Grappling Tips Newsletter

Jason Scully (in the green shirt) is our guest contributor today. He is a teacher and competitor with 12 years of grappling experience. He owns Jersey Shore Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Mixed Martial Arts and also operates The Grapplers Guide Forum. He is currently a BJJ purple belt under Kurt Pellegrino

These are very important aspects of the closed guard to remember and practice. These tips are especially helpful with no-gi.

1. Don't give him space. When having your opponent in closed guard you don't want to give him any space. Space for him means more opportunities to work a pass.
2. Don't let him posture. When he has his posture he is able to get his elbows in and head up to work out of your guard.
3. You want to get control of your opponent's hips, head, and upper body.
4. Climb your legs high up on your opponent's waist, closer to his upper back. When they are higher up it is much harder for him to sit back and get his elbows in. You also have your hips off the ground, which allows for better movement on the bottom.
5. Knock his hands off your body. When he has his hand flat on your body he has the opportunity to push off of you. As emphasized before, if your legs are higher up his waist/closer to his upper back it is much harder for him to push on your body and regain his posture.
6. Pull him in with your legs. Do not rely on using just your hands to pull your opponent in close to you. It will not work. Your hands against his whole body are not an even battle. You want to close your legs tightly around your opponent and bring your knees into you: this will cause your opponent to lunge forward.
7. Control his head. This is a really important point. Where the head goes the body follows, so you want to try to control your opponent's head most of the time, at least until you have moved onto something better. If you have ever experienced someone constantly pulling down on your head while you were in their guard, you would probably agree that it is very frustrating. Also when you pull down on their head you want to pull down on the upper back of their head because that is where you get the most leverage. It is much harder to pull down on your opponent's head once you get closer to his neck area. Don't control directly on the neck.
8. Try to control his arms/shoulders. Immediately after controlling your opponent's head and bringing him close to you you want to get control of at least one of his shoulders or arms. This gives you a lot of control. You can either overhook one if his arms or underhook one of his arms, but always remember to keep control of his head.
9. After you gain control of your opponent you want to start moving your hips out so you can start working some attacks. Most attacks are going to come from the side or with your hips out, so you need to be a step ahead of your opponent and start moving your hips out right away. Many people make the mistake of not angling out while having a closed guard, but it is very possible to have tight control with a closed guard and work angles at the same time.
10. You want to stay tight at the same time as making your movements. An example of this would be placing one of your feet on the ground to aid in scooting your hips out, but retaining control of your opponent's head and shoulder/arm as you do it so he can't sit up. Once you get your hips out you want to immediately get your legs tight around your opponent's body again. Think of yourself as a Boa Constrictor, always on the move but staying tight at the same time.
11. If you feel you can't stop your opponent from getting his posture and opening your legs. then you need to open your leg voluntarily before he forces you to do it. Remember you want to always be a step ahead. If he forces your legs open, he will have the upper hand and will most likely be able to control your legs and hips. Always be ready to react and go into a position if you feel your opponent is going to open your legs.
12. When he sits back, try to sit up with him. Remember you always want to be tight. When he goes to push you back, lots of times he will open up an opportunity to gain control.
13. Always practice regaining guard control. During your practice sessions allow your partners open your guard and work passes. Then fight your way back into guard. To do this always practice your hip escapes (shrimps), this is a really important fundamental movement that is used in a ton of techniques involved in grappling. Also do not let your opponent get control of your legs above your knees, close to your waist. You are in a bad spot if your opponent gains control of your legs close to your hips, or even worse gains control of your hips all together.
14. It's in your hips. Remember a lot of the grappling game, especially on the bottom, is in the hips.
15. Always practice your backward rolls. These are very important in getting back to your knees if your opponent stacks you up and there is no way for you to stop him from passing your guard. If you can roll back to your knees, you're in a much better position. Also work on getting back to your knees during your grappling sessions so you can increase your reaction time.
16. Always practice your shoulder bridges. These are very important should your opponent pass your guard and you need to escape or prevent the pin. You can develop the right mechanics and reaction time to bridge into your opponent and back on your knees, or make at least enough space too scoot back into guard.
    

Finally remember that the closed guard can be a great tool and many attacks and advantages can come from it. Remember to work with it. Too many people use the closed guard to just hold their opponent and stall.

Thanks for reading!
Jason Scully
www.GrapplersGuide.com

Labels: the guard

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A reader asked:

Q: "How do I escape the Rear Naked Choke - I've tried all sorts of things and they don't seem to work"

A: The Rear Naked Choke (or RNC) is one of the top finishers in submission grappling and MMA. Once applied, the odds of an equally skilled grappler getting out of it successfully are very small, probably 5 to 10%. You have two general options: 1) Prevent it from being applied, and/or 2) Escaping it once it is applied.

