It's always good to attend these big seminar occasions that Chico arranges for us, not only for the wicked techniques we learn but also for the fact that Chico is bringing over internationally famous, World Championship calibre Bjj players for us to meet and learn under. Honestly, it's a Bjj geek fan boy's dream.
Photos courtesy of Chicopics ;o)
After a very brief warm up of some laps and stretching, Lucas went straight into the Techniques. Apart from the first technique that he showed with Chico, he demonstrated all of his Gi techniques on the two Brown Belts, Ian Rossiter and Matt Sellars. For ease of explanation I will describe these moves from the sides that I have learned them.
Gi
The first technique was a very nice transition to back from Half Spider Guard. It started from the full guard position and then you switch to a transitional open guard position where you have grips on the opponent's sleeve cuffs and are pulling the arm in close to you with your knees being pushed into the elbow crooks to hold the guy in place. Drop the right leg down and putting it through the opponents legs to wrap around his right leg whilst pulling his right arm closer so your left knee can be pressed against the right side of his upper chest. Now use a slight extending of your left leg to push the opponent's body slightly left whilst lifting his arm out of the way so you can use your left arm (you've just released his sleeve cuff) to quickly and forcefully go under the arm to wrap around his back and take a grip of his gi pants. You now use your left leg to hook over his right leg and pull it off to the side so part of his base is gone and you can shrug right under his right arm and get to his back. At that point, if you reach down and take a grab of the gi pants at either the inside hip or the knee on the left side of the guy, you can roll back down to seated position, pulling him with you and easily getting your left hook in (remember your right hook was already in thanks to the half spider) all ready for the seated rear mount attack.
I paired off with Glenn Cutter for all of the techniques for this seminar and we had a great laugh as well as learning a great deal of cool new techniques.
Next move was a pretty cool Half Guard Sweep that starts from a position I have often found myself in. No one likes being in half guard bottom when you've unfortunately given the guy on top enough time to flatten you out and lay across you. This one is a cool technique to help you out there. So you've got the opponent's left leg trapped but he has laid diagonally across you with his left arm wrapped around your head and grabbed by the other arm on the other side, for control. Now you bring your arms up - the right hand grabs the material below his left arm pit, with the left you grab the material at his left shoulder (so your hands are grabbing his gi above and below his left shoulder) with your left forearm pressing into his throat. Interestingly, I found your left arm can come over or under his right arm for this bit. With both arms in place you push up and get first your head under, into his chest, then you can make enough space to bring you left knee up into the mix and get lots of space for the half guard. From there, as before, you can grab around the back again to the gi pants and pull the leg out using your left leg. This time however, he's stopping you from going to back (maybe he's grabbed the back of your gi, maybe he's got a whizzer) you bring your body upright a bit, so your pushing against him - tip for doing this, instead of trying to push yourself up using main strength on your right hand, bring your right elbow in close to your stomach and push up using more of your arm and shoulder - until you can draw your right leg out a bit and rest on that. You can now reach under the opponent's left leg a fall/pull back and roll over on your left shoulder to flip the opponent up over you head and onto his back. Your free leg (right) would most likely have been used to plant on the mat to push off, can now be brought up and you can knee slide across the opponents body to land in mount (have to do that last bit fast though or I'm pretty sure a wily opponent will manage to at least recover to half guard in the scramble).
The third technique of the session Lucas showed, offered us a pretty cool escape from side control bottom. You are on you back and your opponent is laying across you in a side control position (I was practising this mainly with Glenn's legs on my right side with him laying across so his head is to my left) with your head secured. You reach down with you left hand to his right leg (this bit can be quite tight but if you work for it you'll get there in the end) and push it down so your left leg can bend in and hook it and pull it off down and then to the left into an uncomfortable position. From there you can either: a/ pull the opponent's right arm in tight with your left while your right hand reaches down and under his left leg. Then using your right (free) leg as a plant you can bridge over flipping the opponent over and coming up in side control top. Or b/ reach around with the underhooking left hand to the back of the opponent's gi pants and bring your free leg up through a bit so you have space to base up and you're back in the original strong Half Guard position to take back. Two very good options from the one disadvantageous position.
The last part of this first set of techniques Lucas demonstrated was once again from the Half Guard with the opponent's trapped right leg hooked off by your left leg and you with the left arm under hook reach around (oo-er) to gi pants at back. You have the strong half guard position basically. This time though, instead of going meekly to your impending doom the opponent has over hooked your left arm into a whizzer and is blocking your attempts to take his back or overhead sweep him. This time, you can sit up as in the second technique so you're both pushing weight against each other, then you reach your right hand over and pull on his left leg at the knee whilst continuing to push your weight forward. The result is (or should be) that your opponent topples to his back with you able to push forward past his right leg into side control.
We then messed about with all four of those techniques, mix and matching the lot so you eventually work out that have just learnt an option for just about every counter he can think of when you're trying to sweep him from your strong half guard.
