Learn to defend the berimbolo with Atos!

Had some weird injury issues this week, hopefully everything is ironed out.

On… Tuesday, maybe? Earlier in the week, one way or another, my right ankle started hurting.  It was the one that Angelica popped doing a toehold around Thanksgiving; I figured it was a combination of catching it on the mat and the weather recently (it’s been down in the thirties which is a) unusual for San Diego and b) means the gym is COLD COLD COLD and drafty all the time), so I taped it up and went about my business of training and lifting and stuff.  I just played from the bottom as much as possible to give it a chance to heal.  My guard was getting passed a little easier than usual but I wasn’t too concerned, because I couldn’t use my right foot very well.

Then, in the middle of sparring with Angelica (again! I don’t know!!) I went to hip escape with my left foot and BAM, instant pain in my left ankle. Exactly the same pain as a hyperextension on a toehold, except all I did was hip escape!  I am really anxious about it since the Trials are coming up and I want to be in awesome shape.  Yesterday it was pretty bad at the beginning of strength/conditioning, but then once I warmed up it was much better. It feels okay-ish today.  I did manage a 40-inch box jump yesterday too, which is pretty cool considering the bad ankle and the fact that I’m only 62 inches tall, haha.

I also managed to squat 145lbs. Squats and I have a really tumultuous relationship. By tumultuous relationship I mean “I hate squats.”  My squats are bad– not because my form is bad, or because I am weak in my legs/core, but because I have this mental block about getting out of the bottom of the lift.  If I could get over my mental… thing… about squats, I think within a few months I could be pushing the 200-pound marker, but I swear, I get to the bottom of the lift and my body just goes, “you know, this weight was perfectly fine on the rack, why did you even bother picking it up?” Ugh. Squats. I know they’re important, and I know my lower body is weak compared to my upper body so I need to pay more attention to it (there’s no reason for my 1RM for the floor press to be 115 lbs and my squat to be 145lbs) but UGHHH I hate it.

This week I’ve been working on my positioning from the double guard pull. It’s bad.  Maybe not bad, but certainly not good. This week that’s going to be my focus: working from the double guard pull, and from single-leg X, because holy crap my single-leg X is bad (and it should be good, because it would fit into my game so well).  Another thing I’ve noticed lately is that I’ve become too complacent about letting people grab my collar when they’re trying to pass my guard. That needs to stop, I need to focus more on that and preventing the cross-face.

So that aside, after lifting yesterday I went to the aquarium.  J and I have decided that we need to expand our horizons and explore more of San Diego so we’ve been doing enriching things. Like going to the aquarium, and going to see instruments of torture.

It’s a pretty cool place, the aquarium.

 

There has been a disturbing lack of BJJ in my BJJ blog (techniquepost yay!)

My technique for today is half spider/reverse DLR.  I’m talking about it because my guard game is super rusty and teaching is one of the best ways to learn something.  So, let’s talk about half spider/reverse DLR guard!

I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT

So, hey, apparently every academy ever has a different name for this position.  Regardless of what you call it, I am convinced that this is a guard that is effective for everyone, no matter what size you are. The more flexible you are in your hips, the more effective the guard is usually, but as with everything, there are exceptions. I like to play reverse DLR with my right leg hooking theirs, with my leg looking something like this:

reverse de la Riva guard

I think this could be considered the “classic” reverse DLR position. The guy is standing up with good posture, and the guard player has the sleeve and the ankle, with his control foot on the hip.  In my experience, this doesn’t happen often or for very long.  To me, this is a volatile position that I really don’t want to be in; the second I hook my foot like this, the guy is going to go for the knee-slide pass. Every time. And if that doesn’t work (bitch please, of course it doesn’t work) and he’s an Atos guy, he’s going to try to leg-drag the shit out of me, because that foot on the hip is just ASKING to get dragged, it’s practically begging (somehow this technique chat just went from G-rated to PG-13, I apologize).

Anyway.

I like to play with a reverse DLR hook and both hands on the sleeves. My left foot will work alternatively on the hip and on the bicep, but again, I have to be careful that I’m not leaving my leg in one place too long, or it’s going to get dragged, then I’m out of luck.  This position is the only place I really like to use the lasso around the puppet arm, in case they do that really effective thing where they bring their elbow in and start to work for the underhook.  When this happens, I’ll use the lasso to open the elbow again and start to play with the space.

