Martial Arts Wellington and Lower Hutt GSW BJJ NZ

Archive for November, 2007

Sorry all not a lot of time to post too much info but I just have to give a quick update. John’s seminar was fantastic, unfortunatly I’m still dealing with Kidney stones and was unable to get on the mat. John covered the following points in the seminar

4 Omopalata drills
Get the elbow
Keep the elbow
From mount via reverse side mount (with bonus sweep)
From sidecontrol also via reverse side mount but finishing on the other side

4 Arm triangle choke (or head arm choke) setups/drills
From crossface
From sidecontrol
From head to head
From underneath

Before the seminar got under way we took the opportunity to promote a few of the GSW crew.

Congrats to new Purple Belts Jonny Bares and Jason Murphy and new Blues Brendan Pfahlert and Cain Harland. Well done boys. At the end of the session John ambushed me and awarded me with my BJJ Black Belt.

I would like to thank everyone for their kind words, emails and comments over the last few days. I’ll have to admit that I’m still a bit dumbfounded and it hasn’t actually sunk in yet I think. Thursdays class was the same as always but any time I caught a glimpse of the Black Belt it surprised me all over again. I’m sure it will take some time to get used to.

Here are a few shots from the night as well as a video of John ambushing me using a chocolate cake as a prop. I’ve edited my speech from the footage because I waffled like a raving idiot.

Fundamentals

Mat Paul took the class tonight as Geoff was crook

Tonight we started with the Basic circuit,with emphasis on pulling one arm back at the same time putting your partners leg on your shoulder, then driving the knee into their face Walking around,dropping the head to allow your partners leg out,securing Side control.Switching Base, killing the fly onto mount. A quick Bridge and roll from our Partner repeating Drill

After Basic circuit we went into Top control drill, which started in long base side control,We then went into short Base, blocking our partners hip, and cupping the opposite shoulder.We then proceeded to North South position with Long Base then Short Base, then long again.walk around to the opposite side to do the same again.Once around to the opposite side we switched Base, Grabbed the leg, killed the fly to get mount position. Dismounted etc. to go through the drill again.

point to remember:

When in long base drop the hips down

After Top control we went into figure 4’s drill

First was Fig 4 from Guard, then a quick Basic sweep onto figure 4 mount (Ganging up on one arm), then side control, then North South

point to Remember:

Fig 4 angle should Ideally be at 90 degree’s

We then quickly ran through the 4 Sweeps

Basic, hooking, back, and front

1st half : Worked through the blue belt syllabus

2nd half: Grappling

One point of the blue belt syllabus which needed to be highlighted was to do with the basic half-guard pass.

When you start to walk up your captured leg:

• make sure your other leg is out at 90 degrees to your opponent’s body

If it’s alongside their body, like in switchbase side control, you run the risk of being bridged and swept over. In switchbase side control, you usually have your other leg ready to post in the event of a bridge, but in 1/2 guard that leg is tied up.

By keeping the leg straight, you form an extension of your opponents shoulders making it very difficult/damn near impossible for them to affect your weight by bridging into you.

The focus for tonight was controlling the mount position and working some basic finishes from there. We also looked at transitioning from the mount to side-mount and back control.

Mount

Started off with one person taking mount.

• Lean your weight forward and place your hands out wide – this lessens the effect of the person underneath bridging their hips

The person underneath then bucks and bridges to destabilise the person on top. If they attempt to throw you forward (over their head):

• Lock your feet together and base out wide on either side with your hands

If they throw you to the side:

• Post with the arm on the side they’re throwing you
• Hook their neck with your other hand to slow the momentum

Arm-bar from Mount

In this scenario, we’re exploiting a natural reaction to having a hairy, smelly chest in close proximity to the face – pushing the weight off with both hands.

One person takes mount

• Lean forward and smother your opponent with your chest
• Ease the smothering a bit to enable your opponent to push your weight off, extending their arms
• Pick an arm you’d like to armbar
• Bring your arm on the same side around the top of that arm
• Bring your other arm between their arms
• Press both of your palms to their chest, letting them take your weight

Keeping your weight applied to your opponent’s chest

• Hop up to your feet – foot on the attacking side next to their ear, the other one close to the far hip
• Step over their head with the attacking side foot
• Claim their arm, either with both arms or one arm grabbing the arm, the other their near leg
• Slide down their arm to sit on the floor
• Squeeze your knees to trap their arm
• Weld their little finger to your chest, ensuring their elbow is turned the correct way
• Lie back – SLOWLY – to apply pressure to the elbow joint until they tap

Key points:

Hip penetration – get your hips as close to their shoulder as you can as you slide down the arm. This means that:

a) They have a lot more work to do to extricate their arm

b) Your hips are in an optimal position to apply pressure to the elbow joint, rather than going hell for leather to try and break their forearm.

