Mike Jen Mount Seminar
This past weekend
Gary and I headed down to Milpitas to attend Mike Jen's mount seminar. Most
everyone knows Mike from his bjj tapes from back in the day. I have always
heard good things about the content on the tapes, but have never viewed them.
Truthfully, I would have bought them ages ago on people's recommendations, but
they always seemed a bit pricey to me so I did without...
As far as the
seminar, I decided to attend mainly because it was billed as something
completely different. Mount is one of those areas that gives me a lot of
trouble, so if there is a better way, I want to hear it. Like most people in
bjj, I strive to be effortless in everything and if there is work involved, I am
sure I am doing something wrong. It's an ideal I work towards. That said, I
have never trained with Mike so I really didn't know what to expect from the
event.
The first hour or so
was spent in a classroom style format. Think of listening to a lecture on body
mechanics while you sit and take notes on the mat. No stone was left unturned
and I would say that Mike's undrestanding of body mechanics and posture is his
specialty. Overall, this part was a bit cerebral, but entirely necessary to
understand the why of the movements that came later. There were also some good
examples that helped us each "feel" how proper alignment will change how
effective our bjj can be. The great thing about this type of theory is that it
can now be applied in other positions, on your own.
After the
theoretical grounding, we dove into the basics of the mount escape. The beauty
is that it is really all based on a single principle of unbalancing your
opponent (while balancing yourself). He used a great example of stacking
children's blocks. In balance (stacked perfectly on top of one another), they
are a strong support structure while if they are stacked poorly, they hold very
little weight.
As I said, the major
concept of his escape is to mis-align your opponent and align yourself. What I
found was that if I followed this principle the escape was effortless. If the
escape was tough, I was somehow breaking a rule. This was made even more
evident when I went and tried my typical elbow knee escape. It suddenly seemed
very challenging after feeling what a more biomechanically correct version could
be.
In the end, the
seminar was excellent in that it opened my eyes to really evaluate my posture in
all positions with an understanding of what good and bad posture really is. It
also gave me a new concept of mount escapes to play with. The challenge will be
to see if I can train my body in this new movement via drilling. Since we did
not work the movement with resistance, I cannot be sure it will be 100%
effective live, but I will certainly be testing it out in the coming weeks.
I'll be sure to update this post with my findings as I test out this new
system. I am pretty excited to see if I can apply these ideas to my
rolling.
Thanks to Mike for
the seminar and if you're interested I think he is holding another one in
November if there is enough interest. He can be reached at
jennbjj.com
See you on the
mat.
