Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Hi Crew
It was great to be back on the mat last night.
As mentioned, we have been very fortunate and have managed to secure 80 square meters of mats from GSW as they have now fully set up their Wellington premises and these are left over from the Hutt, so this is going to help Submission Porirua with its next stage of growth.
The plan was to purchase a new set by the end of this year, so this has come up somewhat earlier than we expected. So I need to find some money ASAP.
So I’m going to do something I hate, but what several of you have suggested and have offered in the past, and ask for help.
The main thing that everyone indicated last night is they would be prepared to donate some money towards the mat fund.
If you want you can donate online or talk to me at class, or email for details, or just ignore this and I will leave you alone.

With another successful year at Submission we all need some rest and relaxation.

Submission Porirua will have it’s last class on the 22nd December and will resume on the 10th January

Submission Takapuna has finished up for the year and will resume on the 11th of January.

Club members – If you want to be kept up to date regarding random rolling times over the break then check our Facebook Fan Page.

http://www.facebook.com/TeamSubmission

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Industry of Combat are hosting their 12th Event which will be held in our home town NORTH SHORE!

We have 3 guys entered unfortunately Simo had to pull out due to injury.

Vince Lowe and Brayden Goldring will see a return to the ring and Nick Allan will make his debut.  Also of note will be Rob’s debut as RING BOY!

Team Submission wish you guys all the best for Saturday!  WAR!!!

What an awesome weekend!

With 34 Submission entries into the competition we were stoked to see our results.

Gold

Jesse Evans – Kids +60kgs
Alistair Young – White -78kgs
Leyla Okyay – Females +65kgs
Steve Hogg – Blue -73kgs
Mike Wallace – White -98kgs

Silver

Serina Cole – Females -65kgs
Amanda Tuarau – Female +65kgs
Bevan Brooking – White -68kgs
Michael Hunter – White -73kgs
Nick Allan – White -88kgs

Bronze

Nick Ovens – Blue -83kgs
Brayden Goldring – White -68kgs

We achieved what we set out to achieve which was to have fun!

Submission Takapuna are now offering a Sunday BJJ Class this will be a general class and open to all members.  The first class will start on Sunday 20th June 2010 7.30pm – 9.00pm

Submission Porirua now offer MMA Classes on a Monday at 6.30pm – 7.30pm

Our guys made us proud!

(72.8kg/73.5kg) B Class
Simo POSTINGS (Team Submission – Auckland)
Vs.
Craig FOOTE (The Fight Shop NZ – Palmerston North)

- Postings wins by submission rear naked choke – 0.24mins in Round 3.

(68.1kg/68.4kg) B Class
Scott BODNAR (The Fight Shop NZ – Palmerston North) Vs.
Jack Lambe (Team Submission – Auckland)

- Bodnar wins by unanimous decision.

For full results and some coverage check out nzmma.tv

We will add pictures and video as we lay out hands on it

Cam D

This weekend will see Simo enter the ring for his third and final B Class fight.  His fight record is 2-0 with wins over Josh Nicholls and Matt Samson.  His opponent is Craig Foote from respected club Fightshop NZ in Palmerston North.  Jack Lambe will be having his first Amateur MMA fight and is going up against Scott Bodnar who is also from Fightshop NZ and having his first MMA debut.

The guys from Submission Porirua and Submission Takapuna will be their in force to support!

We wish Simo and Jack  “WAR”!

Some Pics from Simos last fights.

Ok, so I haven’t managed to make it to a seminar yet for various reasons so today was my first experience of one. Will-Machado black belt Geoff Grant from GSW in Wellington came up to the humidity of Auckland to teach us some new techniques, but more importantly developing our ways of thinking and being while doing BJJ. A lot of them Mark and Warren have told us before but today they were highlighted really clearly in the middle of having a crack at very advanced technique that contained animal words like Anaconda and Spider, as well as descriptors like spinning, inverted and triangle.

A lot of today though I felt like the real lesson was learning how to learn BJJ.
Starting with basic understanding of what it is in brief terms and then teaching us what frame of mind and body we need to be in, in order to learn technique effectively and develop our overall game.

