Saturday Private Lesson 1/12/2008

Coach was offering privates at a discount in January, and since I'm going to be competing next month, and also since I've seen the benefit the privates have with Jeremy who is improving at an alarming rate, I thought I'd try one out. I'm very happy I did. I learned some things that I will begin working into my game right away. I also scheduled another private lesson for the week prior to the tournament. Hopefully, I'll have met with some success from the techniques I learned today and will tweak what's not working.

I have very little game from half guard, and was looking for some offensive techniques. Coach showed me a lockflow of four techniques, three of which begin with an overhook: a collar choke, a shoulder lock, a straight armlock and then a transition to an omoplata. The beauty of this is that I can react to what I'm being given. Rather than forcing one technique, I can actually control my opponent's movements and react to what he gives me.

The set up is to get a deep overhook in half guard.

I'll start with the Lapel Choke from Half Guard:

1. Start from solid half guard position.
2. Secure overhook gripping opponent's lapel (not necessarily really deep) with bottom arm.
   
3. Reach back and get a thumb in grip with top arm.
4. Swing top arm over.
5. Widen bottom elbow out for choke.

1: I'm starting from a solid half guard. So, I'm up on my side and I'm creating space by widening out my topside elbow into my opponent's neck to create space and keep him from driving into me and flattening me out. My other hand is on my opponent's hip. I noticed that my tendency is to try to control that arm. I'm not sure why, but there ya go. Coach said that it's not wrong, but there are advantages sometimes to posting on the hip.

2: These techniques work from an overhook. If I can get the overhook, great. If not, I can fish for a lazy underhook and many times my opponent will fish back in to keep me from getting the underhook and I can easily secure the overhook at that point. I'll anchor the overhook using either my own lapel or my opponent's. For this first technique, I'll use my opponent's lapel, so I'll reach around his arm, feeding his lapel to get a solid grip, locking his arm in tight.

3: With my other arm (the topside arm) I'll reach back and get a thumb-in grip behind my opponent's head. If my grip on his lapel is too deep and makes this difficult, I can reach across with that topside arm and work the choke that way.

4: Next, if I have the thumb-in grip behind his head, I need to swing my arm around his head to get into the cross collar position.

5: And finally, widen out my bottom side elbow to get the choke. It gets tight very quickly.

The Shoulder lock from Half Guard is for when my opponent tries to posture up to keep me from getting the choke:

1. Steps 1 and 2 same as above.
2. Focus on torquing the elbow into my body.
3. Bring a knee in for leverage, extend body for tap.

Very simple. From the overhook position, I'm working for that lapel choke, but my opponent is defending. In defending, he's exposing his arm. So, I will 2: focus on torquing that elbow in. I can gable grip for a little extra leverage, and then 3: bringing a knee up will allow me to extend my body a little bit more to tap guys with exceptionally flexible shoulders.

If he tries to drive in, I can work for a straight armlock:

1. Overhook as above, but slipping to my own lapel.
2. Bring outside knee over on top of my opponent's shoulder.
3. Gable grip above opponent's elbow.
4. Bring other knee up, pinch and work for submission.

Where the Shoulder Lock opens up when my opponent postures up, this one will be in situations where he tries to drive in somewhat. I will actually be moving away from his somewhat to get this submission. I'll 1: overhook as above, but this time instead of anchoring onto my opponent's lapel, I want some mobility, so I'll anchor on my own lapel. 2: Sliding out on his arm, I'll bring my outside knee down on top of his shoulder. 3: Gable grip, and 4: bring my other knee up for the submission. The key to getting the tap is to concentrate on my bottom elbow, which should be very tight to my side, and then concentrating on crunching into him.

While this would be cool to get, my opponent will often turn his arm to defend the armlock. If this happens, he's playing into an Omoplata:

1. Swing top leg over his head to mat.
2. Sit up.
3. Scoot hips out a little at time to bring opponent flat to mat.
4. Scoot hips back in, turning legs correctly.
5. Work over/under grips with head low.
   
6. Raise hips until he taps or starts crying.

This one's pretty straightforward.

So, this is what I'm working on right now. So, instead of working to pull guard, I'm going to be pulling half-guard in sparring and getting as much work on this as I can. I'm sure when I screw these up, that I'll be working a lot on my escapes from side control, too.

Tomorrow is Competition Class followed by BJJ.