13/10/2013 - Study Hall (Closed Guard Posture Break & Side Control Chokes)

Class #529
Gracie Barra Bristol, (BJJ), Study Hall, Bristol, UK - 13/10/2013

I'm continuing with drilling offence from closed guard, attempting to develop a series that starts with breaking their posture into the gi tail control. If that doesn't work, I want to add the windscreen wiper sweep. Should I be unable to break their posture and they lean back to resist, I can switch to a sit-up sweep.

I'm still not quite sure how best to put those all together, but it's been helpful playing with it for the last few weeks in an open mat environment. I plan to teach something on the topic next week too, which should give me some further ideas. The sit-up sweep has been by far my most successful sweep for as long as I can remember, but strangely I haven't taught it yet in the two and a half years I've been an instructor, so that will be fun. :)

With the gi tail grip, I'm still having some trouble keeping their posture broken. People were standing up when I was doing that, though I found I could still finish the choke (although that might just be because I was trying it against somebody less experienced). More reps required. Also, I need to make sure I'm getting plenty of gi material, rather than snatching at it. If I can't get that grip and they're posturing up, I should be going into the sit-up sweep as before.

Geraldine wanted to work on side control chokes, which was perfect as that's what I wanted to work on too. She saw a specific step over triangle set-up that she wanted to try, from Jay Pages (IIRC). From a sort-of scarf hold position, he grabs their arm, then shoves his bottom leg into that arm. As he is still pulling with his grip, that should wedge their arm in place. His other leg then steps over to trap their arm in place, meaning he can then transfer his grip to hold on with his other arm.

From there, he can now step over their head with the raised leg, moving into the triangle position as usual. Drilling this with Geraldine reminded me to be careful of the neck. Especially when you're drilling this repeatedly, you have to watch out you're not twisting their neck into awkward positions, such as when you're adjusting your legs to lock in the triangle. I also played around with the chokes from the private lesson, but need to rewatch the video.

25/09/2013 - Dónal Private (Side Control Chokes)

Class #524 - Private #016
Gracie Barra Bristol, (BJJ), Dónal Carmody, Bristol, UK - 25/09/2013

This will probably be my last private with Dónal for a while, as I've covered the majority of what I wanted to work on for the next year or two. Today I was keen to add some more side control chokes to my game, along with refining the few I know. Dónal began with the breadcutter choke (I think that's what it's normally called), setting it up by moving towards north-south. They will often reach past your hip when you do that, which leaves a space for you reach under their arm and clamp it to your side.

Move back to side control, then with the hand of that clamping arm, grab behind their neck, gripping in the middle of the collar. Cinch that in. Bring your free arm back towards you, then use that to turn their head away from you. This is in order to expose the side of their neck. Grip their far collar with your free hand (this might require balancing on their chest, turned towards their head, which should also help keep them pinned to the mat), then put your forearm into the exposed side of their neck.

To finish, you need to create some pressure into their neck, in order to close off the artery. Turn towards their legs, in a sort of reverse scarf hold position, then use that base from your legs to lower yourself gradually into their neck, keeping your initial gi grip tight. Be careful, as this can come on quickly and it isn't very comfortable.

A similar option is the baseball bat choke, so called because your hands are in the same position as if they were gripping a bat (or a greatsword, if you want to picture something cooler. 'Greatsword choke' has a nice ring to it, or maybe 'dai-katana choke', for fellow Daggerfall fans. ;p). It's often done from knee on belly, as in the screencap from Roy Dean's Brown Belt Requirements, but I rarely use knee on belly. I much prefer side control, so Dónal showed me the application from there instead.

Again you want to grip the collar behind their neck, but this time you aren't going underneath their arm. Your other hand reaches over to the other side of their neck, gripping the collar just above your first hand: this is where that 'Greatsword grip' (that has a nice ring to it too! :D) comes in. A key detail Dónal adds here is that you then 'engage' your arms. By that, he means tense the muscles slightly, squeezing into their neck. This shouldn't be straining, but enough to create pressure.

