Archive for the ‘Seminars’ Category

We have been extremely lucky to be co-hosting the Drysdale Seminars.

Robert and Sophia Drysdale will be coming to Auckland for the 11th and 12th December 2011

BJJ & ADCC Legend Robert Drysdale is coming to Auckland on Sunday 11th December for a two seminars. No -Gi and Gi Seminars Cost: $100 per seminar. $170 for both.

Sophia Drysdale is doing a Womens only Seminar Open to all Clubs $50

Both seminars will be held at GroundControl MMA and BJJ Auckland, 20 Stonedon Drive, East tamaki

Contact Warren if you are interested in going.

Warren Lambert 021 0773788

Congrats to Leyla Okyay on receiving her Purple Belt yesterday at the latest John Will seminar. Leyla is a dedicated Submission member and recently made the move to Whangarei where she now trains the BJJ curriculum at Roundhouse Kickboxing.  She regularly comes down to our trainings and is still very much part of the team. It was Warren and Marks pleasure to get John Will to award Leyla our first female Purple Belt at Submission.  Leyla recently won the Abu Dhabi Pro Cup trials in New Zealand and Won a trip to compete at the Worlds this year. She had an awesome time and did us all proud.

Next up we saw long time member Greg Woodcock receive his Blue. Greg has been on the mats in Takapuna first starting our in the Karate classes then moving on to the BJJ classes. Well Done on your achievement Greg!

Scott Shearer, Michael Wallace, Aristotles Neto and Alistair Young all received their Blues on Saturday it is great to see our Mat getting a awesome spread of knowledge and more colourful! John Will also said he hadn’t ever seen so many Purple objects at Submission at one time.

Thanks to John Will for spreading his knowledge with us on Saturday we had a blast!

Congratulations to Amanda Tuarau and Brad Kumerich on receiving your Blue Belts a huge achievement for you both.

Kodie Hamilton, Steve Hogg and Howie Fergusson all received their Purple Belts! That takes our Purple belt count up to 5!

We were also very lucky to have Haydn back on our mat for the first time since December last year.

Awesome seminar with John and we look forward to having John Will back on in our Mat February 12th 2011.

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

With John Will back in town, Submission Porirua was once again able to crash the GSW Seminars. With the growth of Will / Machado BJJ in Wellington, Geoff Grant was hosting two seminars back to back. First one was catering for the white belts followed directly by the coloured belts seminar.

The white belt seminar finished on a high for the Submission crew with its first ever Blue Belt being awarded. Andrew Douglas joined us not long after we first opened the doors in March 2008. His dedication and passion is obvious in every class.

It was a well deserved promotion and I would be confident in saying that the rest of the 3 & 4 stripes will be breathing a big sigh of relief.

Well done to Andrew.

Wow what an awesome John Will Seminar! Our two trainers from Submission Takapuna were awarded their Purple belts! Warren Lambert and Mark Corkhill took over the ownership of Submission, Takapuna when Glen Tarrant moved to Porirua and set up a new school down there. Warren and Mark have been successful in creating a fun and enjoyable mat! A huge Congratulations to Mark and Warren what a year it has been and now you can finish the year off with an awesome new belt.

Mark and Warren had just received their Purple Belts from John Will

Congrats to John Lamb who received his Blue Belt from John Will.  John has been a loyal member of Submission and we are glad to have him back on the mat after having to take time off for a serious injury.  Sadly we are going to be saying goodbye to him again at the end of this week as he heads to South America for a year.  Good Luck with your travels John!  We look forward to seeing you on our mat again.

John Lamb with John Will after receiving his Blue Belt

Mark Corkhill, John Lamb and Warren Lambert with their shiny new belts.

Submission Takapuna had the privilege of attending a seminar run by RIGAN MACHADO at Howick Recreation Centre on Saturday.

We all walked away with some awesome new skills, great day was had by all.

Team Submission with Rigan Machado