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UFC/WEC/PRIDE veteran
Jeff Curran Seminar In Knoxville a Great Success
MMA star and Pedro Sauer black belt, Jeff "Big Frog" Curran, hosted an incredible two-day seminar last week at Knoxville's Union Martial Arts.
Jeff, currently a Strikeforce bantamweight, brought his considerable experience and wealth of knowledge to a crowd that ran the gamut from white to black belts from all around the country.
Beginning with a two-hour Q&A session on Friday, Jeff explained his philosophy of jiu-jitsu, showed his favorite high percentage guard passes, and emphasized the importance of always sticking to the basics. He also compared and contrasted gi versus no-gi jiu-jitsu, and backed up his points with his personal experiences of training with masters of the game like Marcelo Garcia.
"Whether you train with the gi or without the gi, it's all jiu-jitsu," he said. "But I believe that to be good at no-gi, you must train in the gi. Look at Marcelo (Garcia), it was only seven years ago or so that he first started training without a gi. He developed his technique as I did and still do, in the gi."
Following up on the gi/no-gi theme, the Saturday session was split into two, 3-hour segments. In the first segment, Jeff expounded on the techniques he showed the day before, and got into some very elaborate sweeps and escapes using the gi.
The no-gi segment began with Jeff's favorite go-to pass for defeating the butterfly guard and transitioning into knee-on-belly before finishing your opponent with a choke from north/south. Following that, Jeff showed a brutal guillotine choke and how to stop your opponent from countering it. And just when everyone's attention started flagging because of the long day, Big Frog woke everyone up with a spectacularly tricky -and highly unlikely- armbar technique.
"I developed this armbar after I got a new 16-year-old student in my school," Jeff said. "He'd had no training, so I showed him the standard armbar with one leg behind the back and the other over the opponent's face. I also showed him the "hitchhiker" escape to get out of the armbar. So I start rolling with the kid, and I had him in an armbar five times, and five times he used the escape I had just shown him. Hey, I'm really trying to armbar this kid and he keeps escaping! It was kind of embarrassing! So I started wondering how to shut this escape down and get this kid, so I got one of my black belts, and we worked on some stuff. I came up with this counterspin armbar which ends up being much nastier than the first one. Needless to say, my student never escaped again!"
Union Martial Arts would like to thank Jeff for taking the time to visit and share his humor, his knowledge, and his hard-won experience with us. We can't wait to have you back, Big Frog.
VISUALIZE THE POSSIBILITIES by Eddie Edmunds
How great are your visualization skills? Can you imagine a move with such vividness that it is almost as if you were performing it live? Did you ever hear of Nikola Tesla? He invented AC power and his imaginative skills were so well honed that he was able to assemble and disassemble a motor within his mind’s eye and do this with such accuracy that when the motor was built it ran perfectly.
Next time you picture yourself performing a move, imagine the feel of locking in that armbar. See yourself pulling off the submission with perfect technique. Keep repeating this until you can see yourself performing the armbar PERFECTLY. However, the most CRUCIAL part of this training is constant repetition and using the imagination to create the reality.
If you don't do that you might as well swim in the sand.
One of the benefits of visualization is that your buddies may start calling you the "Armlocking Monkey" because of your enhanced mat skills. However, a larger benefit is that consistently practicing this visualization will allow you to vividly work a move inside your head, iron out any kinks, and when you step on the mat, you’re already in Monkey Stomp Mode!
Remember, visualization isn’t anything difficult. Just taking fifteen minutes a day in a quiet, relaxing environment and beginning to see yourself training sharper and more technical will be the first step to seeing the results on the mat. Relax as you train on the mat, too, and it will allow you to perform better technically.
As always, enjoy Jiu Jitsu and train for longevity!
Eddie Edmunds is the head instructor of Team Fusion Academy in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is a Black Belt under Professor Pedro Sauer and has been a loyal student under Professor Sauer since 1992.
Knox BJJ-Team Pedro Sauer medals at State Line Grappling Championships
Congratulations to Marshall Manning and John Keener for their performances in the State Line Grappling Championships on Jan. 16!
At the no-gi tournament in Bristol, Tn., Marshall took 1st place in the Men's Advanced 170-184.9 lb division, and 3rd in the Men's Absolute division. John won 2nd place in the Men's Beginner 200+ lb. division.
Thanks to our Competition Team, we're looking forward to becoming a well known presence on the grappling scene in the coming year.
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