How To Inspire Fear With Your Butt-Scooting!

We don't say bitch or bitches in our household anymore.  It's been replaced with fish or fishes.  

You see, a few years ago we were playing cards. Offering up a fair bit of smack talk.  And our youngest apparently had a pretty good hand. Her brother said something mouthy to her which I can't recall. But then she slammed down her winning hand with authority, looked him dead in the eye and said, "Well drop you... Fish!" (Complete with head jiggle of course.) It was so darn cute that it stuck, and we've been repeating the phrase ever since. 

We're also big fans of  the phrase, "Suck it, Fishes!" The phrase, "Suck it!" of course comes from our favorite family TV show. If you're a fan, I don't need to explain the connection. If not, you probably wouldn't understand.

Connection

Speaking of connections, we went over establishing connection during class tonight. Why the heck would you waste time on that, you might ask. All you've got to do is just reach out and grab the other guy, right? Well, it's not quite that simple.

Have you ever played the old king-of-the-hill style pass or sweep game? One guy sits in the middle of the mat, plays guard and tries to sweep. He's the king of the hill (or the bull in the ring... I've heard it both ways). Everyone else takes turns trying to pass his guard. If the king of the hill gets the sweep he stays in the center and remains king of the hill. If the passer passes, then he becomes the new sweeper (aka king of the hill) and the old sweeper is out.  

Most folks will try to pass standing. This makes sense because it makes you more maneuverable. Standing passes also have a better track record in competition.

Generally speaking, you'll find it's easier to pass and become king of the hill than it is to sweep and remain king of the hill. Part of this is because you get tired after awhile. But the other part is it's generally easier to pass than it is to sweep. This is why we always want to be the guy on top. It's also why we work so much on our sweeps... you know... so we can become the guy on top.

We teach and practice guard passing techniques all the time. We also teach and practice sweeps all the time. But we rarely go over techniques to establish a guard while butt-scooting versus a standing opponent. It's just not that sexy I guess.

The key to butt-scooting offense

Anyhow, the key to remaining king of the hill in this case is to get good at establishing meaningful connections.  No, I'm not talking about networking and relationships.  I'm talking about physical connections. (Get your mind out of the gutter!)

But seriously, connections are key. Whoever establishes useful connections while denying their opponent any useful connections generally wins the exchange. 

Well that sounds well and good, but how do we use that? Here are three things you can go for when you're the butt-scooting king of the hill.

1. A collar grip (I prefer the cross collar)
2. A sleeve grip
3. A grip on the leg

Generally speaking, at least one of these will be open for the taking... unless of course your opponent is running away from you... because they know you're a butt-scooting badass.

The Collar

Say you get good at establishing the cross collar grip. From there you execute a collar drag and take the back or wind up on top of side control. You run that play successfully for awhile, but eventually folks in your gym catch on and start protecting their collar. What to do?

The Sleeve

Well, what are they protecting their collar with? Let's say for the sake of our thought experiment that they protect their collar with their hands. Then you go ahead and grab one of their sleeves. 

Once you control one sleeve, you can extend you leg on that side without worrying about it getting stuffed. You can put your foot in his hip, or establish a De La Riva hook, or a lasso on that side. 

If he grabs your other leg with his free hand, you grab that sleeve with your free hand and kick to pop that grip off. Voilla! You've established two grips on him. He has no grips on you, And from there you can transition to pretty much whatever guard you want.

You run play number two successfully for awhile as well. But eventually folks catch onto that one too. So now they keep their collar and sleeves away from you by standing upright. What to do?

The Leg

Now his ankle is literally ripe for the picking. You grab the ankle with one hand, push into the hip with the other, and get on top once he topples over. 

Of course if you're a leg locker or an X-guard player, there are some great ways to get to the X or Single-Leg X from leg grips as well. But those are a little more difficult to describe so maybe we'll save that one for another post.

Conclusion

So there you have it. Three targets. Collar, sleeve, and leg. 

Once I started using this game plan, my sweeping percentages went way up in pass or sweep games where you start without any connection. 

Put a little time in with this concept yourself, and it won't be long before your training partners will be very wary of engaging your seated guard. The you too can say, "Fear my butt-scoot, Fishes!"

