Thursday 29th November – Fundamentals
Tonight we covered three finishes from closed guard
Opening points:
For all of the following finishes, Geoff emphasised the importance of breaking down your opponent’s posture first. We covered a session on this a few weeks back, but a basic way of doing this is:
- grip your opponent’s collar deep so you control their head and neck, not just their gi
- control their sleeve on the same side as the collar grip
- pull down with your collar grip and pull in with your legs to break their posture down
Armbar from guard
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grip your opponent’s sleeve with your hand on the same side e.g. left hand grabs their right sleeve
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reach across the front of their right arm with your right hand and grip their tricep – your arm forms a kind of s-shape.
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bring your left knee up in a straight line to rest on their hip – this helps prevent them from pulling their trapped arm back
Now – pushing off your left foot, you do three things simultaneously
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sit up
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raise your right leg and cut it toward your opponent in an arc
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turn your upper body off to the right so you’re at or close to 90 degrees to your opponent*
Then:
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bring your left leg in front of your opponent’s head
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pull both your heels toward your butt, toes curled back
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raise your hips slowly to put pressure on the elbow for the tap
* Keep your hips facing up throughout the movement, from the cut through to shifting off to 90 degrees. If you turn your hips you’ll find it difficult to bring your leg over their head.
Figure four from guard
Your opponent is in your closed guard and has made the mistake of supporting their weight with their hands either side of you.
- grip their left wrist with your right hand, keeping your arm straight
- move your torso offline to the left if you have to
- roll over your arm to the right and sit up*
- reach over the behind their tricep with your left arm and grab your own wrist
- cut across their back with your right leg and turn off 90 degrees to the right
- keep their elbow welded to your chest, creating a 90 degree angle between their shoulder and forearm
- raise their wrist toward the ceiling, rotating it as far left as necessary to get the tap
* you roll over your arm rather than bracing on your elbow for two reasons:
- it puts your shoulders offline from the direction of their weight so they can’t drive you back down to the mat easily
- it takes less effort
Guillotine
- drop your feet to the mat
- sit up
- bring the back your right arm over the back of your opponent’s neck to stop them posturing up
- use your other arm to post and shift your hips back a bit to create space
- turn your elbow and reach in front of their neck with your wrist*
- grab the blade of your right hand with your left
Now:
- scoot your hips back in close
- close your legs to take guard again
- lie back and slowly raise your hands toward your chin in a straight line
