Aesopian’s Totally Awesome Journal

A recent ankle injury has caused me to change the focus of my game. The main areas I’m working on are standing from guard and snapping down to the front headlock then doing brabo chokes. I’ve also been working on the wrestler’s sit-out simply because it’s a skill I’ve never really developed and figured now would be a good time. Below are the drills I’ve been doing to train these skills.

Most of these are warm-ups and introduction stage drills. I’m putting together more that add resistance for the isolation stage. I’ve got a couple interesting ideas for how to create some intense but highly specific drills (like fighting to get back to your feet when they’re hugging both legs, either after a double leg or while passing guard). But this is what I put together for a quick training session so I didn’t make it too tiring.

Standing Up

When I started working on the guillotines, I watched a bunch of submission highlight reels (101 Submissions, Grappling All-Stars, youtube, etc.) to see how people set them up. One of the main ways I saw was standing up from guard. Which is only too obvious, since one of the main points of any guillotine is getting your head higher than their head.

I’ve also been giving standing up from guard a lot of thought lately for a couple more reasons. I’ve got an offer to teach women’s self defense, and this is what I feel would be one of the most important skills to teach. And unfortunately, I almost broke my ankle so playing guard hurts more than getting up and trying to run someone over.

The last and main reason is one I took from my own performance. I noticed that on the days when I feel more “on”, when my game is really working and I’m in the cliched “zone”, I tend to be doing something with my guard that I don’t always do. It happened on the days I got my blue belt and purple belt and when I’m feeling really ready before a tournament. It takes sparring with Eduardo to bring it out in me, since no one else makes me work it like he does. It’s simply that I stop playing a “pull them in” guard and start trying to shove and stand up (or at least come to my knees), especially to counter their guard passes. I didn’t spot this for a long while, since it was something that came out when I switched over to automatic for a hard match. Recently I sat down and really thought about what I do differently that makes such a big difference and this is what I pin-pointed. Now I’m purposely drilling this to take advantage of it.

Snake move to sitting up

This is a simple move that’s a close cousin of a normal shrimp. The main difference is that the first thing you do is get up on your elbow and hand. When you escape your hips with your elbow or arm posted like this, you end sitting up. This move is the base for every move to follow, since it trains you to 1) get up on your elbow and hand, 2) escape your hips and 3) sit up when you’re flat on your back.

Source: The Guard by Joe Moreira, p. 12-13.

Snake move to knees

Start doing the last movement, but end by posting on your hand and opposite foot so you can lift your hips and swing your leg under, coming to your knees. It’s like a miniature stand up in base, but you can do it more explosively since you’re jumping to your knees or sprawling.

Source: The Guard by Joe Moreira, p. 169.

Snake move to standing up in base

Starting with the first move again, this time when you sit up, finish by doing a full technical stand up in base. It’s really two moves (snake move and technical stand-up) but you’re stringing them together.

Source: The Guard by Joe Moreira, p. 210.

Standing up from closed guard vs good posture

They have good posture in your closed guard. Get to your elbow and sit up. Grab their opposite shoulder with your other hand and frame across their neck. Get up on your hand. Shove them back and threaten sitting up into them. Do a technical stand-up in base. Drive in and shove their head down into a front headlock and sprawl on them.

Source: Mixed Martial Arts: The Book of Knowledge by BJ Penn, p. 184-185.

Standing up from closed guard vs stalling posture

They are in safety position (head down in your chest, arms hugging your sides, elbows caging your hips). Shove the back of their head so their face goes down to the ground on whichever side they are looking. Sit up and get on your elbow. Escape your hips. Pull your bottom leg out until you can stand up in base. Keep their head pinned to the mat. Drive in, snapdown, front headlock, etc.

Source: Mixed Martial Arts: The Book of Knowledge by BJ Penn, p. 196-197. Kenny Florian MMA/No-gi Seminar DVD. FJKD3 by SBG.

Standing up from butterfly guard with underhook

You have butterfly guard with underhooks. Start setting up a hook sweep to one side. Kick out their knee on that side. When they stumble and try to regain their balance, post your hand and stand-up. You’ll likely end up in a dog fight position (with them whizzering you) but you can get to a front headlock if you try for it.

Source: Mixed Martial Arts: The Book of Knowledge, p. 221-222.

