This blog will no longer be maintained. I’ve moved to a dedicated WordPress hosting account that will give me more control over the back end management. I’ll archive this one for a while until I get enough content on the new blog. Thanks for visiting. You can find the new blog here. Still lots of work to do so it might be a bit rough for a bit until I get everything in order.
Welcome. This is the personal blog of Cane Prevost. The blog will be my place on the web to write down my thoughts on teaching and learning the art of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
Who am I? I’m a high school teacher, father, and BJJ coach. I live in Portland Oregon and train at Straight Blast Gym.
What’s this blog for?
This blog will be my place on the web to talk about my experiences in coaching BJJ. I’ll post my new experiences and lessons learned as I continue to evolve as both coach and student. Essentially this will be my training and coaching diary. I plan to blog my way through our entire 20 week BJJ curriculum.
Well, after some thinking and advice from friends I decided I’d archive this site and start fresh. I’m going to take the opportunity to build a new website with a better design, higher quality videos, and more back end user control. I decided to leave the free WordPress community and go with a custom WordPress install. This will give me much more access to customizing the site. It’s a steep learning curve. I haven’t dug into the back end of WordPress in quite a while.
Over the next few weeks you should see the new site start to come to life. It’s in testing and development stage right now. Bookmark it at: http://caneprevost.com
Looks like something went haywire with my youtube account and all my videos are gone! Craptastic. I’m hoping I still have then and can re upload…. Gonna take a while. Sorry guys!
Update: I guess my youtube account was tied to a google docs account that I closed. Didn’t remember that. When I closed the google account it closed and deleted my youtube account. So, all my damn videos are gone. Man I’m pissed. I have some on my computer I think. Not sure what I do and don’t have. I’ll do some uploading the next few days and try to piece together some posts as best I can. May have to reshoot some…
This week was closed guard bottom week. It’s a fairly slim week in terms of curriculum. Most coaches tend to teach safety position and base and posture positions. These are fundamental positions that everyone has to know in order to survive closed guard. I’ve done this cycle a number of times and usually go through the same routes. I do safety position, then base and posture, then breaking the guard, then combat base. It’s a nice simple progression and easy to teach with a posture and pressure model. I changed it up a bit for this particular class because I wanted to try something new. I added some standing breaks in the mix.
Safety Position
I first started with safety position. I wanted to stress it as a pin. You really have to key in on controlling the bottom guy’s hips and posture. If you are simply lying on top of the bottom guy he can manage to upset your posture easily.
knees wide ass low
elbows inside of knees and down at hips
squeeze your elbows together to pin his hips
use your forehead to pin his chest
Troubleshooting
After we drilled the safety position I went over some troubleshooting tips. I saw a couple of attacks coming up when we drilled and wanted to address those right away. Typically the bottom guy will take his body offline and frame to create space or they will go offline and sit up. Below is a video addressing those issues.
Standing Guard Break
I hadn’t intended on teaching a standing guard break at this point but it just so happened to dovetail right into what I was teaching so here it is… If you watch through the rest of the videos you’ll see that the way I teach it at the end of class is slightly different than the way I initially show it. I love when this happens. Through watching what students do well and have trouble with I’m often able to modify what I’m teaching on the fly. You can see that here.
Troubleshooting
Watching students try the technique I noticed some trouble with foot position. This caused me to have to think through something I do intuitively. I never quite noticed exactly where I place my foot when doing this break. It looks like the shin needs to be straight up and down and the foot needs to be under the bottom guy’s hips. This gives you the best base and leverage.
Drill Time
Top guy starts standing with hands in biceps. His goal is to survive the posture and achieve the break. Bottom guy is giving pressure and holding the closed guard. This is a great chance to give some flight time to the position and see where it breaks down. It’s great for me because I can see where students are having trouble and whether or not they are making the technique work real time.
Monitor and Adjust
The video below is long. It starts out with looking again at the position and making some adjustments to how I showed the original standing break. It’s modified based on what I saw when students struggled to make it work in drills. This is the power of drilling and the I method to me. It allows me to see the technique in action and modify as needed.
I also answer a question about what to do when the bottom guy grabs your free leg and you can’t get it loose.
