Caged Grappling 2 – Second Instalment

Welcome to the second instalment of my lead up to Caged Grappling, this will cover matches 4, 5 and 6.

Match 4 - Barton ‘the Buttgoblin’ James vs Cory ‘the Hurricane’ Hearn

This is going to be fireworks…. no two ways about it. Hybrid Training Centre’s judo power house Barton James across the cage from the exciting Cory Hearn from 36 Crazy Fists. They are both coming to win and to do it convincingly.

Here is how it breaks down….

Name: Barton James

Barton - arm collector

Style: Judo (green belt)

Strengths: Barton, a veteran of Caged Grappling 1, is a very well rounded competitor with state and national experience in BJJ, Judo and Muay Thai. Barton is tough and poised with a focus on takedowns and arm bars. Look for aggressive takedowns and a dominant top game, he loves to take arms home with him.






Name: Cory Hearn

Cory - Smiley, but deadly

Style: BJJ

Strengths: Also a veteran of Caged Grappling 1, Cory is an experienced BJJ Blue Belt and MMA fighter. Cory is fit and game and will keep up the pressure and pace until the match is over (and probably well afterwards….). Cory is a good submission fighter, but is equally in his element in the takedown game. The cage is certainly not going to be an imposition to Cory.

Synopsis: This match is really hard to call, I know there are people who will think that Barton’s ferocity will bring it to an end in short order, but Cory has no quit in him and despite his smiley demeanour is tough and a competitor. I think this is going to be a battle of attrition.

Match 5 - Anthony Pisano vs Sam Cowie

Match number five for the evening will be Equipe Mestre Wilson product Anthony Pisano going head to head with a Caged Grappling 1 veteran in the Hybrid Training Centre’s Sam Cowie. These guys are both seasoned BJJ competitors and should get after it.

Here is how it breaks down….

Name: Anthony Pisano

Anthony - Clearly needs a haircut...

Style: BJJ (purple belt)

Strengths: Anthony, from Equipe Mestre Wilson, is experienced and strong. He has competed locally and nationally and been awarded his purple belt in a club that is known for its strong competitive focus. Anthony is coming to win, not play.






Name: Sam Cowie

Sam is fast and competitive

Style: BJJ (blue belt)
Strengths: Hybrid Training Centre’s Sam Cowie is another veteran of Caged Grappling successfully beating his opponent via arm bar. Sam focuses on the takedown and has a tough no-nonsense style of grappling. Being a HTC product he has a wrestling and judo flavour to his Jiu Jitsu game.



Synopsis: It is difficult to say which way this one will go. One on hand Anthony is a purple belt compared to Sam’s blue, and is the bigger stronger man. However Sam comes from an MMA gym rather than a BJJ one solely, so has more experience in and around cages. This match comes down to Sam using his cage experience to counter Anthony’s BJJ skills and size, should be an interesting battle.

Match 6 - Mareo “The American” Kerr vs Jeremy “Fantastic” Carroll

Match number six will see Mareo Kerr from Hybrid Training Centre face Kaos Dojo’s Jeremy Carroll. These guys are both experienced competitors in Jiu Jitsu and MMA with unorthodox games and both have good size and strength.

Here is how it breaks down….

Name: Mareo Kerr

Mareo - XFC LHW Champion

Style: Wrestling & BJJ (blue belt)

Strengths: Mareo is the first MMA champion to have a Caged Grappling match, as the light heavy weight XFC champion. Mareo has good cage craft and is comfortable trading submissions from the top or bottom. Expect a powerful, but tactical and well thought out approach from Mareo.



Name: Jeremy Carroll

Fantastic.....

Style: BJJ (purple belt)

Strengths: Jeremy has been a regular face in the BJJ scene for a long time and has fought in both Brace For War and Valor in MMA. Jeremy is known for unusual submissions and takedowns and approaches his fights with intelligence.


Synopsis: This match is the first one in Caged Grappling 2 that sees both competitors with MMA experience, the presence of the cage shouldn’t benefit one over the other. Both are also known for being tactical and intelligent in competition, so in a lot ways this one is difficult to call. I am expecting an interesting match and perhaps the first one to make a mistake will be what decides it.

The third instalment of my lead up to Caged Grappling will be out soon.

When do we search for a better way?

Jiu Jitsu is a search for perfection in technique… but how do you know if the technique is actually perfect to start with? When do you search for a better way?

