A great weekend! Here is hoping we can get Frank back up in 2010!
What a blast! Frank Barca proved to be a fantastic teacher and a very knowledgable representive of Eddie Bravo's 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu system.%placeToCut My main reason for bringing Frank up to Gladstone to our gym was purely to add options to our no-gi jiu jitsu training and fighting and after the 3 sessions on the weekend we have definatley done that. We will not be offering 10th Planet classes because we are a Fight Club Jiu Jitsu club under Daniel Lima. But we will definatley be including some of the skills and strategies into our Friday night no-gi class as part of our normal training. I like the fact that Frank thinks the same way I do and is not looking for allowing "affiliate" 10th Planet schools in Australia for quite some time. It shows a very high level of integrity from not only Frank, but also any gyms who train with Frankt, hat he will not be grading anyone or offering clubs to use the name just because they pay for seminars - top marks Frank and well done to everyone that is on board the with his teaching.
After doing a quick dash from the airport to the gym due to a late flight on Saturday afternoon, we got straight onto the mat and Frank explained his background, his reasons for training and travelling for 10th Planet as well as some of the basic concepts of 10th Planet that makes it slightly different from main stream BJJ. he went on to explain the idea of "pathways" and the idea of having a couple of options or paths from each situation on the ground and choosing and moving along that way. I know this is not the way most Jiu Jitsu schools train, but it is the way I have always taught it at our school so I was glad I was already on the same page as Frank to begin with.
We partnered up and began straight away with some of the fundamental half-guard skills needed for 10th Planet. First up was the "whip-up" to "boa". We did this skill for some time to make sure everyone had it down before moving onto the old school sweep and then the electric chair submission and sweep. We have our own pathway skill set of half guard but the electric chair will be a great addition (we have all tried to use it in our rolls in gi this week!). We drilled this set for quite a while before moving onto the whiper pass or hands free pass. During the whole time Frank was picking up on little mistakes, explaining things to make them clearer and also passing on more and more concepts to help what we were learning.
That concluded the afternoon session and we all ducked home for a quick bite and Frank and I caught up for a coffee and a chat. We seemed to be on the same wave length for so many topics and with a lot of the same background in martial arts (Zen Do Kai) we had heaps to talk about.
Back on the mat for another 2 hours that night and Frank began to introduce the rubber guard to us. We began simply enough with a solo drill to help us get the movement for breaking down our opponents posture and falling back into rubber guard once we had done so. We practiced this with a partner for quite a while to make sure we had the fundamentals down and he made sure we tested the position with some resistance work as well. From the rubber guard we moved onto a whole host of transition moves that all have very intersting names. I must admit, I have no time for the names and to me, they are just details but they do seem to add an air of fun to the seminar and make the guys laugh.
We moved straight onto the omoplata from rubber guard but first we need to make sure go "zombie", "chill dog", "kung fu move" and "jiu claw" - how funny are those names? All of these little transistions allow you to keep control of the opponents posture and move to omoplata unobstructed. An intersting side note is that we actually got to teach Frank something here. We showed him the way Daniel Lima finishes the omoplata and he thought it was great! I like that attitude in training and learning and it is one that myself and Daniel Lima also share - anyway that works is a new way for me.
Frank then moved us onto the triangle chokes via the "meat hook" "the pyramid". He showed us the "goofy" triangle moving to the standad triangle and everyone seemed to pick this up very quickly and we ended on this at about 8.30. Frank and I went out for dinner again and had a huge gas bag over subway before hitting the sack.
The morning session began with sore calves (from all the half guard lock downs) and shoulders (from the omoplatas) but revision was the remedy. Everyone was asked to go back through every single thing we had done the day and night before and I was very impressed to see how well everyone had retained it.
The last session with Frank covered the Twister Side Control and some of the cool submission that go with it. We started off with a "D.A." sweep from an omoplata attempt and from twister side control began to work the lock down to the roll over to the "truck". From here we worked the calf cutter and the kamikaze leg locks before finishing with the crotch ripper and the bannana split and of course the twister it self. These are a bunch of painful submissions I have to tell you.
Man did we learn a lot, but the cool thing was, we retained a very large portion of it and are already putting it into our everynight rolling. A big thanks to Frank for coming up to coach us and a huge thank you to the guys from Townville (dog factory) as well as the Zen Do Kai club from Brisbane - Chikara Dojos. Renshi Kyl and the guys were so great to train with and I hope we get to catch up with again soon.
I hope we can afford to get Frank up here again next year at some stage and I have already had some offers of sponsorship to help out.
A huge thank you to our sponsors - McCann's Port Curtis Hotel and the Mining and Energy Union - we could not have put this on and kept the price down without you guys so thankyou so very much.
Check out all the photos at our photobucket gallery http://s748.photobucket.com/albums/xx123/GladstoneMartialArts/seminars/?albumview=slideshow
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