25/06/2016 - Private with Nathan Adamson | Open Guard & Mount | Knee Cut, Knee Shield Pass, Knee Cut Counters & Mount

Class #746 - Private #025
BJJ Globetrotter Camp (Sportoase Leuven), Nathan Adamson, Leuven, Belgium, 25/06/2016

In the same way that I booked a private with Kenny Polmans because I liked his side control attacks, I also booked one for the next day with Nathan Adamson due to his excellent lesson on passing. I have been doing a lot of knee cut counters in my private lessons so far: this time, I wanted to work on the other side of that equation, refining my knee cut and dealing with issues that can arise, most significantly the knee shield. The fact that Adamson sounds and (very slightly) looks like Greg Proops was a bonus. I used to love Whose Line Is It Anyway? :D

A photo posted by Artemis BJJ (@artemisbjj) on Jul 4, 2016 at 4:02am PDT

Again as before, I quickly showed Nathan what I normally do with my knee cut, in order to get some tips about how to improve it. First Nathan talked about getting in tight, pressing your shin into the back of their leg. Grab their same side collar (or alternatively, anchor your hand by their hip), putting your elbow on the outside of your knee. Come through the centre and drop your hip. With your passing side hand, push their wrist to the mat. With your other hand, either swim for the underhook, or grab their opposite collar.

Swing your elbow up and drive, flattening them out and controlling (to a degree) with that instead of an underhook. To finish, slide your shin back into their bottom leg to push that out of the way. Keep your bum by your heels to prevent them catching half guard. Slide through and finish. Nathan likes to hop up to knee on belly in order to swivel his legs into mount, I generally prefer moving to side control.

If they manage to get that annoying knee shield in the way, you’re going to grab low on their trousers, palm facing up. Straighten your arm, shoving the leg away in an interestingly angled stiff arm. If you get that in place correctly, any attempts by them to get their knee back in place results in pushing you into the mount. Nathan goes to knee on belly off that, grabbing their passing side collar with his opposite arm, pushing his wrist to the mat with the same side arm. If their knee shield is more firmly in, pushing your back. Lock in that stiff arm in the same way as before, then slide your bottom knee over. Jam their knee to the mat and hop around behind. You might not be able to get your arm as straight, because they’re already connected to you.

A photo posted by Artemis BJJ (@artemisbjj) on Jun 26, 2016 at 1:06am PDT

When the knee shield is up higher, into your chest, your same side hand taps the top of their knee. Yank it back, twisting your hips in as you pull that knee behind you. This results in you facing their legs. The knee you now have on the bottom pops up to their thigh, as with the hip switch pass. Bring your far elbow inside their armpit, meaning their arm is stuck behind your elbow. To make it really tight, feed their lapel to that far hand, pinching it tight. This therefore applies to knee cutting through half guard too, as you can clear their lock ankle with this. You can also try and simply turn your hips around the knee that’s blocking you, ending up in the same position.

Another option, again for a lower knee shield, is to rely on that hip twist. Grab the collar and the hip, making sure your head is diagonally opposite to his. Drive in to press their knee-shield into their chest, also trying to flatten them out. If you can, get the cross face and gable grip. From there, switch your hips, turning your knee inwards, underneath their knee shield.

You can then climb up into mount. If they have a half guard on your leg, you can still climb up, crushing through it. If they are framing firmly into your arm, grab their collar and use that to break them down. If you are pushed too far out, you can grab their knee and hop over, as before. There are other options too, like doing a headstand to hop over to the other side.

Nathan loves going to mount, so I wanted to ask about that too. Off the pass, you have their arm underhooked thanks to your gable grip superhold, enabling you to pry that arm up high, pressuring into their face and/or neck with your cross-facing shoulder. Once in mount, he looks to get the cross collar grip. He can then swivel to progress into chokes and armbars, particularly from the powerful submission platform that is s mount. Never sit back until you're all in position, stay really heavy, leaning forwards.

