13/01/2016 - Teaching | Women's Class | Standing Break

Teaching #448
Artemis BJJ (MYGYM Bristol), Can Sönmez, Bristol, UK - 13/01/2016

For the standing guard break, start by shoving their sleeve/wrist into their belt knot/belly button. With your other hand, push into their sternum (as always, be aware this is just one option, there are many other ways of standing in the closed guard). Either way, be careful you aren't tempted to lean forward, or they can grab you and break your posture, preventing your stand. Keep your posture upright and head up.

Swing to your non-sleeve grabbing side, then raise your knee on the sleeve grabbing side, stepping forward with that foot. Once it is up, turn your leg into them, pressing into their hip. That should hopefully provide you with some base, meaning that as you step up the other leg, you can keep it further back, so you have a staggered stance. Standing up with your feet in line makes you very vulnerable to sweeps. You also want a slight bend in your leg, in what Jason Scully calls an 'athletic stance'. That helps your base and also aids mobility.

As you stand, pull up on their sleeve/wrist (if you've lost it, grab their collar, if they are wearing a gi). Make sure you keep your elbow inside their knee: that both makes it harder for them to pull their arm back, as well as protecting you from omoplata attacks and the like. You then want to push their knee off your hip on the other side, stepping back with your leg on the non-sleeve/wrist gripping side to help.

If you're having trouble getting that knee off, try bouncing your hips to open their ankles, like you were struggling to take off a tight pair of jeans. At the same time, splay your hand by the knee you want to shove (Roger Gracie calls this 'making his hand big') in order to help push down. Immediately as their leg hits the mat, you can move into your pass.
________________

Teaching Notes: Main thing I want to emphasise next time is posture. A common mistake (I've done this myself plenty of times) is to put too much weight through your forward arm as you stand, leaving your posture bent over and easy to break. Instead, it's better to push off your feet rather than their chest, but I can understand the instinct to push on the chest. I need to highlight that the reason you have the hand there is to stop them sitting up, not to help you stand.

I went with the knee cut pass initially, but that didn't combine as well as I'd thought with the standing break. Weirdly that wasn't because there's anything wrong with the technique (it's my favourite pass), but simply because I'm not used to knee cutting on that side. Next time I teach the knee cut, I must remember it feels way less awkward if I had my right hand on the hip and therefore stand with my right leg first. I added in an underhook pass too, which I think was easier for the class to understand (especially as there was a brand new student there), though that would normally fit with the kneeling break. Usual thing with the underhook, which is getting people to really put their bum in the air, then turn their shoulder rather than swinging their head around the leg. I might go for double underhooks when I teach the kneeling break in the women's class in a couple of weeks: I'll also be teaching a kneeling break in the mixed class next week I think, so can do some more testing on teaching the underhook.