If you don’t end up with your hips in close, keep the arm secure and just scoot your hips closer. Then lie back for the finish.

Squeeze the knees! You need to trap that arm and keep it on the correct angle to ensure the tap

Knees bent -Particularly with the knee closest to their head, you want that knee bent and the heel pulled in against their neck. This enables you to drive high with the hips if necessary to apply additional pressure to the elbow joint.

As you become more confident, you can dispense with the initial jump to the feet and just swing your legs straight round for the armbar.

NB: If you lose control and fall back prematurely, let your partner’s arm go!

Figure-Four from Mount

Once again, one person takes mount. This time your opponent knows that extending their arms is bad news, so they’re keeping their arms in tight.

• Take an upright posture
• Take your torso slightly off-centre, away from the arm you’re going to attack
• Turn your shoulders to face about 45 degrees toward the arm you’re about to attack
• Keeping your arms locked straight, grab your opponent’s wrist with both hands next to each other, palms down
• Use the weight of your body and your ‘big fat head’ to drive their arm to the mat

With the arm nearest their head:

• Keep the grip on their wrist
• Drop your elbow to the mat so your forearm is at 90 degrees to their body
• Roll the hand gripping their wrist forward a little – if necessary – to put the back of their hand flat on the mat

With your other arm:

• Reach underneath their tricep to grab your own wrist

With your ‘figure-four’ grip, you can now:

• Slide their arm down toward their feet
• ‘Paintbrush’ the back of the hand along the mat as you…
• Raise their elbow toward the ceiling for the tap

Key point:

Make sure you preserve a 90 degree angle between your opponent’s forearm and shoulder

Side-Mount to Back Control to Rear Naked Choke

In this scenario, we’ve attempted the figure four from mount, getting as far as pushing their right arm to the mat.

To defend the figure-4, the person underneath tries to turn onto their right side and grabs their right arm with their left.

So we:

• Provide the space for our partner to turn onto their side

As they turn

• Slide one knee up behind their head and bring the other heel into their stomach, foot flat on the mat
• Bring your right arm behind their head and your left arm in front of their body to control their arms
• Keep your weight quite low and your chest connected to their back

Your goal now is to get them lying on their front, so you can apply the rear naked choke

• Drive your left shoulder and chest into their left shoulder*
• Pull your left heel back toward you and drive your hips forward

* Drive at about a 45 degree angle toward their head. Pushing sideways is harder work because of the ability of their forearm to act as a frame.
The net effect of these movements is to turn your opponent so they are face down on the mat, with you on their back

In other words – Back Control

If they’re on their knees:

• Put your hooks (feet) in between their thighs
• Bring one hand under their armpit to grab their foreram
• Lever your elbow forward and drive your hips forward to flatten them to the ground

If they’re already flat on their belly, proceed with the:

Rear Naked Choke*

• Right hand slides in front of their throat – if you kept your grip from side mount this is already done
• Grab as high on your left shoulder as you can with your right hand
• Your right arm now forms a ‘V’ with their throat in the middle
• Bring the blade of your left hand behind their neck
• Squeeze your elbows together
• Drive your chest forward

Phew – Ok, some of that was hard to explain and therefore probably hard to visualise, so just ask Geoff or one of the blue belts if you need some extra pointers on any of this stuff.

*I’m fully clothed, will this still work?

Yes. The ‘naked’ refers to the fact you’re not using the gi or any other clothing to effect the choke.

Continuing on our theme of getting back to basics, tonight we covered the Guard Work Drill and the Top Control Drill. As well as working the escape to our knees from side control.

As the mat was Blue Belt free we took our time and went into quite a bit of detail on each of the first stripe drills to ensure that everyone had a good grasp of what they were trying to achieve.

Escape Side Control to our Knees: Starting stuck in side control we first make attempts to secure the underhook – With our partner on our right side our underhook would be our left hand under their right arm. – While we attempt to get the underhook at the same time we use the bucking and bridging motion to turn on our side to face our partner, effectively pre-empting the escape. Once we secure the underhook we then continue to hip out until our head ends up under our partners belly and we a lying face down in front of them. We then drive our legs into our body and get under their base.

