Working guard passing details

I’m continuing to work on the details of simplicity. I’ve been reanalyzing my guard passing over the last few days as I realized how lacking it was while working with JS on Monday. Where I normally feel like my hips are heavy, I felt like a kite in the wind and kept getting swept over effortlessly by him.

I keep thinking of the Roger Gracie quote, “The basics work. You just have to do them right.”

And I realized that I am doing the right moves incorrectly and sometimes at the wrong time.

First thing I’m going to work on is committing to being a tight guard passer. I’m not a jumping around, flipping over guy and I find being methodical with my whole game works best for me.

The second thing is to commit my hips more. I’m realizing in hindsight that I was light because my hips were light.

Third, using my head. Just like in takedowns, and open guard, I want my head below his. I’ve used my forehead under the chin from time to time and I need to start that up again.

Fourth is tying the passes in together. The idea is to gain slow steady control and decrease his options, just like in every other position.

Fifth and I think most important, is securing control after the pass. JS is excellent and sweeping right after I’m past his legs or getting to his knees. I think looking at keep his legs crossed, working the crossface, knee on stomach and taking the back may be a few of the options to look at.

But more importantly, I have to realize that a certain level of player is always going to accept the next position and start reacting to it. He accepts the pass so that he can set up the sweep. I have to anticipate the potential sweep I’m giving him and start reacting to that when the pass is finishing.

Kevin Bacon, Organic Chemistry and Jiu Jitsu

Last week in training, I caught my training partner in a toehold. It came from a failed reverse triangle underneath. Which came from a failed arm bar from up top. Which came from a failed choke from sidemount.

For some reason this sequence made me think of organic chemistry exams.

In those tests, you were given a starting compound and a final compound. It was up to you to show the path of chemical reactions that would transform your starting compound into your final one.

And for some other reason this made me think about Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. This was a game that started in the early 90’s where the object was to connect any actor to Kevin Bacon in as few steps as possible.

And this leads back to jiu jitsu where each reaction can lead to the final goal if you just know how to order the subsequent steps. The defenses are predictable and lead to predictable offensive opportunities.

Kron Gracie said his father Rickson was the master at finding the easiest route to the submission.

In college, we got a better score for getting to the final compound in the fewest steps.

And in Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, the fewer films you needed to connect to Kevin Bacon, the higher score you got.

Revisting the basics part 6: Keeping it simple

Lately I’ve been working on the idea of making your life simple and your opponent’s life difficult.

What I mean by this is always having two attacks working together. He has two bad choices to make and you have one easy one: whichever one is given.

It reminds me of a quote I once heard, “A man can do anything he wants but he can’t do everything.”

An aspect of keeping things simple is to always give your opponent motivation to move.

My dad told me many years ago that in judo, the way to get someone to push you was to push him first. I think about this all the time in my attacks. I always want to get the other guy to want move rather than force him. Forcing involves energy and can allow tunnel vision to take over.

For instance, if someone postures up in my closed guard, rather than pull the opponent down, I prefer to hip bump them, which forces them to push me back.

All these concepts have been floating in my head as my instructor’s been telling me lately to simplify everything. Quite frankly, it’s been a relief.

For so long I’ve had so many techniques and options floating in my head that I often would freeze up with analysis paralysis. Now by just focusing on a few basic attacks I simply need to figure out what the two threats are in a situation, then take whatever one is given to me. It’s that simple.

Revisiting the basics part 5: getting your hips underneath their hips

I started working some of the deep half guard over the last week. Yesterday with JS I was messing around with some of the entries from far away. I could definitely feel that my arms and my neck were vulnerable. It felt like trying to sprint off the trail in the woods and had to dodge branches coming from all directions.

But I did notice if I was able to get there, some sweeps were possible. Afterward we were discussing this type of half guard vs the Bear half guard which is more shifting the hips, trapping a side, then bridging. I feel that both are good sweeping systems with quite a lot in common.

In my efforts to tie things together, I started thinking that these sweeps are not just unique to half guard, as X guard, scissor sweeps, ankle sweeps and really almost all sweeps involve getting your hips underneath your opponent.

I thought about this more as I started trying to work more of an open guard against JS. I was putting up some barriers to his pass, but since he tends to keep his hips low and back, my barriers are ultimately ineffective.

The smarter gameplan would be either to disengage completely or to use a strategy that would cause him to want to move his hips forward. A good example of that might be the rolling knee bar. My instructor often mentions how he started to use the rolling knee bar when people became wary of his armlock from the guard.

One of the best defenses for the arm lock is to keep the hips back. However, when the hips are back, the legs are exposed to a degree. And when one starts to counter the legs, usually this involves moving their hips forward and inevitably up. The next move is to attack their base while still looking for submissions. And furthermore, you can get underneath their hips now, in order to do this.

While this might be a little more complicated example, a simpler version is the scissor sweep. Regardless of the variation that is taught, there is always the idea of pulling the opponent on top of you, i.e. getting his hips over yours, in order to do the sweep.

And looking back at times when a sweep works verses when it doesn’t, I’m seeing this hip principle is present much of the time. There are other factors of course, but it’s hard to get any sweep without this floating hip idea.

