BJJ Class 158 – Red Belt Seminar
This class was a treat because it was a red belt seminar. 9th degree Brazilian Jui-jitsu red belt Master Francisco Mansur was in town and gave a seminar at my BJJ academy. He’s one of the only six men given a red belt by the legendary Helio Gracie. See his On The Mat Wiki profile here.
I came in late, as I am late for every evening class due to my commute and don’t know if there was a warm-up or anything. We went through a lot of techniques very quickly, making the seminar a brain-dump of BJJ tips and pointers. My game will improve dramatically if I can remember even half of everything we went through.
The bulk of the techniques were on the control points needed for each top position i.e. In side control put your elbow here, here, control that. If your opponent moves this way, modify that this way and so on and so forth. Positions covered were side control, scarf hold (Kesa-gatame), North-south, reverse scarf hold (Kesa-gatame), taking mount, and mount. From there we moved to mount escapes and top half-guard escapes. Every one of those positions and techniques listed had three, four, or five variations to them.
While I can’t remember everything we went through and everything he said, here’s one I won’t forget (I’m heavily paraphrasing here):
“Be like a wild animal chasing prey – never stop until the prey is dead. Don’t stop until you have a good position”
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August 28th, 2009 at 10:55 am
Wow what a powerful statement!
August 28th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
very, the imagery is very vivid and was a great thing to keep in mind while rolling today