my thoughts, musings, rants and discoveries . . .

A while back I learned a double threat attack from side control. This consisted of a kimura and arm bar combination that attacks the far side arm. I pretty much forgot how to do it and then we went over it again in class on Wednesday.

Let’s suppose we’ve got our opponent in standard side control as opposed to something like Kesa Gatame. If we start to wrap the neck or attack the far side arm, there’s a good chance our opponent will take his far side arm and reach up across your back. If he does this, it will leave a great opportunity for us to attack with a double threat.

The first thing is to trap the far side arm with our arm closest to our opponent’s head. We can help secure the arm by grabbing our lapel. Make sure the arm is nice and secure and that you’re below the elbow so he can’t simply slide it out.

Once we’ve got the arm secure, we want to pull him onto his side slightly. We can help accomplish this by switching our hips to more of a Kesa position. So rather than being on our knees, we’re gonna sit out. This hip switch will help to prop our opponent up further.

Once we’ve got him propped up, we’re going to step over his head with our near leg. We want to keep all of our movements nice and tight to avoid creating space.

Now we want to place our free hand on the ground to help our base as we turn our body towards the feet. We want to drive our opponent’s trapped arm down in front of us so we can then grab the wrist with our free hand and then take our hand that is attached to our lapel and grab our other wrist for the kimura lock.

Now we’re in position to attack with either the kimura or with the arm bar.

1. To finish with the kimura, we’re gonna want to keep our opponent propped on his side, but we’re gonna reposition our legs for better leverage.

   The leg that is on the same side as our own body is going to step into his arm pit area to help keep his free arm from pulling into his side where he’ll have more strength to resist our attack. And with the leg that previously stepped over his head, we’re going position it closer to his back as a form of kickstand.

   We should have our opponent nice and tight now between our legs so he can’t turn either way. And we’re gonna weight him down as well to add further pressure.

   Now we’re going to take up the slack in his arm by pulling the bent arm down and into us. The pressure will come from rotating his hand away from us.

2. Finishing with the arm bar is a little bit smoother once we have stepped over our opponent’s head.

   From there, we’ve got our opponent turned up on his side. We’ve got our head-side leg stepped over and placing pressure on his head. And we should basically be sitting on him at this point.

   Now we want to basically pivot our body to finish the arm bar. But we don’t want to create space for him to turn into us. So we’re basically gonna pivot on our butt so that we can simply slide down his back. If we need to, we can turn him on his side more so that we’re really tight when we slide down.

   Our one leg should naturally be across his head. But the leg we previously used to step over his head with could block us from finishing things. We don’t really want to step over his head to get into position. Instead, by moving our foot closer to his body, we should be able to sit and keep our knee up. The closer our foot is to his body, the easier it will be to sit without trapping our own foot under us and the tighter our two knees will be around the arm for a really solid arm bar.

While the arm bar is the easier of the two to finish, the reason for using the double threat is to give us options and to keep our opponent guessing.

So with a long flight to the east coast, I’ve had much time to contemplate things that have been marginally working and somewhat broken in my BJJ game. One of the areas that has frustrated me is my half guard game. Sometimes I nail things and sometimes I get clobbered.

1. I suppose the first thing to work on is also the one of the easiest things to fix. And that’s flattening the guy out. If my opponent is on his side, even the tiniest bit, it’s going to make my ability to pass his guard more difficult and it may leave me more susceptible to a sweep, which has indeed been happening lately.So, I want to circle my feet and walk my opponent flat. From there, I have a number of different passes I can try, along with several submissions.
2. I have been struggling lately to see who will actually get the under hook first. And I shouldn’t even worry about that. If my opponent happens to reach over my shoulder and across my my back, then I will naturally have an under hook. So why worry about it?Just grab the gi at the shoulder and lock him down as I tripod up to free my knee past his half guard. I might have to block his bottom leg a little, but I shouldn’t need to really push much. Once I free my knee, drive it to the mat and complete the pass into side control or into mount.

   *added 7/1/10* One other key to this is going to be keeping shoulder pressure on him.  Since my arm is pretty much under hooking him and acting as a bit of an ancho, I will shift my weight over to the other side of him. This should help keep him from rolling into me or away from me.