Answering these questions is a big part of the problem solving that I love so much about Jiu Jitsu. In Jiu Jitsu we often deal with the same scenarios repeatedly and gain efficiency, but I don’t know how often we work out new or better approaches to these problems. There are existing techniques and methods that are used in most situations and they are used due to their effectiveness. However I don’t believe that the conventional method is necessarily always the best. Or more to the point, what works in a given circumstance may not continue to work as people develop a better understanding of that circumstance.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that I have new and improved methods for every single technique and I am always very cautious of seeming disrespectful to my coaches or the developers of Jiu Jitsu. However, I have found some situations that I feel I have been able to improve.
It wasn’t until I was approaching Brown Belt that I started to investigate changing techniques that I had been learning rather than practicing them the same way I always had. In most cases the process I have followed to improve technique is by considering the most common problems and counters that arise when I am trying a technique and look for ways to pre-empt them. So here are two examples of slight modifications to fairly standard techniques that I think make a big difference.

Harness Strategies 

So, most people have similar strategies when it comes to attacking the back with the harness. Such as “over/under” grip, choking arm on the bottom side and protecting the choking arm. Commonly there are two defences that you need to deal with in addition to actually taking the back. First the opponent will squeeze their chin to their chest so you can’t get to the neck and second they will hand fight to take away your choke.
As such when I approach the harness grip I like to move my arms further round the torso so that my grips are “hidden” outside the opponents arm pit. In terms of dealing with the hand fight this is effective for two reasons. 1. My grip is out of the opponent’s immediate reach and 2. My hand placement lifts their arm a little which reduces their mobility. As for the chin being down, I have usually found that the tighter pressure I generate stops their chin going down and even if it does, pulling arms through this deep has my bicep tight to their carotid artery anyway so they are already being partially choked. Incidentally this actually leads to a sneaky little back control version of the head/arm choke as a bonus.

I have a made a video to show what I mean:

Triangle with Gable grips

When it comes to triangles most people tend to agree that there are a few key things that you need for a good triangle; you need to break your opponent’s posture, cut an angle, you shouldn’t see your opponent’s shoulder, you should squeeze your knees etc. Where I approach things differently is in terms of preventing my opponent’s defences, both in a BJJ and an MMA sense. The first two lines of defence for the triangle are similar in both BJJ and MMA. In no particular order they are to drag the trapped arm back from across your body (to take away their angle) and then to posture up. In MMA you also have the very real threat of being lifted up and slammed onto your head.
In most cases the arm defence isn’t really focused on, but there are common answers to posturing up as well as lifting and slamming. However these answers tend to be reactive rather than proactive. In the case of posturing a lot of people try to prevent it by pulling down on the head, whereas the answer to the MMA slamming problem universally seems to be to underhook the leg so that you can’t be lifted off the ground when the opponent stands up.
I prefer to address both problems before they occur and to do it with the same technique. My approach is to cut my angle with the triangle and then underhook the arm rather than the leg, I then Gable-grip over the shoulder and crank downward pressure over the arm. This stops the opponent from being able to posture up and also prevents even the strongest opponents from being able to stand. If the opponent can’t lift their head, then they can’t stand and if they can't stand, they can't lift. The added bonus as well to this is that it maintains your angle and can sometimes result in a tap due to shoulder pressure.

I also made a video showing the triangle details:

Have fun everyone, if you enjoy this post, please check out and like my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/hobartmartialarts

Caged Grappling 2 – First Instalment

So here is the first of four instalments in the lead up to Caged Grappling 2. Here I will look at the first three match ups on the card, of these six men only one is a veteran of Caged Grappling 1 although they are all already names on the Tasmanian scene. The first three matches will be of disparate styles and are set to excite… so here we go!

Match 1 - Kieryn Wright vs Callum Berechee

The opening match up of the card is between two heavy weights; Kieryn Wright of Hobart Martial Arts Academy/Maromba and Callum Berechee of Hobart No Gi. This is a great way to start the show with two big men with two different skill sets and experience.

Here is how it breaks down….

Name: Kieryn Wright

Kieryn - BJJ Purple Belt

Style: BJJ (purple belt)

Strengths: Kieryn, the Hobart Martial Arts Academy/Maromba product, has had a great deal of experience in competition and has several state and national titles to his name. He is calm under fire and has pulled off a number of upset victories, it is often said that he “moves like a little man” and has a dangerous guard.






