I had a blast teaching the jiu-jitsu class last night. I made a game for the students for Halloween, called Zombies vs. Human.
For the first part of class, I taught everyone how to roll like a zombie (flow rolling) so that they could understand the enemy and know how to act like a weakened zombie. Brains are sometimes scarce on the mat, after all.
Then for the last half of class, the human starts with a zombie in his guard. The zombie is only allowed to flow roll and use minimal strength. The human is allowed to use full strength and technique to sweep or submit the zombie. Needless to say, the first zombie is quickly dispatched. Being undead, they stay out as the next zombie gets in the human’s guard. Now the human has to sweep or submit the second zombie while the first zombie interferes with the human. They grab an arm, foot, gi, etc. . .
The second zombie isn’t too hard to get rid of, but once there are four or five zombies, the human is predictably buried with an insurmountable task. Often the human can’t even find the zombie he’s trying to sweep or submit, and eventually a couple zombies are able to apply a submission that normally requires one human to finish.
Zombies are allowed to use dead weight, of course, and the only submission that can be applied by a single zombie is a rear naked choke.
It’s all fun and games for the human until you have to deal with a bunch of zombies.
Although I pointed out the usefulness of aspects of this exercise (flow rolling, rolling while compensating for a trapped/disabled/injured area, a toothless BJJ zombie apocalypse), let’s face it: the adults are tired of the kids class getting all the fun games. It’s a bit chaotic, so some rules:
- Everyone should wear a mouth guard.
- Someone skilled should monitor the situation (even a one zombie heel hook is a bad idea).
- The zombies need to take care not to collide skulls. Broken zombies aren’t fun.
- Verbal taps are important. It’s too easy to tap the wrong person.
Zombies make everything more fun.