowing when to tap and when to hang on and try to get out of a submission.

Coach Tim's Advice: 

At what point in sparring / competition is it appropriate to tap and end that particular grappling instance? Obviously, each individual will have different answers for different occasions. For example, tapping during the demonstration of a technique is much different than tapping out during the finals of the black belt Mundials at the Pyramid.

Tapping signifies that you and your partner must stop grappling for the safety of the person tapping.  Problems with learning to tap arise in two ways:  (1) students refusing to tap despite immediate danger of injury and (2) students who tap to the slightest amount of discomfort and pressure.

Solving the problem requires coming to a universal solution to both ends of the "never tap" and "always tap" spectrum.  Coach Tim has grappled with this idea (and would like you to know that there is super extra pun intended, since he'd been thinking of this pun all morning because it's so bad.) throughout his training and coaching career.  Thus far, Coach Tim's conclusion is that the appropriate time to tap is about tempering the ego (for the "never tap" candidates) and cultivating durability (for the "always tap" cadets). 

Just like other aspects of Jiu Jitsu, the mental apparatus has physical consequences - drilling and sparring (physical) with proper intention / visualization (mental) will foster your own powerful growth. In the case of tapping / submitting, tapping early will stifle your growth by slowing your body's adaptation to the physical stress of the Art. On the other hand, tapping late will result in injury and, more subtlety, the more experienced students, the ones who are able to submit you, will begin to avoid training with you. I have never met a student that likes to injure their fellow students and it is a disservice to lose more experienced training partners because submitting during training causes duress.

The Take Away: 

Do not let your ego keep you from tapping, because not tapping can keep you from being able to train and scare away higher level training partners.  Conversely, do not let discomfort or pressure cause you to tap, because tapping before you are in actual danger or unable to escape the submission will stifle your ability to adapt to the physical aspects of BJJ.

SoCal Women's BJJ Open Mat

Today was like my BJJ Christmas came early.  This month's SoCal Women BJJ Open Mat was held at my academy!

SoCal Women BJJ is a Facebook group run by Jill Baker, a brown belt training out of Bakersfield Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Riveters BJJ.  Once a month, Jill picks a SoCal academy and rally's the Facebook group to meet up at the designated gym for a three hour open mat.

Today was our turn, the second time Robot has hosted.  I think we had a pretty great turn out!

52 participants! Can you believe it!?  Every belt level was represented today, from all over SoCal.  I don't have words for how happy days like today make me.  Osss!

For My FemmeBots

This article is important.

It isn't about jiu jitsu, but it is important. I've starved myself before eating 800 calories a day of fish and lettuce while doing three hour workouts 6x a week just to see the scale move a few pounds and hope that maybe I'll get back down to the Size 2, 105 pound, 15 year old body that I had when I met my husband. It didn't work. It made it worse. It made me hate myself. 

You know what makes me love myself? Being able to do whatever I want to do physically, having my doctor tell me that people would kill for my cholesterol and blood sugar numbers, even though I still think I'm 40 pounds heavier than I'd like to be. No number on any scale makes me love me. No bikini I can wear without cringing makes me love me. Being exactly who I am makes me love me. 

Each and every one of you is beautiful, inside and out. Each and every one of you is different, and inspires me in a different way to train harder, be kinder, and love more. Be healthy, be strong, and be happy. 

Wednesdays with Coach Tim: Balancing Act

One of my very favorite things about working with the new white belts at Robot is how much I learn from them.  Things that my coaches have been telling me to do for years are seeming to finally make sense as I roll with new white belts and see where they are struggling and answer their questions.  This week, the importance of keeping your balance and keeping good posture has been in the front of my mind.

Keeping my balance has been something I have struggled with from day one. For the first year I trained, I'm pretty sure I swept myself more than my partners swept me. The most common thing I would hear my coach telling me during a sparring session was "don't fall, don't fall, don't fall!"  I just could not get a handle on how not to fall over when I was trying to get out of someone's guard.  I still struggle with being the standing partner for Spider Guard and De La Riva drills because I seem to be the human equivalent of a bowling pin -- designed to topple over!

