October 17, 2009

Marcelo Garcia Seminar: Day 1

Okay, so I saw Marcelo last night during open mat and he seemed SUPER friendly. Sometimes you should judge a book by it's cover.

There were a ton of people for day 1 with the gi. I saw a lot of people from our gym and plenty of others that I didn't know from our affiliates. Marcelo started with a quick stretch to warm us up. It wasn't anything tiring but he explained why he doesn't warm up hard saying that he sometimes has 5 matches in a tournament and doesn't want to wear himself down. Completely understandable.

Shortly afterwards, we got into technique. We started with a basic butterfly sweep with both hooks from sitting position. He noted that whenever he scoots forward his hands follow, protecting his legs/feet. One under hook and one over hook, sitting back on the under hook side (shoulder only touching the mat!) and sending the person over landing in side. Next, we moved to a sweep to use when the person bases with their leg. We switched our feet and took him over to the other side. If they blocked that second sweep by posting out their hand, we simply scooped underneath the arm for the straight arm lock (or telephone pole?). THEN, if they tucked their arm follow with a butterfly sweep to the tucked side. It was cool to see so many things stringed together.

Next, we learned a sliding collar choke from the seat belt position. Grab the collar with the over hand and pull it with the under hand. If they're blocking their collar, peel their hand away from the top with the palm of your hand. Reach your free hand under their arm, over their head to your own bicep (kind of like the RNC). Finish from there. Same position, but this time the person is pulling their collar away to relieve pressure from the choke. Lay them down on their side, take the s-mount and lay on their arm. Now, reach down and hook under their leg going all the way up and going behind to your bicep again. I can't remember the third one!

Finally, we did a defense to someone in side bridging and going for your far leg from the outside. First step is to sprawl that leg out far, putting your weight on them. Get seat belt, and switch your hip around to their side. Up on your toes, and shoot your left leg inside for the hook. Roll them over to their side and secure your final hook.

Afterward, we had open mat. I rolled with a few people from my gym and two people from other gyms. One female green belt. She was scrappy. I also rolled with a blue belt (quite a bit bigger than me) and did really well. I'm happy with my performance as of late.

That's all I can think of right now but I'm looking forward to no gi tomorrow.