- Joined
- Jan 14, 2006
- Messages
- 26,575
- Reaction score
- 4,711
Strongest guy I ever trained with was a big Lithuanian dude. 6'4", 250, day laborer. He's stronger than NFL guys I've trained with, it was just ridiculous. He tapped me twice with sloppy guillotines that were nowhere near being close to choking me, but it felt like he was about to just break my neck. Shit was crazy.
I think that everyone who rolls for any reasonable amount of time runs into someone like this. My version of this was a Polish dude I once trained with. He looked like what I'd imagine The Thing would look like if he were real. If he would've told me he was part boulder, I would've believed him. He'd make me want to tap just from the pressure of him crunching down from side mount
On the opposite side of the spectrum, I dated a Lithuanian girl once. Still the hottest girl I've ever seen in real life. You had to deal with a gorilla dude from that country, I got to deal with an elegant girl
If I had him in side control, I had to have perfect technique and keep driving forward, because his hips were so strong he could just stand up. I finally figured out his number. I couldn't take him down, but he would always try for judo throws, and he didn't have good technique, so would expose his back. Being able to get a guy like that out of there gave me a lot of confidence in my BJJ, because he was an absolute animal.
For sure, being forced to deal with outliers forces you to dial in on technique. There's no way to "muscle out" of positions or submissions when you're dealing with a monster. The Polish dude forced me to get good at arm drags and getting back at least to half guard if not full guard.
Here I am posting about grappling more than I have in a million years, which is about as long as it's been since I've been on a mat, and now it's giving me the itch to back into it even though I'm barely keeping up with all the shit that I've already got going on
Still, I forgot how much I enjoy this sort of shop talk.
They flow off each other nicely too.
Both in take down defense and in the full guard > hip bump > kimura > guilotine loop.
True, I think that the kimura sweep was the first sweep that I was taught and that the kimura/guillotine combo (in either direction) was the first submission combo that I was taught. And I remember seeing old footage of Cro Cop doing some sort of seminar teaching self-defense and I was so stoked when I realized that I was learning the same technique that I saw him doing