Allright, we did some berimbolo drills for warm up. The throw of the week is Uchimata. Then we taugh a simple and efficient back escape. It was followed with 5 submissions from back control. Situational rolling from back control and then normal rolling.                            

We have been covering this topic recently.     This a great video from Stephan Kesting breaking down the berimbolo.   Then the rest of the videos are more advanced.                           

We did Tomoe nage for the throw of the day. It is also known as the sacrifice throw.  You can also do it from closed guard and is known as the balloon sweep.  It is very effective option to a guard pull.   If Uke defends, you can set up the tripod sweep.   The ground techniques were arm bar defence for the beginners.   We also covered berimbolo for the more advanced students.   Training concluded with 30 minutes rolling from stand up. 2 minutes stand up and 3 minutes rounds.   Stu will be flying to Japan for the Judo Masters on Thursday. We hope that he improves his knowledge of drinking sake while getting thrown around by ex Judo Olympians. Best of luck. Do not break a leg!                                         News of the week   ...

We hit the Douglas Santos BJJ mats for our usual Saturday open mats at 11 am. Heaps of guys strolling in, as usual you pick your partner to roll with as time goes by. A lot of blue and purples belt as usual and 3 boys from Epsom chapter turned up. Wes managed to berimbolo a dude 30 kilo heavier than after clocking a night shift working the doors on the viaduct Auckland. The guys in the picture are both purple belts, Benjamin and Corey. Corey is the kids instructor for Douglas. Kid class are on Saturday from 10 to 11 am.

Listening to a Judoka lamenting about the state of Judo made me think about the current state of Brasilian Jiu Jitsu. The problem was that the IJF took away most of his favourite newaza in their competition. Of course, there is nothing new about the fact that most Judokas are against the new IJF rules. In F12 (a notorious grappling forum on sherdog.com, where we waste our time responding to trolls and bashing on nogi guys), judokas keep repeating similar information and even worse: "Do not let the IBJJF take your BJJ to the Olympic games and turn it into something useless for the sake of making the sport more spectacular to the public!". I think BJJ will never make it to Olympic level. The sport is too clannish and controlled by a few people. The grass seems always greener on the other side of the fence. I read about this problem but hearing about it face to face reminded me of my pet peeve with my cherished Jiu Jitsu: its lack of stand up. Is BJJ is going downhill...