10/01/2016 - Open Mat | Shoulder Clamp

Class #689
Artemis BJJ (MYGYM Bristol), Open Mat, Bristol, UK - 10/01/2016

There was an injection of impressive stamina today, thanks to Steve's niece from Australia. I don't think she stopped running around the mats all lesson: wish I could keep up that kind of pace for two hours! ;)

I was mostly helping people out with some pointers today, running through things like the triangle, the pressing armbar and omoplata we did earlier in the week and the windscreen wiper sweep. I did get in some fun sparring later, with Milka (which is cool, she doesn't make it down too often to the open mat). I've said it many times, but I must get in more sparring. I need to get back into the habit of just grabbing people when the round timer beeps, that's a good way to make sure I get at least a few rolls each open mat. Tuesdays have been good for specifics too, thanks to Mike and Simon regularly making it down.

Tracey (another awesome Tuesday regular) also helped me out by drilling some shoulder clamp details with me. I've been wondering if that tip from Carlos Machado about the forearm clasp could help. It seems to work really well on the butterfly sweep (unsurprising, given that's the context he shows it on his DVD), so I thought I'd try it from closed guard too. I'm not sure it is quite as effective, but a habit I want to get into. More important is pushing their head away and down, before they manage to square up and start pulling away. Perhaps rolling their elbow up too, because they need it down to pull the arm out properly?

Another problem I have from closed guard is controlling the basing arm when going for a sweep. Just grabbing the sleeve and pulling doesn't seem to work too well for me, so I tested out using the shoulder clamp. That probably isn't going to work all that well either for the sweeps I was looking at, due to my body ending up in the wrong place. Trapping their arm against my body could work though, if I can establish a tighter grip. Needs to be very tight to stop them pulling their arm out: if I can get my chest behind their shoulder that should do it, but I might then be too far over to get underneath them for the sweep. As ever, more specific sparring with help with that, especially if I can do it at open mat and focus in on the problem areas. :)