Open Mat

To my friends beginning to develop a standing game in grappling: Understand that different take downs work best when your opponent is in certain posture. Ankle picks work fantastically on opponents with a bent posture. Use a setup that gains you angle and/or clears their defensive hands out the way and it works magic.

QUICK TIP: When using the butterfly sweep, generally, you want to sweep people to the same side their head is on. If their head is out of position, take time with your setups to get their head on the appropriate side before attempting the sweep. If you attempt to sweep them with their head out of position, first, they will feel very heavy, and second, the chances of them hip switch passing out of the sweep increases a lot. *a good pinch headlock or shoulder crunch are somewhat exceptions as they give you so much control over the head anyway.

Even though this is mainly a funny video, there is a teachable lesson here about what to prioritize in a leglock exchange. Leglocks always carry a risk of you being counter leglocked. To mitigate this risk whenever you feel your own feet being isolated or that your heel is exposed, stop whatever you’re doing and focus on defense and escape. Ignoring the safety of your own feet turns it into a race to the bottom where whoever is willing to rip a heelhook faster or take more damage will win.

The Side Triangle/Kimura Dilemma: It’s not new by any means but this attack combination has become en vogue in BJJ as of late. Commonly setup from the Dorsal Kimura Position; the first horn of the dilemma is to separate the hands and finish the kimura. Simple enough. If for whatever reason the hands can’t be unlocked, that creates perfect conditions to trap the head and shoulder in a side triangle. If the opponent chooses to unlock their hands and widen their shoulders to make the triangle difficult, that feeds back into the Kimura option.

Details on the wristlock from the Yoko Sankaku position

How to open up your opponents chin to finish the RNC (meant to be paired with an arm trap)

QUICK NOTE: The knee/elbow frame is well known for it’s defensive use in guard recovery and retention. It also has many uses offensively as well. Lucas Lepri uses it adeptly near the start of this clip to deny his opponents inside leg pummeling so he can continue to apply passing pressure.

Details on the most versatile sweep in BJJ from the GOAT The butterfly sweep is wildly effective but it also requires a lot of nuance to manage the possible responses to the initial elevation and landing

One of my favorite counters to a common back defense. A lot of BJJ players will keep a very high elbow to deny the choking arm. It places the raised arm as a barrier to getting a choking arm all the way across. (Craig Jones attempted this vs Gordon in their famous EBI match) Simply hand fighting is possible but can be awkward in practice. If you’re able to lock a body triangle, you can use your hands to cinch up the raised elbow and arch your hips for a very nasty spine lock counter.

How to escape the body triangle and immediately counterattack 👆👆👆

There are degrees of back exposure, and how much exposure you can risk will largely depend on the skill, athleticism, and goals of your opponent. Practically speaking it’s impossible to 100% deny any back exposure to an offensive opponent; most guard retention movements involve your back coming off the mat (exposure via side switches) and combat stance offers a degree of exposure (via snap downs and arm drags) The best way to deal with the constant threat of back exposure is stealing a turn at your own offense to get your opponent to focus on defending themselves instead of attacking you.

Brief details on how to efficiently separate locked hands in an arm bar

An aspect of grappling defense and counter attack that not enough people mention: Sometimes the difference between success and failure is simply how much pain/damage you’re willing to take. How much you’re willing to put on the line is a decision you will have to make for yourself going into a match.

As a smaller player vs a larger and stronger player the DIRECTION of your attacks matters a lot. Against larger players it’s way easier to attack them along the same direction they’re already going, than it is to force them to go a certain way against their weight and strength. This sequence from Craig Jones and Nicky Rod is a perfect example: First, Craig attempts to build up into Octopus Guard and Nicky responds by locking his hands and powering forward. Craig accepts this change of direction and uses a reversal that forces Nicky backwards making him post out with his arm. Second, Craig establishes a scoop grip on the leg and attempts to knock Nicky over. Nicky responds by pushing off his post back into Craig. Craig accepts this and pulls Nicky further than he wanted to go in that direction for the back take. A perfect example at the highest level of how you can work vs bigger players and make it look very smooth.

The back is King in BJJ. Not just as an attacking position but the threat of a back take can also force strong defensive reactions out of an opponent that you can take advantage of. Here Jeff Glover uses a leg weave on the hips and a crossface on the head of his opponent to begin to turn him and expose the back. This causes his opponent to react by turning back into him to defend the back take, however Glover uses this reaction to set up a triangle trap, and eventual finish.

Wise words from Garry Tonon on how to properly structure your training ✍️

A strong tactic to steal underhooks when passing a half guard; Make them choose between keeping tight elbows to block the underhook, or posting on the knee to block the transition to 3/4 mount.

When you watch two high level grapplers work you can pick up useful tactics even by observing the things they do that DON’T work. Body locking is a very popular form of passing so how does Big Dan attempt to deal with it? 1.) Framing. Keeping his knee, elbow, or hand in front of Nicky’s head, shoulder, and hip at all times. 2.) Asphyxiation. Gordon did this vs Nicky as well; covering the mouth and nose will force Nicky to compromise his own head position (I’d spare your regular training partners this tactic and save it for competition) 3.) Butterfly sweep. As Nicky worked his way past #1 and #2 by playing possum and tricking Big Dan into sitting up with a forward shift motion and using that lapse in framing to shoot his bodylock, Big Dan goes into his late stage defense of threatening the butterfly sweep, using his falling momentum from the bodylock to try and bring Nicky over.

For all the hate guard pulling gets, it’s a very effective tactic done properly. Done well it lets you bypass the work of takedowns, guard passing, and pinning. It’s the most effective and consistent way to quickly submit someone. However it needs to be done well; DON’T just sit to your butt with no connection to your opponent, savvy players will take advantage of that bad habit and use it to get a head start on passing. Engage the standing game to get favorable grips first, and those will let you pull into strong submission attempts that put opponents away quickly. The video above is an excellent example of that. He engages the hand fight and collects a collar tie (for posture control) and a fully extended arm which allows him to sit to an armbar that comes on immediately.

Even though it’s been heavily slandered recently, the rolling back take is an excellent way to break someone down from turtle position. It’s advantage is that it can be done from double unders. Against opponents with strong hand fighting you won’t always be able to get a proper seatbelt grip. In situations like that you will need methods to break someone down working with alternative grips. I can’t express enough that injury with this move is very rare. However I recommend doing it at a moderate pace (the move doesn’t gain much more for doing it at a fast pace) and roll over the bottom guy in a straight line, inline with their head and spine.