24/08/2015 - Teaching | Half Guard | Lapel Trap Americana

Teaching #377
Artemis BJJ (MYGYM Bristol), Can Sönmez, Bristol, UK - 24/08/2015

From the top of half guard, there's a cool attack sequence I learned from Jason Scully's Grapplers Guide. Establish a strong cross face and solidify your base. When you're feeling secure, yank out their far lapel, getting as much material as you can. Pull that over their far arm, trapping their wrist to their shoulder. Feed the lapel to your cross-facing hand, gripping as near their wrist as you can. Use your head to press their arm to the floor.

From here, you can continue to twist on their lapel, going for the submission. If you need extra leverage, switch the lapel back to your other hand and continue rotating. If that's still not enough leverage, you can always transition into a standard americana. Your head control on their wrist should help you set up the typical grips on the wrist and finish the lock as normal. If you keep their wrist trapped with the lapel, you can do the normal americana, but with the added bonus that they can't unbend their arm due to the lapel.
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Teaching Notes: I think this technique isn't overly complicated, but today reminded me that's only if you're already familiar with the americana. Most of the problems I was helping people with during drilling related to a standard americana, not the lapel grips or anything like that. Which makes me wonder if it is worth going through the normal americana from a half guard position, as some didn't know it?

The main problem was the same as usual, with people focusing too much on lifting the elbow rather than pushing the knuckles back like a paintbrush. I will be going through it during side control month, as I almost always do for side control month, but then if somebody missed that because they start after it, potential issues. Then again, that's not going to be a huge number of people and I can always add a quick amerciana basics section for when I next teach them. Or even take the new people aside and show them an americana?

Either way, this should flow nicely into side control month next week, as you can do much the same thing with the lapel off my favoured gi tail choke, when they try to block the lapel with their arm.