Unexpected

I’ve been coming to train at Gracie University every year since I retired.

That first year the visit was 8 weeks long, and the following five visits were all 2 weeks long. This week it’s visit number seven, and I’m halfway through two weeks of training.

There have been milestones along the way; one year I did a few private lessons with Jordan Collins; in 2016 I was evaluated for and received a Purple Belt promotion.

In general, it has all been good, rock-solid training.

This year is just a little different. A lot of the lessons have involved defence, where suddenly the defender abandons everything that they’ve spent years learning, and does what seems suicidal, and suddenly is out of danger.

This is very good for me, and is making me think differently about rolling.

Compared to just about everybody I train with, I am a dinosaur. Certainly not one of those sprightly velociraptors or t-rexs, something significantly more lumbering.

My basic assumption, almost always proven totally correct, is that my partner is faster than me, and stronger than me.

I can only manage to survive with technique.

With significantly less experienced partners, this is just fine, as almost anything I do will be a surprise. With those around my level of skill, all I can usually do is defend and try and survive.

Those guys know everything that I do, and are still faster and stronger. It hardly seems fair.

Therefore, it is really nice to be learning some techniques that turn all of an opponent’s expectations upside down. With these kind of moves being exactly the opposite of what is expected, I will seem crazy fast, even if it’s only an illusion. These also go exactly where the attacker they want things to go, therefore making a strength advantage into a handicap.

And there is something even better than the techniques; this is the mindset of looking for them.

If it were just the moves I’m being taught, then I’d head home after two weeks with maybe 4 very specific tricks to use when caught in very specific situations. Focusing on the mind set means that, while I’ll still have the specific tricks, I’ll be looking to create others of my own.

Let’s say I figure out a couple more, and am back home pulling this kind of stuff on my rolling partners. This will annoy the hell out of them, and they will likely get much more careful about everything they try to pull off. Does that seem like they’ll be slowing down to protect themselves from the tricky old guy? It does to me.

That in itself is a great form of defence.

Tired Knee no Problem

My knee is acting up, so this evening I am only watching the classes. It’s nothing serious, but better to baby any injury.

Currently, the group lined up in class has about 40 members, at least half of whom are coloured belts. This is very strange, as it is primarily a White Belt session.

All the other White Belt classes are just about as large, but with only a handful of coloured belts around. Those that attend are there to help.

Not tonight. This is the ever-so-slightly-higher-level session for beginners who are at least half way through their program.

The fancy name for this class is “Reflex Development.” It is still aimed at self-defence, and focused on simple technique. But why so many coloured belts?

The answer is simple. Rank advancement has many mandatory minimum requirements. Coloured belts have to attend at least ten  Reflex Development classes in every 8 month period if they want to move up in rank. There is no such demand that they attend ordinary White Belt classes.

What this means in practice is that a lot of people with Blue, Purple of Brown Belts show up for exactly ten Reflex classes, but never, ever attend any other White Belt sessions. The only advanced people that do so are there to help. I applaud them.

Anyhow, it’s a room full of every rank right now.

Ryron Gracie is teaching, and having them do some cool control drills. The moves all feature what the White Belts are already familiar with, but in a very different context. It is also stuff that the higher folk don’t regularly deal with either.

After an hour, the group is dismissed, and the Friday advanced class happens. Likely, all of the coloured belts from the Reflex class will stay, and be joined by a million others.

For my entire time here, the advanced classes have all addressed counters to Back Mount submission attacks. Well, almost all. The 7am classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays are a little less controlled. In those we’ve been doing mostly Back, but with a little arm bar work thrown in.

Usually we jump right into the lesson, but at the noon class earlier today we were all directed to do a simple throw that I wasn’t going to risk my knee for. When everybody grabbed partners, I just moved to the side.

After a couple of minutes of everybody working, and me sitting who do you think walked in?

It was my Black Belt friend Marc from Vancouver. He’s down to help with the police training course. He saw me at the side and asked if I wanted to do the throw on him.

Both taking and receiving the throw are not knee friendly events, but with a perfect partner like Marc, my executing the throw carries zero risk.

He stayed with me for the whole class.

The main lesson covered escapes from side and turtle position that I’ve done before, but not in a very long time. The instructor, Alex Stewart, is detail-oriented teacher.

My favourite part of this was the final movement of the sequence. The instructor the previous night also included that movement in what we had done. It was fun noting the differences between their two, very dissimilar methods for the move.