I AM SO UNCOMFORTABLE HERE PLEASE SEND HELP

If your half spider/reverse DLR is getting passed like it’s nothing, I can’t help you.

No, I’m totally kidding, I can.  Never fear!

Here are a few common problems and solutions I have found:

• The guy is using their outside hand (in the picture, the guy in white’s LEFT HAND) to grab your collar.  This is bad news, kids. I pass a LOT of people this way.  If they grab that collar, step number one is always break the grip.
• They’re kicking out their leg and passing to knee on belly.  This means your foot isn’t active and your hip positioning isn’t quite right.  Flex your toes and turn more on your hip. If the guy is really strong with this pass, then you can transition one hand to the ankle to effectively kill the kick.
• He’s leg-dragging you.  Well, here’s the thing about leg-draggers: when they’re good at it, and I mean really really good at it, the most you can do is delay it, especially if you’re smaller. If the guy is not a good leg-dragger and he’s still doing it to you, your spider-guard leg is too inactive. Keep more tension on the sleeves. Maybe you’re too much on your hip at this point; I can’t say for certain without watching a video. Leg-draggers can… well, yeah.
• The guy is grabbing your head and smashing you flat into the ground. You are a white belt. Learn regular spider guard first.

Okay, I did all that, now I’m stuck. I hate you. Why the hell am I even in this position? 

Because it’s awesome, okay?

I like half-spider as a transitional position, and let me tell you why.

If you like to play far-away guards, this position is not for you.  It could be, but you have to first get over your fear of intimacy. If you’re comfortable with balls in your face, large men sitting on your chest, and leg contortion, THIS IS FOR YOU SO GET READY.

Until recently, I was never an x-guard/deep half player. I hated being so close to my opponent, because I felt like they could smash me at will.  But then I started playing a lot more no-gi and my x-guard/deep half evolved naturally from the necessity of closing the distance on the bottom without putting my feet and legs at risk (brown belt woes).

Sometimes it’s hard to sweep from reverse DLR/half spider, especially if the guy is higher level and has a good base. If you can keep the spider guard hook extended, that will increase the likelihood of being able to sweep, but it doesn’t guarantee anything.  What you can ALWAYS do with that hook, however, is maneuver yourself underneath your opponent and/or make him step forward with his base leg. I recommend doing a lot of playing around with this; see what you can make the guy do by putting different types of pressure on the puppet arm.  If you’re a leg-lock guy, there are some easy-as-pie kneebars/toeholds that come from this position. You can lock them in by rolling over the base leg.  This is also worth some experimentation.

I made the guy step! I did it, it was me! Now what?

Take the back.  It’s what I would do, for sure.

I like to bait the guy with an arm drag.  Here’s the basic premise:

• Switch my hand grips while keeping the foot on the bicep. My right hand is now holding his right sleeve, and I’m up on my right elbow. I cannot even begin this process if he’s holding my collar with his left hand.
• I start to scoot away, making the guy put pressure forward.
• When I feel like he’s got most of his pressure on me, I remove my foot and reach for the belt.  When this works, it looks like an arm drag, and you start the process with the bottom hook and a good seat belt.  Awesome.  Unfortunately, it’s one of those techniques that people really only fall for once.

If the guy has any idea what he’s doing, he’s going to bring his base leg in to avoid the arm drag.  This is your moment to sink into deep half.  I like to use grips on the collars to break his posture and do the little Atos deep half/x-guard back take. This is, unfortunately, too complicated to describe without movin’ pictures.  Instead, I’ll just tell you to work your favorite x-guard/deep half sweep from here.

I prefer to spend most of my time during sparring upside-down, in the pile-driver position. Do you have thoughts on this?

Yes.

If you like kiss of the dragon/inverted guard, I would play reverse DLR without the spider guard hook.  I like the collar grip at first if I’m going inverted, because it forces the guy to posture up and away from me a bit and releases the pressure. I’d use the foot on the hip to make space and spin as quickly as possible underneath the guy.  Then I would kneebar him because why not? That’s what I spend most of my time doing.