From there, spin around to north-south, putting your head by their far hip. Your bum raises slightly for added pressure. Often, they will tap before you get all the way around, because you already started applying to submission as soon as you engaged your arms. It is possible to do this choke by squeezing at the end, but I prefer Dónal's method.

You can also use the gi tail to apply the baseball bat choke: the grip is the same as for the attacks from guard Dónal showed me last week. Yet another option is to do the technique in reverse, so you establish your second grip before the first, in order to overcome their defence. To work out the position you need, set up the baseball bat choke as normal, then before spinning around to finish, look at where you second hand is. Reset, but this time, put that second hand in place first. Switch to the other side, bringing the elbow of your second-grip arm across. Put in your first grip, engaging your arms, whereupon you finish as in the standard version.

The gi tail also comes in handy for a variation from Norbi. They are defending, so their arm is bent, protecting their neck. Wrap their gi lapel on the same side straight over their arm, feeding it to your hand under their head to lock it in place. You can potentially apply an americana from here by lifting their elbow: another tip on that submission is to control their wrist by bringing your chin to your chest, then bring your head to the mat to get their arm into an americana position. If you're not doing the americana, then you just wrap the arm up as above, but use that as an opportunity to establish your grips for the baseball bat choke.

We finished off with the step-over triangle, which is the one technique from today I already use frequently. I first learned it in a nogi class with Felipe Souza back in 2007, along with a few times since, like when Kev taught it in 2010. However, I rarely use the step-over triangle as a submission: normally I just use it for control, then attack the far arm. I have finished the choke occasionally, but most often that happens without a focused effort to get the submission: I just happen to be tighter on the neck than I thought while going for the arm, or the person I'm sparring is less experienced and taps before there is truly the threat of a choke.

Dónal's method had some similarities to the way Roy Dean teaches it on his latest release, Black Belt Requirements (review forthcoming). Like Roy, Dónal also sets it up from scarf hold, stepping over the head, then bringing that leg back to press firmly into their neck. Locking up the triangle, your other leg curls back, then you finish by reaching behind you and pulling their arm and squeezing. The way I've done it in the past was flatter, more like in the picture on the right of Yuki Ishikawa on yellow mats (being careful to lock on the ankle not the foot): it will be good to add Dónal/Roy Dean's method as another variation.

15/06/2010 - BJJ (Basics)

Class #319
Gracie Barra Birmingham, (BJJ), Nathan Roberts, Birmingham, UK - 15/06/2010

I couldn’t make the advanced gi on Monday, so did my usual backup of the basics Tuesday class. That also has the advantage of starting later, so even though I stayed on at work for thirty minutes, I didn’t having any trouble getting to Leamington train station to get to Acocks Green in time.


As I walked in GB Brum, Kevin was showing a useful looking escape from side control to the advanced no-gi class. I didn’t see it from the start, so probably missed some details, but it looked as though they have a normal side control. You keep your elbows in, grasping their underhooking arm with both hands, on either side of the shoulder. That means you can also use the lower part of your arm against their neck if required: Kevin noted that you should never rely on just your wrist or hand, as they can simply collapse that with their weight.

You’re then going to make a powerful bridge, by bringing your heels right to your bum. That gives you some extra force, as you aim to either bridge them right off, or at least make enough space to get your knee in. Due to your elbows both moving beneath their torso, that makes it more difficult for them to collapse their weight back down. Shame I didn’t see it from the start, as it looked interesting.

Nathan’s class began with several drills, which are always useful. For example, where you stand up in their guard, with a grip of both collars, the other hand driving their same side sleeve into their opposite hip. This controls that arm and also helps to immobilise their hips. As you stand up, you let go of the collars, pulling the arm up, but also keeping your elbow inside their knee.

Make sure you drive your hips forward too, to keep the pressure on: something I often forget to do. My passing remains terrible: it would be good to get some guard passing classes at some point again, as it feels like it’s been a while. That also reminds me to review my notes from Kev Capel’s private a while back, which presented a good set of tools for passing.