Standing up from butterfly guard with overhook

They get an underhook, meaning you get an overhook. Wrap their arm tightly. Grab their opposite wrist. Scoot out to the side of their overhooked arm. When they drive in to flatten you out, post back on your hand, scoot even further to the side and try to whizzer their face into the floor. Put a lot of pressure on their shoulder and use this to pivot as you jump to your knees. The front headlock and guillotines and brabos are all sitting right there once you’re up.

Source: Matt Thornton shows a guillotine similar to this in FJKD3, The A.P.E. Guard.

Standing up from butterfly guard with guillotine

They grab your legs/ankles to start passing. You wrap their head for a guillotine. They let go of your feet and grab your arm to protect their neck. Keeping a grip on their chin, you post back on your other hand and jump to your knees for a front headlock.

Source: Mayhem Miller on subfighter.com (watch video here).

If you’re doing MMA and want to strike instead of grapple, all of these can easily end with you backing away to standing instead of staying in close contact.

Sit-outs

I’ve always had an aversion to wrestler’s sit-outs for some reason. Probably the “wrestler’s” bit. But I recently saw two applications of it that made me yearn to do it correctly. First, I watched Bill The Grill teach a brabo that he catches in transition as he’s sitting out from under a front headlock. It was just too cool and I had to try it, but I know I need a decent basic sit-out before I can add the fancy part. The second incident was seeing Thiago Tavares use a sit-out to take Jason Black’s back after getting sprawled while shooting for a double leg in the last Fight Night Live. So I’ve decided to give it a fresh look and put in serious drilling. I figured if I was going to take any move from a UFC, it might as well be a basic wrestling skill instead of the gimmicks most people like.

Solo sit-outs

This is a fairly common drill. Start on all fours. Get on your hands and feet with your butt up. Sit through, putting your opposite foot where your hand is and your hand where you foot used to be. Then spin over again and come back to all fours. Do this for 1-2 minutes, switching from side to side as you please.

Source: Passing the Guard by Ed Beneville. Grappling Drills by Stephan Kesting.

Slides

Squat down on your hands and feet. Slide your leg across, posting with your hand and lifting your other arm in the air. Go back and forth quickly, like you’re a Russian dancer.

Source: Passing the Guard by Ed Beneville. Grappling Drills by Stephan Kesting.

Slides down the mat

The same movement as before but you hop forward before each slide, so you’re traveling forward down the mat.

Sit-outs (arm spin to front headlock)

There are many different ways to do the wrester’s sit-out, depending on how they’re holding you and what you want to do with it. For my purposely, I want to work on one that ends with me in the front headlock. In Paragon Jiu-Jitsu: Secrets of Our Success, Bill the Grill teaches one that feels the most natural to me. The key detail he added was the idea of spinning around their arm as you sit out. It gave me a central point to rotate around, which smoothed out the move. Before, I was sitting out then flipping over in two motions, instead of spinning smoothly the whole way through.

Front Headlock, Sideride and Brabo/Darce

Most of the preceding drills end with you in the front headlock. This is because my goal is to get guillotines and brabo chokes. But before getting to the submissions, I like to flesh out the position. Once that’s done, we can work on the chokes.

Spin drill

Your partner turtles up tight. You sprawl on him with your arms behind your back. You run around in circles, switching directions, turning your upper body on its side, walking different ways. The goal is constant movement while keeping all of your weight and pressure focused on to his back.

Source: Grappling Drills by Stephan Kesting.

Spin-behind drill with darce grip

In Grappling Drills, Kesting teaches a drill where you start in a sprawl position on someone, then spin to sideride and grab the harness, then spin all the way around their front to get it again on the other side. I took that idea and applied it to the darce grip. It goes like this:

1. They’re on all fours. You get a front headlock.
2. Spin to sideride. As you spin, switch to a gable grip, shoot your arm deeper under their armpit and bring your forearm behind their head.
3. You’re now in the darce position. Keep your head on their back, like you want to listen to their shoulder.
4. Release your grip. Start spinning to the far side, getting a front headlock as you move around.
5. Spin to the darce grip on the other side.
6. Repeat steps 2-6.

The trick is understanding which side to spin to depending on how you have the front headlock (which arm is trapped) and being able to switch this back and forth as you go side to side.

Darce from sideride

The darce to brabo like you already know how to do. Lately I’ve been putting more attention on fine tuning grips, adjusting and finishing. Maybe I’ll talk about that later.

Like I said at the start, I have more drills to add and create. For example, another natural extension of this is working on sprawling, since they’ll often try to take you down as you stand up or once you’re in the front headlock. You’ll hear about them later.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 at 10:41 pm and is filed under Coaching, Techniques. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response.