Strapping up the gi after a decade off. Wish me luck.

[ahox]

Gonna leave this here. Masterclass in temperament. Ricco constantly trying to outmuscle Marcelo, walks over to his corner for advice with Marcelo on his back at one point (lol wut), and back slams him out of frustration later on in the match when he can’t figure out how to get Marcelo off of him. Marcelo doesn’t even bitch after getting slammed, just gets right back to the match, heel hooks him soon after, and lets go the second after Ricco taps when most people would want to snap their opponent’s ankle into oblivion. The point being, in a world full of Ricco’s, be a Marcelo.

[VinnyPazRules]

Wrestled all through highschool. A little in college, but mainly joined this tiiiiiny ass mma gym that consisted of 8 guys blasting Jizz on each other multiple times a week. This was back when Matt Hughes was the baddest mofo in the ufc.

And there it is, The real reason guys like you can't stay away from the "wrestling"

[JungleJenetics]

I could be wrong but i'm slowly discovering a large amount of the bjj community has a hyooooge salty/inferiority-complex toward wrestlers. bro just let me wrestle**** you for 2 minutes before you get your submission off without being a lil bitch. yes you have a higher "belt rank" but i'm tossing your ass around this gym for at least 3 minutes before you get your chit off.

I trained at a legit catch-wrestling school and the right school makes a big difference; you would get mofos that had no belt that would keep up with REAL purple belts. Also I always refer to it as grappling instead of bjj/wrestling/judo, it is all literally the same basic concepts in the end. Guys you reference have a horrible mindset for learning and are usually not that experienced and would get wrecked.

edit: a sign of a decent school is if you need to compete in order to be promoted, you can't fake it then.

[Clockbro]

I trained at a legit catch-wrestling school and the right school makes a big difference; you would get mofos that had no belt that would keep up with REAL purple belts. Also I always refer to it as grappling instead of bjj/wrestling/judo, it is all literally the same basic concepts in the end. Guys you reference have a horrible mindset for learning and are usually not that experienced and would get wrecked.

edit: a sign of a decent school is if you need to compete in order to be promoted, you can't fake it then.

edit: a sign of a decent school is if you need to compete in order to be promoted, you can't fake it then.

lol, no - there are plenty of guys in the gym who can keep up with the competitors and give their instructors a hard time, who simply don't have the time or desire to train for comps, get injured, cut weight, spend hundreds of dollars and days away from family for a medal and a t-shirt, etc.

[W1LLW]

I'm not sure what the discussion is anymore, i know i sounded like an arrogant douchebag in my wrestlephuck post but oh well. it is what it is.


As for update, went to my 2nd class at the RealGym over the weekend and again. Exactly what I wanted. Instructor retaught the complex sweep that completely went over my head the first day, but this time I was catching onto it quickly. Even better, the guy I was drilling the sweep with was a purple belt, he was able to give me some great insight to improve the sweep (I was kicking in a suboptimal direction causing me have to use more upper body strenght to perform the sweep)


The Rolling/Sparring
We were paired in groups of 3 and rotated top, bottom, out, then reversed it or something so everyone got to spar both positions with each other. I was paired with another white belt and a blue belt. Started off in 1 minute rounds, then went to 3 minute rounds. I was under the impression that the live rolling was supposed to be used to execute what we had learned, but i quickly realized these guys were emptying the clip of all their techniques to win the round lol.

The white belt was quite good. He couldn't submit me, but he had solid guard passing and def made me work. He swept me maybe twice, and passed my guard a handful of times. The blue belt was a little more fun, because he was actively going for submissions. He subbed me twice. The second time was more out of rage. He got too lax and tried to lazily put me in an armbar but I escaped, swept him and started cranking on a kimura. It was right in front of the coach and he was like "good job new guy!". i could tell it got in bluebelt's pride, he instantly stepped on the gas and spent the next 90seconds going full PanAm on my ass until he subbed me with the armbar lol.

Loving this gym so far. There's just the right amount of pride/respect to where guys are gonna step up and smash you if you prove to be a legit opponent, but it's not to the point where you're unable to learn. By the time the class ends, everyone is sweating balls, exhausted, little fist bump out of respect for the challenge and everyone is off on their way. I just feel like the bar is much higher here than the other gym i'm at. Looking forward to coming back and improving because my guard retention is dookie.

[VinnyPazRules]

edit: a sign of a decent school is if you need to compete in order to be promoted, you can't fake it then.

lol, no - there are plenty of guys in the gym who can keep up with the competitors and give their instructors a hard time, who simply don't have the time or desire to train for comps, get injured, cut weight, spend hundreds of dollars and days away from family for a medal and a t-shirt, etc.

Exactly, its like this in all fighting sports. Some people can just fight and pick things up quick. Some people have natural strength with no training at all.

