Another great morning class in the books! For those students of Crossroads who aren’t afraid to wake up before the sun is up the 6AM BJJ class was an amazing way to start the day, and for those of us with busy work schedules and a family at home it may be the only time of the day we get a uninterrupted workout in.
As always our 6AM classes start with a nice flow drill designed to get the blood moving, after a laying down all night and then sitting in the car on your way to class a good warm up is essential. In this weeks classes were working on a flow drill which links together the stack pass, taking mount, and the umpa or bump and roll escape. Both Jiu-Jitsu players cycle through these moves adding details and creating smooth transitions between the BJJ techniques. These drills also create an experience very similar to rolling but a little bit slower so our mind has time to process what is happening and we begin to learn how to think moves ahead which is essential in Jiu-Jitsu since Jiu-Jitsu is the triumph of intelligence over brute strength so we must learn how to think while we are rolling.
Once everybody was warm we began with an introduction to open guard with an armbar attack. The main idea of this attack was to use our legs on the hips to create tension and then change angles and work to the submission. Creating tension with our legs stretches the top Jiu-Jitsu player out and breaks their posture making it much easier to work into the submission. After working the armbar we began working on how to deal with the top Jiu-Jitsu player resisting the armbar by pulling their arm back. In this particular class we dealt with them pulling the arm away by going with the flow, and helping them move their arm in the direction they wanted to pull it. this means when the top bjj player pulls the arm away I push it the way they are pulling and pin it to their body. this allows me to use my legs to break the posture and then work for a sweep or back to the original armbar. We finished the class off with 15 minutes of positional drilling working to make these techniques successful against a resisting opponent and then did some sparring to round out the class and make sure everybody got a good workout in.
In two weeks Crossroads will be moving to a new and improved location with over twice as much mat space, men and women’s locker rooms and showers. The new facility is going to be absolutely amazing and I can’t express how excited I am to move into a facility that will help people who’s busy schedules prevent them from training as often as they would like.