Base and Posture
Below is a video describing the basics of a good base and posture. This is a core fundamental of BJJ and something everybody has to know. It’s done the same way as a white belt and as a black belt. It’s a fundamental you are likely to use every time you roll.
Same video as above just skip to about 5 minutes 8 seconds in.
Grip Basics
Below is a short video detailing hand grips for base and posture with Gi.
Troubleshooting Base and Posture
Below is a video where I talk about how to move the far hand when you feel like you are getting broken down. If your posture isn’t perfect or if the bottom guy is super strong you sometimes have to alter the position of your far arm to keep your body upright. The video describes how to make the adjustments.
The later half of the video talks about the job of the rear hand in base and posture. This is often overlooked by guard top players. It’s the rear hand that keeps you out of triangles and armbars though. The hip pressure applied here is key. The video describes how and when to apply the hip pressure with the palm of your hand.
Breaking Guard from Knees
Below is a video where I describe how to break open the guard from knees. This break relies on having good posture and grips. If you have those then the break is a gimmie from here.
This week’s topic is north south position. We address both top and bottom in the same week. Usually that’s not the case but with a position like this that’s not that complicated in terms of what’s available to do it makes sense. I decided to start the week with the bottom game. Defense first. As is usually the case I didn’t want to simply pile a bunch of escape techniques on students. That approach is usually not helpful as nobody seems to remember them well. Instead I wanted to explore the position a bit and give students some ideas about good posture and how to pressure from bottom. In the end I hardly worked escapes at all but everyone improved a lot in their ability to set up escapes over the course of the class.
Initial Posture
I worked from the premise that an initial strong starting posture was the key to working the position. Most of the opportunities from bottom happen because of a good starting base. The starting point of the posture is the hand position. I used to use a position with my elbows on the mat because it made my arms very difficult to harvest. The problem with this position was that it also made it hard to escape. I switched to a boxing hands posture with my elbows as close together as possible and that’s been working way better. This keeps the top guy from getting chest to chest contact and gives me much greater leverage for lifting him off. Here’s a video of building the initial posture.
Students drilled the position with the correct arm posture. Top guy trying to hold and bottom person trying to escape. Or more specifically just trying to get the bottom elbow tucked in which is the building block of escape.
Problems Created and Solved
What sometimes happens if you build an initial good posture is that the top guy will react by modifying his position. It feels really uncomfortable to try to hold down someone by lying on their forearms. You don’t feel like you have a firm hold. Often times the top guy will slide down the body and try to pin the hips instead bypassing the shoulders/arms altogether. This is a great way for the top guy to negate the initial arm posture and render it ineffective.
When he does this we need to adjust our posture and build a different arm position that works with his new top game. Below is a video explaining how to adjust our bottom posture when the top guy is pinning our hips.
Just Add Pressure
Next we went back to the initial start posture and started building a pressure game with our lower body. We went through 3 initial pressures. Those were:
Pendulum
Shrimp
Upa
The potential or objective was the same for all 3. We were still trying to get our hips facing the mat with our bottom elbow tucked under. This is the starting point for all our good escapes. Below is a video of the first 3 pressures.
Minor Corrections
After watching students move from bottom I decided to be more specific about how to move the legs when turning over. Students were doing all sorts of things with their legs as they turned towards the mat. Some of it looked a bit like a fish flopping around. It was clear that some of them needed some help. Below are videos of me describing 2 different methods of going from your back to belly.
The Kickover
The Hip Heist or Threading the Needle
Alternate Arm Positions
Things don’t always work out the way we planned in a live roll. We worked a couple of alternate hand positions when on bottom. I described the worst hand position and it’s problems and then gave an alternative hand position to try. We drilled it after. Below is a video of the alternative hand position I call the forklift.
A bit of footage of students drilling
A Couple of What Ifs
Next I addressed a couple of common scenarios. The first one was what to do if you get caught with your arms in a way bad position. I describe the escape that is possible from here. It’s not great but better than nothing.
Next I describe the most high percentage arm catch from the top position. If I get caught in a sub from the bottom it almost always starts with the top guy getting this catch. I describe the simple objective for taking care of this situation. It’s mostly a matter of awareness here.