These are some of the ideas Geoff talked about that are standing out to me at the moment.

Almost the first thing Geoff talked about was Basics vs. Fundamentals. These are different. Basic is like a Basic figure 4 from mount, it’s a straight forward version of the technique and is one of the early things you learn. Fundamentals are the underpinning little things your do which, when added together, result in achieving control of your opponent: e.g. how you shift your weight, position your hips, hip escape or move from one position to another keeping your weight down but still moving lightly. If you master these fundamentals, then submissions and other techniques, basic or advanced, flow from that control.

The idea that was emphasised over and over again by Geoff was Flow. Being relaxed in rolling is something I have fought very hard to learn since starting BJJ under the guidance of Mark and Warren. Geoff re-emphasised this idea and the way it applies to your learning in BJJ and your technique in rolling. Flowing techniques as you learn them means not being herky jerky or trying too hard to push through a technique or finish the submission, it’s about slowly and smoothly getting it right step by step, flowing from one step to another. It’s also about making sure you are applying the technique for the tap the first couple of times and then working through the grips and positions that resulted in the tap with out worrying about getting the tap. Slow, smooth flowing reps and lots of them is the best way to learn and get really good at it.

This is the math of it according to Geoff (paraphrased by me)

Flow = good BJJ
Flow + speed, strength = AWESOME BJJ
Jerky, poor technique + speed and strength = Munter with jerky poor technique

From the very start of the day, Geoff told us we were going to do stuff way over our level, crazy messy Rigan stuff that would be hard and probably impossible to pull off rolling. The point was to bust us out of our boxes…to have a crack at this stuff and see what we get, what we don’t get and what new paths to techniques we already do get opened. He was teaching us the mindset of training, try stuff, think, reflect on what you learned from what you got; examining what works for you and developing your game. These are questions we can use for all our rolling not just the things from this seminar.

The last point I will discuss here is the idea of your own game. I had understood this from classes so far and at an instinctive level about what I liked about BJJ. Geoff really solidified this for me. One of the core concepts of BJJ is that BJJ uses what works and not what doesn’t. At a personal level this means we work on a technique to find out how it works for us, with our body shape and abilities. We are not cookie cut physically and in BJJ it’s not expected that our technique and strategy will be the same as everyone else’s. It’s also our responsibility not our instructor’s to work this out, to analyse what’s working and not working for us. Sure we can go to them and say hey X is not working for me at point Y in this technique, but is up to us to have figured that out and go and ask, not to put the responsibility on them by asking “what do I need to work on”. This means that in training we find people that are good at what we’re bad at and learn from them and we find people that are good at what we suck at defending and roll with them.

The techniques we did today I am sure we will all be having a crack at pulling off in rolling, but what we really learned was how to posture ourselves to learn effectively, how to be effective in our technique, and to take responsibility for learning and developing our own game.

Cam D

BJJ

We started out with light positional rolling to warm up.

Then Warren picked up where he left off on Tuesday, quickly running through what we had done then, and went on to show us how the far side arm bar fitted within the game plan from the knee ride position.

We partnered up with the first side starting with revisiting knee ride position. Then Warren took us step by step through the technique.

From the knee ride position we make sure we are putting our weight firmly down on our opponent, trying to get a reaction from them we can work with. We use the far side arm bar when our opponent uses their free (far) arm to push on the knee that’s crushing their stomach. As soon as they present that arm, we let go with the rear hand that was holding the pants leg (or elbow in the nogi technique) and shot it under the arm they are attacking our knee with, gaining strong under-hook grip. We then pull up on that arm, letting go of our grip on the near arm, and partially stand up while still keeping our weight low. We continue while doing this motion, to pull our opponent onto their side, using the far arm we have under hooked, until they are against the shin of our leg closest to their feet. We then in one motion kick our leg closest to their head all the way around their head and down to the small of their back in a circular movement, pivoting on our other foot. Once there, we apply the knee squeeze and sit back to arm bar, making sure to keep our butt as close to our opponent as possible.