Thoughts? Comments? Concerns?

Life’s better on top? I just need to get there.

Been training in the gi again, although a lot lighter than before no-gi Worlds.  My knee is bothering me something fierce, but I’ve discovered it’s an IT band problem, not the torn ACL I thought it was (I could not be happier about this revelation, really).  A lot of foam rolling is in my future, but stretching has helped it a lot, even in the past few days, so that’s good news.  As with the last time I hurt my knee, I find myself playing on top a lot more frequently.  When I’m on the bottom, I’m not screwing around down there, because if I get my guard passed, I don’t have the flexibility in my knee to replace guard like I usually do.  It’s forcing me to play a different game if I have to pull: pull guard, sweep, pass, take the back. I’m seeing this succession in my sleep, for God’s sake.

I’m feeling a relative lack of motivation lately, but as someone pointed out to me today, Abu Dhabi Trials are at the end of January, so that means I don’t have the breath of fresh air that I thought I did before we start training hard again. In reality, I probably have until early or mid-December to get mentally prepared to jump back into competition season. I guess that’s better for me mentally– the long break would just give me a chance to really psych myself out– but I need to make sure I take care of my body. I’m going to go see a nutritionist to make sure my nutritional needs are being met and to ensure that I’m not at risk for osteoarthritis or anything nasty like that. The women in my family tend to be obese, so we have a low instance of osteoporosis, but a recent trip to the doctor (and a very firm, agitated suggestion) made me realize I’m at risk for both. Bah, I wish I were still 18. No I don’t, being a teenager was lame. But I wish my body were still 18. Moving on.

Right now, besides my technique, what I really need to deal with is my attitude. I’ve gone through a lot in the past three years (more than I’d care to share with anonymous strangers on the Internet and the smattering of teammates that read this blog), and I’ve stayed almost unfailingly positive. Life, to me, has been like that Ellen Bass poem; I love life and living, even when everything hurts and is awful. I’ve never felt the desire to give up. But last week… that rocked me. It shook the foundation of my motivation, perhaps more significantly than I let on in my post immediately after the tournament. I don’t know what I’m more ashamed of: the loss itself, or the fact that it’s so thoroughly messed with my head. Everyone has said the same thing: it’s okay, you did well, you made a mistake, you’ll do better next time; but this isn’t helpful. I need solutions; I need goals, I need a way to fix this. Without that, I’m worried I’m going to lapse into apathy.

FEARLESS

Given my recent proclivity for kneebars, a friend sent me this:

HOW DO THE JIU JITSU KNEEBAR?>>>@???

Not like this, kids.

I had a really, really bad day.

I’m feeling a lot of pressure at the moment, and I probably have done it to myself, but everything is a mess.  I went in to the gym expecting to have an easy day, but then we did a Tabata workout in the morning and competition class was hard. Wrestling is just wrecking me (and my self-confidence). I don’t think my wrestling is bad, but when we get into rotation sparring, I’m just so frustrated because I can’t manage to control my takedowns.  This ended with me crying through the entire session of rotation sparring. After I finished crying through twenty minutes of stand-up rotation sparring (I don’t think anyone noticed because no-gi=so much sweat), I had various little breakdowns during our regular sparring (10 x 4 minutes). I kept being told by my professor that I have to keep fighting when I’m standing. I’m fighting as hard as I can and it’s not working.

I’m not training tonight, and I already feel guilty about it, but I’m on the verge of tears still, so I know if I train, it won’t be good training. I snapped at my friends and I feel bad about it, and I haven’t slept through the night for about a month. This morning I was up at 4am.  I can tell that I’m writing like a meth-head, but the number of fucks I give is approximately zero. I’m hungry and I’m exhausted and all I want is a hug.

I’m stuck at the gym until 8:30 too, because I don’t have a car today. Fuuuuuck.

Low singles: success. Not making bad choices: not a success.

Today I succeeded in doing a few low singles. Currently concussion-less! Yay.  However, my choices last night were less than stellar. Boo! I was hurting hard in competition class today, to say the least. I was also sweating like some kind of livestock.