Basic Guard Work Drill: One person in Closed guard preforms the basic guard pass, passing around to side control and looking to attack the far arm. Other partner then preforms the basic side control escape putting their partner back into their closed guard. Repeat the drill again.

Top Control Drill: One side starts on their back with the other partner securing a basic side control position -one hand blocking the hip the other hand controlling the far shoulder with a over hook, legs out straight, driving on the balls of our feet. From there we move around to top control and shift our grips slightly then move around to the other side of our partner and secure side control on the other side of their body. We then switch our base and mount- as we do for the basic circuit – we then dismount to side control and then repeat the drill again.

Rolling, grappling, little bit of sitting round talking and/or drinking water, repeat until 9.30.

First half of the class focused on drilling the blue belt syllabus.

Second half, rolling.

For the first 15 mins or so the class was split up based on experience to work on the syllabus. Blues worked with the ‘newbs’ on the Basic Circuit.

Next we covered the three basic headlock escapes

1. Headlock Escape to Back

Scenario: Your opponent has you on the ground in a headlock. They’re in switch-base side control, which means they are facing in the direction of your head.

With a right-arm head control:

• their right leg is extended in the same direction as your head
• their left leg is posting slightly behind them, foot flat, knee pointing toward the ceiling

For this first escape, your opponent has made the mistake of leaving their left leg close to your legs.

So you:

• suck your right arm close to your body, ensuring your opponent can’t grab it
• clamp their left bicep with your left hand, keeping your opponent attached to your body
• hook your left leg in front of their left thigh
• pull back with your left leg and drive forward with your hips to force them face down to the mat
• control their locking arm at the wrist with your right hand
• extricate your head and continue to control or finish

2. Headlock Escape to Knees

Scenario: Same as the example above, except this time your opponent’s legs are too far forward for you to snag.

So you:

• suck your right arm close to your body, ensuring your opponent can’t grab it
• clamp their left bicep with your left hand, keeping your opponent attached to your body
• shorten your neck, bringing your shoulders as close to your ears as humanly possible – this is to avoid cranking it as you…
• turn onto your knees
• turn your body to the left and start walking your knees in that direction, taking your opponent onto their left side
• bring your left forearm across their neck and hold your wrist with your right hand
• drive your head in the direction of their head to break their grip

3. Rolling Headlock Escape

In this scenario, your opponent now has control of your head and your right arm, negating the possibility of escaping using the previous two methods.

Also:

• their right leg is under your right shoulder, outstretched as an extension of your spine
• their headlocking arm is gripping the inside of their right knee

So you:

• grab your right wrist with your left hand
• change the angle of your head by moving your legs in toward your opponent*
• bridge your hips up
• roll to the left as your opponent’s weight shifts above your head
• if they’re still holding onto your head, break their grip as per the headlock escape to knees

*It’s important that your hips and head are offline in relation to their outstretched leg. Otherwise, this acts as an extension of your spine and it’ll be like bridging with a length of 4×2 sticking out of your collar.

Another important point:

For each of these escapes, it’s important that you pre-empt enough to turn onto your side toward your opponent as they’re grabbing your head. If you’re just lying flat on your back and they’ve grabbed your head, your neck is not going to appreciate the rest of your body trying to get to its knees. If you find yourself in this position, your first priority should be to make just enough space to shrink your neck and get onto your side.

Warm up

Arm-bar Drill

One person takes mount

• Leans forward and smothers their opponent
• Gives them enough space to encourage them to push them off with straight arms
• Arm-bar
  

Once you’ve secured the arm-bar, lie next to your partner, mount up again and repeat, this time attacking their other arm

Repeat on each side, focusing on fluidity rather than cranking the arm like there’s no tomorrow. The crank is the easy part, this drill is about building up a smooth transition from mount to arm-bar. Once you’re warmed up and comfortable with the movement, you can save your partner’s arm some grief by letting go of the arm once you’ve reached position

Q&A

We spent a bit of time highlighting some of the key points of a successful armbar and doing our best to answer some questions

Firstly some key points:

• Hip penetration : The closer you can get your hips under your opponents shoulder, the less further you have to lie back to apply pressure to the elbow joint. Space between your hips and your opponents shoulder means more work for you and more of a chance for them to regain control of their arm
• If you sit down with space, control the arm and take it back – scoot your hips in!
• Opponent’s little finger welded to the chest/thumb up to the sky
• Squeeze the knees

One question was “How do I escape from the armbar?”