This week is back escape week. I decided to focus on one simple escape from back and break it down into parts. This teaching method is the part method. It’s where you teach something one piece at a time. The advantage of this method is that it allows you to focus in on each individual part of the technique in a way you couldn’t if you taught the whole thing at once. I was able to do this because there aren’t many effective escape techniques from this position. In fact, I use exactly two. The one I use most is the one you’ll see here. My hope is that because I taught so much detail from each part of the position that students will understand it conceptually instead of just as a series of movements that build a technique. If you understand the fights and objective of each part then it’s easier to troubleshoot when something goes wrong.
Step 1 Survival
The first step in escaping back control is survival. You have to understand the objectives of the other guy. You need to be able to survive comfortably for enough time to build an escape. If you can’t survive intelligently then escape is not going to happen. Survival begins and ends with hand fighting. The first video is me blabbing on about the class and what we’re going to cover. I introduce an initial drill. The second video is talking more technique about hand position and hand fighting.
Video 1 Introduction
I usually start with a drill to see where people are and what they already know with regard to the topic for the day. It allows me to better tailor the teaching and gives me a before and after test I can use to see if they actually made improvements over the course of the class.
Video 2 Details of Hand Fighting
A Few More Hand Fighting Details
Step 2 Building Posture
Once we feel pretty good about hand fighting and we an survive here we can begin to build an escape. The escape that I show is almost all I ever use to escape the position. If you learn this one well it’ll be your go to technique. Initially I’m looking to trap the underhook arm and fall to that side. I’ll build the escape from there.
Video of Initial Escape from Back
Adding a Few Details and Drill
Step 3 Improving End Posture- Adding Leg Fighting
I purposely separate this out and teach it after students can come up into guard effectively. In a live roll you’ll sometimes end up in cross sides top. Sometimes though you’ll get half guard or full guard top. You have to be prepared for any of these. Here’s a video of how to leg fight and end up in cross sides top instead of guard top.
This week we were working on quarter position top. As always I wanted to start with survival first. If you can’t hold the position then any subs, reversals, or position improvements won’t be available. I break up the quarter top position into zones.
Front Zone- In front of the shoulders.
Side Zone- In front of the hips and behind the shoulders.
Rear Zone- Behind the hips.
For this class I started in front zone and moved to side zone.
Front Zone
When in front of someone in quarter position it’s important to know what the main fights are there. The bottom guy will do a few things to improve his position from here. They are:
Grab your legs. The bottom guy will reach out and try to grab your leg. He can execute a double or single leg takekedown from here.
Peek out. He can peek his head out the side. This will allow him to sit to guard or execute a sit out type escape.
Sit guard. The bottom guy will feel for when your weight lifts off and he’ll sit to guard immediately.
Our posture and pressure has to keep this in mind. We need to establish a posture that neutralizes all these games from the bottom guy.
Class Start
I started with a drill. This is a great way to see what people already know and how they are playing the position. It allows me to find what student’s weaknesses are and what they are doing well. I can shore up the weaknesses later and build on the strengths. The drill was simple. Bottom person start in quarters and improve your position. Top guy improve your position, get a sub, get your hooks in.
Front Zone Posture
We are trying to establish a posture that negates the bottom guy’s fights. A good posture when approaching from front zone looks like this:
Hips out and knees off the mat. Looks like a sprawl. You can raise and lower your hips at will.
Upper chest to his upper back. This makes you heavy on him. It places your belt right on his head and makes your hips effective in stuffing his head.
Arms either double underhooks (forklift arms) or one over and one under (harness). Never have double overs. Double overs will allow the bottom guy to peek out and puts you too deep in your posture.
Posture Video
Front Zone Head Control
Controlling the head in front zone is a great way to control the movement of the bottom guy. The grip I use is a double chin strap with elbows squeezing together. This feels much like the tie up position from thai boxing. Both your palms cup the chin and your elbows squeeze around his head. With this grip you use your whole body to turn his head left and right and keep it from peeking out. Your hips are critical as they do most of the work. As the bottom guy tries to come out one side you can turn his head the opposite direction. This will neutralize his movement and begin to set up a sub.
Head Control Video
Head Control Sub- Guillotine (basket choke)
OK, so apparently the sub I was calling the guillotine choke all class may actually be the basket choke. I always call any front choke a guillotine and don’t much distinguish. So if you are into correct naming then the basket choke is what I was working here.