At Robot, when someone is being coached on how to stay balanced and grounded, they hear a coach telling them to "posture up."  When I hear "posture up" I instantly note the alignment of my head and spine and I make them as straight as possible.  I square my hips, square my shoulders, relax my neck, and typically look at the ceiling (which for some reason seems to automatically cause me to straighten up and become stronger).

This week, I've asked Coach Tim to give some advice on the importance of keeping your posture while training -- even during the most basic drills.

Coach Tim's Advice on Posturing Up: 

The number one issue with posture is that we all unintentionally come to understand posture, for example during guard passing, as having your head above your hips and your back (spine) straight. This is only partially true and is the center of problems for students of all levels.

What Does "Posture" Mean?

The first step to unraveling this issue is to understand that the term "posture" as "to engage the entirety of your core in a manner that stabilizes your spine against faults in positioning."  

What in the crazy does that mean? 

It means that your brain likes itself. It doesn't want to get hurt and it doesn't want its precious spine being hurt either. Selfish, yes, but guess what else? Your brain makes sure that your arms and legs do whatever it takes to keep the spine (from the skull, through the upper torso and down into the pelvis) in a strong, braced positioned.

Legs tend to flail and arms push frantically for space when someone applies strong, twisting pressure to the head or the hips because the brain is making sure your arms and legs are trying to keep your spine straight. This can result in a sweep (when the other person is unable to use their legs to catch their balance), a guard pass (when the other person is unable to use their arms to push and create space), or submissions.

How to Properly Posture

Instead of thinking of posture as "head above your hips and your back straight" just think that if you can engage (flex) your butt, hips, stomach and lats, then you are either in good posture, or very, very close to it. This is because engaging those particular muscle groups is only possible when your spine is in a stable position.

The next time you are in Spider Guard and your elbow is separated from your side, try to engage your lat.  You will find that you are unable to engage your lat in the same way you would if your partner didn't have their hooks + grips.  The inability to engage your lats means you have poor posture in that moment.

It is important to remember that good posture during guard passing doesn't require your hips to be directly under your head.  For example, one of the purposes of the using the Spider Guard, transitioning to the Leg Lasso and then moving into the De La Riva is that the first two guards (Spider -> Lasso) will cause your opponent to begin stepping their feet towards you if they: (a) begin to tire, (b) don't understand how to pass, or (c) use a posture that requires them to get their hips under their head.  If you've worked on controlling Spider Guard, you've probably worked on getting your hips forward (under your head).  Once the guard passer walks in, the guard player can transition to the De La Riva or Reverse De La Riva and begin a series of back attacks, submissions and other sweeps.

A more effective strategy than putting your hips under your head would be to create stability in your entire body by ensuring that your hands are always gripping, your elbows are always twisting in towards your hips, your glutes, stomach, and lats are stabilizing your spine and your feet are straight. More precisely, the big toe and knee joint on both feet are pointed towards whatever surface your are using as a fixed point on your opponent. From here, you can more effectively apply torque to your opponent and pass their guard, keep your balance, etc.

tldr; The Take-Away: 

Keep in mind, "back straight, head up and over the hips" isn't wrong, but rather that positioning is not the only way to achieve good posture.  Rather, an understanding of what "posture up" is actually referring to will help the individual decide what exact expression of posture is most appropriate for that moment.

Posture is constant because the core muscles are always engaged, but what proper posture looks like changes continuously because the positioning of the hands and feet change as the sparring develops.  Since the positioning of the feet, knees, hands and elbows all determine your ability to engage the muscle that brace your spine, it follows that your limbs must maintain proper posture as well (this is where "elbows in" comes from: you cannot engage your lats effectively with your elbows away from your body).

Posture exists in all positions and should always be checked, adjusted and then re-adjusted as necessary because often we think we have good posture when in fact, elbows are slightly separated or our back rounds under stress, etc.  If you cannot hold the position you are in comfortably for a long duration of time, your posture is off and needs to be readjusted.

White Belt Survival Tip: Just Keep Training

After I was promoted to blue belt, my husband (who has a year of training on me) told me he could finally tell me the truth about my first year of training:  I was awful.  I was really, really bad.  He was really proud of me for not quitting.  

I've thought a lot about why I didn't quit, even when I was the shortest and slowest in class and when I seemed to get hurt every time someone put a little pressure on me and I went almost a year before getting my first submission or pass.  True, I just loved my academy.  I love the smell of the mats in the morning and the guys I train with, our stupid inside jokes, and my ability to let everything go once I got on the mat.  