In keeping with my focus this camp, I made sure to get Nathan's opinion on countering the knee cut pass. His approach combined the two options David showed. First he gets a grip on their opposite collar, grabbing their same side sleeve with his other hand, shoving that in towards them. He then bumps with his knee, using his grips to help win the scramble as he turns to the top. Come up on your elbow. That grip on the sleeve means your can immediately stuff the arm as he comes up, moving into a strong pass. Your other grip enables you to pressure into their neck, similar to the pass Nathan went through earlier in the lesson.

Nathan suggested a shrimping drill for this knee cut counter, where each time you shrimp, you are bringing your top shoulder across, pulling the bottom shoulder back. He also spoke a bit about sitting guard, where there is a grip detail. You bend your wrist, like you're casting a fishing line: this makes your grip stronger, although it does put greater strain on your wrist. That can lead into a choke too, gripping with your other hand, looking away as you apply the pressure.

That was a great end to the camp. I was able to hang around long enough for the belt ceremony and a bit of open mat, but then had to rush off to catch my train. Next time, I'll stay for the Saturday night, so I can go to the camp party. I don't drink, but I do like a good dance. Next year! ;)

A video posted by Can (Jun) (@slideyfoot) on Jun 25, 2016 at 9:46am PDT

29/07/2014 - Artemis BJJ | Open Guard | Passing Combinations vs Knee Shield

Class #583
Artemis BJJ (Impact Gym), Dónal Carmody, Bristol, UK - 29/07/2014

Dónal started off with a simplified knee cut, stepping between their legs, then driving your shin across diagonally, keeping your elbow in tight and hips close to theirs. The most common problem with that is you leave too much space, whereupon they manage to slip a knee in front of you. Knee shield can be a real pain to pass.

From a failed knee cut, the leg squash comes in handy. Grab the knee of the leg you're trying to slide across (Dónal prefers to cup under the knee, but you can also grab the trouser material: the problem is that may move and give them room to adjust enough to establish spider guard or something like that). Lift and move it across to the opposite side. To do that effectively, you'll need to turn your non-knee sliding foot so that the toes are pointing in the direction you want to move. Bend the knee and shift in that direction. Also, don't use your arm at the end, or you'll end up lying on it. Instead, as you move them across, rely more on your chest to move them over, meaning your arm is free to hook around the hip and block their shrimp.

As you slide across, you're going to break what is normally a cardinal rule of BJJ: putting your hands on the mat. This is for base, with one by their same side armpit, while your remaining hand posts on the other side. The intention is to end up sprawled on top of their legs. More specifically, your groin is by the back of their knees, ideally with the point of your hip pressing into the middle of their thigh. Although it feels counter-intuitive, don't go up on your toes. Sink your weight through your hips into their legs, with your own legs draped on either side.

Almost certainly they are going to move, especially if you're being mean and digging the point of your hip into the 'dead leg' point of their thigh. Once they do, backstep and pass around the other side. This feeds smoothly into mount, pulling their knees towards you and wrapping your leg behind their knees. If you like, you can also lock your legs as you wrap them, making the transition to mount particularly secure.

If you can't get that, there is the hip slide pass against knee shield (no idea if it has a name, as I just made that up). You have a grip on their collar. Put your elbow by their hip, using it as a means of driving your weight through them, as opposed to being a white belt and trying to dig into them with the elbow. Lean through and slide over their knee with your hip until you can slip through. To finish , shove their legs back with your hips, secure side control.

In specific sparring from open guard, I worked more on the knee cut rather than the bullfighter from last week, seeing as we'd just been practicing the knee cut. Fellow RGA Bucks purple belt Gareth was visiting, which was very cool. That also meant I had a higher calibre of training partner than normal, immediately demonstrated when unlike everybody else, he went to deep half. I tried holding that off by underhooking his arm to stop him from turning and rolling me over, then attempted to get into a position where I could exert some pressure, controlling the arm (again, to stop his turn). I need to review my deep half passes, as I only remember that first part about underhooking the arm: this is why it's useful to have purple belts there, they can put in stuff like that. ;)

I think I sort of passed at one point but then got reversed. I may be mixing together a few rolls though. With the next guy, I clamped his shin to his leg by wrapping it up, then simply swinging to other leg back to pass, but that wouldn't normally work. I'm sure once he's seen that a few times, that passing route will be gone. Underneath, I wanted to go into the cross-grip guard to practice the techniques I'm teaching this week, along as the ankle pick I taught yesterday. I couldn't get into position, or they put up the other knee. Thinking back, that should really be a good set-up for a scissor sweep: I tried it once, but sloppily and I don't think I pulled them into me enough with the collar grip to control their weight. I'll have another look at the version Kid Peligro shows in his book, supposedly a variation he learned from Rickson.

