6309 SW Capitol Highway, Portland OR, 97239
503 432 7450
info@southwestportlandmartialarts.com
The longer you train in BJJ, the more you should be able to see variations in the positions. As a novice, it’s all a mess of limbs. With some experience, you start to pull out the some major positions: guard, side control, mount. Tonight, Coach Alex had the class look at the difference between how to defend when you’re in a trap triangle versus how you defend when you’re in the triangle.
What’s the difference? A trap triangle means you’re close to being choked. A triangle means you are actively being choked. Most of the time, the trap triangle proceeds the triangle. Heed the warnings! Defeat the trap triangle so you don’t have to fight desperately to survive the triangle.
Even better is to know what your partner needs to do to set up the trap triangle when you’re still in guard.
Interesting in trying out classes? All students are welcome to a free week. Come on in and check it out.
SW Portland Martial Arts Blog
Guard, Trap Triangle, and Triangle
September 9th, 2025Sparring in Kids Class
September 6th, 2025
Thursdays is our sparring class for kids. What’s that mean? It means we put on the gloves and the shin guards and we play. We don’t go hard – and that’s not just because it’s kids class. We don’t go hard in adult class either. We keep our sparring light.
What’s “light” mean? Light to us means touching the head. Light to the body means a hit that can be felt but doesn’t push the body out of alignment. Light to the legs means the same kind of thing – you feel it but it doesn’t hurt.
We believe that in order to learn functional martial arts, there needs to be contact. We also believe that hard contact, especially to the head, and especially in children, is counter productive.
It’s definitely true that the body and legs can adapt to contact – meaning if you train over time, you can get used to harder contact – but that’s only something we do in adult classes and even there we take our time, never cross anyone’s limits, and never go hard to the head.
Interested in our kids martial arts classes? Check out the schedule here.
Defense
September 2nd, 2025
For September, the theme in our BJJ classes is “late stage defense.” What’s that mean? It means how do we get out of bad positions and submissions. It also means learning to recognize the level of threat you’re under. If you can’t identify how bad the situation you’re currently in is, it can be very tough to defend. Finally, it will mean learning how to not simply escape submission threats, but how to immediately move into a counter attack.
Practically, that will mean drilling and naming bad positions. This will require both solid offense and solid defense. In order to know how to escape an armbar, you need a partner with a decent armbar. If you’ve got a partner with a lousy armbar, you’re not going to improve your defense training with them.
If you’re interested in training BJJ with us, come try a free week. Our schedule is here. If you’ve never done any martial arts, no sweat. We love welcoming beginners into the art. Come in and we’ll work with you at your speed.
Throwing Medicine Balls
August 29th, 2025
Some gyms, so I’m told, are barbell-centric. Others are HIIT centric. So which are we? We’re community centric.
Too cheesy of an answer? Too much of a dodge? Alright, fine. We use the barbells, we spend time dissecting how to properly lift. We also do HIIT and spend time practicing good technique for bodyweight movements.
Still a weak answer? I guess I’m not up to picking a side, because I find the debate to be meaningless. We’re here to learn how to move properly, with barbells and without. Today we threw medicine balls. Tomorrow we might throw barbells. Either way, we’re going to use good technique and develop quality movement patterns that are going to make us more awesome humans both inside and outside of the gym.
Interested in CrossFit? Come try a free week. It’s our standard offer for all new students. Click here for the schedule and signup for any class at no charge.
Muscle versus Power
August 27th, 2025
We’ve been spending this week looking at the difference between a “muscle” motion and a “power” motion. The clean, snatch, and other related lifts can be dissected this way.
Today we worked the dumbbell snatch. So if you do the “muscle” version, it means you simply throw the dumbbell using your legs as the primary driver and the arm whips the weight up. If you do the “power” version, it means you did everything you did in the “muscle” version, but you don’t have to throw it quite as high because you also land underneath it (not in a squat, but anything shy of that.)
So why choose either of these two versions? Well, the “muscle” version is faster, so if you’re doing a CrossFit workout with 9 reps of a dumbbell snatch and you can do the motion without having to get under the weight, it makes sense to use the “muscle” version. If, however, the weight is too heavy and you find yourself starting to press the weight instead of throwing it, it makes more sense to do the “power” version.
Developmentally, it’s important to learn both motions, because they are both useful and they build on one another. Ideally, you’d learn the “muscle” version first, and then the “power” motion, but different folks have varying ease picking up one movement over the other.
Interested in CrossFit? Check out our schedule and try a free week.