Mat developments and Easter

Recently I have been discussing my strength and conditioning training as much as my BJJ training, so today I figured I'd write more about my grappling and only a little on the other.

I will quickly cover off on the workout I have been doing recently just for fun though, I have been doing 3 rounds, with a total time of about 15 minutes.

Round 1
Push Up ladder from 10 - 1 with a set of 10 crunches between each rung of the ladder.

Round 2
2 sets of 10 Clean and Presses on each hand (18kg kettle bell)

Round 3
Squat Ladder from 10 - 1 (holding the Bell at chest height) with 2 Hindu Push ups between each rung.

It is a quick workout but is very intense, my quads certainly let me know after I have finished...

Onto grappling, there are a couple of things that I have been working on recently. One is as always, triangles, I am constantly trying to improve my triangle game, as it is probably the weakest part of my guard. I have been playing recently with the idea of a "triangle guard" essentially closing my guard with one of my opponents arms trapped in side, making sure I am clamping the upper arm to the body. I have found that this midway position allows me to use both arms to break down the opponents posture and hold it down. Then it is a fairly small movement to scoot my hip out and a bit and setup a triangle rather than trying to clear the opponents arm and setup the triangle all at once. I had found that doing it all at once tended to give my opponent time to escape. The other good thing is that I have found that most traditional triangle setups can be used to setup the "triangle guard", so it is fairly easy to find.

The other aspect of my game that I am using a bit more is X-Guard, to be perfectly honest when I learned X-Guard I didn't think it was something that I would use a lot, but as it turns out the half guard hooking sweep that I mentioned in my previous post tends to turn into X-Guard quite readily. The reason is that I have found that the only may people are countering the hooks sweep is by moving to the opposite side of my body from my hook and effecting an explosive pass. After being passed a few times I discovered that this movement actually gave me an opening to put my inside leg into it's position for X-Guard. I already had an underhook on their leg for the sweep and my outside hook was already in so one small adjustment gives me X-Guard. Once I get X-Guard I try to sweep immediately, the sweep I go for first is to grab the opponents other foot with my free hand and drive my hooks into the knee, this is essentially the same as the first X-Guard sweep that Eddie Bravo shows in Jiu-Jitsu Unleashed. The next step if that sweep fails is usually that my opponent will reach for a cross face with their near arm. I have found that I can claim that arm and use their motion to do a back roll and sweep them over my shoulder.

Anyway that is basically all that I have been adding to my game recently except of course for Omoplata from mount which I learned from John Will in the recent seminar we hosted. The other great Omoplata trick that John showed us that is your opponent rolls out of your omoplata, that you should keep their arm by cupping their elbow, this allows you to move to the opposite side of their body and pull them into a tighter omoplata, I have been getting a lot of mileage out of that as well. I believe that there is a video of that very move on Aesopian's blog if you are interested.

Anyway gotta go, Easter things to do, have a good holiday.