Name: Callum Berechee

Callum - Very powerful

Style: No Gi Grappling

Strengths: Callum may not have had the same level of BJJ competition experience as Kieryn, but he is tough and durable and has proved it with several wins in the local MMA scene. Callum is patient, big and strong and I expect he will make Kieryn work for everything he tries. Expect good use of positioning and cage craft from Callum.




Synopsis: This match will be either be really fast or really show, it comes down to whether or not Callum can shut down Kieryn’s offence long enough to use his size and power. Expect a great match up from these two!

Match 2 – Brad Hutchison vs Tyson Read

The second match up of the card is between Brad Hutchison of Hobart Martial Arts Academy/Maromba and Tyson Read of Equipe Mestre Wilson. After the Heavy Weights in the first bout, the light weights will be moving like lightning.
Here is how it breaks down….

Name: Brad Hutchison

Brad - Not scared of snakes

Style: BJJ (blue belt)

Strengths: Despite being a lightweight Brad is well over 6 feet tall and is deceptively strong. Brad has had a considerably successful BJJ career, even going undefeated for a full two year period. Brad is known for his exceptional use of his butterfly hooks and has a deadly array of no gi chokes. Look for Brad to attack with combinations on the ground and the feet and be ready to finish at all times.




Name: Tyson Read

Tyson - A submission hunter

Style: BJJ (blue belt)

Strengths: Tyson is an experienced competitor with over 5 years in BJJ, in his career he has earned numerous gold medals including Gold in the Blue Belt Gi division of Grappling Industries. Tyson likes to work takedowns and aims for the back once on the ground. Look for aggression on the feet and the will to finish.




Synopsis: I don’t think that either man will be happy to waste much time in this match, so a takedown is likely only if it happens quickly. Rather than spending a lot of time on the feet I think that both men would be just as comfortable pulling guard. This match is going to be fairly even with a lot of submissions going back and forth, but either one can finish it quickly if things go their way.

Match 3 - ‘Flyin’ Ryan Mazengarb vs Deacon Laugher

Match number three pits Ryan Mazengarb, also a Hobart Martial Arts Academy/Maromba competitor against the Hybrid Training Centre’s young up and comer Deacon Laugher. At light/welter weight these two will be a stark contrast to the opening match, but the action will be just as intense.
Here is how it breaks down….

Name: Ryan Mazengarb

Ryan - Caged Grappling veteran

Style: BJJ (blue belt)

Strengths: Ryan is an experienced competitor in the BJJ scene and has competitive experience across Australia and has even competed in South America. He is technical, quick and smart with skills in multiple areas. A veteran of the first Caged Grappling, Ryan is adaptable to the environment and has rapidly improving wrestling skills.



Name: Deacon Laugher

Deacon - The up and comer

Style: BJJ

Strengths: At 18, Deacon is by far the youngest competitor on the card, but he has had consistent experience on the state and national BJJ scene. Deacon isn’t afraid to mix it up from the top or bottom and will go for any submission he can. This match will be a huge test for Deacon and a feather in his cap if he can pull off the win.



Synopsis: I foresee a match with a lot of back and forth in terms of positional exchange and submission attempts. On paper it is Ryan’s match to lose, but the cage changes everything and Deacon will be hungry to prove himself!

I hope you enjoyed the read, stay tuned for the second instalment of my lead up to Caged Grappling.

Caged Grappling....

The 13th of December 2014 was the first time I had competed in grappling since mid-2012. Most people know that I am not personally overly interested in competition; I tend to focus my energies into coaching. So following a few bad injuries through 2011 and a change in my work I decided to stay off the competitive mat for a while. However, when my friend Hamish McLaren (the eccentric promotional visionary that he is) started to float the idea of his company All Styles Grappling running a Caged Grappling event with me, I got excited.

Real Excited….

Excited enough to start looking into matchups….

I love a show and I love being able to entertain a crowd, so I started to train and put work into the lead up hype and the walk-out music. The night came and I (who was also the referee) planned out the show side of the night with my opponent (who was also the MC). Our set up worked, the people were entertained and then we got down to the match... I got bashed…

However, I still had a cracking night and believe that everyone who attended loved it. In fact I commented to Hamish (and everyone else who would listen) afterwards that of all the BJJ, Grappling, MMA, Muay Thai, Boxing, Karate and Tae Kwon Do events I have worked, competed in, organised, refereed and coached at this was absolutely the most fun.

