Last Saturday I was lucky enough to find some time to make it over to One World in Union City for the Paul Schreiner Seminar.  I have always been a fan of Paul's and I think he is years ahead of the crowd in terms of teaching ability.  He always seems to have a fresh perspective to bring on something you think you already know.  The great thing is that even with his depth, he has not lost his humility and openness to new ideas.  You'll notice it immediately when you ask him a question.  He is not dogmatic, but rather introspective about why he does certain things and clearly articulates his view, letting you decide if it works for your game.  It seems he has been able to maintain the mind of a white belt with the depth of a seasoned expert.  That in itself was worth the mat fee.

The seminar started on time, so I appreciated his professionalism.  Instead of the usual warmup style beginning, we warmed up with his "6 movements of bjj".  His six movements are a great way to not only get the blood moving, but also to ingrain the fundamentals of jiu-jitsu into your game.  Examples of the movements include the shrimp, guard recovery and going to your knees.  Watching him perform these will make you want to spend more time on these basics.  Personally, I tend to skip these and start rolling, but I plan to make these movements the foundation of my warm-up going forwards.  It is just too important.

After the primary movements were completed, Paul moved on to some details on the double under pass.  It was nice to see he has the same emphasis as John Frankl did when I saw him teach this in Berkeley.   For both a key is the placement of your grip and the elbow position, as it can be a great counter for the guy on bottom.  The unique element that Paul brought, was the basic idea of how palm position really impacts your strength.  We always talk about elbows tight, but I had never thought much about palm position.  If you play around with palms up or palms down, I think you'll find just how different the level of strength can be for each.  This is a great overall principle to take away and represented a theme of the day being broad ideas that are universally useful as you'll see at the end.

We then moved to mount.  The concept here being that there are two risks when mounting.  The first is the upa and the second is the elbow escape.  As with all jits, if you know what your opponent can do, you can counter it, proactively.   Paul showed some great details on mounting properly to effectively shut these counters down before they become an issue.  I love these small details that immediately tighten up a part of your existing game.  He even showed a way to mount by trapping the opponents leg that I have never seen.  I am really excited to work it tonight. 

Once in the mount, he showed his favorite method of holding mount with his hips low.  It is the same position that Dave showed me a few months ago and he referred to as "skydiving".  The basic idea is to lock the opponents lower body while keeping hip pressure.  The really interesting thing is that he never left this position to finish the fight, whereas I tend to bail on it to attack.  I think his idea is smart since it allows you to be safer.  Another nice addition.

From here he showed several methods of finishing the cross choke as well as the head and arm.  We probably spent a full 90 minutes on these positions.  As you can imagine there was a ton of detail here.   I won't even attempt to explain it all, but suffice it to say that Paul has a very nuanced approach to each.  Every movement, no matter how small, is doing a job.  He continues to tighten the noose bit by bit until it is checkmate.  Super detailed stuff that I know will take me a long time to get right.  I think I could work on this approach to finishing mount for years.  The great thing is that at the same time I think it's pretty much unstoppable when you get it right.

Of course at the end of the seminar he spent time with Q&A and rolling.  Everyone seemed to have a really good time and we even had some brief discussion of the north south guillotine that is so popular now.  To me that was the cherry on top of this great, great seminar.

I'll leave you with a few principles I caught throughout the event that stuck with me.  If I misquote, consider it my error.  I was struggling to keep up as the seminar went on:

• "Mount is one of two apex positions in jiu-jitsu, you're there to finish the fight"
• "Jiu-Jitsu is the gentle art, but mount is the one area where you can't be too gentle"
• "Jiu-Jitsu can almost be simplified to Pass, Mount, Choke" (via BJ/Roger)
• "Make Jiu-Jitsu a part of who you are, not something you do"
• "Success at the higher levels means knowing exactly what you want"
• "Removing techniques is as important as adding new ones"
• "You'll only get one chance to finish the RNC, it may come immediately, or 5 min later" (via Marcelo)
• "Mount stability is largely determined by your foot position"

Thanks again to Paul and definitely look him up for some great instruction.