Category: Technique Discussion

Back to writing…

Oh jeez I’ve been slack on writing on this, and I know exactly why. It’s that damn Los Angeles trip hanging over me- apparently it’s been a month since I’ve gotten back, and I’ve yet to do a full write up of my travels there. And since I haven’t done that, I haven’t written any further entries. Now I’ve accepted that I’ll have to do the big write up down the line, out of chronological order, just so I can start writing about the day to day training again.

The trip does loom over me though, and permeates my current training back home. Firstly, the goddamn lasso guard. Everyone competitor under lightweight uses lasso in some form, and for 8 years I’ve ignored it. Now in training I’ve been drilling lasso and going for it as much as possible, and I’m finally seeing why everyone uses it; how it ties in to the DLR game and creates both offence and provides a strong defense. My guard retention is getting better and my fingers are getting more sore.

I’ve also been studying Keenan’s lapel guard a lot, which is another thing those Cicero Costha athletes played on me constantly and gave me absolute fits. I have been having a good bit of success using the lapel guards, especially against people who have no idea what I am doing. Guys like Clint who are now aware of the danger of giving me a lapel are giving me trouble setting up the guard though. There is a strong relation to lasso/sleeve control, lapel guard, and DLR, so it is all fitting together slowly but surely.

Finally, I’ve been trying to fit in more pure drilling with Clint and others whenever possible. I think both of us realised the value of drilling while over there; arguably moreso than rolling. Of course both are important, but we spend more time free rolling than we do drilling (our own techniques, which aren’t necessarily what is being taught).

Uncharted

I feel like big changes are going to happen in my life this year. As a man who likes his routine, the onset of change does provide a fair amount of stress and anxiety. Thank god for jiu-jitsu. The routine of commuting and training, coming home late to eat and wash…its familiar. Almost 8 years now. Its comfortable.

Discovered some videos of this guy Priit Mikhelson while browsing the BJJ Globetrotters website. Interesting guy with some very strong opinions on jiu-jitsu and coaching. I like listening to people who have views on this kind of thing, as it challenges myself to think about the way I teach my class and whether I’m doing the best I can.

Anyway, he has a one hour video on the Turtle. Some key positioning changes to make it very hard for anyone to take the back (full seatbeat, or hooks). I tried some of it out last night on the girls; it was pretty successful. I’ll try to keep that in mind if I ever turn away to escape the guard pass into the turtle. Also, its just a weird goofy position, especially combined with what Priit calls the ‘Panda Guard’. I’m gonna call it the Snorlax though!

I mapped out the gyms that I’ve visited so far in my BJJ life. It’s pretty…disappointing? Really not that many gyms in 8 years of practicing jiu-jitsu. To me it seems like I really have not gone out ‘into the world’ and connect more globally with the community. I guess again, the routine of going to my own gym is comfortable. Maybe also because I don’t compete much, so never traveled for that purpose either. I’ve never dropped into other gyms in my own city for example, other than affiliates.

  • Long term goal-fill out this map with far more pins, across many different countries.
    • I’m off to Los Angeles next week- so that will give me a few more pins!
    • I would like to get some more in SE Asia (Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam), Korea, Japan, East Coast USA, Canada, and Europe…
  • Medium term goal- visit other gyms in my own city.
  • Short term goal- continue reading Christian Graugart’s The BJJ Globetrotter

Under Pressure

This year so far has been the year of developing some good old fashioned pressure passing.

I’m not sure what exactly inspired me to focus on this at the onset; I think part of it is the amount of time I have been working on my half guard, which a position that tends to create sweeps directly into the over-under position. Another part is wanting to pass nogi without exposing my legs to the leg entanglements and footlocks. Part of it is hurting my knee and not wanting to knee slice and use my speed passing. Partly its just me wanting to be a small guy with incredible pressure, like all small black belts I have ever rolled with. Part of it is thinking about getting to that next level and what I need to improve to get there- IMO a brown belt should have that really refined and tight top game and I’m not there yet. Lastly, part of it is how I’ve been thinking more about longevity in this sport and what kind of jiu-jitsu I will be able to play when I’m 40, 50, 60 years old (I’m 29 now, which is young for a non-competitive ‘hobbyist’, but I do have 8 years of mileage on me). Probably won’t be inverting and cartwheeling over my opponents- but hopefully crushing through guards with the kind of pressure that makes your opponent relieved when you finally get into side control.