Important points to remember are to keep your legs unavailable. Don’t walk in too close. If you do that the bottom guy will start grabbing your legs and put you in trouble. Also, you need the bottom guy to move to set it up. He needs to begin to sit up or sit out to one side or another. If he does that then the choke opportunity happens. It’s too hard to do from quarters if the bottom guy is simply hunkering down. In that case I’d either bait him into moving or do something else.
Basket Choke Video
Correcting Mistakes and Try Again
Transition to Side Zone
Sometimes we want to transition to side zone to continue our attack on the quarter bottom position. It’s important that we don’t lose position in transition. Keeping your weight on the b0ttom guy and making your legs unavailable are two key elements to making the transition happen. I’ll outline a couple of good ways to get to side zone as well as what the landing posture looks like.
Video of transition starts at 2min 3osec in
Fixing some mistakes and a second version of the transition
Hand Position
You have to be very specific about what to do with your hand while in side zone. They have two distinct jobs. The inside hand is used to keep hip to hip contact. A good way to do this is to reach over and go shallow in the far pocket. It’s important to not go deep as the bottom guy can capture your arm if you do so. Keep it shallow and grab the lapel, belt, or pants. No gi you can grab the ankle. The far side arm can do one of three things.
Grab collar and drive the head down.
Staple the near arm to the mat.
Look for a collar grip.
It’s important that you are able to maintain hip to hip contact as you work these grips.
Video of Hand Grips
Improving Posture
One great way to improve the side ride posture is to get the near knee inside. We’ll drive our knee forcefully into the space between his shoulder and hip and break into his side zone. With my knee in tight here it’ll be hard for him to roll to guard.
Clock Choke
Many times in working to get the near knee in the bottom guy will drive his elbows forcefully towards his hips. This opens up a collar grip. When he loses the collar protection up high he’ll give you an opportunity for a clock choke. The driving knee is what opens that up for us. If we simply try to forcefully drive our hands in for a clock choke it’s too easy for the bottom guy to defend.
Video of posture improvement and clock choke basics.
OK, strap on your bullshit meter for this one. This week’s topic was quarter position bottom. I’m not too keen on addressing the position from the standpoint of techniques. I wanted instead to address posture and pressure instead. My first goal was to have students survive the position. Then I wanted them to be active and pressure from the position. Once they understood the top guy’s game and knew how to survive and pressure then they could pack in some techniques.
This topic is one that I’m not as clear on as some others. So, I’m certain I’m going to get comments like “Dude, you are going to get put into a guillotine choke there!” Certainly when you look at the material you’ll see opportunities for counters and holes of attack. I think this is always the case in BJJ though. I can say the method I’m teaching here is what I use and have been using for a couple of years now so I’m at least familiar with it. Feel free to tear it apart if you see any holes in it though.
3 Zones
I break quarter bottom into 3 zones. They are:
Front Zone- Top guy is in front. His hips are somewhere in front of your shoulders.
Side Zone- Top guy is to your side. He may or may not have attachment.
Rear Zone- Top guy is behind your hips.
Knowing what the fights are in each zone is super important to knowing how to be safe. I’ll work with the front zone in this post. First we’ll address posture a bit.
Posture Goals
Keep the other guy in front of you. Don’t let him get to the side our your back.
Don’t stay there! If he’s not actively keeping you down then you should be sitting to guard right away.
Protect your neck. It’s the only thing he can attack from here.
Feel with your hands. Use them to “see” what the top guy is doing.
Be active. Don’t sit and wait to be broken open.
Intro and Video of Posture
Here I intro the topic and show a possible posture for quarter bottom. After I show the posture I start with a drill. This is a good way for me to see what people know about the position.
Hand Fighting
One of your initial fights from quarter bottom in front zone is hand fighting. The top guy is trying to break in. He wants a double under grip or one over and one under grip. A double over grip is not great for the top guy. As the bottom guy, if the top guy gets a double over grip (grabbing around your waist from above) we let him have it. It’s not a good grip for him and keeps his arms occupied so that he can’t do something more dangerous with them.
