Collin and I headed to Matt Thornton's seminar in Berkeley yesterday  It was actually a three day seminar, but one day was all we could make.  Good thing too, cause it was one looooong day, as you'll see.

We arrived at 11am and the seminar actually got going around 11:30.  We then spent 30 minutes rolling with a variety of partners in the ModCom gym.  It was pretty intense.  I'd say our games held up very well and our cardio was pushed more than we usually do in our typical laid back classes.  It was nice to roll with different body types - that was worth the price of admission so if you ever get the chance to visit another location, definitely don't pass that up.  Incidentally I should note that I spoke to Jude who runs the Fremont location for Modcom and they will be in their new building within a few weeks.  Once they are a go, we will be making some road trips there to cross train.  Very cool!

Back to the seminar...  Matt is always fantastic at teaching, but I honestly learned more in this day of training than I have in any other single day.  We started with some basics of posture in the guard and a very high percentage method of opening the legs from the knees.  Of course, we work basic posture and opening a lot, but the little details he provided really helped me a lot.  I feel like my posture is now 3x better.  I just love little adjustments that you can put in your game right away.

We then went on to learn Matt's current top game.  Ironically, I rolled with Matt at the start of the seminar and he gave me a personal lesson on this for about 10 minutes where I was stuck under him, unable to move.  His pressure is unreal.  Of course he is 6 foot 4 and likely 240lbs, but still, I had no game at all - zero, zilch, nathan, nada.  Looking back, my big mistake was "playing" a bit at the beginning - easing into the roll.  We'll that didn't work, I was swept and locked down in side before I knew what was happening.  I am sure we would have ended up there no matter what, but I would have liked to given him a bit more of a challenge before being squashed into oblivion. [Note to all who roll with Matt, never play, ever.]

Back to his topgame...The basic idea is to use a deep prybar grip and tight far side elbow control.  From here you wait and simply adjust depending on what your opponent does.  They roll away, you sprawl, they turn in, you prybar (lift elbow), they reach up, you kill the arm with your hips and attack.  We will definitely be working this game a lot in the coming weeks.  It's super effective, simple and works gi and no gi (adjusting the grip of course).

Once we were all comfortable with the holding of the position, he showed a few of his bread and butter attacks, mainly the paper cutter choke and the step over lapel choke.  Both of these are already staples at the gym, but he seeing how he weights his body during both of these cleaned up some weaknesses I have.  He also showed a different entry to the paper cutter that may be more effective.  Again, small improvements in what we already do fairly frequently.

The last section of the seminar was all about passing with the knee.  Matt covered 5 different passing options.  I had seen some, but I find this area of my game to be the weakest once I get beyond the simple bull pass.  All of this material is solid and once we started to fold it in with some isolation rounds it became clear how the combination of the knee drive threat with the torreando becomes very tough to deal with.  It was also nice to polish up some principles of the sitting up guard.  Again, fundamentals I will put into my game immediately.

After the seminar, it was time for Matt to take a look at Collin's game.  I have never seen Matt belt test, but I was expecting more of a "roll with a bunch of people while I watch" model.  This is how I was promoted by Dave and it is also the model I think of when I see SBGi Irormans.  Instead, Matt paired Collin up with a strong blue belt and had him work a variety of positions.  It started with Mount bottom and progressed through head and arm, side bottom, knee ride bottom and on and on.  Each time Collin would work his escape only to be reset in a bad spot.  After about 15 minutes of this, Collin took top in the same set up positions.  From there he worked his game. Then at the end, they rolled twice to submission with Collin nailing a paper cuter choke and an armbar.  This went on for about 30 minuets, all after our 11-4pm seminar, ending with Matt skull riding while he tied the blue on Collin.

I could not have been more proud of his performance both technically and personally.  Anyone who trains with him knows he is just a quality individual who happens to have really strong jits.  It was a great day and he deserves all the credit for his accomplishments.  Please join me in congratulating Collin!