But I also had upper belts and more experienced white belts encourage me.  Upper belts noticed when I started moving better, and offered suggestions on how to get even better.  People asked where I was if I missed a few classes and asked me to roll.  When I got a good pass or position, my training partners told me so.  Just a few words of encouragement from a training partner meant the world to me.  

I remember that every time there is a new white belt on the mat.  I remember how hard it was to put myself outside my comfort zone and try something so new.  I find something about each white belt I roll with that they have done right.  Maybe they won't remember it, maybe it doesn't mean anything to them, or maybe it will be the thing that helps them show up to the next class and keep training.         

Wednesdays with Coach Tim: Understanding How to Train

There are a ton of great resources with tips for beginners in BJJ. To avoid redundancy, Coach Tim has come up with some pointers that we haven't seen anywhere else.  We've also included some basic pointers, since many of you may be so new to the sport that you haven't gotten into other blogs yet.

Obviously, this is not an exhaustive list! In fact, these tips may be harder to adopt than advice given in other columns. On the plus side, these tips are not only for beginners, but they are tautologies that can carry a student through black belt!

1) Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is a tactile sport, not a visual one -

We are often exposed to Martial Arts through striking disciplines, such as Karate, Muay Thai or Boxing. In these arenas, most of your skill development is centered around your visual acuity being tested against your opponent's (speed of strikes, speed of reaction time, speed of footwork, etc).  In Jiu Jitsu, however, we are responding to tactile cues. The placement and removal of weight / pressure, the application of torque, the removal of slack from a system, etc. Long story short, the skill we are trying to improve requires that we receive a tactile input and match it with an appropriate tactile output.

What all that blah blah blah above means is: Have your instructor demonstrate the technique on you after you have seen it, if possible. Tim tries to go around his class and do the techniques on everyone if there is time, because the slight differences in pressure and the order in which we acquire an anchor, use it to apply torque, re-anchor, re-torque, etc. is very subtle and often difficult to see or understand from an explanation.Practice your techniques on your partner and instructor, have your instructor do the technique to you and your partner and continue this triad so you can continuously focus on the tactile input / output instead of trying to understand Jiu Jitsu through visual input / output.

2) Positions are Relative -

Without an understanding of human movement patterns, grappling movements will initially seem counter-intuitive. This is normal! It can be overwhelming to try of think of what you should do ("Do I move first?" or "Should I wait until my partner moves and try to counter them?") in tandem with what your opponent is doing ("He grabbed my sleeve!" "She's making me fall over!"). Instead of trying to process what you and your opponent are doing and then coming up with your next move, just focus on your own body positioning. You should always feel like you have your balance, your spine (from the top of your head to the bottom of your pelvis) is straight and braced and you feel like you are strong and fast. Regarding the last point, feeling strong and fast in your positions, remember we are not trying to rely on strength and speed; however, if you are in a position where you can normally move 100 lbs., then you should never settle in that position feeling like you can only move 50 lbs., because this means that something (spine, hand, grip, etc.) is misplaced and obstructing your force production.

If you are consistently able to place yourself into optimal positioning, then you don't need to worry about your opponent! Since we are in contact during drilling and sparring, if my positioning improved, then your positioning has regressed. This simple axiom allows you to narrow your focus down in the beginning of your training and makes it easier to understand the purpose of each step in a technique.

3) BJJ is not magic -

"Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch, and a kick, just a kick.
After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick, no longer a kick.
Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick."

-- Bruce Lee

Tim started teaching Brazilian Jiu Jitsu soon after he started training (as is natural in class, anyone, even a white belt, can help the less experienced students in certain areas).  Tim had studied Martial Arts since he was 4, and loved showing other children what he had learned.  In explaining Jiu Jitsu fellow students, however, Tim realized that a punch (armbar / guard pass / etc) had become so much more than a punch and a kick had become so much more than a kick.  In explaining techniques to fellow students, Tim realized teaching was giving him greater insight into the art and helping clarify the techniques in his own mind.  Somewhere within Jui Jitsu was a governing set of principles that comprised the architecture of grappling on the whole. It was more important to find the roots of this tree than to foolishly try and memorize the infinite pattern of branches that sprouted from these roots.  In that way, a punch could once again become just a punch and a kick, just a kick.

