On August 29th, Solarte students took a day off the mats to enjoy the local scenic beauty with an Elwha River rock climbing trip! A short hike lead us to the impressive Elwha River cutting through the landscape. If you haven’t been there before do yourself a favor and make it out before winter arrives. We weren’t there just to admire the area though—we joined the Olympic Peninsula Climbing Community’s Wha Wednesday climbing day for a little rest and relaxation. 60-foot cliff faces rose out of the river offering a variety of routes with different degrees of difficulty. More seasoned climbers like Solarte student, Isaac, scaled impossible looking edges and crevasses, while newer climbers took on more sane paths. With patient instruction and belaying by Isaac, everyone learned how to tie the knots and check gear for a safe and fun Elwha River rock climbing excursion.
Elwha River Rock Climbing & Other Fun Activities
At Solarte in addition to providing the highest quality concept based Brazilian Jujitsu in Clallam County we’ve been building a community of fun, interesting, and supportive people from all walks of life, the kind of people you like running into on and off the practice mats. Let’s be honest, if you’re going to be working out, sweating, and grappling with someone you’d really like them to be someone you enjoy being around. One of the great aspects of Solarte is that everyone has different interests. Most of us had no idea about the climbing opportunities in the area. If it weren’t for Isaac we wouldn’t have even known about this hidden gem. Our next activity is some range shooting, compliments of the experience gun owners in the club—I can’t wait!
Solarte BJJ Concept-based Instruction: A Fresh Way of Learning Brazilian Jiu-jitsu
If you’ve been interested in getting started or trained before but dropped off (for whatever reason, be it injury, lack of time, difficulty understanding how everything fits together, etc.), consider giving Solarte BJJ a shot. We strive to provide clear and concise instruction. Our instruction is based off of Island Top Team’s method of teaching. We focus on the concepts, so that you’re learning more than just yet another technique.
As a quick example of our teaching theory, let’s break down the most fundamental question you could have and see where it takes us. What is Brazilian Jujitsu? There are of course many possible answers, but I’d say at its core it’s a system to improve your position in grappling to an increasingly dominant one. If someone is on top of you, that’s not ideal, so sweeping them or controlling their movement by using the guard is a real improvement. If you’re on top, that’s good, but submitting them or escaping to a stand up (so in real life you could run away from an attacker) is even better. So given this goal of improving our position how do we go about it? We look to use our bones as frames to create space and the opponents bones and joints as levers to increase the force we apply to them. And on we go down the rabbit hole until we arrive at the fundamental movements we are working on in class today, but the entire time we have the end goals in mind. Nothing is arbitrary and magical (aka “Put your left arm here. Why? Uh… because that’s where it goes.”).
If this style of instruction resonates with you then stop on by so you can get a feel for the instruction and atmosphere. The first 2 classes are free! We hope to see you soon.
Written by Mike Boensel
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