After the success of the first instalment of Caged Grappling, All Styles Grappling is back with the next show! Picking up where the last event left off, Caged Grappling 2 is taking it up a notch with upgrades to the cage, improved audio and of course an even more stacked card of match ups. Over the next few posts I am going to outline all the match ups on the card and talk about the competitors. I will also be providing a few reflections about the event and what it means to me and the larger community.

Hope you enjoy it.

MMA Guard vs BJJ Guard

After a recent discussion with a student on tactics in combat I thought I would talk a little about some differences in the way I believe we should approach the guard depending on the scenario. As with everything it is important to note that there are no “right or wrong” answers, just different opinions. In a recent interview with Rickson Gracie on the Joe Rogan podcast both men showed very different opinions on guard use in MMA.

On listening, it seemed to me that Joe Rogan favoured an attacking guard, locking the opponent down and hunting submissions, in the 10th planet style, but was surprised when Rickson discussed using feet on hips to create space. Rickson hoped to prevent an opponent from causing serious damage until he was able to regain his feet, he discussed the famous match between Mark Kerr and Fabio Gurgel as one of the reasons he considered this strategy. It is worth also noting that in most of Rickson’s Vale Tudo fights he avoided the bottom position as much as he could and fought very hard to get takedowns to the top position.

I have embedded the video of the interview here, the parts relating to Rickson's thoughts on Vale Tudo guard are from 1:30:29 - 1:40:38, although if you haven't heard the whole interview I highly recommend it (along with anything else Rickson related for that matter).

Of course for some people one strategy may be more effective than for another, Paul Sass for example is quite effective in MMA when he pulls guard, but he is certainly in the minority. Very few others have the level of guard skills to be effective enough to make this strategy work.

In the BJJ world we often see a preference for guard with people happy to work from this position and even to go directly to it by pulling guard to negate the opponent the opportunity to score takedown points. Due to this preference I sometimes need to discuss different strategies for different situations. I have broken this into possibilities, BJJ Guard and MMA Guard, for the purposes of this article I am rolling “Street guard” and MMA Guard into the same strategy.

BJJ Guard 

Strategy Heirachy:

1. Sweep
2. Submit
3. Stand up

In a BJJ sense I believe it is generally best to strive for top position, largely because the opportunities for winning are increased from top. There are scoring opportunities through Passing, Knee Ride, Mount and Back Control as well as the associated advantages (in addition a sweeping in itself is a scoring move). There are also arguably more submission options from the top in that you have more positions that you can submit from.

Picture courtesy of Josh Stebbings Photography

Assuming that you are unable to sweep or a very good opportunity arises the submission is the next most important option. Notice I prioritise submission lower in priority than sweeps due to the importance of top position, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t attack with sweep and submission combinations from your guard.
The last option in BJJ is to try and stand up; one of the main issues with this strategy is that this can be seen as passivity in a sporting sense. However, sometimes when an opponent is trying to stall or you are under heavy attack on the bottom, getting up, or at least creating a scramble in the attempt can be a great opportunity.

MMA Guard

Strategy Heirachy:

1. Stand up
2. Sweep
3. Submit.

MMA is a bit of a contrast and the main reason for this is urgency. The dangers to you in any bottom position in MMA are so much greater that you need to heavily limit your time there. As mentioned above Rickson preferred to create space and keep the opponent off him until he was able to regain his feet. As such the first priority is in my opinion to get up.

Picture courtesy of Josh Stebbings Photography

If simply standing up is not an option or if you are working a combination of the two then sweeps are your next best bet. A successful sweep gives you the choice of fighting from the top position or disengaging to fight on the feet. I believe that Half Guard and Hooks Guard are the two best options to combine sweeps and stand ups in MMA.
While a submission will end the fight, the risk you place yourself in by deciding to stay on your back and seek them out is very high. The damage you are very likely to take will dramatically reduce your effectiveness on your back, we have all hard Carlson Gracie’s view on what happens when you punch a Black Belt in the face….

Image credit goes to http://www.azquotes.com/quote/757220

Bit of airtime....

Here is a recording of an interview from today on ABC Radio in the lead up to one of Hobart Martial Arts Academy's fighters "Super" Steven Maxwell, taking a fight on Minotaur Unleashed.

Check out the soundcloud here

New Article - Tap or Snap

Tap or Snap… surely there is a third option?

