My goal today was to really allow the students to use their Jiu jitsu. I wanted to encourage that fight we touched on during the last class. So for our first game we used basically the same rules.

Game 1: Person on top still has the same goals, they must score mount points, score back points or finish a submission to end the rep. Bottom player is the active grappler who will stay in for 3 minutes. Their goal is much more difficult today. They can win one of three ways. The first is establishing a meaningful guard. This means they have their legs actively connecting to the top player for a significant amount of time. 5-10 seconds. The second way to win is to stand up and completely separate from the top player. The last way to win is to end up in a topside position of any kind. This should allow for a lot of grappling, it should also highlight the risks involved with turtling.

Discussion: This was such a fun game to watch. Even though most of the room was within their first 10 weeks of Jiu jitsu they all did great things. The learning curve is crazy when you allow the full range of grappling. I saw lots of students have their backs taken on the first attempt only to defend it on the second. From the top players perspective I saw a lot of great guard passing and they quickly understood the importance of passing before the bottom player could establish a significant guard. To me this looks like high level grappling. The action was messy but effective. We can fix the small details later for now I am very happy with the grappling I saw.

Game 2: No changes in this game. We are now several weeks into this same basic game so the grapplers are locked in. 3 minute rounds, win at all costs. I’m asking for maximum intensity for this round. I want a team of three top players trying to torture the bottom player for 3 minutes. As soon as a rep ends the new top player is ready to jump in. No rest for the active player, the goal is a cardio tap.

Conclusion: This was exactly the class I needed to see. The students are learning how to be aggressive and strong without being a dangerous white belt. Their pace is fast but controlled. This is what is going to build a team of monsters. I need them to be able to fight hard and push themselves to their limits, without injuring themselves or their training partners. A little blood is good, a little ouch is good, injuries are not ok. So its important to monitor the room closely. This is where it is my job to watch the room, its not my time to get my training in, I’m there to coach and push my students.

We will eventually cover more technical guard recoveries. I think there is value in learning precisely how to escape. For now I keep going back to context. I need them to play the game before they are flooded with details. Once they have context then the details can seep in. For now detailed techniques are just white noise. This block flows so perfectly into the next block so I’m excited to see where it goes. So much of this week was focused on the idea of moving to turtle and working to a stand up, so as we move into our turtle block a lot of the work has already been done. Let’s see how they use their experience to crush this next block.