Stephan Kesting Interviews PNW Black Belt James "300" Foster of FosterBJJ

Omoplata from Spider Guard

Love the omoplata, but lacking a high percentage set-up? You're in luck!

The Road to Mastery Begins with Failure

One of the best things I ever heard about learning jiu-jitsu was a reminder of how much jiu-jitsu I'd never get to know. There's something of that spirit in this personal essay by black belt Stephan Kesting:

The Real Secret to Mastering a Skill

In the popular new age Ophrah conception of the world the only thing stopping you is your imagination or – alternately – your lack of belief in yourself.
We tell our kids, “Honey, you can be anything you want to be. You just have to believe in yourself…”
We give each other calendars with motivational sayings like, “Conceive, Believe, Achieve.”
Well belief might be important, but it’s not the only thing you need. It’s necessary but not sufficient; those syrupy sayings don’t tell you the whole truth…
The truth is that you CAN be anything you want to be, but only if you’re willing to make the sacrifices that are required.
Anything worth achieving is going to require some kind of sacrifice.

Kesting on Common Half Guard Mistakes

More great stuff from Stephan Kesting for your half guard.

Back to Basics (Again)

At the black belt level, the learning process starts over again. If a new black belt is honest with him or herself, they realize they know very little about their chosen art.

--Roy Harris, Progression in Jiu-Jitsu

Ryan Hall Interview with GrappleArts' Stephan Kesting

Here's an extended interview with American BJJ superstar, Ryan Hall. At the risk of sounding like an ass, the more I read interviews with Ryan Hall, the more interested I am in interviewing him myself. But it's always nice to hear from Ryan, who is truly one of the good guys in a great martial art. And the discussions on developing your guard as a game of range, as well as the sports psychology stuff (excerpted below) are certainly among the conversation's keepers.

Ryan Hall on BJJ, Submission Grappling and MMA

Stephan: Now, I guess this awareness really only comes with experience. Maybe first you go in at too high a state of arousal, burn yourself out, and not be able to think. And then you might go in at too low a state of arousal and not being able to capitalize or use the 'agro' energy when it might have helped you in this situation... So you'll be trying to dial it up and down as your experience level grows, which is exactly what you were doing, it sounds like...

Ryan: I’ve been on the wrong end of both of those, actually, and I still am every now and then. There have been certain tournaments where win or lose, I still don’t really feel like I performed well. I'm not like “oh man, the other guy was really tough but I somehow just expected to walk through him.” Instead it was more like, “man, I just didn’t really feel sharp,” or felt like I was too amped up, or just felt not into it. And that can be for a variety of reasons, but even now, I find myself on both ends of that.

And then, when everything comes together and you have a great performance, it’s usually when you find that optimal level of arousal, not only for the sport but for the moment and for that day. Everything seems to be clicking. And when I’ve been able to find and maintain that state of mind once then I’m able to find it again. And that’s one of the big things that I think that constant competition gives us.

For instance, if I compete only once every 6 months, I kind of lose touch with the proper frame of mind. It’s easy to have all these other things going on, these little voices in your head telling you what you need to be doing. But if you’re competing all the time, not only will you be getting experience, but you’ll be getting experience psychologically preparing yourself to perform at your best, and I think that’s absolutely critical.

Guard Passing and Circuit Building with Shaolin

More great stuff from Stephan Kesting and Vitor Ribeiro.

Everything You Wanted to Know About the Shaolin Sweep

Paulson: Attacks from the Front Headlock

Training Day: Wednesday

Double legs, sprawl to standing guillotine and guillotine counter/takedown made up the instructional part of training today. Probably the most important detail came to us from Prof Carlos by way of Tom the wrestling coach: keep your shoulder square when attacking with the double leg rather than turning one shoulder ahead of the other. Another detail was to keep your stance in as much as a runner's crouch as you can, with both feet pointed forward. This allows for better a quicker and more efficient level change as well as better drive when you make contact.

We also worked the back take counter to the on-the-ground headlock escape.

Live Training was a lesson in What Needs Fixin': Half Guard Special, specifically dealing with bear hug type passes when guys avoid engaging the half guard altogether. There are a couple of options I want to work the next time: including a more aggressive sitting guard underhook counter that Kesting shows on his DVD that's part of his "triple attack" combination.

162.7 on the scale post-train, a far more reasonable figure to be sure. With any luck, I'll be able to notch a sub-160 number after the Friday early class.

Grip Fighting, Guard Defense and Arm Drags with Kesting

Halfoplataville

Because I didn't quite spend enough money over the winter holiday season, I took advantage of Stephan Kesting's great holiday deal to pick up a pair of instructional DVDs to add to the collection: The Dynamic Half Guard and Omoplata and the Dynamic Guard.

This purchase was mostly a matter of patching holes and adding to inventory. I'm thinking that the half guard DVD will provide a good check on my half guard basics as I plan for the fatter end of the 2010-2011 training season (the seven months and two Revolution tournaments between now and the end of July 2011). Even after just a a few minutes, I can see a couple of fundamental issues that I've been neglecting that could make my life a lot easier from the bottom.

With the omoplata DVD, I'm trying to expand my King Crimson attack from the closed guard (kimura, guillotine, omoplata, crossover/hip bump sweep/take the back etc.) and add a a submission from the guard that will probably be more high percentage than the triangle or the armbar given my body type (note that fellow half-hobbit Marcelo Garcia is a big omoplata guy).

CBDP: Half Guard Transition Drill

Lock

Stomp

Hook

Square

Hook

Stomp

Lock

Kesting: 5 Triangles You Need to Know

So I'm Thinking About the Deep Half ...

and then I get this e-mail from Stephan Kesting. Inside the e-mail is a link to this:

Three Deep Half Guard Leg Positions

And ye shall receive, indeed.

A Classic from Kesting: Kimura from Side Control