Ya there are plenty of people coming through that don't but not everybody.

I understand why a lot of practitioners away from serious competitive contests want to think practice and dedication equal skill level but that is just not the way it is.

You get guys in professional boxing who train their entire lives but no matter what they do they can never crack the top 50.

Certain special people are born with gifts of strength, speed, or reflexes that can never be trained into the next man.

Thats just the way it is.

[VinnyPazRules]

I'm not sure what the discussion is anymore, i know i sounded like an arrogant douchebag in my wrestlephuck post but oh well. it is what it is.


As for update, went to my 2nd class at the RealGym over the weekend and again. Exactly what I wanted. Instructor retaught the complex sweep that completely went over my head the first day, but this time I was catching onto it quickly. Even better, the guy I was drilling the sweep with was a purple belt, he was able to give me some great insight to improve the sweep (I was kicking in a suboptimal direction causing me have to use more upper body strenght to perform the sweep)


The Rolling/Sparring
We were paired in groups of 3 and rotated top, bottom, out, then dookie.

God damn it, It's not my way but I'm glad you're back in the gym.

[W1LLW]

I understand why a lot of practitioners away from serious competitive contests want to think practice and dedication equal skill level but that is just not the way it is.

You get guys in professional boxing who train their entire lives but no matter what they do they can never crack the top 50

Plus one could argue competition is relative. In multiple disciplines you hear about certain gyms being "soft" compared to others. I'm guessing that means the level of competition is low.

For example, I would assume a white belt that started and worked their way to purple at a place like Renzo's NYC gym, would be a challenge for just about anyone of any belt rank considering A) the amount of different looks that person gets (high turnover and visitors) and B) the sheer level of talent that is in there on a day to day basis.

Wouldn't have to ever step foot on a tournament mat, and would likely make 95% of practitioners really work for whatever they got. Yes being "top 50" is an entirely different animal, but I don't think that's everyone's goal. Certainly not mine. I just want to be competent and enjoy the ride of sucking and then feeling myself get "good"

[I3igAl]

So as much as I just got done chitting on the BJJ Social Club. I'm gonna continue to train at both places. Is the competition soft? Absolutely. Do the instructors handle everyone with white charminsoft gloves? Yes. But I do recognize the importance of learning the barebone fundamentals slowly and building on that. SocialClub will teach me the basics slowly and progressively. The RealGym will give me the athletes and competition I need to not just bulldoze through twinks and bloatlords. Will report back later.

I get you and I had a quite similar experience, when I switched from my old MMA/grappling gym to a real BJJ gym. It also was a new gym with lots of white belts smaller than me. The coach was legit and a nice dude and I even progressed on some techniques, but in the end I missed the hard rolls.

Maybe some more soft technique drills will actually turn you into a better BJJ guy quite fast, maybe both methods will work well but the classic Bjj version is safer, but in the end I missed the fighting. I loved going hard, that whole physicality of it. And I simply got bored woth that way of training. I started to only appear for open rolls, than I started switching to kickboxing. (which got closed down due to Covid before I could develop a base)

Now I am back home at my old gym and I love the training. I just want to fight as much as possible during training and leave the gym battered.

[W1LLW]

I get you and I had a quite similar experience, when I switched from my old MMA/grappling gym to a real BJJ gym. It also was a new gym with lots of white belts smaller than me. The coach was legit and a nice dude and I even progressed on some techniques, but in the end I missed the hard rolls.

Maybe some more soft technique drills will actually turn you into a better BJJ guy quite fast.

That's exactly what happened actually. At the SocialClub, we practiced this escape where the opponent has side control.

They taught us the escape, and we drilled it from the absolute worst case scenario. Partner has a knee against your hip, a knee at your shoulder, laying down on you with head control and one free arm posting. The entire class was live situational rolling out of being in that dogchit position.

Ironically, that one technique got me the only "win" i had all day at the RealGym. That post above where I mentioned escaping the blue, sweeping and then cranking on a kimura? Yeah that happened because him and the whitebelt kept passing my half guard. He passed it then put me in side control but he forgot to wedge his knee at my hip, and the hand that didn't have head control was posted really far out.

I did a suspicious shrimp toward him like "is he... is he really just gonna let me explode out of this?" yup. bridged, threw my free hand up under his posted hand and i was out. i think that's what got the coach to yell "good job new guy" initially. Also proved some my readings on line that lower Blue Belts actually suck, they just no longer have the excuse of being completely pathetic (white belts)

[chino3]

If I had never watched some Andre Galvao competitions, or the way he trains, I would assume alot of you BJJ purists are just soyboys that were bullied in school that discovered bjj to be your savior from bullies and now you're angry dudes with some grit are infringing on your safespace. Maybe i am in the wrong place, but maybe just maybe, you're a bitch.

