Winter Wisdom

You have reached a new level of wisdom when you don’t remember the six pieces of wisdom preceding the piece that you have been allegedly quoted upon. So I will now attempt to reconstruct all the pieces the Joker mokuroku that I don’t actually remember ever uttering:

1. Don’t run in the snow. The cardio benefits are probably not mitigated by the potential ankle, knee, and blunt force traumatic injury of falling on your @$$.
2. Don’t leave your gear in the car all day, there is nothing more futile than trying to warm-up in a subzero jiujitsugi. Either grab your gear at home just before class or bring it into your nicely heated office (if you have one).
3. Warm the mats up. Cold mats are harder and suck to fall on.
4. Not a clue. But I want 12 Winter Wisdoms.
5. Check the weather forecast and road conditions before going to class. No amount of rolling around with sweaty dudes is worth getting stuck in the snow or in a fender bender.
6. Wear gloves from home and into class, jamming your ice cold fingers onto a frigid floor ranks up there with kidney stones and child birth in pain level.
7. Wear a hat from home and into class, cold ears have vasoconstricted blood vessels that are more likely to burst if traumatized and hence produce cauliflower ear.
8. Garage training is for the late spring, summer, and early fall.
9. Cold does not sterilize. You still need to wash your combat sports attire after each use. Anecdotally the incidence of skin infections increase over the holiday season, probably because people believe that a cold, sweat-soaked gi is magically cleaned as well as the fact that people are going home and training at the filthy gyms there.
10. The cold does not cause upper respiratory tract infections (e.g. “colds”), you need germs and people infected with them to get sick. If you are snotty, sneezing, coughing, or febrile stay away. Your training is not worth my health.
11. Bring separate (dry) shoes for training, ice in treads turns into a water hazard.
12. Remove all wet attire prior to leaving practice. The Northwind will find it. And inflict frigid pain for it.

2014 Fall Megaton Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Seminar "Don't look at my eyes, look at the technique"

Counter Intuitive De La Riva Guard Pass: Free the grips, grab their ankle on the unhooked side (with either one or both hands) rapidly pop your hips forward. As your hips return to neutral, guide their leg to your opposite side (a lá the “leg drag”), slide the hooked knee to the mat. Bring the elbow on the side medial and then laterally, clearing their top thigh, then underhooking their head. Switch step your free leg across your opponents legs, insert your free hand at their hip to control. Now draw your other leg through to obtain side mount.

50-50 Guard to Straight Ankle Lock: Their distal leg should be next to your flank, overhook their ankle and grab your opposite lapel. The leg on this side is just lateral to theirs, your contralateral foot is tucked under their butt on the same side. Roll laterally, externally rotating their hip, until your are nearly face down. Now extend (don’t arch) your body to submit with the straight ankle lock

Lasso Guard Pass: Take your free hand and adduct their knees, place your shoulder on their lateral thigh, weaving your arm posterior and medial to their top leg, grab their opposite pant’s leg or bottom sleeve. Place your head on the mat next to their torso, pike up, control their lapel with your free hand, and slide your knee medially, over their bottom shin. Clear their legs with this knee. A variation would be to control their ipsilateral sleeve with your free hand, drop laterally to your hip on this side, using your sleeve and leg control from allowing them to come on top. Pull your leg free and take side mount.

Reverse De La Riva Guard Pass: Your opponent has reverse De La Riva, deny them control by grabbing their hook side, ipsilateral, lapel. Transition out to your hip and underhook their head. Free your leg.

Over-Under Guard Pass: Push one of their feet down, enter your opponents guard but they have this hook in. Overhook this leg and grab their distal pant leg, underhook their opposite thigh, keeping their hamstring on your shoulder, control their pant leg just distal to the draw string line. Place your head on this side of their stomach and walk your legs, circling toward their head. You may need to circle back to free their hook or to push it down with your lateral-most leg to step over with your other leg.

Spider Lasso Guard Sweep: Set-up lasso guard and place your other foot in the ipsilateral cubital fossa. You can perform a simple sweep by pulling them toward you and lifting either way, although I found sweeping to the lasso side more easily done.

Worm Guard Defense (before they cross the gi to the opposite side)

• Use our ipsilateral hand to reach behind you and push their leg down, step around this leg and pass it between your legs
• Pull the kimono skirt up, prying it from their grip

Worm Guard Defense (after they cross the gi to the opposite side)

• Spin and go to the mat while grabbing the foot and look for a figure four ankle lock

Oma Plata Lock In: Once you have the oma plata and are sitting up, free the skirt and obtain a good grip, drop your elbow behind there back to tighten the grip, scoot laterally to finish.

Spider Guard to Overhook X-Guard: From spider guard, scoot underneath and bring your hip control leg through their legs. Overhook his ankle on this side with your arm. Bend your knee and thread your foot back to his anterior side, placing your foot in the far inguinal area. Now if your opponent tries to step around this hook, pull him back into place by applying pressure on his arm with the foot in his cubital fossa. Now reestablish this foot behind his popliteal fossa. Pass his sleeve to your overhook hand, control the collar on the same side, Extend your legs and pull laterally, they will fall on their side.

Quarter Guard Knee Bump Sweep: From quarter guard your opponent posts to his free foot. Pass their far skirt to your top hand, giving them a “gi-string”. Your opponent grabs your bottom sleeve. Re-grab his sleeve, bump them with your top knee and come on top.

Half-Guard Half-Somersault Sweep: From Z-guard (shield guard) obtain contralateral sleeve control and ipsilateral grip on their distal pant leg on the side opposite the Z. Bump them toward the gripped leg, if they fall over come on top. If they resist pull their arm across your body, loading them on your knee, now lift them over your head with your legs and roll backwards until you are in the top half-mounted position.

Megaton talked a good deal about his approach to jiu-jitsu:

“I love to compete, I hate to lose” He talked about the importance of competing at least once in your life. He also noted that there is only winning or losing, whether by submission, points, or a single advantage it does not matter, a win is a win, a loss is not. He noted the importance of attending a rules course at least once a year.

“Train like you compete.” If you practice giving up position and points you will do it when you compete. Always grapple with the guy that gives you the most trouble. Become a black belt in a particular position and know how to get there and what happens there.

“For every action, reaction”. In the context of the game we play, we can limit that reaction to options that we have answers for. We should do what we know to do best, and expect reaction and have our own to react with.

“Jiu-jitsu is simple, we make it complicated.” We need common sense and moves that work for us, not an ever expanding lexicon that is ineffective. Do the simplest, biomechanically effective method of getting the result you desire.