Anyway, starting this week, I’m going to be making a serious effort to train more. I sound like a nutcase, since I’ve been training twice a day for months. I feel like a nutcase, guys. I guess I’m training like one too. I don’t even care!  Sometimes it’s so hard to keep perspective– I’m training with some people who are amazing athletes and BJJ players– so most of my perspective comes from the evening class.  Things that don’t work in the competition class work like a charm during evening class. It’s definitely nice.

In other news, I’m having a love affair with knee bars.  I don’t even know why, I’m just diving for them like I get paid to do it. It doesn’t even make sense half the time, especially when the guy I’m trying to knee bar has a leg the size of my body.  BJJ. Sigh.

“I mean, I can’t let you get underneath me or… stop laughing, it’s not funny.” SPIDER GUARD POST.

Someone asked me about doing spider guard.  I do a lot of spider guard. I get in trouble for the amount of spider guard I do (true story, I got a stern talking-to about it the other day, and was informed that a whole asston of push-ups were in my future if I didn’t branch out). Professor Galvao told me I need to do other things, but I’m in love, what can I do?  Listen to my professor, of course, and combine spider guard with x-guard and y-guard and the waiter sweep and all that fun stuff.  But those aren’t the things I want to talk about today. Today I want to tell you guys about spider guard.

Everyone thinks that the important thing about spider guard is the length of your limbs. This is BS. I’m 5’2″ and stubby. Nothing about me can be described as “long.” The important thing for spider guard is your hip flexibility and the movement of your hips on the mat. Being long-legged and flat is just as ineffective as being short-legged. Everyone can do spider guard effectively.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about grips.  Pistol grips are stupid. They waste your energy and they rotate your shoulder funny. No pistol grips for spider guard (although if I had my way it’d be no pistol grips for anything because seriously, fuck pistol grips) hook grips only. Sleeves on gis are designed especially for grips like this; once I have a grip on the sleeves, I can control the person with very little effort on my part. I have very small hands, even for someone my size, and I have to work really hard on my grip strength to get it to be passable, but it’s damn near impossible for most people to break my hook grips.  Moral of the story: hook grips for spider guard, or you’re lame.

Keeping Tension

If you can’t keep spider guard it’s because you are doing something stupid with the tension in your grips. When I do spider guard, I want my hips turned to one side, with my opponent bent in half over me. Ideally, one of their elbows should be above their head. If you can’t get that elbow above their head, you need to switch to a different guard because you’re about to get passed.  Practice this all the time. Learn how to immediately snap someone’s elbow into that overhead position. It’s essential to making the spider guard work.

Additionally, you shouldn’t be flat on your back in spider guard. Turning onto a hip and stretching a leg will keep the tension. Pull your elbow in to your ribs and stretch a leg straight to keep control.

Sweep… Submit… Sweep…

The quintessential thing to do from spider guard is a triangle. If you have been following my blog at all, for any length of time, you know my ability to triangle anything that’s awake and sentient is piss-poor. I also don’t use the omoplata nearly as much as I should from this position, mainly because I don’t use the lasso (more on this later).  Instead, I like to use the spider guard for two things: first, to reset the fight to my pace, and second, to bait the person into a position where I can sweep them.

Lately, in gi, I’ve been using the half-spider/inverse de la Riva position to do a lot of sweeps.  This isn’t important; the important thing about spider guard is that you can use it to bait your opponent into any other position you want. It’s just a matter of the right leverage.  If I wanted to play traditional de la Riva, it’s easy to stretch and reach from open spider guard. If I want to play x-guard, it’s easy to make the guy step. Deep half? It’s just a hip-switch with tension on the arm.

 

To Lasso or Not Lasso?

I don’t use the lasso (or the overhook or whatever you want to call it)– the one where you wrap your leg around the guy’s arm. There are a few reasons for this, and please don’t take my word as gospel here, because the lasso is a very powerful position for people who can rock it.  Here are the reasons I don’t use it often:

• My grip, as I stated before, is comparatively weak. When someone manages to break my grip and I’ve lassoed their arm, they are in the perfect setup for a really quick, strong ankle lock.
• I like to transition very quickly from spider guard to kiss of the dragon/knee-bars. If my leg is all tangled up, it’s really difficult to make that fast transition.
• If I’m going to be underneath the guy, I want to be able to control the distance really carefully. The lasso doesn’t offer me the fine-tuned level of control I can get by switching to deep half or my x-guard variation.
• I like the inverse DLR better than the lasso guard, and I’m much better at it.