Those governing principles are the same in every sport, every martial art, in fact, every human movement. Understanding how an anchor can become a brace and then be used to generate torque, which is the determining factor in who controls the space and slack in a grappling match. This control then dictates who will create faults in the other person's positioning, eventually leading to a submission. If this last portion doesn't quite make sense yet, don't worry! That's why we train!

4) Mistaking an Ouchie for an Injury

I was in pretty good shape when I started training. I'd been doing spinning and Pilates classes 4 times a week just over a year, and I was getting really strong. One of the reasons I started training was because I wanted to use my muscles for something. My husband was training, I was getting to know the guys at the academy, and it seemed like it could be fun.

It was so fun. I was completely and utterly exhausted and covered head to toe in sweat the first night, but I insisted on buying a gi and signing up on the spot. I couldn't wait for my next class. That first month of training was the most painful month of my life. Every single thing hurt, but nothing was a injury. I very clearly remember sitting at the kitchen table after training one night, looking at my dinner, and crying. I was trying not to be a drama queen, but I was so sore! I didn't want to pick up my silverware because I knew it was going to hurt! When my husband asked what was wrong, I remember choking out: "This is the hardest thing I have ever done in my whole life."

It is true. BJJ is the hardest physical activity I have ever done in my life. I have had injuries that have kept me from training, but if I didn't train when something felt sore I would never be able to train.

This is not to say you should train through an injury. Rather, you should learn to listen to your body and tell the difference between an injury and the soreness that comes after a hard workout.

5) Declining a Roll Because You are Tired

Rolling (sparring) is exhausting, especially when you first start out. There are several reasons this happens; for me, I was holding my breath during rolls without realizing it. I spent months concentrating on mindful breathing during rolling before I figured it out.

I will hear newer students speculating on how easily they are "gassing out" or "need to work on their cardio." These same students will also sit out half the rolls during the training session because they are tired. How exactly are they going to improve on their endurance and strength if they don't push through it?

Yes, you will get sweaty. Yes, your face will turn red. Your muscles will feel tired and sore. But learn to know the difference between exhaustion and intense training. Push yourself. Some of the best rolls I have had have come at the end of the night when I am so tired I think there is no way I could possibly defend anything or be the least bit aggressive. It is when I am most tired that my technique gets sharper, because I can't cheat on a position by trying to muscle through it.

6) Not Asking Questions

If you aren't understanding the technique being taught, ask your instructor to help. Most instructors ask for questions on a position after they've demonstrated, and then walk around assisting students. Good instructors will ask the students again, after they've drilled the new position, if there are any questions.

There are always questions! If you have one, chances are the guy next to you has the same question or a similar problem. Additionally, asking questions helps your instructor improve their teaching technique/method and cues them in on details that the class is struggling with that need to be addressed.

7) Negative Thought Patterns

Ah, the ego. If you've done some lurking on BJJ blogs or the posts on www.reddit.com/r/bjj, you've seen a lot of talk about the need to train without ego. But what does that mean? Does it mean you should stop trying to get a submission during sparring or otherwise "win?"

Not exactly. For me, so far, training without ego means I understand that "losing" (i.e., getting tapped, swept, or otherwise dominated during a roll) is actually learning. Training without ego allows me to learn because I'm not so caught up in "winning" that I'm not willing to try something new or take a risk during a sparring session. Training without ego means that I ask questions when I don't understand something -- I'm not afraid of sounding stupid. Training without ego means that when an upper belt asks me to roll, and I'm completely exhausted, unless I'm injured, I accept the roll. I know I will learn from them, even as I struggle to keep up.

It isn't easy. I struggle with checking my ego at the door often. For me, remembering that BJJ is fun, and if I'm not having fun I'm not doing BJJ is the key. If I'm not having fun, chances are I have accidentally let my ego get in the way of learning.

Jiu jitsu is a tough sport to learn.  But remember:

Wednesdays with Coach Tim: Standing Up In Closed Guard

Standing up in the guard is a basic move that I've struggled with throughout my time training BJJ.  I seem to be able to drill it properly (if slowly), but during sparring I very rarely make it to standing and breaking the closed guard.  Instead, I (1) try not to get stuck in someone's closed guard or (2) break the guard from sitting (which exposes me to a higher risk of triangle or omoplata submissions).

