Next Generation Martial Arts
Thibodaux, Louisiana
A few minutes here before class to refresh your memory pays off big on the mat — use your time wisely.
Same drills as Year 1, in the same order — class opens with line drills, then movement, escape, and strike defense. The drills don't change. What changes is what you're free to do inside them.
You have the green light to hunt for an attack while the drill keeps moving — and on the other side, to feel the moment your own body is in danger. Neither of you announces it, and we won't call it out. That's the point: you build the feel for it yourself, blind to your partner, until reading the attack and the defense becomes instinct instead of instruction. Line drills stay text-only as in Year 1; movement, escape, and strike each keep their Year 1 video and gain a Year 2 freedom video.
Class follows the room. When most of the mat is in Year 1, that's what we run; when it's mostly Year 2, we run the entries. If you're in the smaller group tonight, this page is your job — show up knowing what's on the schedule and ready to add your piece to it.
We'll always make time to help you, but no one can put your reps in for you. Your progress is yours to drive.
Year 1 gave you a vocabulary — the techniques and movements, built into your body by showing up. Year 2 is about learning to train with them. The skill now isn't just doing the move; it's knowing when to add resistance and when to give it, so both of you actually improve.
Good training is two people working to make each other better — not a fight to prove who's tougher or stronger. Give your partner enough to test the technique, never so much that you turn the round into a battle. When the whole room trains this way, everybody gets better — not just the toughest people in it.
This week's entry: Reverse Kesa → Side Control into Half Guard Top.
This week is about the finish, not the pass. You take the reverse kesa straight to side control (the Month 12 pass, in the reference below) — then live in the kimura grip that opens as they bridge to escape.
▸ Not new material — shown inside the Year 2 technique videos below, not as a separate clip.
Start slow. Slow movement, slow technique — the first job is to feel how your body has to move to make it work, not to get it done fast. Never rush: speed that costs you smoothness is costing you the skill. Only once you can move through it clean, with no trip-ups, do you add pace.
When it's smooth, ask your partner for light resistance — light movement, not a fight. The point isn't to make it harder; it's to give you a live reaction to read while you still have the time and the calm to process where to go, instead of fighting for it. Add resistance a little at a time, and what starts as a deliberate read slowly turns into feel. That patience is where real control — of yourself and of your partner — comes from.
This week's chain: Reverse Kesa to Side Control → Reverse Kesa Passing → control → read the Kimura Grip Control → finish
As you step out to side control, players bridge big and stretch the far arm hunting another hook — that's your moment. Grab the kimura grip and lock up the control. From there you have three attacks off one grip, roughly in order: the kimura, then the straight armlock, then the back take. Same grip — read which one they give you.
You don't choose the finish. Their bridge does.
Dictating the flow doesn't mean you decide it alone — your partner gets a say. Their reaction is the information: turn one way and it points you somewhere, turn the other and it points you somewhere else. Reading that and answering it is the skill. Calm down enough and you stop muscling through and start noticing the patterns; the patterns become your defaults, and your read starts running on feel instead of thought. That's the shift — you're not just collecting technique anymore, you're learning with your body. It moves where it senses it needs to be, the instinct that holds up when everything turns to chaos, because in a scramble there's no time to think, only to feel.
It's what makes a black belt feel the way they do. They've run this loop over countless mat hours until it's effortless — they aren't fighting your strength, they're borrowing your own energy to find the control and the finish. That's the destination: not more force. Just feel.
Read the full Curriculum Philosophy →