It seems like there is a bit of a renewed interest in this old-school pressure passing in terms of the instructional market; I have managed to pick up some recently released material such as Marco Barbosa- Pressure Passing, and refer back to my usual resources (Ryan Hall, Rob Biernacki) for their insight into this as well. (BTW I heard a story on Reddit that Ryan Hall has unbelievably heavy and painful pressure for a guy his size). There’s some great stuff on youtube, such as BJJ Scout’s Murilo Santana, Demien Maia, and Miyao studies. Gordon Ryan’s just released his new guard passing instructional where he has encompassed pressure passing (he calls it ‘tight passing’) into his system, alongside “loose” and “submission” passing. Fabio Gurgel’s just released one with Stephen Kesting too, which seems targeted towards older hobbyists as a sustainable and realistic approach to guard passing.

In terms of success, I would definitely say my pressure passing and even the holding of dominant top positions has considerably improved. Over under has become my go-to pass, and I have built some basic combinations from it, depending on my opponent’s reactions. I feel more aware of my balance; having to usually maintain a tripod-like posture, and I think I’m getting swept less. I’ve become aware of the power of jamming my opponent’s hips and keeping them flat on the mat, and the usefulness and psychological blow of a brutal cross-face. I’m using my head more, literally- as a fifth post, usually driving up under my opponent’s jaw (the “pez dispenser”). I am definitely passing more guards.

From all this, what i really want to do is up my submission rate from top positions, especially side control. In nogi I am focusing on the arm triangle and the the armbar, and in gi I am working on lapel chokes. I’d also like to get a tap solely from my pressure, from a bigger opponent. >:)

Arm triangles!

Working on my arm triangle lately. I think its a submission i have a pretty good mechanical understand of; just need to develop some reliable setups. I’m working on one from 3/4 mount, courtesy of Seph Smith. Watching Ryan Hall’s Arm Triangles set has been really eye-opening as well. The nogi Ezekiel choke is a great little counter against the arm triangle escape. Everyone I have put it on so far has commented on how nasty it feels-they tap instantly- so I might have to refine it a bit to make it more of a clean blood choke. Thanks to this set I’ve finally learned how to put on Darce that properly chokes both sides of the neck, as opposed to cranking hard on one side.

Pressure passing was going well last night. The tripod posture has been really effective, focusing hard on shutting down the hips. I watched the BJJ Scout Murilo Santana breakdown video, and noticed the way he postures is the same way I have been doing it!

I was able to stay safe and pass against a dangerous spider/lasso guard by really focusing on my balance and stability, and being relentless with occupying space, dropping to both knees at times when I felt a DLR hook oncoming, resisting the urge to engage in a standing pass battle which I felt was where my opponent was trying to draw me into.

One new thing I faced last night was the half butterfly; it was shutting down my pressure and I was getting elevated. I was eventually able to figure out how to kill it, by pressuring and also ‘floating’ towards the hook side leg and flattening it, which put me in 3/4 mount.

Prof. Luciano also showed me a real easy/sneaky lapel choke from side control (after he hit me with it of course). Kind of a reverse grip baseball/brabo choke , with the opponent’s lapel under their armpit. Stoked about this; as I now have this choke with their lapel, plus the good old Jacare choke with my own lapel. 2 gi chokes from side control is all I need.

Finally, it was good to see some really old faces in class, one guy Stu I
probably haven’t seen since 2012. My man Ricky is back too (we started BJJ on the same night!), White Mike… guys from the old days when the gym was in some run-down building on Quay Street.

First week back

The tweaked knee has changed the way I’ve been rolling last week. Still wearing a knee brace, though the physio reckons it’s mostly a placebo/confidence-booster at this point. Basically, total flexion is not good for it right now, and neither is any lateral stress. That means basically for the left leg:

  1. no DLR and RDLR hooks
  2. no butterfly hook, no crab riding (inverted butterfly)
  3. no omoplata/triangles
  4. no top armbar with the leg tucked in by the armpit
  5. no closed guard
  6. no sitting inside closed guard
  7. no knee sliding to the right (how i hurt it in the first place)
  8. no 50/50
  9. no leg lock turning escapes
  10. no guard retention via leg pummelling

This has been quite the difference- as Pedro commentated, my guard game is heavily dependent on being able to pummel my legs. Luckily, I’ve been working on my half guard for a few months now, which I can continue to use. Right now, I’m trying to utilise the ‘shell’ variation of half guard where the bottom leg knee is at a 45 degree angle, blocking the hip. What’s nice about this is that it slows down or even shuts down the opponent’s ability to immediately stand up to initiate a standing pass.

On top, I’m working hard being tight with my pressure and going primarily for the over/under pass. Once I pass, I’m working on either getting the armbar on the far arm (which I never used to get, until I saw some great details from Demian Maia’s video), or if I’ve gone from over/under to the 3/4 mount, finishing the pass into the mount using the tripod movements (again, Demian Maia stuff!) and working on isolating the arm for a arm triangle, armbar, or back take.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to my 2 readers. I think I’ll be making the blog public soon.