A recent incident on the mat involving an injury to a student from a late tap got me thinking about why this occurred. In an ideal world no one would get injured ever and we would progress to becoming high level grapplers in good time. I figure the problems of injuries and stalled development are related, so I have written some of the factors, as I see them that contribute to both problems.

Ego 

This is tough to define, we hear a lot of people talking about “ego” all the time, but I think that it is often a generic word used for a variety of meanings. For me though it means “the personal definition of ones importance in comparison with others.” This isn’t a problem in and of itself unless the ratio between self and others leans too heavily towards the “self” end of the spectrum.

This is how it really works at the gym....

Competitiveness

Yes, I know that BJJ is at least in part a sport and we “compete” in sports, but it may be of benefit to fully understand what competing actually means. Then decide whether your approach to competition is that of its original intention or more from your own unbalanced ego. If you look up compete in a dictionary (a good dictionary that shows the etymology of a word) it should say that the word comes from the latin competre which is made up of 2 parts. Com which means “together or unified” (as in community, compadre or comrade) and Petre which means “to seek”. So to compete literally means “to seek together”. The Romans obviously had this in mind when they held sword or chariot tourney’s, a means of encouraging growth and learning, not a search for the best individual. Putting this into a Jiu Jitsu context, when we roll in every class, it is probably worth asking yourself are you “seeking together”? Or are you in it for yourself?

Poor Coaching/Poor Attitude

Another factor that became apparent to me recently was when speaking to a person who had developed a chronic injury in his elbow from tapping late, was that this person had a poor attitude to tapping. During our discussion I was told that his previous coach had taught him that it was “weak to tap” and that you should never do it unless absolutely necessary. Whilst I will concede that the purpose of Jiu Jitsu is to strive to submit, not be submitted, I still think that this previous coach’s advice was extremely poor and also reckless. In terms of my own game, it wasn’t until I realised that tapping was part of developing that I really started to improve in Jiu Jitsu this I believe is for 3 reasons:

1. I stopped getting tweaked and injured as often (and now hardly at all).

2. Letting go of my ego allowed me to let go in a lot of other ways, such as clinging to techniques or approaches that didn’t work or thinking that I knew better than my coach.

3. I stopped wasting so much time.

Wasting Time

By wasting time I mean that I could spend 1 minute of a 4 minute roll trying to avoid an arm bar by locking my arm into a life and death tug of war. However, I will have lost 25% of my rolling time (read: ‘learning time’) to my own ego. Imagine losing 25% of your time!!! If you consistently do that it would equal out to hours and hours throughout a year that you are doing nothing but testing your anaerobic fitness. Once I learned to just tap and then start again I found that I was spending more time rolling and guess what? Getting better at not getting into an Armbar in the first place!

 The other side of the coin

Most of what I have written here has been on the decision to tap or not, the other side which also equally needs to be looked at is getting the tap. I think that for every injury that comes from not tapping there are just as many that come from overzealous submission attempts. There has often been an attitude on the mat that says “If he doesn’t tap it is his fault”. That is all well and good except when you were so intent on finishing quickly you didn’t notice he didn’t have an arm free to tap with, or you didn’t realise that it was his first lesson and no one told him what tapping was.

Time wasting can equally apply in offence, except in this case if I spend 25% of my time straining to put on an Armbar then I am still losing 25% of rolling time. Don’t get me wrong, there is certainly room for persistence at times, but this attitude can be negative if frequent. Remember Jiu Jitsu in fact means the gentle art, so winning by straining for a technique probably misses the point a bit. It is more in the spirit of the art to continue to transition until you do get a clean submission. In other words, it is not the “tap” that I am after, rather than execution of clean technique.

Conclusion?

So do I actually have a conclusion? Not really except to say that I think firstly, the willingness to tap and not see it as some kind of personal or moral defeat is critical for good Jiu Jitsu and secondly, the absolute need to tap everyone else is probably best being traded in on the desire to roll well and achieve everything through skill and perfection. I reckon that would make for a safer mat with a lot more skilled Jiu Jitsu practitioners on it.

Train smart and train safe...

Lapel Drag.

Here is a quick video of some of the concepts that I was working on last night. Nothing miraculous or new here, but it still a solid game. Obviously it ties in very well with an arm drag if you don't have a gi to work with.

The point that I was working towards last night was to use the space created to scramble to your knees giving a higher percentage sweep opportunity. Much like the wonderful Martin Aedma suggests in his Wrestjitsu Blog here and here.

Enjoy and stay safe on the mat.