 

Happy training!

- Big Mike

How to get the most out of a private lesson

I had my private Zoom lesson with Dax yesterday. First of all, it was nice to see some of the old gang. He had a couple of guys there to help out. One to be his practice dummy and another to hold the camera. 

Any time you train with Dax you can expect to have your mind blown, and this was no exception.  He went over 18+ techniques near as I can count.  At least a dozen of them were specifically geared toward what he saw on the videos of me sparring. The rest were based on questions that came up over the course of the lesson.

Some of the techniques were things I know I've seen Dax teach in class before, but had forgotten about.  Some I just wasn't ready to pick up the first time around but this time they just clicked into place. Others were completely new. All of them were directly applicable to my game at this point in time.

That's the great thing about private lessons. It's Jiu Jitsu custom designed for you at your particular point on your Jiu Jitsu journey. They're pricey, but so worth it if you can afford them. There's no better way to accelerate your progress.

How do you know you're ready for private lessons?

Some folks say that private lessons really aren't worth it until you reach a certain level. They feel that you have to have a basic understanding of the fundamentals, and some experience applying those fundamentals in sparring before you can fully appreciate the value communicated through private lessons.

Try telling that to the Gracie family. In the original Gracie Academy in Rio de Janeiro in the 1950s, they only taught private lessons for a period of time. A student would come in, there were several instructors, and they only taught private classes. They did this because the order in which you learn techniques can greatly affect how long it takes you to master the art. A student was permitted to join group classes only after they had a firm grasp of the fundamentals. 

They only switched to an all group classes model when they had gained so many students that it was no longer practical to teach them all via private lessons.

Rener Gracie says that, if he could choose the journey for a newer student today, private classes would give them the most amount of comprehension and the greatest understanding of the art in the least amount of time possible.

So the bottom line here is that if you train Jiu Jitsu at any level, you're ready for private lessons.

How do you prepare for a private lesson?

Your instructor will probably ask you what you want to work on.  You should probably have an answer ready for him. You could begin with whatever questions pop into your head, but consider this... What position do you find yourself in the most?  

• On the Back trying to Submit
• Top Mount trying to take the Back or Submit 
• Top Side Control trying to Mount or Submit
• Top Guard trying to Pass
• Bottom Guard trying to Sweep
• Pinned trying to Escape

This is a simplified list of positions, but it'll work for our purposes.  If you're a newbie, you probably don't find yourself mounted on top of your opponents very often.  You probably find yourself pinned good amount of the time.  It doesn't really do you any good to focus on guard passes at this point if you can't even escape a pin, right? The basic idea is this, wherever you find yourself the most during sparring, that's probably what you need to be working on.

When your instructor asks you what you want to work on, you tell him that you find yourself on the bottom of side control more often than not, and just can't seem to escape. Or maybe your escapes and sweeps are fine, but you just can't seem to pass the guard. You get the idea.

Another thing you can do is record footage of you rolling, and send it to your instructor a week in advance. Thanks to this little strategy Dax was able to analyze my game and come ready with some things to work on. This is so much easier to do than it was 20 years ago. If you're reading this blog, chances are you have a cell phone with a camera on it. Just bite the bullet and ask a buddy to record a few of your rolls. 

But wait a minute Big Mike! My instructor watches me every day in class. Shouldn't he already know what I need to work on? Having taught classes for a little while now I've gotta say it's tough to watch all the sparring matches going on at the same time. And that's if I'm not rolling that day for some reason. I've had students come up to me after busy class, ask me how I thought they were doing, and I couldn't even remember who they rolled with. That's why I try to get around to rolling with everyone. But it takes awhile. Your instructor just can't roll with everyone every class. So giving him some tape to watch goes a long way.

Now that I think of it, even if your instructor rolls with you, he can't read your mind. If you're technologically savvy you could narrate the footage of you rolling, explaining to your instructor just what you were thinking at each point during roll. You can point out the mistakes that you notice, what moves you are going for and why so that he has a better idea of which holes in your game are systemic, and which are just brain farts. This can only make your session more productive.