I hit the tripod at one point, but generally I'm not making a smooth enough transition to the sickle when that doesn't work. It's too telegraphed and too clunky, so more drilling required on that. While generally this week I felt that I've been better at conserving my energy in closed guard, I did have a roll where I fell into that enervating pattern of clamping down in closed guard. I eventually got the sit-up sweep, but that method of closed guard (grabbing them and pretty much trying to hold them down with an arm or two) is terrible for me. I don't have the strength, and even if I did, I'd burn out quickly. So, deep collar grip more often, timing, better sensitivity to their body movement.

Class finished up with a purple belt spar. I was looking to block the pass, where normally I could get back to half guard at worst. I sort of got the toe grab sweep, but I made a silly error of grabbing the toes after reaching under his legs, rather than over the butt and around the legs. Although I was able to come up and drive through, due to my poor grip, I got reversed straight away.

Loads of teaching for the next few months, as it will be just me teaching every class until 16th August (apart from this Thursday). Most exciting is that the women's class begins tomorrow! Yay! :D

19/06/2014 - Back from Croatia | Passing Knee Shield

Class #573
Artemis BJJ (Impact Gym), Dónal Carmody, Bristol, UK - 19/06/2014

My flight back from Croatia arrived in good time (much more on that trip later, though it will probably take a good while to get it all written, judging by how long it took me to finish the Paris write-up ;D), so I was able to head down to the class at Impact Gym. While I was away, I tried out the 'schedule post' option for this website so there would be content whilst I was away, which seems to have worked ok. In case you missed it, the two part interview I did with the excellent blogger BJJ Grrl can be found here and here.
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Following on directly from the previous time I was at Impact, Dónal was continuing with knee shield, moving on to passing that position. Dónal also chatted a bit before the lesson about dealing with that bugbear of old school BJJ fans like me, the berimbolo (*shudder*). In contrast to the flashiness of the technique, there is a very simple method for countering the berimbolo, at least in principle (application is a whole other thing in BJJ, as anyone reading this will know). Basically, you just stiff arm their free leg as they try to swing around into the technique, then do a technical stand up to back away and initiate your pass.


The knee shield pass was quite simple too. If they are on their side (very likely), to get them flat again, stiff-arm into their same side armpit and pull back on their other sleeve. Should they be wearing a gi, make sure that if you're gripping the gi material, you shove it right into their armpit. If you just grab the collar, when you try to push, you'll end up shoving their gi to the mat rather than their shoulder. Without a gi, shove into their armpit and grab their wrist: note that may need to swivel your armpit-hand to their shoulder to keep them flat.

From here, cut your knee through. It will help if you're able to raise your trapped knee, but you can still try and pass without (harder, but possible). Slide through on your hip, keeping your weight on them as you aim to surf over their knee. As soon as your leg is free and you're past that knee, shove your hips back into their leg and establish side control.

Sparring was fun, after being off the mats for two weeks. On top I tried to maintain heavy pressure and gradually work my leg free, which generally worked, but I often being sloppy rather than going for a specific technique. When I did try and do something specific, my staple pass attempt ended up getting me swept. I need to take another look at that: it would be worth teaching it next week as well to really solidify it back in my head. I'm not sure whether I'm going to go for stuff on the bottom or focus on passing, so I'll see what I reckon after having a play at open mat on Saturday.

Underneath, I vaguely managed the roll-back sweep from knee shield, although I ended up a bit low when I got to the top position. Also, I wasn't pulling out the sleeve, having grabbed the collar instead. It still seemed to work, but probably not as good control as a result of where I was gripping. That's something else I could consider teaching again to work out the kinks.