In class on Saturday we worked on what to do to prevent the double ankle sweep once you've stood up in guard, but that implies I've gotten to standing!

Coach Tim, to the rescue!

Today, I've identified where I find I have problems standing up in the guard during sparring, and asked Coach Tim to help me out.

My Attempts to Stand up in the Guard:

First, the grips I usually get are the lapels and the hip.  I'm able to keep my posture secure at this point, keeping my opponent away from me.

Second, I step forward with the leg that is on the side I have a grip on the hip.

Third, I get stuck.  One of two things happens:  Either I literally feel stuck to the mat, unable to stand up, or as I start to stand up my opponent hooks my foot, my brain yells "DANGER!" and I sit back down.

Help!

Coach Tim's Advice: 

Let's look at the major steps encountered with standing up:

1) Frames / Arm Position: 

Before you even think of lifting up your knee and replacing it with your foot, you must place yourself into the best position possible. Just like everything else in Jiu Jitsu, once you complete a movement, the stability of that position is your platform for launching your next movement. If this setup is even a little bit off, your attempts at moving forward will be easily thwarted.

Whether you prefer to control the lapels and the hip, both lapels, the lapel and sleeve is not as important as the position of your elbows for these grips. Always turn your elbow-pits and armpits away from you (creating external rotation, the same you use for a proper pushup), anchor your hands to the gi and completely close your hands. Position your elbows before you grab the gi! If you grab the gi first, the hand position will determine the elbow position. It is better to have perfect elbow position and allow your hands to fall and grab whatever material is available so we do not compromise elbow positioning.

Another good rule of thumb is to keep your head behind the belt-line of your opponent. Bringing it further forward than that places your center of gravity over the fulcrum of their hip. This makes it incredibly easy to break your posture down by pulling forward with the legs and if that is not enough, this forward pull will enable the guard player to sit up and grab your head, which, barring a huge strength discrepancy, will ALWAYS break down your posture (a spinal fault will always be addressed by your body, even if this means opening your elbows and allowing the rest of your body to fall into poor position).

Lastly, you cannot allow for any slack in your body positioning or grips. This means that wherever you hand grabs, it grabs all the material until it flush with your opponent. Your hands don't slip around, rather they attach like they're bolted into place. Your core and hips are engaged to stabilize your upper body, there is not looseness in your spinal structure. While you don't have to flex like Arnold trying to win Mr. Universe, you should have enough tension throughout your upper body that your movements do not break down the structure you have built with your grips, arms, torso and head.

2) The first step up:

We are traditionally taught to step up one leg at at time. Later, it becomes appropriate to jump both legs up simultaneously. For the purposes of learning proper bracing technique, one leg at a time is best. The most important aspect to remember about the first step up is that you are transferring weight from your hips and legs (you are sitting on your ankles, after all) into your hands so that you can step up to your foot on the mat. In order to do this, your hands must be in position to support your weight. Go back and review step #1 if this is not the case. If you are trying to stand and your training partner is pulling you with their legs, having your weight in your hands will still cause your legs to "feel light enough" to lift off the floor. You need to step forward far enough to create a 90-degree angle between your foot / ankle and your knee. Then, you need to turn this knee is so that your training partner's hip is contained between a) your knee on one side and b) your hand / elbow (depending on your grip) on the other side.

If you feel off-balance here, either a) step #1 was incorrect and you were not able to properly brace your weight or b) your foot positioning is preventing you from creating torque off of the ground which would stabilize you enough to step up your second leg. Regardless, as always, if you do not feel strong and balanced at this point, advancing forward will only make it worse! Go back and correct if necessary.

3) The second step up:

The second step up is tricky because you have elevated your entire body (relative to our starting position) yet your hands are in the same place and are still required for you to properly brace your weight. Instead of making the mistake of rounding your back OR dropping your hips below your knees (both are done to make it easier to place weight on your hands), use your braced core, grips (elbows turned in!) and knee position (turned towards their hip) to elevate your opponent's hips (rounding their back and destroying their posture) and balance on their hips. If any weight is not braced against your knee and hand positioning, your remaining leg will feel very heavy. Shift the position so that you can feel your second leg free itself from the load so you can step up.