Then, when drilling, my partner Marc didn’t do it the exact same way as either of the instructors.

Sam, from the night before, would insist we duck our shoulder underneath, plant it on the mat as far out as possible, and pivot. Alex, from today, had us duck our shoulder underneath, but very close in, and pivot. My partner Marc, didn’t really duck his shoulder under at all, and would pivot. I liked seeing what the range of possibilities really are.

The problem was that I was having way too much fun, and not holding back at all. By the end of the class, my knee was really done, but it was worth it.

Nothing desperate about my cranky knee, so I went for a yummy lunch, and walked about in a cool market area. When I got back to Denise’s place, I iced my knee and took things easy.

Now I’m on my viewing bench for the evening classes.

The Reflex class ended, and the advanced crowd moved in.

Ryron was teaching, and I think the stuff they were doing was something that I first encountered during last year’s visit, but perhaps it was at a seminar sometime.

It involves at totally non-intuitive method of defending from a nasty rear choke.

Watching from my bench, I decided that the best way to teach this would be from the back to the front.

In the normal order the attacker manages to get a one arm choke started, and wants to bring in the second arm. Conventional wisdom is that the defender tries to stop this progress, and tries to pull his chin down, and to tense all of the neck muscles.

This evening’s wild defence insists that as soon as that first attacking arm gets locked in, the defender should pull is own head back, totally exposing their throat, but making the insertion of the attacker’s second arm into position much more difficult.

The defender concentrates on a couple of moves that capture the slowed second attacking arm, and then defeats unsupported single choking arm.

I learned a great deal from my off-mat perch. The biggest revelation was how difficult it was for most of the students to overcome their instincts and to really commit to fully exposing their naked throats to being attacked.

By not doing so, they totally failed to slow the other attacking arm. By not risking the neck, their partners were able to easily lock in both arms and finish the choke. To prevent the choke, they had to expose themselves to being choked. To hesitate at all got them choked; totally counter-intuitive.

That’s why I think that the finish should be taught first. Students would learn all the easy-to-trust stuff that finishes the move. The hard part would be left for last.  It could be emphasized that none of the evening’s lesson would be any use at all without total  commitment to the key element.

Things are rarely taught that way in Jiu-Jitsu. Sometimes, mixing up teaching style can be shockingly effective, specially with unusual material like tonight’s lesson.

It was a really great day for me here at Gracie University.

Happy

This visit has been freaky.

Keep in mind that I am nothing special at all. We have come to LA for a couple of weeks at about this time of year since 2014. We do fun tourist stuff, but we come primarily so that I can train in Jiu-Jitsu at Gracie University.

For this visit, my goal is to attend 20 classes, and so far am only 5 classes toward that total.

Gracie University has thousands of students of its own, and tons of visitors always coming and going.

I have been noticed and acknowledged by instructors Ryron Gracie twice, Alex Stewart twice, and by Sam Fernandez, and Rener Gracie.

Several students have remembered me from before, and made a point of greeting me.

I have also been approached in the change room by a student who says I am exactly what he is aspiring to be. You see, I am 63 years old, which counts as crazy old for an activity like this. He was stunned to run across somebody my age wearing a Brown Belt.

Another student came up after a class to greet me. He used to be a member at an affiliate school in Palm Desert, which has folded. I visited there a few times in 2018 and 2019 and showed them a few simple things.

Their survivors have opened a new school in Indio, and he enthusiastically invited me to visit them there. As we will be in that general area soon, I happily agreed.

Keep in mind that I’ve only been to 5 classes.

Nothing even close to this happened during any of my other 6 visits here to train.

It must be because of the high regard that people have for Brown Belts.

I must say that I don’t act like the other Brown Belts. Most don’t behave like they do at earlier levels.

There seems to be two trends. The first group seems serious all the time, and somewhat reserved; dare I say, “mysterious?” The other bunch is more annoying, and insist on telling other folk how to do every little thing as if they are some kind of experts. If you listen in, you’ll hear all sorts of downright nonsense. Luckily this is by far the smaller of the two groups.

I don’t know why either group behaves as it does, but it’s really pretty obvious if you play spy for a while.

Me? I’m usually smiling, and acting as if I’m just happy to be there, because I am. Not mysterious, and not trying to pass my self off as knowing more than I do.