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Hi all

Just a quick note to say we’re all back to normal now. It’s been a busy time the last few weeks in the none JJ world I must inhabit I’m afraid, having to go away with work has interrupted training and posting to this site…Most Inconvenient!

However, that little bit of work seems to have finished now…I hope, so normal service will hopefully be resumed, both in training and with regards to this website, design and progress.

It’s been a bit slower than we’d have liked, it’s getting there but we still have other ideas!

Hopefully, you’ll like them, and maybe have ideas yourself about how we could develop.

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Anyone For Group Press Ups?!

Just another night at training and the guys decided press ups on their own was a little run of the mill!

Next one is…How many can we get at one go!

I’m not in there, Sensei’s privilege!!

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Transitional Flow

What on earth is transitional flow then? Is this a new language we’re learning?

I suppose it is really. Transistional flow is basically the fluid transistion from one move to another.

Sounds easy? It’s not! But then by now I’d hope you’d have come to expect nothing less?!

So, what am I actually talking about? What does it mean in real terms?

You’re training with your partner, doing ground work for example, you try a move and it doesn’t work, what do you do? Well in most cases you end up straining against each other and it becomes a contest of strength rather than technique, seeing who is the stronger and who will tire first? What you should be aiming for is try one move, it doesn’t work, they counter it, you use that counter and immediately go to another move using what you have there. That is basic transitional flow, the ability to flow seamlessly from one move to another when needed.

It confuses your opponent and increases your chances of success. It takes, time, practise, skill and relaxation, in order to feel what is happenning and where the weak points are at any given point in time.

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Why So Much Repetition?

One thing that bugs me is when people come up to me and say, done that one Sensei, what’s next?!!

Have you done it absolutely perfectly loads and loads of times every time? No would be the answer, I suspect any good Martial Artist who is truly honest would admit that it is very rare to do a move perfectly, with every little thing exactly right. In fact they may think it was spot on and you’d find somebody else, just as qualified with a slightly different opinion who’d pick up on a tiny piece that was out of synch! That’s the nature of what we do, that’s the nature of human beings. So to say you know it inside out after a handful of repetitions is not hapenning I’m afraid.

Admittedly it is mostly the juniors, and yes I appreciate the attention span isn’t the same, but still doing it 3 times and thinking it’s sorted…! Seems a different mental ability to traditional training. It’s not possible to spend weeks or months doing the same move, people get bored and move on to something else, there’s got to be a happy medium to it all.

Anyway, moving away from the rant slightly;o)

You need these techniques you are learning to work in a real situation, you need to react under pressure when the brain may want to do something else. The way to do this is to train the body to react independantly of the brain,you can probably guess what’s coming, it’s repetition, doing the move over and over again you are programming your body to just do it. For you slightly older people, think about driving a car, when you first started there’s loads to learn, then after a while you do it without thinking about it, you get to the state where you do things without thinking about it, it’s confidence and repition of a set series of moves to a given action/reaction or circumstance. It’s exactly the same in Self-Defence Martial Arts, someone punches you in a certain way, if you train correctly this then triggers the body to react in a pre-programmed way without concious thought or effort, this is where you start to link in with the Mushin concept talked about elsewhere.

There is a very famous quote from Bruce Lee:

“Before I learned Kung-Fu a kick was just a kick and a punch was just a punch. When I’d learned it a kick wasn’t just a kick and a punch wasn’t just a punch. Now I understand the art a kick is once again just a kick and a punch just a punch.”

Break the move down in your training, understand it, train it correctly over and over again until you have trained your body to do the move correctly, then you no longer need to think about the individual components of a move but can relax and let your bodies muscle memory take care of itself.

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Mushin - The Hidden Advantage!

Mushin, it may or may not be something you have heard of before, I would guess, especially if you’ve not been practising for long that you’ve never heard it before.

Mushin means basically no mind, or empty mind. It’s the concept that during combat, be it an actual fight or sparring you do not have thoughts bouncing around your head, these interfere with your involvment in the moment. Such things would impede your response to an attack and could get you killed. Less if you’re sparring admittedly, but going back to the days of sword fights or even today in self-defence, a moments distraction could lead to disaster.

This distraction or thoughts could take many forms, it could be a case of:

It’s this attack so I could do this or this.

What if I over do it, what are the consequences

Why is this happenning to me?

What if I miss time it, how badly is this going to hurt?

What if I die?

Or any other thought that takes you away from the moment. You may think that they are all actually to do with the moment, but by the time your brain has processed these distractions you could be too late to react to the oncoming danger.

Where you should aim to be is relaxed, breathing easily with no thoughts of fear or consequence in your mind, you should let your body and your training take over.

Sounds easy? It’s not. It takes years to get to this level, it may even be a fair comment to say some people never will achieve it. It requires serious training, committed to repetition, doing the move over and over again. That’s the first part, it then requires relaxation and confidence in your abilities. In training for example, accept that at some point in your training, if you train hard, you will get injured. Accept it as a given, you will relax, conversly this generally leads to less injury!! It also lessens any fear you may have to the consequence of what you are doing.

The first time you react in your training without prior thought, you do a move that goes really slick, you throw somebody then afterwards realise, wow that was a such and such a move, you’re heading in the right direction.

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Ground Work Basics

Ok, first thing we’re going to look at is the terminology. Throughout it all you’ll here all sorts of stuff about positions used and wonder what the heck it’s all about, so before we move on to actual techniques we’ll go through naming and positions.

The Mount

This is a position that you’ll see most people strive to achieve in the course of back to back, and it is a very powerful position to be in. You are on top of your opponent,squarely on top of your opponents torso, with your legs at either side of their body facing their head, your hands are used to either attack or base yourself.

The Cross Mount

Again you are positioned with your opponent on their back on the floor with you on top, covering their torso, this time though you have your torso on theirs with your legs out to the side of them. There are a lot of people who just don’t like this position but it is still a good strong position if you train it. you can defend, counter and attack quite readily from this position.

The Guard

This position involves one person being on their back with their legs open and the other person in between their legs facing them. The advantage is still with the person on top in between the legs, but not so much, it’s relatively easy to control the distance of your attacker and defend then counter attack from this position.

You will see also some people when on their back like to have their legs around their opponents torso, crossing the ankles at the back and squeezing, others prefer to place their feet in between the attackers legs and tuck them underneath their shins giving them some control, called putting the hooks in.

You will hear terms banded around like being in the guard or having them in your guard. It’s the same position the difference being whether you are the one on your back or not!

Giving Them Your Back!!

Pretty descriptive really, you’ve turned your back to your attacker, this is bad! you have no means of attack and limited defense, try to avoid this at all costs!

The Half Guard

Very similar to the full guard, apart from you only have one leg in between your attackers, you’re both in the same position really so the only point of any sort of favour is, who’s on top!

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These are the main positions you’ll find yourself in as you’re rolling around, what we’ll cover in the future of this site by myself and others I hope is the transition between them and submissions from them.

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