Video of Hand Fighting
Students Drilling Hand Fighting
Hand Fighting Technique
When hand fighting to keep the top guy out you have 3 main things you can do.
Posture- Good posture will make it hard for the top guy to break in.
Hand Parry- Use your hands to parry and push his hands away.
Grip- Grip his sleeves so that he can’t reach in.
Video of Hand Fighting Technique
Second Fight- Keep Him in Front
If you are successful in protecting your neck and keeping the top guy from getting the attachment he wants he’ll usually give that one up and try moving to one of the other zones. (side or rear) As is always the case in BJJ when you solve one problem it usually presents another one.
Next drill is top guy starts with chest to back attachment and pivots from side to side. The bottom guy will attempt to move with him and keep the top guy in front.
More Detail
After the drill I brought students back in and detailed how to move and use your hands to monitor the position. It creates some opportunities for the top guy so watch out here. You have to be ready to bring your arms back in quickly if the need arises.
If the top guy lifts his weight off your back even slightly during the movement then you should be pulling guard immediately. There is no reason to be in quarter position if there is no weight on you!
Video of Concepts
Putting it Together
So, to put the two ideas together, when the top guy is trying to get hand position we are building a tight fortified structure and keeping him out. As soon as he starts to move to the side we open up and move with him. Our goal is to keep him in front of us. We’ll drill this using a call out drill.
Students Drilling
Defending the Double Over Position
Often times if you are doing a good job of protecting your neck the top guy will resort to bear hugging your at the waist from above. He wants to attach and will take the only option open to him. We’ll look at some options for escape/ reversal from here.
Using the Sit Out to Reverse the Position
Here’s a gi version that I sometimes use since I’m not awesome at the sit out. I don’t seem to move too fast and this one allows me to do it more slowly. The grips make all the difference. They keep the top guy where I want him and help me to pin him after the reversal.
Drill Time
Another Option- Leg Catch
When the top guy is grabbing with a double overhook he makes his legs available. It’s a mistake for him. If we immediately drive forward hard we should be able to grab one of his legs before he can sprawl hard. If we are able to control the leg we can use it to turn him over. Here’s a video of that concept.
Putting it all Together- Tripple Attack
So, we have 3 ways that we can get out of quarter bottom and improve our position.
Pull guard
Sit out
Capture the leg
These aren’t the only ways but they are among the most high percentage. They have the advantage of working well with each other. If the top guy is defending one then it makes the others more available. Cycling through them as you work your quarter bottom will give you a much more active game. Here’s a video of that concept.
Below you’ll find raw footage from class. I’ll post some commentary so you know what to find in each clip. These aren’t as concise as the video I usually shoot. They are unedited. My goal is to make these posts as easy to do as possible since I don’t have a huge amount of time. Therefore I won’t be editing them down. Sorry for all the extra footage and blabbing on in the videos…
Video 1- Intro to Cross Sides Bottom
In this video I go over the concept of early and late cross sides bottom defense. Early defense is reverse engineering the top guy’s fundamental 5 passing game. The fundamental 5 passing game looks like this:
Open the legs
Control the legs
Control the hips
Lock down the upper body
Land the hips
When the top guy gets to number 4 we have to begin to assume our early stage defensive posture. Here is where we are transitioning from guard recovery to cross sides bottom escape. The main thing we are trying to do with our posture is prevent the crossface. This is the main tool to lock down the upper body in this scenario.
In the video I show a few different possible ways to prevent the cross face including:
Bottom hand paw
Top hand paw
Both hands paw
Head position
After this we do an objective drill. The top guy has to flatten and cross face the bottom guy. Bottom guy just tries to maintain position and not get flat.
