Fight Core

This little weekend adventure to Idaho for a seminar all started when Yamasaki began posting pieces of our old TV show Taking it to the MMAT on the internet. As he was doing this he stumbled across a the profile of a guy who had thousands of members which eventually took Yamasaki to a website called submissions101.com. The site is owned by 10th Planet JJ “purple shirt” Ari Bolden and is one of the biggest and baddest places you can go for Jiu-Jitsu on the web.

We ended up recording a few clips of our show as a house warming gift for the submissions101 site. The clips were well received and repoir was starting to build as Yamasaki continued to communicate with the online community at submissions101.

A couple of weeks ago while we were at CSW camp in LA Yamasaki told me we would be going to Idaho to meet Ari Bolden in person and have our first official lesson in 10th Planet JJ. I am always down for an adventure so I was on board but I have to admit, I wasn’t real thrilled about what I had seen up to that point from the 10th Planet system. I didn’t think there moves would fit very well into my game because most of what I had seen was half guard and rubber guard stuff.

I can think of two times in my past that sort of shaped what I think of the lock down and half guard game. The first is a time when I was teaching Kyacey Uscola some techniques from the guard and he said “wow that’s cool Kiser but I don’t want to practice that. I like the move a lot and I can see how effective it would be but if I start getting confident in fighting from my back then I won’t fight as hard to stay on top.” For a brief moment I was offended. I thought to myself, damn this guy is a kucklehead. But after I let those words settle in, I realized there was a lot of wisdom in that. I have often reflected on what Kyacey said that day and I feel like I have been a better “top” fighter ever since.  The second converstation that impacted my desire to learn the lockdown was when Dennis Davis was showing me some things that Evan Tanner would do to guys from there which basically consisted of  punching them in the face.

With that in mind, here we are, on our way to a seminar where I suspect we are going to cover a bunch of cool moves from your back which would make me even more comfortable there and would eventually have me getting pounded under a guy like Jake Paul or Yamasaki.

I woke up Friday morning, worked from 7am to 4pm. Then did a power lifting session and went straight from that to the UCE to film for our new show called Damage Control. Got in an awesome fight with Shannon which Yamasaki recorded and will be using for our new openening sequence. Wrapped that up and went to Yamasaki’s house where we rolled, studied and filmed for the seminar that we would be taking on Saturday. I ended up crashing on Yamasaki’s couch at 2am and woke up as the victim of Brian’s Bannana in the sleeping mouth joke at 5am. Slammed a warm cup of coffee down and hit the road by 5:30am. 3 hours of sleep and a 5 hour drive ahead of us.

Our drive was perfectly timed as we pulled into Keith Owens (Pedros Sauer Black Belt) club 10 minutes before the seminar started. We received a very warm welcome from everyone there and got to meet Ari Bolden for the first time.

We bowed in for the seminar and went right into the lock down. The very first thing we covered was the Whip Up and it was awesome. It took me right to the position I battle for whenever I get put on my back. I believe in 10th planet they call the position Dog Fight. It’s one step away from my favorite postion call Quarter. The wheels started turning and I was really excited about what I was learning.

I am so glad I took this chance to learn a new perspective. It’s going to be a lot of fun to see where this piece of the game fits for me.