Again, we begin our first class of the block with our 4 foundational movements. Forward rolls, backward rolls, granby rolls, and sidewinders. Today I offered a few new details on these movements, for two reasons. I wanted the movements to become hyper detailed. I didn’t want the students to just to a forward roll, I wanted them to do my forward roll. So I needed to see if they could follow instructions and complete the task as I’ve demonstrated. I think this will help them down the line when I ask them to repeat techniques. The second reason is I want to be sure they are doing the movements safely. (Update from week 8, most students still can’t do them correctly haha maybe techniques are dead )

I wanted to go into this first game with almost no introduction. For most students, this is just a repeat of last weeks classes from reversed rolls. They spent almost 3 hours trying to win the games from the top position, so in theory they should have learned something about guard retention. I ran the game with no tips, I only explained the rules of the game

Game 1:

Groups of 4 students. Guard player stays in and active for 3 minutes. Top player rotates out as each rep has ended. Guard player has a few ways to win. Either they maintain their guard for 3 minutes, they close their guard, or they stand up. Each of these three tasks ends the rep. Top player has only one way to end the rep, they must pass the guard and get chest to chest.

Discussion: Whenever I introduce the rule of “just stand up” a funny thing happens, the bottom player just stands up and the top player stares at them in disbelief. It usually only happens once, but it always happens. The students are starting to learn something that will be a reoccurring theme. It’s relatively easy to maintain a position, they tend to fail as they look to advance to a better position. This highlights something I’ve said for years “all offense costs some defense”. There’s an inherent risk to advancing. That never goes away, we simply learn how to advance in safer ways. This comes with practice and you shouldn’t get discouraged by this. Failure is an important part of learning. If a student is successful in winning every game every day then they will be limited in what they learn. They either need to find better training partners or learn ways to work on their weaknesses.

I talked briefly about the importance of an outside guard, meaning both of our legs are on the outside of our opponent. I want the beginners to avoid half guard or butterfly guard and only focus on outside guard positions. With the big emphasis on pulling the top player into closed guard. The secondary focus is on standing up. This is such an important idea, most of the things we will be learning in the sweeping and submission blocks will be the result of an attempt to stand. So getting students comfortable with this concept early is important. I will continue to emphasize the importance of standing up and the curriculum continues.

Game 2:

Same format, no changes. This time I set the main goal for bottom player as standing up. This should change the look of the guard pass attempts and will absolutely change the look of the guard play. Bottom player can still end the rep by closing their guard or by maintaining an open guard for the entire 3 minutes, but the priority should be standing up.

Conclusion: Another strong class. For these first two weeks the explanations are very simple so there is little for me to correct. My main goal as the coach is to encourage a fast pace, this is meant to be a practice. One hour of intense action. This is supposed to be hard. I want to see what happens to my students when they are tired. Can they continue to work, can they keep up their pace and most importantly can they stay motivated when their cardio fails and they begin to lose the games more frequently.

I’ve noticed more and more intermediate and advanced students attending these classes. I love seeing this. It means the classes are broad enough for even our black belts to get something out of them. I always encourage my students to join pods that fit their needs, so its not uncommon to see a group of 4 brown and black belt students in a pod. This allows them to work hard, have realistic feeds and improve their games. Even thought the class is focused on the beginners.

The students in each pod need to be a good fit. I always tell them we have several criteria for a pod.

The most important is pod intensity. You have to join a pod that wants to roll as hard as you do, just as its important to join a pod that wants to be a bit more mellow if that suits your needs. I want to avoid having 3 students that want to roll very hard mixed with one student that needs a chill day.

The second priority is skill level, try to find 3 other students who match your current rank or skill level.

Lastly is size/weight, try to find students who would be in your competition bracket.

We have one more day of guard play in this block then we will slow things down for a few submission blocks. I’ll have some thoughts to share on the year shortly and I’ll make then in a separate blog post. For now, lets move to day 2