4) Once you are standing:

You must keep your elbows tight, turned towards your body, with your elbow-pits and armpits turned away from you. Your knees should meet underneath your opponent's hips (your feet must be pointed straight forward and will be fairly close to each other). If your core is braced and the previous criteria are met, once you are standing your opponent should have their back bent and be supporting themselves only with their weight. Properly situated, they will be unable to use the double-ankle sweep because they do not have their shoulder blades on the ground and therefore cannot create the torque to push you away while controlling their ankles. In addition, if they release their closed guard, your positioning will cause them to recede away from you before their knees can make contact with their body, giving you the chance to begin passing instead of having to defend a sweep.

With regards to grip and actually opening the guard, that can take a number of directions based on a) how insistent your partner is in keeping their guard closed, b) whether or not they sit up with you as you stand and c) your relative height.

If I am opening the closed guard and my partner is shorter than I am, using my knee (same side as the hand on the hip) in their tailbone (ON their tailbone, not next to it, with your foot precisely under your knee) and then stepping my remaining leg back while using that same side hand to push their knee down is the preferred way to open the guard. This capitalizes on the height advantage by creating so much space inside the closed guard that they cannot keep it closed.

If they are taller than you, that same knee in the middle will instead slide up between their legs and you can open the guard from the kneeling combat-base position. Again, the exact mechanics used to open the guard will vary depending on height, but having a stable position (posture) to do this from is of utmost importance!

Long story short, the most appropriate way to think of standing in the closed guard is to simulate the way you sit up out of a chair without the use of your hands. Instead of trying to stand straight up vertically, which is difficult because your weight is set behind your knees, you will tend to lean forward, brace your core, and then stand up. This is the same movement for standing in the closed guard, with one additional caveat: because your partner is trying to pull you into the ground, when you begin to stand up, you arms provide a frame / brace for you to bear your weight on when that pull comes into play. This is why it is incredibly important to have the proper hand/elbow positioning so that you don't lose your own progress in standing up just because your opponent pulled down on your gi.

Working out the Kinks

The Saturday morning women's class is always my very favorite class of the week for several reasons.  This week it was my favorite class of the week because we had visitors from M3 Fight and Fitness in Montrose, CA.  The owners of M3 came up under Robot's instructors, and Rich was able to organize their ladies to make a trip to Robot.  They even had a lady purple belt for me to play with! So awesome!

This week, Coach David led the class and we worked on getting the kinks out of two things:  (1) Preventing the sweep when standing up in closed guard and (2) securing the De La Riva guard.

(1) Preventing the Sweep 

A pretty common response to having someone stand up in your closed guard is to open the guard, drop your hips, grab the ankles, and push the standing person over.  I'll admit to being a big chicken about standing up in guard because I so sincerely hate getting swept like this.

Previously, I had focused on staggering my legs as soon as possible when standing up in the guard, so that the opponent playing guard could not grab both of my feet.  Today, we worked on preventing the sweep by pushing our hips forward over the guard players hips as soon after they open the guard as possible.  From there, it is a matter of securing the guard player's legs and moving to the side -- essentially a stack pass.

The more we drilled this the more I saw how important my posture and my balance is when I'm dealing with preventing a sweep from an open guard position that hasn't hooked my legs yet -- specifically spider guard.  I've been struggling the last few weeks to figure out what to do with someone who's spider guard grips are so good that I can't pull their legs down to the ground.  Though I've been told over and over to push their legs over their head when they do that, making my hips heavy to control them, I hadn't understood it until this morning.

(2)  Securing the De La Riva (DLR) Guard 

Though we did work on several sweeps from De La Riva today, what I got out of it was (what I hope) is the final piece to figuring out why my DLR guard is so hard to maintain.  Earlier in the week, I talked several times with Coach Tim about feeling like my opponents could just step around my DLR and that the leg "stretching" them out never seemed long enough.

Coach Tim and I came up with two solutions to that problem.  First, I hadn't been fully engaging my abs.  Rather, I was letting my head and shoulders drop to the mat, which does about zero to break my opponent's posture down.  Second, because I am a super shorty (I'm only 5'2" with t-rex arms and short legs), I need to be more assertive with the pull on the sleeve, and probably even reach up and switch to the lapel grip in order to break down my opponent's posture.