So there you have it.  Questions about spider guard? Hit me up, I’d love to hear them.

I feel (BJJ) pretty

How I feel every day.

My life has been a series of geographic relocations on a global scale. As a result, my BJJ training has been so fractured and so varied that it used to be really hard for me to look at my style and say “yes, I got this technique from this person, and this technique from that school.”  I’ve always been a mishmash of different techniques gleaned from trying not to get squished and different schools and teachers.  I’ve always had good basics, really solid fundamental techniques, but after training at Atos for a while, I came to realize that having good basics isn’t enough.  I came to realize that the fancy shit doesn’t just exist because people wanted to look awesome in tournaments, but because they needed it to outdo someone with good fundamentals.  I was suddenly faced with the prospect of deconstructing 10 years of technique and rebuilding it piece by piece. It was a daunting task, to say the least.

It all started with a Berimbolo, for me. This technique, despite being something that should have been working for me, was as much of a failure as my triangle. My legs are too short for a traditional approach to de la Riva guard, but Berimbolos should have been right up my alley. Should have been, but weren’t.  I worked for weeks on Berimbolos, failing miserably into leg-drags and reversals and other terrible positions. I persevered past the point where logic should have kicked in and told me to cut that shit out because it wasn’t working, because I wanted that damn movement in my game. I was tired of getting destroyed every time I tried it. My work paid off, eventually. I don’t default to Berimbolos, but I can do them if the occasion calls for it, which is still more than can be said for the whole triangle situation.

My reaction every time it works.

But now that I’ve been here awhile, I have changed. Atos is written all over my game; you can see it in the way I play guard now (my guard has improved approximately one million percent).  You can see it in my passing, and in the aggression I’m finally starting to show.

I made the mistake of telling someone I was going to “smash bitches” and I haven’t lived it down.

I’ve been working on my rolling kneebar/rolling kneebar sweep and I’ve been hitting it on everyone. Once people figure out how to stop it, I imagine it will stop working so well, but I finished my opponent in no-gi Nationals with it, so I figure it must be pretty good.  I’m starting to develop that pretty-looking guard game that I admire so much in the Mendes brothers and the Miyao brothers, and in a lot of my teammates (Liera Jr for instance, but others as well; we have some blue belts that rock beautiful guards). I’m really proud that I’m starting to look like them.  I totally drank the Atos kool-aid, and I can’t fathom that being on any other team would feel this good. I feel like I’ve joined a cult.

Not even mad.

Lights down low

I live in California. For those of you not from ’round these parts, that means that we get these lovely things called rolling blackouts.  At about 7:00 (read also: the goddamn middle of class) we had a blackout.

Everyone: “Err… should we…”

Andre: “KEEP GOING I WILL BE THE TIMER, FIND YOUR PARTNER, BEEEEP.”

Everyone:

The lights never did come back on. We trained for a good hour in the dark. Getting changed afterwards was also interesting.

On another note, I am feeling so good these days. I finally feel like I can do things against my teammates, and I am actually getting submissions and good positions occasionally now.  I got quite a stern lecture when the professor got back about using more x-guard and more inverse de la Riva/half spider, and you can’t say no when the professor tells you something.  It’s been quite helpful and I’ve been sweeping the hell out of everyone. Only problem is that sometimes I get stuck in the kimura and my feet are a little too exposed for my liking. Also, if they DO manage to pass, they’re right on top of me, which is no good. I guess that means I can’t let anyone pass, eh?

I’ve also been working on this really awesome guard pass recently, and it’s been working on everyone. I love it. I’ve discovered that to pass properly you need to really work with your head. This was a major breakthrough for me in the realm of passing tight; previously, I was training with people who I didn’t really need to pass tight against. Now it’s very necessary and I had the hardest time with it for a long time. It’s finally starting to make sense now, though.