2009-02-01 Sat AM BJJ Class

Cassio Werneck BJJ - Sacramento CA - Dan

Smaller class today than recent Saturdays, lot of white and blue belts at the tourny in Lodi. I guess that means Lodi actually has buildings...

Worked a few closed guard techniques, I loved it. First was the basic cross collar to arm bar attack. The second was a nifty Brabo choke from closed guard.

For the first technique you start in closed guard. open the lapel with one hand and get a nice deep grip with the other, your last knuckle should be around the shoulder blade. For the sake of this discussion lets say your using your left hand to grip the collar. Your opponent is understandibly not very happy with this grip. To help loosen the pressure some they reach in with their left arm placing it over your elbow and pushing down to release some of the pressure. Now you need to do two things at once. Help their right arm a little farther across their body with your free hand and put your right knee on their hip, pinching pretty hard, to keep that elbow trapped. Now finally kicking your left leg up and to your right, trying to lean your opponent that direction. From here you either work the other hand in for a top of the shoulder grip for the cross collar choke or you kick your leg over their head for the arm bar, you can even go bck and forth. It's kinda fun actually.

Second was the Brabo choke. This one as a little more perplexing. It's weird how some techniques just don't fit right. Starting from the closed guard again with the same deep cross collar grip this time the opponent is going to defend their arm with their same side arm. In this case their right arm. Now you attack that arm by grabbing the sleeve or elbow and driving it across their body, down to your right hip basically and at the same time plant your left foot on their hip to block their arm from returning to a safer spot. Now that the arm is across, you sit up a bit, grab them over the back with your free arm, and do a crunch pulling them into you. Sposed to mash their right side carotid with their shoulder and their left with your deep grip. I could ony get it a few times. I'm blaming it on Mark's nonexistent delts, nothing to do with any lack of skill on my part..... ;)

Rolled:
Somehow (all the resting maybe) only rolled two 8 min rounds
rest, Jordan, rest, ?,

The roll with Jordan was good. He's always a struggle. He dove in for an early deep half guard, something I don't remmeber seeing from him before. I ended up going reverse halfguard and passing. I don't know I could reproduce it though. It would have been much smoother if I was more limber. I still could not sweep or sub him from my closed guard. He's got a strong base.

Also rolled with a white belt that I hate to admit I've never caught his name. Besides the experience gap I also had at least 30 or 40 lbs on him. I just tried to share with him as many little tips as I could in the 8 minutes we rolled. Stuff that you sometimes just never get 'taught' in a class. where to be and where not to be with your hands in someone's guard and why, where to put your arms when your in someone's side control and why you shouldn't try to just keep benching the guy off you, stuff like that. I try to keep it as brief as possible so we can both feel like we worked. Sometimes I don't think I do this enough with the new guys.