Today, Coach David saw another piece to the DLR puzzle.  I get my DLR hook in, but as soon as my opponent starts to move, I drop it.  I hadn't even realized I was doing it.  I just drop it straight down.  It sounds so stupid to not realize that's what was happening, but it's the truth.  All I know is once I started actually paying attention to keeping hooked in, my opponent was having a much harder time getting out.  Now, if only I could grow some size 13 feet so that the hook would stay on a little easier! Maybe I should wear swim fins to train...

All in all, a really great day of rolling.

Wednesdays with Coach Tim: How to be a good training partner

Welcome to the inaugural "Wednesdays with Coach Tim" post!

Every Wednesday will (ideally) feature a post reflecting collaboration between me and my coach, Tim Peterson. Coach Tim has been training BJJ exclusively since he was 15, and received his black belt from Giva Santana in December of 2011.  He's also ridiculously photogenic:

This week we are covering something that is critical to learning BJJ, but that isn't formally taught:  how to be a good training partner.  There are three aspects to being a good training partner: (1) Basic etiquette, (2) drilling, and (3) sparring.

(1) Basic Training Etiquette:

• Come to learn and help your training partners learn
• Coach Tim often says you cannot learn BJJ alone.  You can't learn to submit anyone unless someone is willing to be your grappling dummy and roll with you.  You will not win every time.  A lot of learning comes from getting tapped.  Stop thinking of tapping as "losing" and start thinking of it as learning. 

• Have good hygiene 
• Clean and healthy body 
• BJJ is a close contact sport.  Be kind to your training partners, and keep yourself clean and your skin healthy.  Do not roll with contagious conditions like ringworm, athletes foot, or a cold.  

• Clean gi
• Do not roll if you do not have clean gear to roll in.  Not only does it smell (and yes, an unwashed women's gi has a funk to it), but it is unsafe for you and your training partners.  Unwashed gis and gear increase the likelihood of a staph infection.  And seriously, no one wants to be the smelly kid. 

• Trimmed nails
• Fingernails and toenails must be kept short and free of jagged edges.  Not only can a nail seriously harm your training partner, but it can get bent backwards or ripped off if it snags on a gi.  Carry clippers with you and double check your nails before class. 

• Make-up free 
• I violate this one on accident all the time, but women who roll should carry some sort of make up remover cloth with them and try to get rid of as much make-up as possible before class.  You don't want your mascara staining your training partner's gi! 

• Smile
• I overheard Mike Martinez, one of my very favorite coaches and an amazing human being, telling a little boy crying after losing a tournament that if he wasn't having fun, he wasn't doing BJJ.  I've kept that little piece of advice with me, and it has helped me keep my head straight when I'm rolling.  BJJ is a tough sport, mentally and physically.  If you aren't having fun, why are you doing it?

(2) Drilling

• Picking a Drilling Partner 
• When I first started training, I had no idea who I was supposed to train with.  Luckily, I was one of two women training and that made it pretty easy.  I'll be honest that we picked each other because we were the only women, but we also made pretty good training partners because we were the relatively the same height and weight.  Finding a drilling partner the same height and weight is important, especially when you start out, so that you aren't trying to figure out how to deal with someone 100 pounds bigger or 6 inches shorter than you in addition to mastering a completely foreign movement.  

• When there are both women and men on the mat, often women are the last to match up with a training partner.  Why?  Because the awkward goes both ways! Women are more likely to be newer at BJJ and not know as many people, and men (I think) are nervous drilling with someone who is (often) much smaller.  My solution?  Come early to class and introduce yourself around to the people stretching and warming up.  Get a feel for who is attending the class, and who is your size, and do the asking when it comes time to pick drilling partners.  The more you come to class, the more people you get to know, and the easier it is to pick a training partner.

• Drilling -- To be a limp noodle or a stiff cockroach?
• Neither! 

• Coach Tim's Advice: 
  
  
  1) A good visual guide for being a drilling partner is to try to imitate what the instructor was doing during demonstration. For example, if your instructor is teaching the armlock from the closed guard without a follow-up sweep, then during drilling the person being submitted should maintain enough tension in their body so that they don't topple over. Remember that you are generally trying to emulate your instructor's movements as closely as possible, so having your training partner imitate the sequence during instruction is vital!
  
