Maui Jiu Jitsu

After snorkeling and swimming this morning we had to run some errands, one of which was near a BJJ school I visited a while ago, so I figure I’d drop in again for a class.  Maui Jiu Jitsu is owned by Luis Heredia, a Rickson Gracie black belt (5th degree).  I had the privilege of training with him for a class before and really looked forward to working with him again, but unfortunately he wasn’t at the class today.

The warmup was a typical run around the mat doing various motions (side stepping, high knees, heel kicks etc), followed by front and back rolls and some ab work.  It was enough to warm me up and get me fatigued at the same time.

The technique we went over was a double leg guard pass in which the partner counters by rolling, but we re-counter by setting up a D’arce choke.

1. We started inside our partners open guard
2. Go for the double leg pass by wrapping arms around both of their thighs and securing with gable grip.  Then pulling their hips towards us onto my thighs.
3. As I start passing towards my right (their left) they counter by rolling over their right shoulder.
4. I plant my right hand on the ground next to their right neck before they roll so when they roll and end in turtle, my arm is already where it needs to be for the D’arce.
5. Once they get into turtle I’m automatically in the north south position with my right arm where it needs to be.
6. For the choke to be effective, I need to walk to my right and end up perpendicular to him before securing a mata leon grip to lock the D’arce.
7. To finish, I roll onto my left side, bringing him with me, and slowly walk my legs towards him while tightening the choke for the submission.

The remainder of the class was spent doing positional training from the top and bottom of open guard, from the top and bottom of 1/2 guard, and then rolling from the knees.

I was able to execute some sweeps and defended some submissions, but I didn’t submit anyone today.  My open guard is still extremely porous and gets passed with remarkable ease, so this is something I need to work on.  I’m definitely much more comfortable with a closed guard.  I was also working on the guard pass with knee penetration variation I learned from Babalu’s recently, but kept getting tripped up because I was forgetting the important step of stapling their shin.

In total it was around 50 minutes of positional training and free rolling, and I was completely gassed.  I’m not sure if this had to do with my lack of conditioning, the fact that I went swimming/snorkeling, or related to being in nutritional ketosis.  Robb Wolf recently put out a series of articles about needing to add in more carbohydrates to his diet to improve his performance, and in the last one specifically mentions BJJ as an extremely glycolytic activity that requires more energy than what ketosis can generate.  This is definitely something I’ll have to pay more attention to the longer I remain in nutritional ketosis.