The last few weeks of December was supposed to be a week of no work and more training. I had plans to attend a Sunday charity marathon roll and then fly back to Christchurch to spend time with my parents and drop in at the local gym for a week.

Unfortunately things didn’t quite work out as planned. The charity roll itself was great; the mats were more packed than ever before as people from many of our affiliates, even other gyms, came together to roll and donate to a good cause in the wake of a recent suicide of a young woman within the local jiu-jitsu community. I had the chance to meet some new people and enjoyed some good rolls, although I’d say the mats were a bit too packed.

However in one of my rolls I went for a knee slice and felt my left knee pop. There wasn’t immediate pain, but soon enough it started. Soon I had to sit down mat side, and after the event wound down and people went off to the nearby cafe for a bite, I felt the pain come on as I walked. On the bright side, the cafe serves a good coffee, and it was nice to catch up with Hux who had moved to Australia a couple of years ago and was in town for a couple of days.

Since then I’d been on the couch smashing Red Dead Redemption 2 and Final Fantasy XII: Zodiac Age till I went off to Christchurch, where I spent more time couching and eating food while my gi (packed just in case) sat unused.

I have been trying to watch jiu-jitsu instructional though, and have a renewed appreciate for Ryan Hall’s Deep Half Guard set, which I think I have had since early blue belt. There’s a lot of stuff, particularly in disc 1 that I glossed over earlier in my journey, that now makes a lot more sense conceptually. His approach to half guard is interesting and definitely a little different from Lachlan’s, though the structure of the half shield is pretty similar. one thing I’ve picked up that Ryan, as well as Seph Smith (no surprise as he’s one of Ryan’s black belts) and Rob Biernacki do is use the bottom knee as a frame as well. I have kinda short legs so I haven’t naturally done this, and I’m not sure I can, but definitely something to keep in mind.

Anyway, as of a few days ago I’ve managed to pick up my yearly throat infection. However, good news on the knee- not a tear, diagnosed as pinching of the tissue in the knee around the patella and meniscus. Once I’m no longer sick, I’ll ease back into some training, using pain/discomfort as a guide.

More half guard reflections

But first, a whinge. 

I am really not enjoying gi training at the moment. It’s probably all the half guard work I’ve been practicing; it’s much harder to play half in gi with people grabbing and holding everywhere to stop you from getting the underhook. My right index finger has been constantly aching for about a month now ever since a white belt landed on my hand, so gi gripping is not too fun in any case. 

Anyways, I haven’t been watching as much of the Lachlan Giles set as I’d like to. Just haven’t had the time, which is really just me being too addicted to Red Read Redemption 2 like the sack of shit I am. 

The biggest problem I’m having lately half guard is spending enough time in half guard. There’s quite a few rolling partners who just refuse to engage in it which is forcing me to think of new baits. I’m getting a bit of snagging half guard from turtle as a result. Probably not a good strategy to give up the guard to turtle up, but I just need more time in half! Worst of all are those that double pull guard on me, argh! 

I’m starting to make better connections/transitions between half guard, RDLR, and X guard now, which is of course based on both my own prefernce for RDLR and Lachlan’s instructional. Goal is to develop a good system here. I’m thinking the main components will be:

  1. Underhook based half guard game against low passers- getting underneath and coming up to the dogfight or going further down into deep half 
  2. RDLR against standing passers/knee slicers- RDLR sweeps and saddle entries, or use it defensively to force them to come back down into my half guard
  3. X guard into sweeps or leg entanglements if they stand from half and I can grab under the outside leg

Nogi tonight, will see how how much of the above I can pull off! 

A game-changing detail

Sometimes in jiu jitsu, you just get shown a little something that resonates with you and makes sense so quickly that you’re convinced you’ll remember and use it for the rest of your life. Today I had one of those days. 

Today was Saturday comp training. Quite happy with how the rolls went in terms of my half guard. Hit a lot of the basic half guard sweeps from the underhook, the Jedi Mind Trick against the backstep, got out of some bad situations using deep half, hit some transitions into leg entanglements, and managed to escape a Darce choke. 

However, I was caught in a high elbow guillotine from half top; this was despite me coming up top and getting past the legs into top side. Usually I am able to get out at this point, but clearly against a good high elbow it was not safe. 

After rolling coach asked if anyone had questions, so I used the opportunity to ask about escaping this, feeling that what I did above was not the best option. I was shown a nifty, safer option that involves flopping sideways towards the choking arm and hip heisting to the top. Very similar to the escape Conor McGregor did against Chad Mendes. What made this memorable to me was a really nice detail by my coach involving framing the hips with my arms, which keeps you safe from the guillotine pressure throughout. 