Revisting the basics part 4: Bumping the butt with the knee

As a tall lanky fella, there are a lot of moments where I had a lot of difficulty using the hip escape, as I could never seem to get my knee in tight enough. I saw guys with shorter legs slide right in, but for me, my knee would always bump against the top player’s knee.

I noticed this initially from mount escapes, but soon saw it from side mount escapes or even guard pass defense when the opponent would, slice his knee through and baseball slide in. I saw shorter legged guys who could get their knees in to block the hips and I’d suffer from reverse Napoleon syndrome.

Well my instructor showed me something a few years ago that I didn’t really think much about at the time. The basic principal is when you bump the back of someone’s thigh or their butt with your it brings their hips forward and makes them base out with their hands. It also makes their legs light, which means it’s easier to push them back or lift them up.

My instructor later showed this same concept from the umpa escape from the mount, where he’d first bump the butt to get the hands to base. This makes it easier to grab the arm and start the move.
I’ve noticed this in some of the competition footage I’ve seen where Jeff Glover uses this a lot to get hooks in with his deep half guard game. And I’ve noticed this helps me in situations that previously felt impossible to get out of.

It’s a movement I’ve seen a lot of people do, but outside of my instructor and the Bear half guard dvd, I’ve never really seen anyone talk about it. Once I started thinking about it and putting it back in my consciousness, I see it everywhere.

Worked on it with JS early this week and while it’s not enough to stop the crushing freight train, it is enough to get some hooks and attempt some other attacks. With lighter guys it seems even more effective.

Revisting the basics part 3: The Bigger Picture

For a long time now I’ve gotten caught up in minutia. I’ve become so obsessed with jiu jitsu that I started to forget what the point was. Last week was a frustrating one of training for the most part. I was trying to find the exact answer to the exact moment of an isolated situation. And I was annoyed when I couldn’t reproduce the situation exactly so I could keep practicing this one scenario.

I think this is where the idea of being a scientist breaks down. Jiu jitsu is too much like life. No two scenarios are ever the same. I was searching for order when there is only a controlled form of chaos. I was trying to find details when I was missing the bigger picture. The reason I’m doing all of this is to get better at jiu jitsu. Knowing all the nuances and details in a frame by frame manner is all well and good, but if I don’t make a good movie out of it, then what’s the point?

I think what all this means is more sparring, less thinking. I remember Rickson talking about the true purpose of training is to reach a point of neutrality. This is what I need to work on now. I have so many techniques and questions in my mind, but it’s time to throw that all away and just see what happens.

Revisiting the basics part 2: The X Guard

I remember getting exposed to this guard 10 plus years ago by Ethan Milius. Back then it was a follow up to a failed butterfly sweep. I wasn’t ready for that technique and even though I could drill it, I rarely ever hit it.

I pretty much ignored it for the next few years but rediscovered it when I came out to Texas. My instructor here had a different version with one foot controlling the instep of the opponent instead of the upper thigh.

I started playing around with this new version and liked some of the dexterity it brought to the picture to set up leg locks and sweeps that were more balling up oriented rather than stretching out.

I used this game a lot as a purple belt against some of the bigger guys. It was especially effective against wrestlers, as I don’t think there are too many situations in a wrestling match where competitors would find themselves in this position.

Then for some reason I stopped playing this game completely. It might have been that I wanted to develop more submissions from the bottom and ventured into other things. I don’t remember it being any conscious decision, but I look back at the last few years of training and can only think of a handful of times that I’ve used x-guard to any degree.

All of this information has been flooding in my head over the last few hours as I think about my training session with JS yesterday. His game has gotten so good that I can’t decide if starting on the bottom of half guard is a brave gesture, an exercise in stupidity or some sadistic urge I have to make myself seem chumpy.

I wanted to focus on the omoplata battle but his head was in a different position. He was moving more to a reverse kesa type pass. I kept flailing trying to force the situation that we'd been working on the previous day rather than truly accepting the reality of what was happening. With a guy like him, this becomes a punishing and humbling experience as indecision makes surviving a freight train unlikely.

I had no real strategy because I had no real idea of attack. One of the main flaws in my thinking was not coordinating my upper body and lower body.

My instructor suggested I think about x guard from this position and at first I felt even more lost. It had been so long I didn’t even see how I could get there. He showed me some sweep variations that weren’t X in the strictest sense but had the same principles.

I was annoyed with myself after training. I felt like I’d just been a flailing spazz for an hour and that belt was just staring me in the face, disappointed. But I realized the lesson had been learned. I needed to delve back into the X guard.

After looking at my book and a ton of videos, I realized that the half guard position does have an x guard set up to it. I’d just never really drilled it. In fact, x guard has always worked well for me, once I got there. But I haven’t practiced getting there enough. This is why it came and went for me as without drilling sequences, I'll never go to them when the chips are down.

I'll need to work on the timing and sensitivity down the road, but for now I don’t even have enough reps in to warrant that. For now, I need simple repetition. After working on entries over and over, I'll start to recognize them in live training. In fact, I can already think of at least four times in yesterday's session where I could have transitioned to X guard.

As long as frustration ends in a lesson, I'll always take it.