The main part of Nathan’s basics session was focused on side control. He began with a transition to mount, similar to what he’s shown before. You have a tight side control, and have already cleared their near elbow. First, shift your hips up towards their head, getting as tight as possible. Walk the hand that is under their far arm towards their head, until you can reach the top of their skull.

You can then slide your knee onto their stomach, but don’t go all the way to the floor yet. Keep twisting towards the area you just vacated, to bend their body and make it more difficult for them to bridge. You can also move up towards their head, staying tight. Once you’re secure, go to full mount, and there is the possibility of either digging their arm into position for an arm triangle, or setting up an armbar by getting a good high mount.

Nathan then demonstrated how to move into a triangle from side control. This isn’t the option I like to try where you step over their head from scarf hold, but instead a transition straight into a mounted submission. As before, you have a solid side control, and have cleared their near elbow. Also as before, you want to shift your hips towards their head, then walk your hand underneath their far arm.

This time, you’re going to manoeuvre that arm to the ground, pressing their wrist to the mat with your hand. You can then feed it to the hand you have under their head. Next, drive your hips forward and straighten your arm. That will prevent them turning their head, and it also puts them on their side. Be certain to keep that near arm of theirs trapped, so they aren’t able to pull their elbow free.

Now put your free hand on their torso, using that as a post to swing your leg over and sit on them. You then want to slide it over the arm you’re gripping, at which point you can let go to pull their head up and towards you. That should provide enough room to wrap your leg under their head, meaning that their recently freed arm is of no real use to them. Grab your ankle to maintain the grip.

Lean forward and post with your free hand, in order to get the space to then lock up the triangle with your other leg. From here, you can either go for the triangle, attack their arm, or indeed go for a wristlock. Your weight is on their neck, and their bridges aren’t going to be very effective, as their hips are so far away.

Finally, Nathan switched perspective for an escape from side control. This time, it’s your elbow that’s been cleared out the way, so the first thing you need to do is get it back. Start by digging the hand near their head into their jaw line, knuckles first, until you can slide the forearm under their neck. You can then grip around their shoulder blade and pry their head up, by lifting your wrist and thereby driving your forearm into their neck.

This is unpleasant (meaning that I try not to be too gung ho with this in drilling: fortunately, my training partner tonight was of a similar mindset), so you’ll suddenly find you have some space to free your trapped elbow. You can then shrimp out, bring your knee in and recover guard. That forearm against their neck will make it difficult for them to bring their weight down, while the elbow by their hip prevents their motion forwards.

Specific sparring was unusual, in that for once most of my training partners were either my size or smaller. There also weren’t any other blue belts there this time round: Gary normally attends the Tuesday basics, but I guess he must have been teaching at his kickboxing club or something. So, that meant I had a chance to practice both on top and on the bottom.

On top, I tried moving into reverse scarf hold to mount, which worked nicely the first time, but then that was against somebody a fair bit smaller (I did try to focus on technique, but it is always hard to know if you’ve managed to avoid using a size advantage, especially if you’re not used to having one). The second time, I don’t think I controlled their torso well enough, as they were able to get onto their side. I should probably have made better use of the arm by their head, and perhaps grabbed a knee or something before they managed to turn.

Underneath, I looked to put Norby’s advice from Saturday into practice, especially as I was starting from the worst position possible, with both of my arms clear. Again, that worked a few times, but I think I wasn’t always concentrating enough on bending their head towards their shoulder coupled with a firm bridge. It is definitely good to have that option for when they’ve managed to isolate your far arm, so something I’ll be looking to try more often (though it is of course much more difficult against bigger people, especially if they’re more experienced).

26/01/2010 - BJJ (Advanced)

Class #280



RGA High Wycombe, (BJJ), Kev Capel, High Wycombe, UK - 26/01/2010

Not content with being one of the greatest bloggers to ever sit behind a keyboard, Matt from Martial Farts has now set his sights on mastering the video camera too. He's been doing his Grappling Dummies series for a while, but the latest edition reached even higher levels of awesome than normal. Documentaries, humour, sparring, even techniques (and as this is Japan, crazy spinning is of course involved).

