Aesopian’s Totally Awesome Journal

Indrek Reiland is the instructor of Aliveness Gym Estonia (Straight Blast Gym) and an e-buddy of mine. Just to try his hand at it and see what it was like to create an instructional, he produced one called Functional Half Guard. Despite the guerilla filming, I have to admit that it is one of my favorite half guard instructionals.

I’ve seen ones by Gordo, Gustavo Machado, Saulo, Bob Bass, Ze Mario and others. While those are all good, Indrek’s was the first I’d seen break down the half guard into truly basic basics like hip, head and hand position, posture, defending the cross face, defending the underhook. The overall quality is surprisingly good considering the it was filmed in the corner of a karate club with one training partner, Jorgen Matsi, as his dummy.

What I felt really made the video worth watching was the quality of the material. Most of it is simple, solid and safe, making it some of the most useful techniques and positions for half guard. The paw and double paw are staples of my half guard now, and the safety position is invaluable when passing. Watch those if nothing else.

I also found it interesting how he approached it like he was teaching the viewer how to better coach their own students, and the use of the isolated drilling and sparring to focus on specific skills or add them to the game.

I asked Indrek for permission it put his video online, and he was happy to share all it for free. So I present the Functional Half Guard by Indrek Reiland and Jorgen Matsi:

Contents

00: Introduction

00: Basic Positioning
01: Stay on your side
02: Paw and underhook
04: Crossface and flatten (top guy)
06: Isolation: paw vs crossface
07: Triangling the legs
08: Returning to closed guard
10: Isolation: adding the guard return
11: Double paw
13: Defending the brabo choke
14: Isolation: adding the double paw
16: Wedge
18: Isolation: adding the wedge
19: Behind the back arm trapping + sweep
22: Isolation: adding the arm trapping
23: On teaching basic positions and isolated drilling

24: Basic Techniques
24: Two ways of taking the back
+ 25: 1. Stretch the underhook
+ 27: 2. Exploding crunch
28: Toe grab sweep
32: Isolation: adding toe grab sweep
33: Sweeps off the wedge
+ 33: Going out the backdoor
+ 36: Grab pants sweep
38: When to teach half guard, the more advanced games and the basics

39: Half Guard Top
39: Basic goal – crossface and turning out
41: Safety position 1
+ 42: Down by hips to negate the underhook
+ 42: Pinching knees to prevent the guard return
+ 43: Cupping elbow to negate the paw
+ 43: Head in landing pad to flatten them out
+ 45: Isolation: safety position
+ 46: Importance of head position
48: Brabo choke
51: Safety position 2
53: Whizzer
55: Why not to kill the paw with a knee
57: Isolation: safety positions and whizzer
58: Basic goal in detail
+ 58: Crossface
+ 59: Turning out
+ 60: Hand on hip
61: Gi grips
+ 61: Shoulder lockdown
+ 62: Face covering
63: Passing off their bridge
66: Wristlock
68: Passing to mount
71: Passing to side control
73: Passing to side control or mount
75: Isolation: passes
77: Hip switch pass
79: Isolation: Review of passing drills
82: Putting the whole passing game together
83: Closing and Thanks

This entry was posted on Friday, December 15th, 2006 at 1:37 pm and is filed under Techniques, Videos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response.