What to do during your lesson

Take notes.  There's nothing worse than paying for an hour of private, personalized instruction, only to forget all of the techniques the day after.

Don't be afraid to drive the lesson to some extent. If you need to see a technique second, third time, don't be afraid to ask. 

If your brain is getting full ask to stop and review what you've learned. I had to do that yesterday myself. After 40 minutes, I was afraid that if I learned one more technique, one of the others was going to fall out of my left ear hole!  So I asked if I could just run through the ones we'd went over so far.  

You could ask to record the session. Your instructor may or may not go for the idea. Not everybody's okay with seeing themselves all over the internet. If your instructor values his privacy, no big deal.  But if he says yes, a video is worth a thousand notes! Just don't be a douchebag and post it on the internet afterwards. At least not without your instructor's permission. You paid for that instruction and the video. The rest of the internet didn't.  

What to do after your lesson

Review your notes. Go through the notes you jotted down during your lesson. This will help keep you from forgetting what you went over.

Add to your notes. If you're like me, you write everything down during a lesson. There's just not enough time. So you write down just enough to remind yourself what you went over. After the lesson go back and fill in the blanks. Add in as many details as you can remember.

Make a clean list of all the techniques you went over. If they have names, use the names your instructor uses. If they don't, make up your own names for them.  

Make flashcards. Write down the name of a technique on a flashcard.  On the other side write down the individual steps of that technique. For example:

Upa Mount Escape

1. Trap the arm
2. Trap the leg
3. Bridge and roll
4. Base and posture

Chair fly all of those techniques at least three times each. In other words, sit down in your favorite, comfy chair, close your eyes, and imagine yourself performing the technique by the numbers. If you get confused or miss a step, check the procedure on the back of your flash card.

Once you get the hang of this, you should be able to go through 10 techniques 3 times each in about 10 minutes. Do this every day for the next 2 weeks and it'll hard-wire them into your brain. After about two weeks you'll have these down. If you haven't been hitting them while rolling in your group classes by that point, you will be soon!

Conclusion

So there you have it.  Big Mike's little guide for getting the most out of your next private lesson. When you feel like you're in a good position to do so, talk to your instructor and schedule that private lesson. I think you'll be glad you did.

How To Get Better At Armlocks

Right before my gallbladder operation, I stumbled onto a method which got me way better at hitting arm locks.  The experiment was supposed to take a couple of months, but that darned gallbladder had other plans for me.  Still, I made enough progress in a week that I thought it might be worth writing about.

Enter The Roy Harris Plan

I've been a purple belt for almost two years now, and was doing some thinking about how to get to the next level. I came across an old article written by Roy Harris.

He has a talk with his purple belts when he thinks they're about a year out from getting their brown belt. He'll tell them that for the next two months they're only allowed to go for arm-bars. No chokes. No leg locks. Only arm-bars. 

Once the student is done with his two month journey, then he's only allowed to go for leg locks for the next two months. Then two months of only chokes. Then a month of only attacking the right arm.  So on and so forth.

Everyone in the gym catches on pretty quickly that you're only allowed to finish with arm-bars.  This makes it even tougher on you.  After all, it's a whole easier to defend a submission when you know which submission is coming.  So you're forced to get creative with your setups.

This sounded like as good a plan as any so I thought I'd give it a try. I was only able to do it for a week before my gallbladder surgery, but are the top ten things I've noticed so far:

1. I tend to use chokes to set up arm locks.
2. Attacking one arm can set up the other.
3. One arm lock can set up another on the same arm.
4. Chokes are everywhere!
5. It's easier to hit arm locks from top positions.
6. If I can isolate an arm, I have an arm lock.
7. My new favorite position to hit arm locks from is side control.
8. There's really no safe position for your arms on bottom side control.
9. Hunting arms from side control makes it far easier to mount.
10. Grip breaks are key 
    

I tend to use chokes to set up arm locks. 

I had no idea how much I use chokes to set up arm locks. Initially I found myself going for a choke to set up the arm bar. Then I remembered I'm not doing chokes, followed by this long awkward pause on my part. It eventually got to the point where training partners would chuckle a little every time I'd start digging into the collar. Once everyone figures out chokes are off the table, it gets a whole lot more difficult to get the arm. You have to find other ways to set up the arm lock.

