Self Schooled

Me and a friend have started training bjj with the goal of getting our blue belts and competing.

We just started a blog and I posted our first session today: http://egofreebjj.com

We are beginners but are determined to move forward and become better. Tips and feedback are much apprechiated!

Regards,

Bjorn from Norway

I start every class regardless of rank by drilling position 1-4 (Side control, modified kesa gatame, side control over head, reverse kesa, scoop knees to mount.) You can never work thse too much. Consider reppin those each and every session. Good luck and continue on your journey.

learn to shrimp and stand up first, probably the two most important things. also, sign up for a school.

A school would speed the process up so much. I was self taught too, and what I found early was while you can have coaches online(Eddie has always been my main coach) legitimate training partners are essential. If you and your friend are serious, try and find people better than you and train with them and learn how they train.The good thing about training your self is setting your curriculumn. You can take as much time on whatever you want. The bad thing is at first it might be on obscure situational stuff that wont help as much. My personal advice would be to buy Mastering the Rubberguard and drill the shit out of lockdown(nice electric chair in vid) just like you did with other drills. Then move to rubberguard or top side and twister side control.

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Originally Posted by The kza

learn to shrimp and stand up first, probably the two most important things. also, sign up for a school.

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Standing up in base is totally underrated. There's so many positions where you can just stand up, slam into sprawl control and slap on a submission. But when your mind is fixated with guard work you don't even think of hitting the eject button and abandoning your guard.

Assuming you can recover guard to begin with. I think maybe you should be able to control the guard before abandoning it. Learn to work and attack. Then later on realize when and how to abort so you have insurance if you cant.

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Originally Posted by Tony "The Goods" Garcia

I start every class regardless of rank by drilling position 1-4 (Side control, modified kesa gatame, side control over head, reverse kesa, scoop knees to mount.) You can never work thse too much. Consider reppin those each and every session. Good luck and continue on your journey.

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Thanks for the advice! If you know of a video of that drill, please send me the link! We will continue, that is certain! :) Next session tomorrow morning.

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Originally Posted by The kza

learn to shrimp and stand up first, probably the two most important things. also, sign up for a school.

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Thanks! There will be plenty of shrimping! No bjj-schools around.. Nearest club is in another city = planeride. Having said that, we are fortunate to know good players that will help us + we will be visiting clubs.

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Originally Posted by bobby rivers

A school would speed the process up so much. I was self taught too, and what I found early was while you can have coaches online(Eddie has always been my main coach) legitimate training partners are essential. If you and your friend are serious, try and find people better than you and train with them and learn how they train.The good thing about training your self is setting your curriculumn. You can take as much time on whatever you want. The bad thing is at first it might be on obscure situational stuff that wont help as much. My personal advice would be to buy Mastering the Rubberguard and drill the shit out of lockdown(nice electric chair in vid) just like you did with other drills. Then move to rubberguard or top side and twister side control.

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A school would be awesomeness but we are shit out of luck there.. Funny you mentioned that we should drill lockdown.. I posted about our experiment on a Norwegian forum and one bjj-player said to abort the lockdown since playing halfguard required lots of hip movement..different styles I guess.. Glad you noticed the electric chair! :)

I saw that you were learning from a book. If that is the case i hear there is this really good book called mastering the rubber guard, you should check it out. : )

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Originally Posted by Cody Kietzman

I saw that you were learning from a book. If that is the case i hear there is this really good book called mastering the rubber guard, you should check it out. : )

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;) Gonna order it next paycheck!

Just keep at it brotha. Repetition repetition repetition