  
  2) A good tactile guide for being a good drilling partner is to remember that tension in your core is always important and tension from your limbs is less important. An example might be useful:
  
  
   Using the same instance of the armlock from the guard we can see how core tension is appropriate. If you are using the armlock on your training partner and they have slack in their core (their abs / hips / glutes are not engaged at least slightly), then the steps that comprise the armlock (moving their arm across your body, pivoting to the side, breaking their posture and finishing the arm lock) ALL have the potential to cause your partner to topple over in an unrealistic fashion. However, if you partner maintains 20% - 50% of their tension in their core and keeps their limbs relatively relaxed, it will be easy to move their arm and drill the submission without having them a) topple over during a transition that wouldn't translate to sparring b) resisting so much with their arms that the position cannot be practiced. This is because keeping tension in your core forces your spine (from your head to your pelvis) to move in unison, which is always our goal.
  
  
  On the other hand, if you maintain tension in your limbs but not your core, you are ingraining a habit of relying on limb strength instead of generating force from your body in a unified manner. To check for core tension, have your partner lie down on their back and lift their feet and knees off the ground as if you were going to practice a bullfighter pass on them. If your partner has tension in their core, pushing their knees slightly to one side will cause the entirety of their upper body to begin rotating in that same direction, albeit not always the same amount that the knees rotate. If they lack core tension, then their knees will flop to the side while their head will still be facing straight forward. In this instance, simply lifting the back of your head off the mat will usually engage your core enough for drilling purposes.

(3) Sparring

• Picking a Sparring Partner 
• Picking a sparring partner seems scary, seems like it should be complicated, but it is exactly the same as picking a drilling partner.  At first, focus on people who are your own size.  As you get more advanced, you may feel more comfortable trying sparring partners with different body types.  If you notice someone standing on the side without a partner, and you want to roll, ask them if they are still rolling.  

• Safety first:  If there is a person at your academy who has hurt you during sparring or drilling, who goes too hard, who has a bad attitude, or in general makes you nervous about sparring with them you are allowed to politely decline an offer to roll with them.  If your academy matches people up, feel free to talk with your instructor privately if there is a particular training partner you would like to avoid for safety reasons.  

• Sparring -- how hard is too hard? 
• One of the things I love about BJJ is that, unlike a lot of other martial arts, you can go 100% in sparring.  That said, if you spar like you are competing in the finals of the IBJJF World Championships in the Pyramid, you aren't going to have very many sparring partners who regularly want to put their bodies through that kind of aggressive roll. 

• Coach Tim's Advice: 
  
  
  Sparring is too hard if someone gets injured or is sparring while on the threshold of being injured. In general, the more experienced individual will match the intensity of the less experienced individual. With that in mind, if you are rolling with someone of a higher rank, it is great to have a hard sparring session, but keep in mind that if you set a certain pace, you are generally expected to maintain that pace for the entire round. Having someone try to take my head off is great practice for me, but if they accidentally poke me in the eye, knee me in the face and then retire to the edge of the mat from exhaustion after 2 minutes, then something is wrong!
  
  
  Another good rule of thumb is that there are three general categories of sparring partners: those less experienced than you, those more experienced than you, and those at your approximate level. As long as no one is injured and their is no other glaring physical discrepancy between you and your partner then each of these partner's has a different set of qualities that allow you to improve. 
  
  
  a) Those less experienced allow you to train your worst guards, your escapes, etc. and you can also teach them counters specific to your game so that they can provide reactions for you to practice against, yet still at a speed that allows you to consciously process your follow-up counters.
  
  
  b) Those at your level allow you to test your ability to draw them into your specific game and avoid their game. You can test your conditioning with them since your technical experience may not be enough to get ahead of them. Also, it is great to ask your instructor to watch you roll with people of your level because the feedback from that will be easier to implement into your game.
  
  
  c) Lastly, those above your level allow you to ask questions, train your best positions as hard as you can and also allow you to feel the different methods they use to exert pressure on you. Watching Jiu Jitsu is useful, but feeling Jiu Jitsu is much more important. You want to feel what high-level Jiu Jitsu feels like on a regular basis so that you are constantly trying to re-create that same sensation.