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:

1. Pendulum
2. Shrimp
3. 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.

Finally, some end of class drilling

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.

Details of the Leg Fighting

What if You Fall to the Wrong Side?

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.

1. Front Zone- In front of the shoulders.
2. Side Zone- In front of the hips and behind the shoulders.
3. 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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

1. Grab collar and drive the head down.
2. Staple the near arm to the mat.
3. 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.

John Diggins giving his take on the clock choke

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:

1. Front Zone- Top guy is in front. His hips are somewhere in front of your shoulders.
2. Side Zone- Top guy is to your side. He may or may not have attachment.
3. 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.

1. Posture- Good posture will make it hard for the top guy to break in.
2. Hand Parry- Use your hands to parry and push his hands away.
3. 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.

1. Pull guard
2. Sit out
3. 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.

Cross Sides Bottom

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:

1. Open the legs
2. Control the legs
3. Control the hips
4. Lock down the upper body
5. 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:

1. Bottom hand paw
2. Top hand paw
3. Both hands paw
4. 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:

1. Bottom elbow tucked under body
2. Top leg making a kick stand
3. Top shoulder in front of rear shoulder
4. Head touching the mat closing off the space
5. 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:

1. Block out the guard
2. Lock down the upper body
3. Kill the near arm
4. Attack the far arm above the elbow
5. 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.

Wrap Up, Bullshit Meter, and Review

Final video of wrap up and review.

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.

Video of Concepts:

In looking at what to teach this week from closed guard I decided to teach something I had taught a bit of last time through. I focused on posture and pressure from closed guard bottom. Talking with my coach I saw that he had done the same thing. He added a pressure to the 2 that I was teaching to bring the list to 3. I think the 3 pressures came from Travis Davison from Montana? Anyway, it’s a great way to break down the position. Everything I’ve seen from closed guard bottom has the posture and pressures built in.

Closed Guard Significance

My coach always says that until you get to brown belt you should primarily play open guard. Developing a good closed guard game early is not necessary and could be detrimental to your game. If you are using closed guard because you are scared to open your guard you have a problem. It can be a crutch that students use to keep from having to learn open guard. Better to not play closed guard at all than to rely on it too much.

In fact, you can be world class and have no closed guard game at all. It may be an important position in BJJ but not necessarily always needed. It becomes more important when you look at MMA or self defense. For sport Jiu Jutsu though not so much.

Posture

Posture is simple here. Get your hips off the mat. That’s it! Simple but I hardly see anyone doing it. More often than not people get lazy and let gravity drive their hips to the mat. If you feel your rear end touching the mat your posture is off.

HIps off the mat.

Pressure

There are three different pressures you can use from closed guard with the posture. They are the following:

1. Knee pumping. Drive your knees forcefully in towards your chest and back out. Like doing a crunch except you are moving your legs in and out instead of your upper body.


Pump knees in and out quickly.

2. Sit up. Come up to one side and build a base with your rear hand. This is the setup for the kimura, hip bump, guillotine, 100% sweep and more.
   

   Sit up. Build a base with your rear hand.

3. The airplane. This is simply taking your upper body off line by angling from side to side. Keep your shoulders flat on the mat as you do this.
   

   Keep your shoulders flat to the mat. Move your upper body off line.

Grip Breaking

Here’s just a couple of quick grip breaking techniques that I like. There are many more out there. These are just my favorites. Once you can posture and pressure using the above concepts you need to be able to strip and break the top guy’s grips. Adding the grip stripping game to the posture pressure game will put you in a great open guard with the bottom guy in a huge posture hole right from the start.

1. Technique 1- Here I take a same side pistol grip on the sleeve. I then weave my other hand under and grab my own wrist. The trick is to use the knee pumping energy as I pull his hand off my gi. Pass the arm to either side depending on if you want an overhook or a take the back scenario.
2. Technique 2- Same technique reversing the grips. Works well this way too.
   

   Pistol grip on the sleeve with the right hand. Left hand goes under and grabs the wrist.

3. Technique 3- This technique attacks the rear hand. It aslo uses the airplane to take your body off line. Use the airplane to move your upper body towards the rear hand. Shove the rear hand into his midsection and then use the knee pumping energy to collapse his posture.
   

   Use the airplane to move your body towards the rear hand.

   

   Shove the rear hand into his midsection.

   

   Pull him in with your knee pumping energy.

