Gracie Barra, Austin, Texas, March 2017

And yet another I wrote up back in March but didn't post. Weird.

Like I said, got to go down to Austin, Texas for a minute. But I also had my first BJJ tournament coming up on April 2, Jiu Jitsu By The Bay, so I had to keep the training up. Luckily, there's some great BJJ down in Austin, and I was lucky enough to get over to Gracie Barra in North Austin. 

Opinions are everywhere about BJJ schools and styles. Gracie Barra has a reputation for being a bit more sport oriented, which was fine by me, what with my tourney coming up. They have a nice large open space, with a bunch of colored belts who were very inviting and supportive. They were gracious enough to let me train there the week I was in Austin. I trained with Anthony Leon, who's identified on their website as a Purple Belt, but who had a Brown Belt while training. I might could be wrong about that. Either way, he's a beast, but very humble. 

We went over this North-South (69) double bicep slicer/compression lock, that I really can't even explain let alone find a video to describe it. Point is, it's a cool space with some very friendly people. 

Jiu-Jitsu Diary - 3

Lucio taught today. We went over Side-Control reversal, meaning, switching the side you are controlling, via Mount or via North-South, or what the rest of the world calls 69ing, though people in BJJ can sometimes be a bit... well, not homophobic, but let's just say they're aware they're hugging dudes a lot and how socially awkward that is. And ladies, too. So, North-South it is. 

At any rate, there's some good tricky stuff in these reversals. The best is head pressure. Lucio taught us that just putting pressure on the face and jaw with your shoulder from Side-Control, that's just being mean. "It just make mad your opponent." There's a potential submission in there, if you do the head pressure right. Once in Side-Control move your shoulder from the chin/cheek to the chest and then put the pressure back by going under the jaw. Readjust by going back to the chest a few times if you have to. Didn't really get to test this out cause I went with Oscar who is HIGH ENERGY and was never still long enough for me to actually sink in Side-Control. I rolled with Not-Adrian, a guy whose name I keep forgetting and keep calling him Adrian (he's not tagged in any of the group photos on FB, so I can't even look him up), and managed to get him in a Snake-Choke via Sode-Gurama-Jime I got off Jorge's FB page. This one:

Sakuraba is a beast! And an asshole. I was much nicer and asked if Not-Adrian was okay before I crushed him.