PREVENTION: Preventing the RNC from getting sunk is much, much, much better than trying to escape it once it's applied. The best way to prevent it from being applied is first to understand how to apply it yourself. I have previously developed and shared a 'roadmap' for applying the RNC. This is relevant to the discussion because if you understand how to apply a submission you can also reverse engineer a defense for it.

In the aforementioned video I break down the choke into a series of steps. Accordingly, if you can block one or more of those steps then you're well on the way to preventing the RNC from being applied to you. For example, you can put roadblocks in his roadmap by

1. grip fighting to prevent your opponent from initially linking his hands
2. rolling your body towards the underhook side
3. preventing him from getting his underhooking arm out
4. not allowing him to tighten the choking arm around your neck
5. anticipating his attempts to strip your grip and trying to prevent it
6. etc.
   

ESCAPE: Escaping a full-on RNC is very difficult: even with lots of technique neck strength, determination and pain tolerance escape is usually impossible! There are a few things you can try, however, just make sure your opponent will release you if you pass out in the process!

1. Keep your chin down. If you keep your chin glued to your chest you block the path of his forearm to your neck. It IS possible to choke someone unconscious by choking them on their jaw/chin area - the jaw gets pulled into the throat - but it's a relatively slow process and it may afford you some time to escape
2. Relax and breath shallowly. Relaxing is going to be tough but you have to do it. If you panic you are going to use up your oxygen that much faster. Generally speaking you want to avoid large exhalations because this causes your neck and upper chest to relax slightly, giving them more room to sink their choke.
3. Look to leglock. If your opponent has the RNC fully sunk with his ankles crossed you can apply a leglock by crossing your legs over his. Now it is a 50/50 proposition: maybe you're going to pass out from the choke and maybe he's going to tap from the ankle lock. Sometimes you can even use various escaping hip movements to sucker your opponent into crossing his ankles to control you better.
4. Remove the spearhand. In the RNC one arm goes around the neck and the other arm, the one with the hand behind the head, plays a critical role in locking everything in place. If you can, reach up over your head and pull that hand forward off of your head. Now tuck that arm somewhere safe (like back) under your armpit and then use both hands to try and remove the arm around your neck. Incidentally it is a lot harder to remove the first hand if he has the BACK of his hand against your neck, in the video I refer to this position as the 'spearhand'.
5. Suffer. One last ditch strategy that sometimes works IF you've kept your chin down is to push his choking arm up, over your face. Take a look at the photo at the top of this article: if the guy being choked had his chin down then he could try pushing his opponent's right elbow up towards the top of his head, using both hands to push if necessary. This isn't a high percentage technique, but it works often enough for me to mention it here. Be forewarned that even if you do it perfectly you build a lot of character as his bony forearm slides over your mouth, nose and face.
   

Labels: chokes

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I think that grappling drills can serve an important function. Not everybody agrees with me about this: some people think that movement repetition outside the context of a resisting opponent is 'dead' training and a waste of time and energy. Sparring, they say, is a far better way to develop the movements and attributes so essential for grappling.

Of course I believe in sparring. Of course I also believe in sparring exercises where your partner/opponent only gives you certain specific sorts of pressure or resistance. Of course I don't think that all your training should be devoted just to grappling drills. Drilling definitely has their place in my world though, because the correct drill introduced at the correct time can have dramatic results. Sometimes isolating a movement in a drill for just a few minutes is all a person needs to make a major breakthrough.

In a sport that is evolving as fast as ours there is no way that anyone can have the last comprehensive word on drills. Even though I have put out a well-reviewed video on the topic other people have developed or collected other useful drills too. Here are some of the better grappling drill video clips I found online:

Gracie Barra BJJ Drills: not much explanation is given (or needed) in this fast paced collection of movement drills.

Punching Bag Drills: How to use a horizontal punching bag to train transitions between different top positions.

Wall Drill: De la Riva is speaking Portugese while explaining how move his hips, but it's easy to understand what he's trying to convey.

Various Exercises from a DVD called 'Grappling Drills' by some guy called Stephan Kesting

1. Basic backwards shrimping
   
2. Half wall spins
   
3. Kneemount spin armbar
   
4. Turtle flips
   

Stability Ball Movement Drilling by Renato Tavares

Stability Ball Drilling by Hywel Teague,

Spinning BJJ Drill: using a partner to develop transitions between different open guard positions

Various Drill Videos on the site www.lockflow.com

No-Gi BJJ Drills: two grapplers work on a variety of submission and movement drills without the gi.

Guard Pass Drill: this one develops both standing guard pass and the hip, leg and arm motion required to put your opponent back into the guard.

Andre Galvao discusses how he trains movement and coordination (which looks a lot like Ginastica Natural).

Submission Training Drills from www.subfighter.com

Have fun watching this material and training it too!

Labels: training

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