I finished training feeling stoked. I had learned a solution to a very dangerous problem in my half guard game, and was given some unique details to make it even more effective. Its these kind of small details that are the real game changers.  The kind of subtle adjustment to a technique that you just remember apply for the rest of your jiu jitsu life.

I hope in a couple of years I can pass on things like this to the next generation and give them little jiu jitsu epiphanies too. 

I Bought Lachlan Giles’ Half Guard Anthology instructional

quest for half guard proficiency continues…

Black Friday has come and gone; I took advantage of a 40% off deal to get a copy of Lachlan Giles’ Half Guard Anthology video set. With almost 11 hours of half guard content, at US$46 it was a steal. Plus, having visited his gym recently and already being a fan of his youtube channel, I knew he was a fantastic instructor and that I would get more than my money’s worth. 

There’s actually 8 Parts!!! 

My plan is to follow Lachlan’s advice on how to use the instructional- focus on a few things at a time, try them out in sparring, and then if something isn’t working to consult the ‘troubleshooting’ sections on the dvds (which ALL instructionals should have, and the fact that most don’t is why a lot of instructionals are very limited in their applicability).

You can definitely tell Lachlan has put a lot of thought into how he wanted to structure and present the material. A great mix of concepts, techniques, applications (rolling footage of the techniques), and troubleshooting (addressing what-ifs) so far. So far, having only watched up to disc 3 of 8, I have learned some great details already. 

Last night’s nogi sparring was the first time attempting to put theory into practice.  There were a couple of things I wanted to try out and planned ahead of time to go for, but also i there were spontaneous moments where I recalled a technique and just went for it on the spot. 

Theory into practice: Day 1 

Below is based on two rolls I had: a high level purple belt, and a blue belt getting his purple this weekend. Both are well aware I am focusing on my half guard.  

  • Overall half guard positioning- Lachlan favours a high knee shield against the same side shoulder (as opposed to the Z guard across the hip), and using the elbow glued to the inside of the knee to reinforce the shield and prevent the shield from being squashed. Aha! I did not get leg weaved that night!  
  • Pulling half guard against kneeling opponent- Lachlan advises to get the upper body frames first, then worry about getting the legs in.  Most half guard acolytes tend to dive in legs first, which can be exploited by a good passer. Again, a very simple and easy to apply idea that has an immediate positive effect. 
  • Aggressively coming up with the frame on the throat. This has been a great answer for the more patient top players who refuse to pressure down into my half and instead maintain a strong straight posture until they are ready to stand up completely and initiate knee slices. From here, Lachlan shows a great option of sliding the bottom foot deep and bumping them over into a leg entanglement, which I managed to hit on both my training partners! (no finish tho as my leglock game is trash)
  • The Choibar. This was surprising. Upon watching this technique I had doubts I could ever do this,  but I saw the moment mid-roll and was able to escape a crossfaced bottom position using this grip. Had to fight to get the leg across the other side of the head. Was not able to extend the arm for the armbar, but definitely a good tool to create space. 

not so much a ‘review’ but…

As I’ve barely scratched the surface of the series and probably will be going through it quite slowly, I’m hesitant to attempt a traditional review of the instructional. Besides, what’s the point in powering through 11 hours of video for the sake of a review?  

Rather,  I think it might be interesting to continuously blog about my experiences in attempting to use the knowledge from this series in my own training. Hopefully this will give an organic, longer-term view of how effective the material is, which at the end of the day, is why you watch an instructional right? 

Half guardian

Honestly I think a lot of us in the intermediate and higher level would significantly accelerate the improvement of our jiu jitsu if we just ditched the usual class structure and just picked what we wanted to work on and did rounds of positional sparring from there, mixed in with troubleshooting discussions in between. In other words, trial and error and problem-solving.

Good, focused, worthwhile rolls tonight. Was able to force everyone I rolled with into my half guard which is in itself a victory as a lot of people tend to stand and pass, x passes and knee slides being most common. By using the shin to shin and outside knee torque I was able to get people to sit back down when they attempted to stand.

Tonight I was able a couple of times to get the underhook and shoot under deep… before class I watched a great technique of half guard master Jake Mackenzie where he shoots deep half and comes back up to secure a knee torque underhook half. I was able to implement this back and forth idea when I felt in danger of guillotines (in normal half) or kimuras (while deep half). This creates a lot of instability to my opponents’ base. Plus I didn’t get guillotined once tonight which is a huge improvement from last week!

I also managed to get out of a deeeeep darce today (off my quarter guard dogfight counter against a knee slice) using the principles of this video to force my opponent to change to a bottom side darce, where I worked to get my trapped arm below on the mat. Really stoked about this!

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