Kev continued with side control, adding in some interesting submission options. First, the arm triangle. You start in side control, then move round to north-south. As you do, catch under their elbow with your own, prying the arm free. You can then use your continuing motion to push their arm over their neck, trapping it with your body weight.

Keep going until you end up directly opposite where you started. They should now have their arm right over their neck, closing off one side. Bring your arm under their head to close off the other side, lock your hands and squeeze. If that doesn't get them to tap, slide your knee over to move into a tight mount.

Retaining your arm's position under their head, your can now bring your other arm over their neck and squeeze, in a sort of reverse RNC. Alternatively, you could reach that other arm to grip behind your own head and squeeze. Finally, if none of that is working, step off mount to the other side. Their arm should now be very tight around their neck, which will hopefully get you that tap.

The second was a simpler, and rather sneakier, lapel choke. You're in side control, with a cross-face: this is important, as the technique won't work without it. Pull out one side of your gi, then feed the lapel to your cross-facing hand. Pull that tight against their neck. You now move round as if you were going to north south, but instead you're going to stay alongside them, facing their legs. Straighten your cross-facing arm against their head, then keep moving until they tap. If for some reason they aren't tapping, you can flip over to increase the pressure, your feet on the other side of your partner.

Sparring was quite fun, as I was with a white belt around my size. Unusually, Kev did extra-long specific sparring from side control, with ten minute rounds. On top, I got to try out various techniques, including my favourite attacking position from side control: the step over triangle (or at least that's how I refer to it).

If you don't know what the hell that is, then Matt to the rescue, as his awesome video features Ishikawa Yuki teaching that very technique (in surprisingly good English, around the 18:33 mark). I first learned it from Felipe, though the kimura on the triangled arm Ishikawa adds here is something I haven't seen before.

I also attempted to do something I saw on the Mundials 2009 DVD set, where the idea is to use your knee to push them on their side, then thread your arm through their legs before stepping over to mount. Looking again at the video, I can see what I did wrong: Shawn Williams leaves his arm threaded, then moves his knee to their back. From there, he can slide the knee over, keeping their legs trapped with his arm. I was trying to step over with my body by the legs, which was silly.

Underneath side control, I played around with the armbar, but left way too much space. There was then a single five minute round of free sparring at the end, sticking with the same partner. That meant I could continue trying things out, beginning with a sit-up sweep to mount, then finally landing the Ezequiel choke from there. However, I think I may have been raising up too much, so someone with more experience may well have escaped at that point (not to mention all the blue belts see this choke coming a mile off, so I still need to disguise it better).

04/10/2007 - BJJ (No-Gi)

Class #93



Roger Gracie Academy (BJJ), Felipe Souza, London, UK - 04/10/2007 – No-Gi

There’s a social next Wednesday I thought I wouldn’t be able to make, but as it turns out I should be able to make the conference to give my presentation on time. That does mean I won’t be able to stay too late, so I’m not sure many people will be there during the time I spend at the club: it starts at 20:00 and training is still on, so will most likely just be a few beginners. Nevertheless, I’ve been hoping for a social ever since I started, so will make the effort to attend this.

Tonight was also the first time I’ve seen Chris since his tournament performance: from what he said, definitely sounds like he had the same weight-cutting problem I did and felt awful. However, he managed to win, and only lost the next one narrowly on points, so that goes to show how good his BJJ has got in the last few months.

He was keen to work on a butterfly sweep, which we worked a little before class got going, and also went through at the end of class too. Get to butterfly guard, which means you feet are hooked round the inside of their legs, your knees splayed (a defence against butterfly guard is to push those knees together), head further forward than your hips, overhooking one arm by the tricep and underhooking the other, gripping round the back. Switch your left leg under your right, pull them in, then with your other leg flick their leg right up in the air, also twisting over with your body. That should end with you in mount, though you have to be careful to avoid getting trapped in their half guard.