After drilling the technique in steps, we ran all the way through it to the count. 5 on both sides and then they did 5 on each side 1 for 1. Having completed these reps the first side swapped out and we did it all again. I found that it was great to do the continuous repetitions; you could really start to get the movement flowing without over-thinking it.

We then rolled for 45 minutes in 5 minute rounds to finish the class with a lot of people working on their technique with Sunday’s ICNZ Contender in mind.

We are all looking forward to the Geoff Grant seminar this Saturday as well! It’s going to be a great weekend!

MMA

Tonight Mark decided that we would work on our take downs and grappling to help those of us competing tune up for ICNZ Contender. We spent the first half of the class doing 5 minute rounds with different partners doing 1 for 1 take down techniques lightly, refining and practicing the take downs we knew.

The second half we went to full grappling rounds but standing up again after a couple of minutes if no submission had been achieved. This was great for those of us with less experience to practice putting it all together from standing, as you have to in competition.

A great class for learning more about what you already knew tonight. Good luck to everyone who’s competing on Sunday!

Cam D

BJJ

A solid warm up started the night, with our legs and arms getting a good work out.

Tonight Warren explained that we have been working through the blue belt syllabus on Tuesdays for the last couple of months and that soon we would have completed it and there will be training reviewing it all.

With that in mind tonight we did knee ride position, near arm bar from knee ride and then setting up a situation where you can apply a choke or a near side arm bar depending on the response of your opponent.

We started in short base side control. We then made a bit of space between our knee closest to our opponent’s head, which allowed us to slide our left hand in and grip the opponent’s gi just above the elbow. Then we moved our right hand and put it on the floor next to our opponent’s hip and used it to post up and slide our knee into position on the centre of their stomach. As we did this we were popping up, putting our full weight on our knee, sliding our left leg out to post lightly and keeping the toes of our right leg off the floor. We maintain the grip on our opponent’s near arm pulling up, lifting their shoulder off the ground. The other hand grips their pants at the far knee, again pulling up, lifting their leg off the floor and adding our weight down. Warren pointed out that, in this position it’s important to look up keeping your back straight and your weight focused down on your opponent. After explaining this he channelled Cath and Kim and repeated “look at moi, look at moi, look at moi” over and over again.

After drilling us through getting and holding the position, Warren demonstrated the near side arm bar from the knee ride. From the knee ride position we stepped our leg closest to their head over their head and then slid our other leg up so our lower leg is against their arm, while still kneeling on our opponent. Then, squeezing our legs together, we slid down their arm and moved back into the arm bar. Keeping our opponent’s arm with the thumb pointed at the ceiling, we lifted our hips and applied the arm bar.

Here’s  Nick Ovens using a version of it to win a fight in a Gi comp last year. Yes, you did just see that pure awesomeness.  credit to Mel for the music (or is that a disclaimer from me….).

We also drilled the no-gi version of this, where you get a hold on your opponent’s wrist instead of gi and then control the elbow of the raised arm with the other hand.

For the last setup, we worked on creating reaction from our opponent that would allow us to arm bar or apply a choke.

We set up the knee ride but then use our rear hand to insert a grip deep in the near side collar of our opponent, while still maintaining a strong knee ride. If our opponent turns away from us we apply the near side arm bar. If he turns toward us we let go of the arm and quickly slap our hand on their far shoulder, grabbing a hand full of gi. We then sprawl down hard, bringing the same arm back across the neck of the opponent and complete a cross lapel choke.

We drilled this thoroughly and then moved to rolling.

There are 10 members from the club looking to enter ICNZ’s Contender submission wrestling tournament this weekend so there were a lot of people working on the No Gi technique in rolling.

Another very full Tuesday mat which is great!

MMA

Sorry, I didn’t make it to this class. I am sure it was awesome, because it always is when I am not there. I may attempt to interview someone that did make it and enlighten you as to the awesomeness that happened. Watch this space.

If you’ve been watching this space, sorry,  no one  will talk….. because it was so awesome…..(or maybe i haven’t asked?). Either way, we’re all missing out!  The lesson is… go to training.

Cam D