Video
Rolling Footage
Video 2- Looking at the Posture
I sent students out to do another drill. This time I had the top guy do two things. First, they were looking for a cross face. Second, they were looking to grab the bottom guy’s elbow and pull up on it to flatten them. My intent was for students to discover that using the bottom arm to paw out the crossface presents this problem. The top guy will just pull up on the elbow of the paw hand and break them back down. Sometimes it’s better to set up a scenario where student find out for themselves rather than just tell them… Here’s that video:
After the drill I pulled students back in and looked at posture more closely. We talked about what hand positions worked to prevent the crossface and what other posture adjustments I saw that were effective. Here we are building an effective posture to prevent the top guy from flattening us out. What the good posture looks like:
Bottom elbow tucked under body
Top leg making a kick stand
Top shoulder in front of rear shoulder
Head touching the mat closing off the space
Top hand making a paw
Video
Video 3- Adding to the Posture
After students were comfortable with the posture we looked at the next issue. If you are blocking out the crossface well the top guy will often start grabbing at your legs to flatten you. I saw exactly this when we drilled. The top guy would get frustrated that he couldn’t get to the crossface so he’s resort to grabbing the near leg and pulling up. We’ll address this by making a posture change. Specifically we’ll switch our legs. Other leg in front…
Video
Here’s a look at a call out drill. Students switch back and forth between the two leg postures and test them against resistance.
Q and A Session
After the drill portion we did a question and answer session. This generated a few new ideas so we went back out and tried against resistance. Top guy trying for the crossface. Bottom guy preventing. Here’s the video of the Q and A:
Video 4- Late Stage Cross Sides Bottom
Here we are working on what to do if we lost the crossface/ lock down the upper body battle. We are flat on our back and the top guy has a cross face. I’ll examine the use of frames to make space to get out. The video starts with a quick description and teaser for tomorrow night’s class- the running man escape.
Anyway, when you are caught flat you are reverse engineering the top guy’s game. In this case his game is the fundamental 5 of holding top. Those are:
Block out the guard
Lock down the upper body
Kill the near arm
Attack the far arm above the elbow
Be mobile as needed
We concentrated on number 3 and 4 here. He already has 1 and 2. If the top guy does not have 3 then he can’t get 4. If we are aware of where the top guy is in his progression through the fund 5 we can better counter. Here’s the video:
Improving the Posture
Next, I talked about improving the posture. We worked the boxing hands posture as an initial posture when we get flattened. The boxing hands work great because they keep the top guy from getting chest to chest contact. They are also very effective in building frames from the bottom. One key to remember is to keep your elbows as close as you can to each other in the posture. Here’s the video describing the boxing hands.
I’ve decided to try a new approach to posting here on the blog. I’m going to try to video my classes and post the raw footage here. It’s been tough to get short videos made after class lately. Usually I use that time to roll. Since my time at the gym is so limited lately it’s been hard to carve out time to make videos. So, I’ll shoot the instructional part of classes and upload the raw footage to my blog. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to add some commentary etc. to the video. I’ll do this for a while and see how it goes.
Also, I added a creative commons license to my site. This means that any material is available for personal non-commercial use. Feel free to redistribute and use as long as you attribute the information to me. A link to the blog is greatly appreciated.
Here’s a quick overview of one of SBGi’s signature moves, the shoulder of justice. It’s a great way to hold top position in cross sides and has the added benifit of having a cool sounding name. Good deal all around.
Step 1: Block out the guard.
Make sure you are using either the knee or hand to block out the guard so that the bottom person can’t simply slide the knee in and pull guard. At SBG we teach this a a fundamental for holding top. You are always blocking out the guard with either the knee, the hand, or the hip. In this case I’m using the knee.
Block out the guard with the knee.
Step 2: Get the underhook
This is the step where we control/capture the upper body. Controlling the upper body while blocking out the guard are steps 1 and 2 of the fundamental 5 of holding top.
Starting to get a good underhook.
Step 3: Grab the underarm and pull him off line.
You want to kink his spine and pull him out from a straight line. This makes it harder for him to bridge or shrimp.
Grab his armpit from below and pull towards you. This takes him offline and curves his spine.
Step 4: Drop your near shoulder.
Move your near shoulder back towards his legs a bit and attach it to his chest. This sets you up in the right position to apply the pressure in the next step. It allows you to get under his chin more easily.
Drop your shoulder down and attach to his chest.
Step 5: Find the sweet spot and apply.
Move your shoulder towards his head while keeping it attached to his body. This should put it right under his chin in the sweet spot. Apply pressure by extending your near leg and sprawling your hips down. You should feel the pressure go towards his head and not towards the far shoulder. Your elbow should not leave the mat.
Move the shoulder into place. The sweet spot is below the chin on the neck.
Extend near leg and move hip towards the mat to apply pressure.
Who am I?