I know you said you’re not about humility and the respect aspect, but the “soyboys” you’re making up in your head are the ones who have been humbled and know that no matter how bad ass you are, or aren’t, there is someone who is not only ready, but eager, to push your chit in. Gyms provide a respectful environment because people are training 7 days of the week, dozens of hours, and if you aren’t respectful, people get hurt (physically or even mentally some times) and that’s how you lose training partners.

I will tell you now, even as a competitive (as in actively participate in tournaments) player who NEEDS those super rough and competitive classes to push myself, if someone came into our gym with your mindset of “primal blah blah blah” and not giving a chit about the art or the abilities of your partners, you would get red lighted with a quickness, and trust me, your feelings would be far more damaged that the physical damage you would take.


That said, there are definitely gyms that are on the “softer” side where while they have legit instruction, they just don’t “push” the students as hard as a “competition” sort of gym. Chit, I was training at 10th planet HQ, and the only classes my schedule would permit were the morning classes, which just didn’t have enough “push” for me for where I was in my BJJ journey. But at the end of the day I don’t go around talking about how I need to twist some limbs and send people to snoozeville and anyone who doesn’t feel the same is a soyboy who was bullied, fukkin LMAO

[EidFnatic]

I just want to fight as much as possible during training and leave the gym battered.

You should come train at ma dojo.

[EidFnatic]

if someone came into our gym with your mindset of “primal blah blah blah” and not giving a chit about the art or the abilities of your partners, you would get red lighted with a quickness, and trust me, your feelings would be far more damaged that the physical damage you would take.

Bullchit Chino, you aint doing chit cuz, stick to Reddit.

[I3igAl]

That's exactly what happened actually. At the SocialClub, we practiced this escape where the opponent has side control.

They taught us the escape, and we drilled it from the absolute worst case scenario. Partner has a knee against your hip, a knee at your shoulder, laying down on you with head control and one free arm posting. The entire class was live situational rolling out of being in that dogchit position.

Hard drills/basically rolling from a weird position I got no problem with. Too many soft drills, where you are forced to permit your oponent to perform the technique is what really annoyed me.
My old/new gym was - 45min roll + 35 min technique practice + 45min roll
Other gym was - 15min warm up + 30min technique + 15min roll from specific position

[Gizzyhardcore]

I know you said you’re not about humility and the respect aspect, but the “soyboys” you’re making up in your head are the ones who have been humbled and know that no matter how bad ass you are, or aren’t, there is someone who is not only ready, but eager, to push your chit in. Gyms provide a respectful environment because people are training 7 days of the week, dozens of hours, and if you aren’t respectful, people get hurt (physically or even mentally some times) and that’s how you lose training partners.

I will tell you now, even as a competitive (as in actively participate in tournaments) player who NEEDS those super rough and competitive classes to push myself, if someone came into our gym with your mindset of “primal blah blah blah” and not giving a chit about the art or the abilities of your partners, you would get red lighted with a quickness, and trust me, your feelings would be far more damaged that the physical damage you would take.


That said, there are definitely gyms that are on the “softer” side where while they have legit instruction, they just don’t “push” the students as hard as a “competition” sort of gym. Chit, I was training at 10th planet HQ, and the only classes my schedule would permit were the morning classes, which just didn’t have enough “push” for me for where I was in my BJJ journey. But at the end of the day I don’t go around talking about how I need to twist some limbs and send people to snoozeville and anyone who doesn’t feel the same is a soyboy who was bullied, fukkin LMAO

I think theres a lot of posturing and pretending going on in this thread.

I train at arguably one of the top gyms in the world right now, I don't train with the top guys (Israel, Dan, Volk etc) but get to train with their regular training partners. It can be as relaxed or as full on as you want it.

[chino3]

Bullchit Chino, you aint doing chit cuz, stick to Reddit.

Shut it fatty, this thread isn’t for LARPing neck beard autists

[W1LLW]

Hard drills/basically rolling from a weird position I got no problem with. Too many soft drills, where you are forced to permit your oponent to perform the technique is what really annoyed me.
My old/new gym was - 45min roll + 35 min technique practice + 45min roll
Other gym was - 15min warm up + 30min technique + 15min roll from specific position

The SocialClub is doing a bit better now. It's actually running similar practices as the RealGym now. The only difference really between the two at this point is that the social club is really drilling fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals and RealGym is way more advanced in its teachings.

For example I did a two-a-day this week. Went to 7am RealGym, 7pm SocialClub. Real Gym I learned how to get into spider guard then do a sweep, and then a different sweep into omoplata. Fuking hell right? SocialClub it was gaining fullmount by smothering the fuk out of your opponent from side control. Both gyms operate roughly the same timewise: 3 minutes to drill each technique per person. Then 2 minute rolls of light positional sparring the new position, and then roughly 35ish minutes of live rolling.

