On the Mat Day 367: Working Escapes & Jiu Jitsu Nerd

Today was probably the most chilled lesson ever. K-sensei taught some of the stuff he learnt at the Caio Terra seminar. He started with knee shield and showed us a scissor sweep from this guard when the opponent is leaning back and a duck under and elevate sweep when he is leaning into you. He then went on to show reverse dela Riva guard against a kneeling and a standing opponent. In both cases, you end up taking his back. It's an interesting guard and the techniques shown require some skill thinking in 3 dimensions. I generally like these type of techniques because I feel my brain firing on all cylinders when I work on them.

For sparring I just did back and mount escapes. It's interesting to concentrate on them so much and see that some techniques work on some guys but don't work on others. I forces you to have a couple of escapes in your arsenal. I also sparred with a blue belt I've never seen except on the member's photo board. I just warned him not to trample on my leg and basically let him pass so I could escape and mess around. I also flowed very light with K-sensei which I really enjoyed and in fact felt my BJJ was better than when I try to go all out. I pretty much stopped sparring when the UFC Bisping vs Alan Belcher fight came on. I like both these fighters. Particularly Belcher because he is such a smart guy and managed to beat Palhares at his own game. I didn't stick around to see the Jones fight but I saw the pictures of his toe - eww.

There's a new magazine out in Japan right now called Jiu-jitsu Nerd. I bought it for 350 yen. It's a very small booklet but has a lot of information packed into it. Unfortunately, it's all in Japanese so won't be marketable anywhere except here. Unless I decide to translate it!
Here is the introduction as I've translated it.

It's been about 20 years since Brazilian Jiu-jitsu came to Japan.
There are BJJ clubs all over Japan now and every day there are competitions going on somewhere.
People are training every day, researching on Youtube, and impulsively buying BJJ Kimonos during the night.
When you look at things, there are now many ways to enjoy BJJ, but there is still something missing.

To fill that hole for the hearts of BJJ nerds, we bring you a BJJ specialist magazine.
This is the Jiu Jitsu Nerd.

 When I've had time to digest it over the now Golden Week holidays, I'll give more details and maybe translate some of the interesting bits.