The first answer, which at first glance doesn’t seem very helpful, is don’t let yourself be in a position to be arm-barred. Gee… thanks. But, what this means in practical terms is to start becoming aware of what the ‘markers’ are for an impending arm-bar.

To use an analogy, it’s as if you walk down a street every day and have the nasty habit of falling in a pothole. One option for a ‘pothole escape’ would be to grap a rung of the ladder as you’re falling down the hole. Probably the best one would be to notice the big orange road cone sitting next to it and walk around it.

So it is with arm-bars. You can escape as you realise “Shit, they’re lying back with my arm!” (the ladder-rung approach), or alternatively, being in side control and knowing that your opponent has done this 1000 times before to you, keep your arms to yourself (the road cone escape).

With that in mind, we discussed a couple of options along this continuum, from preemptive escape to worst-case scenario

Worst-case Scenario Escape

Your opponent has your right arm and is just about to lie right back and snap it off for you

• Turn your hand in the direction of your thumb (right in this case) trying to put your palm on their chest
• Bridge your hips
• Cross your right foot over your left, swivelling your hips so you turn onto your knees

Chances are you’ll end up in their guard, but that’s OK for a person that was about to be arm-barred

Almost Worst-Case Scenario Escape

Your opponent is going for an arm-bar with their left leg in front of your face and their right knee on the same side as your endangered right arm.

• Before they straighten the arm, grab hold of their left leg with both hands – for dear life!
• Walk your legs slightly off to the trapped-leg side, so you’re lying at about 45 rather than 90 degrees to your opponent
• Roll over your left shoulder
• Pass around to side-control

Slightly Better-Case Scenarios

1. As they’re stepping over to turn for the arm-bar, turn in toward them and suck your elbow to the floor.

OR

2. Knowing they need the top leg to control your neck/head, work to get that leg off your face before they establish full control. Without that control, you can turn into your opponent, either passing or ending up in their guard.

Another principle to bear in mind is that of reverse engineering. Ask the question, “What does my opponent need in place to arm-bar me?” and look at how you might take away one of those elements somewhere along the process. For example, by sucking back your elbow and turning in, you’re taking away the element of hip penetration.

Best Case Scenario

Keep your arms to yourself! (or maybe don’t turn up to class…)

Mount to Back Drill

Mount

Started off with one person taking mount. The person underneath bucks and bridges to destabilise the person on top.

If they throw you forward:

• Lock your feet together and base out wide on either side with your hands

If they throw you to the side:

• Post with the arm on the side they’re throwing you
• Hook their neck with your other hand to slow the momentum

Side-Mount

Next, we provide the space for our partner to turn onto their side. As they turn, we slide one knee up behind their head and bring the other heel into their stomach, foot flat on the mat.

Back Control

The next step is to exploit your opponent’s natural (untrained) inclination to get to their knees. Once again, give them the space to turn over onto all fours.

• Put your hooks (feet) in between their thighs
• Bring one hand under their armpit to grab their foreram
• Lever your elbow forward and drive your hips forward to flatten them to the ground

NB: In this drill, we want to give our opponent enough rope to hang themselves. That means, when you feel they want to roll – give them the space! They’re doing all the hard work for you that way.

Once you’ve flattened them to the ground, it’s can be hard to get the hands in for a choke. Again, give them the space to start lifting their head and voila, you have the space to get your arm in.

Knee Ride Drill

Worked a balance drill to get a feel for putting all your weight on the knee

One person then took knee ride and practiced keeping balance and control while the other provided a bit of movement.

To add more pressure and to wear your opponent out you can:

• Grab their gi at the elbow with your near-hand and pull it toward the ceiling
• Grab their far pants leg at the knee and do the same thing
• Drive all your weight down and through your knee by driving your hip forward, keeping a straight line from hip to knee

The next step was to step over the head with the leg closest to their head for the near arm-bar from knee-ride (Scroll down – it’s there somewhere)

The last point made was that knee-ride is a great position for providing pressure, draining the energy of your opponent and transitioning e.g. mount, knee-ride on the other side etc.

Ok that’s a book. I’m sure I’ve missed something out, but that’s the guts of it.

Good to see a decent turnout, considering we were competing with the local pyrotechnics.

Class consisted of rollin’, rollin’ and more rollin’, punctuated by explosions in the second half – and that was without Rob on the mat!