SEMINAR WEEKEND!
Thank you so much to everyone who made it out to the Joao Miyao seminar! We had almost 50 people on the mats from 7 different academies/affiliations and 6 Black Belts (including Joao)! We hope that you all had a lot of fun and learned a lot as well.
Joao showed a succession of setups for his favorite submission – the Baratoplata. Joao’s enthusiasm was obvious throughout, and I was very impressed with his willingness to seek out and help everyone in the room. It’s such an honor and privilege to be able to host one of my biggest Jiu-Jitsu idols, right here at Sanctuary. A huge thank you to Joao for coming out and sharing the mats with us!
For those of you that weren’t able to make the seminar, don’t worry! We’ll be studying this position and the techniques Joao taught all week in Advanced class!
ROLL MODELS
Coach Karen was conspicuously absent from the seminar but she was busy in Indianapolis with one of her students, Val. They were attending the 2023 Roll Model Women’s Only Grappling Camp! This is a total immersion camp that gathers women from all over the world in every rank and weight class to learn from some of the best female Black Belts in Jiu-Jitsu, with a strong emphasis on building community and making our academies better places to train! This weekend they had over 250 women on the mats. Karen and Val had a ton of fun and learned a lot of Jiu-Jitsu as well as other skills that they will be bringing back with them to the academy.
All of our women members should have received a link to sign up to next years camp at a discounted rate. Coach Karen is hoping to get a group of people together to attend next year on July 12th – 14th. If you didn’t receive this e-mail reach out to Coach Karen!
JIU-JITSU 101
We launched our Jiu-Jitsu 101 program last week on Tuesday the 4th. Jiu-Jitsu 101 is a four week course that is designed to get all participants fully acclimated to the movements, positions, concepts, and techniques of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu from the ground up. I just wanted to remind everyone that this is completely FREE! to all members, and you can jump in at anytime and take away valuable information that will greatly aid your progress in Jiu-Jitsu. I strongly recommend that all members who have been training for less than 6 months attend this course. We will be running this program again in August, so spread the word!
SPREAD THE WORD!
Every third Sunday of the month we host a Women’s Open Mat here at Sanctuary Jiu-Jitsu. Women from all over the state of Wisconsin – and the larger Midwest! – come to this event. This month it will be on July 16th. We hope our members can take advantage of this and make it out!
Fundamentals: this week we began our foray into the study of Half Guard. On Monday we drilled the Underhook Attack series, learning how to take the back and respond with a sweep when our partner achieves the overhook (or whizzer). On Wednesday we studied how to recover our guard from various compromised positions, when our partner beats our knee shield. We closed out the week by drilling various sleeve drags from bottom Half Guard, getting to our partners back.
Advanced: in our Advanced Classes this week we mirrored our Fundamentals curriculum, studying a bit more of an advanced Half Guard position achieving and using a strong lapel grip to control our opponent, take their back, sweep them, or force them down the path of the Triangle.
No Gi: on Tuesday we hosted a No Gi Open Mat in lieu of our regular class. It was a blast and we saw many students from other academies, as usual! We hope you all had fun and got in some good rounds! On Thursday we reviewed the waiter position – entering from Deep Half Guard – and studied transitioning to Waiter X, X Guard, and ending with attacking our partners back.
This week in Kids’ Class we finished up our Closed Guard series with a hip bump sweep and a crafty cross collar choke setup from that sweep attempt. We continued on to the Half Guard position, emphasizing it as a path to the back from the bottom. A concept we have been learning about is working in opposites. From bottom Half Guard, it is important to stay on your side in order to be effective with your knee shield. So from top Half Guard, one of the most effective ways to neutralize the knee shield is to get your opponent flattened out on their back. Thinking like this helps your Jiu-Jitsu and builds strategic, critical thinking skills.
One thing you can do to help your kids at home is to review our Dojo Rules. Academy etiquette is important to keeping our academy a safe learning environment for everyone!