3. Bear in mind that it’s my under hook that’s going to keep him from taking my back. So if I can get it and go for a pass, that’s great. If I cannot get the under hook, then I’m going to have to switch my stance. And this leads me to my next experiment where I have had mixed results.
4. Rather than simply going for the inverted half guard, if I find myself unable to easily get the under hook, I should sweep my torso across his body and face his legs. Then drive my arm to the mat as soon as I can to block his hips. The whole time, I should make myself heavy on him. But I really don’t want him to hip out at this time.Once my arm is on the mat and against his hips, I have an advantage and can simply drive my elbow backwards. If I want, I can even press my other hand on his hip and try to free my knee while driving my other elbow back. This is going to be very difficult for my opponent to fight my elbow with his arm. He’s either going to give up the half guard, in which case I’ll take the mount. Or he’s going to let me drive it all the way back.Assuming I get his arm all the way back, I know how to get into the arm triangle from that position.

   *added 7/1/10* If my opponent  does happen to go for the under hook when we first engage, and keeps it after being flattened out, try to trap it when I go for the wrap. Obviously, an exposed arm is going to be something we’re always on the lookout for. But how do you attack it from such a position? If I can wrap the arm and go under it at the elbow, then perhaps I can grab my opposite lapel. This will afford me an excellent opportunity for the straight arm bar.*added 7/4/10* Getting the straight arm bar was a bit more difficult than I imagined

5. If I don’t want to try for the submission from this position, I can simply go for the pass. Don’t worry about his top leg. I simply need to block his bottom leg to free mine and get the pass. I can use my hand to start things off. But I can also drive my knee in to make things that much more difficult on him.

I am sure I will be adding to this list a lot over the next few months. But for now, these are the simple elements I wish to try to incorporate into my routine and be aware of when I am on the top of my opponent’s half guard.

So, yesterday we learned a new arm bar from the open guard or, in my case, the butterfly guard. In this case, I am sitting up with my opponent in my butterfly guard when he reaches in for an under hook. I go ahead and let him get it, as opposed to fighting him. But then I trap his arm in my arm pit while grabbing behind his elbow.

As I’m trapping the arm, I’m also adjusting my feet so that one goes on the hip. The goal is to fully isolate the arm by pinching it between my knees.

Assuming all goes well, I should have the arm trapped, unable to rotate and with good pressure on the back of the elbow. As I then lift my hips, the pressure should be enough to get the tap.

I’ve done other arm bars from the butterfly guard. But this one is considerably easier to isolate and get.

Overall, yesterday was a really tough day to train. Being sick for the past week has made me quite weak and I found myself light headed as well as somewhat sick to my stomach. I had to take things slower than usual and keep it rather than light. And I wasn’t up to any free rolling after class.

We did work on some up, down and out drills from the mount, which kinda stunk simply because I was hoping to work on my guard techniques. Oh well, it was good to work on some other techniques, nonetheless.

Through the training, there were some good exchanges. This is one of those positions where I would much rather be on the bottom of mount than to actually have it. That’s simply because I’m still not very good at keeping the dominant position.

One of the guys I rolled with is considerably taller than me. He’s the same rank as me and he started on top. He did some good things by threatening with the collar choke. I simply formed a frame at the hip to keep him from advancing into high mount. It worked quite well on him and then I simply used my elbow escape to get him in my closed guard. I did this to a couple of other opponents during class. It’s very basic, but still effective.

One of the other things I tried was when my opponent postured up, even the least bit. I simply sat up and to the side of him and grabbed the pant at the knee. With my body up and the knee trapped, I was able to reverse my opponent so that I was in the top position of his closed guard. From there I could simple pass his guard.

I did went 3 for 3 with this move. My last two tries, I managed to get the guard pass fairly early as part of the reversal.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was told this was a risky move. And I can certainly see how missing the knee, or letting it escape, could definitely lead to trouble. But it’s so quick to execute and it leaves the opponent wondering what’s happening. It’s just another tool. My preference is to still establish my guard.

So, from the bottom of mount, I think my preferences are as follows:

1. Elbow escape
2. Sit up and trap knee
3. Heel drag
4. Hip slide
5. Upa or bump and roll

We also did some refresher drills from the bottom of side head lock. These included the pendulum, going over the back and rolling the opponent backward.

Once we reversed our opponent, we also worked on some arm bar executions.