What i said i like most about RealGym, still stands. I walked into that bitch the first day and it looked like the god damn justice league. Legitimate athletes in there so the level of competition is really high whether you're rolling with a white or purple belt. Rolled with a blue belt and he dominated position most of the rolls. The black belt instructor got in on the rotation and really opened my eyes into the gap between blue belt and black belt.

He had me in the spider guard he taught, transitioned into the first half of the sweep and i said "HA. see now normally i probably would lean forward, but you just taught us the sweep so i'm avoiding it" He laughed, then 15 seconds later he managed to trick me into regaining my balance in the exact position i said i was avoiding. Next thing I knew my feet were in the air and I was watching the room spin as he flipped me. Was fuking awesome.

[W1LLW]

Last Week

- Had my first encounter with a whitebelt "mat spaz". Now I think I know why i was catching so much heat itt if this is what people assumed I was. I'm not bitter toward him at all because i out weighed him probably by 20lbs, and he just doesn't seem to be too talented of a grappler. Long story short, dude managed to bruise the living fuk out of my shins and biceps without ever once putting me in any sort of danger of a submission. He was just grabbing limbs franctically and moving his body all over the place. I mean, i get it we don't know a bunch of attacks yet but holy fuk.

- Had a nice round robin rolling session at the RealGym. Two White Belts, Two Blue Belts and we rotated as a group sparring with eachother. It's funny how opponents at the white/blue belt level have their tiny bucket of go to moves. So after each session, i find myself going home to youtube/grapplers-guide to get the defenses on these specific attacks.


A few hurdles that stumped me:

- Everybody and their fukin nan was elbow slicing the inside of my thigh on my closed guard and subsequently smashing me after. I found I was focusing so hard on tightening my thighs/guard that i lost awareness of my arms and wasn't framing. So i fixed that which helped a lot, but even still i had/have bad open guard but we started learning some spider guard techniques this week that solved a lot of the mess.

- There's this one blue belt that seems to specialize in two things. Having a solid base in guard so you can't get anything, and then spinning around to north south. My first exposure to north/south absolutely stumped me because there's no wrestling equivalent or fundamental that can get you out of that fukery. If you get in north/south in wrestling you've just been pinned and lost the match. I watched some Danaher resources on escaping that though that i plan to attempt.

- I've started focusing on attacks this weekend. I've reached a point where i'm really good at chaining posture breaks from within guard, and i've got some decent sweeps out of spider guard too. So i've now looked at a few arm bar setups i can chain in from posture breaks, and i've researched a few kimura setups from side mount to practice. Side mount is weird because between both gyms i'm training at, i think i've maybe had 2 classes explaining side mount, but i end up in that position like 70% of the time when i'm open rolling. I think it's because when guards get broken, and we start scrambling for position my wrestling kicks in and i'm always able to take the top and dominate for 20 to 40 seconds. Now that I know what to look for, i expect to lock in no less than a half dozen katagatame submissions this week. We'll see.

[FLman333]

So if a guy is elbow digging both elbows into your thighs in your guard there are a couple options. Is it gi or no gi? A base point here is that if he is doing that with both arms he has no post. No way to keep you from sitting up. If you know a sit up sweep, that would be a time to try it. My go to is to reach up and grab either behind their triceps or behind elbows if you can reach them and pull forward with your legs. Since they don't have post on you, they will come forward and disrupt their base at a minimum. A solid idea that most newer guys don't realize is that it is a good idea to actively test their base by pulling your legs forward and rock them. Its just a way to check their base and keep them from setting any one thing up without being contested. Lots of time they rock forward and post their arms which allows Kimuras or armbars and potentially a guillotine. Along with any number of sweeps.

When he went to north south was he just holding the position, or was he trying the north south choke? For north south choke your timing and first reaction are huge. Turn your head into the side he is coming from. If the threat is real sometimes it may be necessary to turn tottally to your side. Facing him initally. But if you do this remember to keep your top side arm tight to your side as you are now available to be kimuraedor armbarred.

I have found also that wrestlers very much excell at this. Turtle position. If you can force your self there via a bridge and roll with a frame as he is setting up north south and rotating for it, get yourself to turtle. From there prevent the hooks and choke initially but start thinking Granby or Peterson roll. You also have your switch potentially or my fav, the Fatman roll if he reaches his arm across your waist. These don't seem to be conventional jiu jitsu moves that are taught, but they work beautifully. I am unable to maintain top turtle against my high level wrestler team mates when they get her and do this.

Hope any of this helps.

[Kay4Kool]

Are you supplementing with any instructionals?