Video of Concepts

I shot these short videos a while back. Just getting around to writing up the post. I’ll have to make it quick. Hopefully the video explains the concepts well enough. As always I like to start any talk of escapes with posture. I’ll outline a couple of knee ride bottom postures. In thinking about the way I usually escape knee ride I realized that having a posture/pressure that works both towards and away from the knee ride is important. The primary posture/escape is always to turn towards the knee ride. There are times though when that isn’t available.  In those circumstances you need to go away to escape.

The other factor is that it’s impossible for the top guy to defend in opposite directions at the same time. If he’s defending the turn towards escape then he’s not defending the turn away. With this in mind I’ll start by describing the turn towards posture and escape sequence.

Posture 1- Towards the Top Guy

Turn in towards the bottom guy. Head sits on shoulder and closes off the cross face. Bottom elbow is unavailable. Top arm is preventing the harvest.

The 3 Fights

When you are in knee ride bottom you have 3 main fights to worry about .

• • The top guy will try to get a crossface,
  • try to pull up on your bottom elbow to make you flat,
  • and harvest your far arm.

The posture described below will help you to survive these fights.

1. The head position is important. Put your forehead on the mat and make the space as small as possible. Touch your ear to the mat if you have the neck flexability. If not, try to touch it to your shoulder. In any case you want to make the space so small that he can’t get his hand under for a crossface.
2. Keep your bottom elbow on the mat and tight to your body. You don’t want the top guy to get at your bottom elbow and pull it up and away from your body. This will flatten your posture.
3. Your top arm has to stay bent with your elbow driving towards your center line and connected to your body. The hand of this arm can be used to block out the cross face.
4. Your top leg makes a kickstand like on a bicycle. This keeps you stable up on your side so you won’t roll back.

I’ll leave the video to describe the escape. The posture is what’s most important to me. If you can’t survive knee ride bottom then you’ll have a hard time escaping.

Posture 2- Turning away from the Top Guy

Sometimes you just can’t get an angle. You find yourself flat and can’t turn in. In these cases you can escape knee ride by turning away. Be careful though. If you do it wrong you find the other guy on your back with hooks in. The video will briefly describe how to avoid this.

This is a version of the Saulo running man escape. I like the initial posture because it prevents all the same fights you have when you turn in. You have to keep the top guy from getting under your neck. You need to keep him from harvesting the top arm. You need to keep him from capturing the bottom elbow. If you build the posture right you’ll be able to do all three.

Anyway, here’s the video of this concept.

I hope that’s enough to get the idea. Haven’t had a lot of time to update the blog lately. I’m hoping things settle down a bit now that school is starting.

I was having an interesting conversation the other day with someone at the gym. We were talking about some general ways to improve his game. As I listened to the advice that I was giving something struck me about it. I was reminded of something my coach Matt Thornton once told me. He said that we tend to roll according to our personalities and not our body type. Watching guys roll with an eye for this idea has proven it to be true  for me.

Back to the advice I was giving the student- The words were something like ” You can be timid at times in taking advantage of opportunities. You hesitate unless you are absolutely sure of success. You may try taking more risks in your game.” What was interesting to me about this advice is how it could just as easily transfer to other aspects of life. If you watch people roll you will see all types.  I see guys who are always trying to impose their will on the other guy. No attention paid to the energy given to them by their partner. I see other guys who are all follow. They never initiate anything. They always wait for an “invitation” from their partner. I see some guys who take big risks all the time and others who won’t take a risk no matter what.

This realization has been good for me. It’s made me look at myself and my game a bit differently. I see in my game that I can be complacent at times. Sometimes lazy. I’d rather wait for the other person’s energy to guide me than to initiate on my own. If a move or technique becomes too difficult I’ll quickly abandon it for another. I can see many times when I should have acted quickly and decisively but instead hesitated too long. I’m more comfortable with the familiar. I approach new things carefully and cautiously. These traits perfectly describe both my rolling style and my personality.

As a mental exercise try looking at your personality traits. See how they apply to your performance on the mat. I bet you will find some startling correlations. My next big question is whether or not fixing these personality quirks on the mat will affect them in other parts of my life? It’d be pretty dang cool if that was the case. I’d much rather roll than sit in a counselor’s office trying to fix my personality issues. It would be an interesting experiment for sure.

Even if it doesn’t work that way the nice thing is that looking at my grappling style has helped to confirm some things about me that I know to be true. I understand some things about my personality and my strengths and weaknesses in a way that I couldn’t if I didn’t have Jiu Jitsu. Jiu Jitsu mirrors life. If looked at correctly I think it can be a microcosm for life’s struggles and our skills in overcoming them. Just one of the many reasons that I love this gentle art….