Kill the Advance Party

Recently I have been helping on of my students with his rolling reversals from under side control. Doing this of course got me thinking about the importance of not letting the opponent pass your guard in the first place and if he does pass taking action that gives you the chance to roll him off.

As usual when I am teching my imagination ran away with me and I started thinking of silly analogies to help with the teaching points. In this case I said that when your gaurd is passed it is akin to being invaded by an agressive foreign force and the lead arm is the advance party of this force. As in battle, by taking out the advance party you can confuse and disorientate the main force, in BJJ terms by controlling the leading arm you make it hard for the opponent to establish control. The result is that it is easier to regain guard or to setup a reversal.

A few options for working with this include: overhooking the arm, underhooking the arm, double hand blocking/kimura, stuffing the arm and also pillow defence (although this is an entirely separate kettle of fish).

In all cases the task is to prevent the leading arm from establishing control of your upper body, particularly with cross face. Regardless of how this is done the point is destabilise, if through this action you can regain guard the that is the best choice, using anything you need to such as shin blocks and crossovers etc. If you are unable to block the pass but you can control the lead arm, the next step is to hip away and face your opponent slightly then reach your far hand over their back and grab their belt or their lat. With their lead arm blocked you can shuffle round so that you are in a straight line with your opponent and then bridge and roll to take the top position.

Mental Toughness Training

I have been trying to squeeze two kettlebell workouts in a week for the last month or so, and have been alternating between two basic variations. Both require mental toughness as much as fitness and strength, which is important for any fighter.

The first is based on Steve Maxwells 300 workout where I do 300 individual repetitions of 18 different exercises without putting the bell down. This workout has a warmup component, a ballistic component, a strength component and a core component. I have been doing this with an 18kg bell and my best time is 20 minutes and 2 seconds so far.
The second is simlar but varies a little in that I do the same warmup component and then do 3 identical rounds consisting of 5 different exercises and a total of 90 reps each. Similarly I don’t put the bell down between rounds so I rest but not so much. Of the 2 this is probably the tougher workout as I really drive certain muscle groups to fatigue through doing more repetitions of less exercises. Also it is pretty close to doing three five minute rounds so is like a fight in that regard. My best time for this one is 17 minutes and 29 seconds including the warmup.

As I mentioned of the two the second is probably tougher and requires more drive to complete it, but the first covers a wider variety of movements so is more of a full body workout. I am thinking that my next goal will be to design a workout with shorter rounds probably around 2 minutes and then work towards doing 10 rounds. I’ll see how that works though.