Technique today was rather nasty looking, as it was a triangle from side control, leading to all sorts of painful submission options. Grab the elbow of their near arm, push it up, then simultaneously switch your base and slide your knee underneath. Having got scarf hold, pull their arm down and step your leg right over their head. As you do so, slip the stepping leg underneath their head, triangling that with your other leg, leaving their arm trapped against their neck. From there you can squeeze to get the triangle, pulling their arm over if its not quite on.

Even if you don’t get them to tap from that, their other arm is now in an extremely vulnerable position, exacerbated by the considerable discomfort they should be feeling from your triangle attempt. You have a range of options to attack their arm – a straight armbar can be applied by getting a figure-four pressing against their elbow, pulling down on the wrist with the palm facing up. Alternately, there are the usual kimura and Americana subs, depending on which way their arm is pointing, or even a wrist lock, where you figure-four pressing on their wrist with their fingers pointing down.

Sparring went much better than yesterday, I think because its continuous, so when I made a mistake, I still had a chance to work technique. The main problem with my sparring yesterday was that I wasn’t focusing on specific things I wanted to do, which I rectified today. Rolling for me was going to be all about getting the knee through from half guard in order to get to full-guard, and that clear aim definitely helped me get more out of sparring.

Before the free rolling, we did specific from side control. Underneath, I managed to switch to half guard a few times, aiming for full guard (not always quite making it, but at least getting a leg in position a few times). On top, I was completely useless, getting swept in rapid succession.

Moving on to continuous sparring with Chris, I immediately pulled full guard. I tried the technique from yesterday, where you bump them forward, grab behind the head, then try to armbar as they move up, but couldn’t quite get it: I think I need to control that arm more and gain a better position with my hips before I attempt to swing the legs and go for the sub. As always I was often in half guard, but worked to get the knee through. I pushed it through a couple of times (though going to rubber guard wasn’t working so well for me), though Chris was generally able to pass into either mount or side control. I was also getting back to half guard when under side control, though I found it a little easier to do that from under mount (because under side control, I have to bring my far leg way over to trap the leg, whereas with mount the stepover is much closer).

Chris had a solid grip on my arm at a couple of points. The first time, after a bit of a struggled, I was able to lock my arms, and then use that strong position to sweep him from half guard. The second time was tougher, as Chris was close to getting me in position for a kimura or Americana, but I managed to lock my arms again. Eventually his grip loosened and I escaped (though he might have given it up to break the stalemate – I asked afterward, and he reckoned he couldn’t have got it as my defensive grip was too tightly cinched in).

I made a bee-line for Aika after sitting the next round out, as she’s always good to spar with due to her much higher skill, but lower weight. I started off underneath, again working the half guard, along with the sit-up sweep from full guard. She tends to pass standing up, so I tried a lot of armbars from standing guard, but couldn’t get the arm straightened out. I walked my legs up her back and hooked her leg, but probably should have pulled her down more, and also used my hips to help.

I also got a chance to see how my open guard defence functioned: at one point I was trying the classic defensive stance of arms and one knee up, which proved a fairly useful base to block her legs with mine. She did eventually get me into side control, but I flipped her over (that weight difference factoring into it more than skill, I’m sure). That left me in the same position I often end up with her in side control, trying to go for scarf hold. Struggling for a while, I decided I really didn’t want to waste the spar that way, so had a go at moving into north south. Aika shrimped out, I tried to move round to get into position for a kimura, which didn’t work but did leave me set up to pull guard rather than get mounted or something.

That meant I could again try for the sit-up sweep. This time, I did remember to keep the kimura from guard, partly because Aika had been careful to get her arm to safety when I tried the sit-up earlier. However, I was looking for the arm and managed to grab it, opening my guard and sliding my leg over her back to get into position for the kimura. She was tapping quicker than I expected, so hopefully that wasn’t an injured arm or something! Also, as with my escape from her side control, I think the weight discrepancy made a big difference: if it had been Chris, he might well have been able to muscle his arm away from me before I could go for the kimura.

I then sat on again, doing some drilling with Chris on the butterfly sweep. Looks useful, so I should give that a try some time. That proved to be the end of class, so just two free spars today rather than the usual three.