Attacking one arm can set up the other. 

When my opponent defends one arm, a lot of times they'll leave the other one open for attack.  For instance, when I attack my opponent's left arm from mount he'll sometimes roll to his left side to defend.  When he does this, he'll often open up his right arm to attack.

One arm lock can set up another on the same arm. 

Other times when someone defends an arm lock, that arm will be open to a different type of arm lock.  For instance, when I attack the left arm with an Americana from mount, sometimes they'll point their elbow toward the sky.  From there I can turn to the left and switch to the straight arm lock.

Chokes are everywhere! 

An unexpected side effect of all this is I'm noticing all kinds of opportunities for chokes. Honestly, it's driving me nuts! Have you ever found yourself wanting that thing you know you can't have? I think it's kind of like that. I'm noticing chokes all over the place. Now it could be that everyone in the gym is just leaving their neck open with me since they know I'm only going for arm locks, but I think there's probably more to it than that. I suspect that when it's time to switch to only chokes, this two months of arm locks will end up being more helpful than I would've thought.

It's easier to hit arm locks from top positions. 

Honestly, I've never hit a whole lot of straight arm locks from guard.  It's never been my thing.  I'll hit Kimuras and omoplatas, but not a whole lot of straight arm locks.  And now that I'm only going for arm locks, I prefer to just sweep, pass, and work for the arm lock from there.  You have more control.  You have gravity on your side. It's just easier to isolate an arm and go to work without having to worry about getting your guard passed in the process. I'll take an arm lock from guard if my training partner is careless, but otherwise I'll just take the sweep.

If I can isolate an arm, I have an arm lock. 

Any time I can wedge something in between my opponent's upper arm and his rib cage, I have an arm lock. I may not always know which arm locks are available to me at that point, but there's always one available to me at that point.  And if I'm able to think about it long enough, I can usually figure it out.

My new favorite position to hit arm locks from is side control! 

I used to hate side control. Especially when I was a blue belt. I had a hard time controlling it against wrestlers. Had an even harder time finishing from there. Mainly I'd just mount from there. As a result I got pretty good at mounting.  And my mount was better than my side control. Not anymore! It's just too easy to isolate an arm from side control.

There's really no safe position for your arms on bottom side control. 

After playing this way for a week, I've come to realize that I have a way to isolate an arm from pretty much any arm configuration my opponent chooses. 

Hunting arms from side control makes it far easier to mount.  

Once people realize that isolating the arms is the key to staving off arm locks, it's soooooo much easier to transition to mount. I was pretty decent at it before, but now people are so focused on keeping their elbows glued to their rib cages that it's easier than ever. Although side control is such a target rich environment now that I only transition to mount to add a little variety to my game.

Grip breaks are key. 

I always had difficulties finishing from the straight arm lock position. I would finally get there, but then my opponent would establish an annoying collar grip, S-grip or figure-4 grip to defend.  And against a bigger, stronger opponent I just couldn't break it. I've attended classes where we'd learn grip breaks, but I'd either forget them the next day, or they wouldn't really work for me during live rolling and I'd have to switch to something else. Often times they'd be so focused on defending the arm lock that I'd be able to switch to a choke and get the tap. But that's not an option for me right now. Luckily, I took some time prior to this whole experiment, researched different grip breaks, found a handful that actually work for me, and memorized them. Now I kinda like it when they grip up to defend that armbar. There's a certain satisfaction that comes with breaking those grips.

Conclusion

They say necessity is the mother of invention. By limiting yourself to only arm locks for the next two months, you force yourself to find new ways to get that arm. If jiu-jitsu is creative problem solving under pressure at its finest, then this takes it to a  If you're a mid to advanced level player and want to get better at arm locks you might consider giving this little experiment a try. I've seen a significant improvement in just a week. It might help you too.

 

Happy training,

 

- Big Mike

 

P.S. If you're interested in reading a little more about Roy Harris and his ideas, be sure to check out his book, The Jiu Jitsu Answer Man.