Moving us away from the Half Guard, Lucas' next technique was attacking the opponent's turtle (so you have rear side mount on him basically). The opponent is turtled up with both hands blocking his collar so you can't get an easy lapel grip for a super quick finish. For this I was at Glenn's right side. Whilst putting your weight against his back (so he cannot easily move out of his turtle) you reach over his back and around under his arm on his left side to grab his right lapel at about the bottom of his chest. Now you position your right knee into his side at the space where he is connecting his left elbow and knee together. If you now fall backward while pushing out with your leg the opponent will come over with you, neatly giving you space to slot first your right hook in, then your left hook in. You now have a perfect seated rear mount. With the left hand that is on his right lapel, hold out the lapel so you can grab it with your right hand to hold it open and slide your left hand up to take a very deep grip at his right collar. Now your right hand can cross over and grab his left lapel low and you can lean back for the very tight choke. This would almost definitely finish a sparring round or a competition match by itself but Lucas also added in your right leg releasing from it's hooking position and going over his shoulder to be used to pull the guy's right arm away. This choke is pretty sick. great stuff.
Another move when you're attacking an opponent's turtle was started by pulling the guy down on his side with you next to him in a combat stance with your right leg flat on the floor with knee in back (he has his back to you at this point). There was two variations to this move: The first had you reaching your right arm under the guys head to make a play for his arm, reacting to this he attempts to turn back down and turtle again. To stop this you grab your right hand with your left. Your right forearm is underneath his face at that moment so you can easily pull the arm, painfully crossfacing your opponent and forcing him back over. The magic of this move though, is that when you're pulling him back with your crossface, you have created enough space to slip your left hook in and you are pulling him over with enough momentum to end up laying over on you other (left) side and you can slip the right hook in nice and easy too. You have now beautifully taken the opponent's back and can slap a decent rear naked choke on or whatever your poison.
The second variation to this move was if the guy on his side didn't turtle back up so you are able to grab his wrist with your right hand (remember it was going under his head) and under hook his left arm with your left, reaching up through to take your own wrist (like for a kimura). You now use the additional strength of this two armed grip to bring the guy over to the left where you slip you right arm over his head (still maintaining the grip on his wrist) and drive that forearm up against the side of his head/neck. This makes space for you to bring your right hook up and around over the top of the face to finish with and arm bar.
The last move in the gi session was a cool Ezekiel to back. You have got both hooks in but the opponent has laid over on his right side. You drive your left arm up underneath his left arm so it pops out at the opponent's right shoulder. You then use that hand to grab in the sleeve of your right arm and bring the blade of the right arm down across his neck, going under the chin with your right hand. Push outwards with both arms to finish. Very tasty. Works well.
As a really cool touch then, Lucas ran through all the techniques again and got us to do the all a few times each once more. This really helped with my ability to remember specific points about the techniques which is pretty cool. To be honest I only had a little bit of difficulty remembering the moves for the gi portion of the seminar which is unusual for me as I suffer from severely crap memory syndrome most of the time. Oh, plus I wrote a lot of notes ;o)
The third was to curl him into you as if you're pulling guard.
All three methods work well. Awesomely in fact :oD
The next technique was my personal favourite for the No-Gi portion of the seminar as it forms part of an amazing Escape from Side Control. Your opponent is laying across you, your head is to his left. To initiate this move you may need to pummel your hands it the correct positions a bit which may take some effort but it is thoroughly worth it. You need to have your right arm down below, against his right side, and your left arm should be across his throat with hand passing his left shoulder. Use this position to bump up to make space as usual for a side control escape, but use your arm positions along with the strength of your legs, to rotate underneath him, moving you in a sort of North South bottom position. The difference being though, that your right arm should have moved his right arm up (from his perspective) and out of the way, and your left arm would have shot over and wrapped around his head, moving into position to be over wrapped by your right arm for a very beautiful Inverted Anaconda Choke. That move is priceless. Me and Glenn were both raving about this move. Couldn't practice it enough.
The last set of moves Lucas demonstrated to us were from a double leg takedown defence position. They were all pretty simple and obvious though, being a transition to Guilltine, a Darce Choke and an Anaconda Choke. I won't write these up as they were fairly straight forward anyway.
The same as with the Gi, Lucas ended by running us through ALL the techniques again and then had us drill them all in succession a couple more times each. Good trick that.
So that was it. Some brilliant techniques learned. Lucas was a class guy and a fantastic teacher through out the entire seminar. Very friendly, very chatty, extremely helpful. And, such as is always the case with Checkmat instructors as I've found, he was constantly watching his students and picking people up where their technique had gone awry, making sure they we had the moves perfectly. It really was a pleasure to learn under this guy, even if just for a day. Who knows? Maybe one day he'll come back again. One can only hope. ¬m/
The third technique of the session Lucas showed, offered us a pretty cool escape from side control bottom. You are on you back and your opponent is laying across you in a side control position (I was practising this mainly with Glenn's legs on my right side with him laying across so his head is to my left) with your head secured. You reach down with you left hand to his right leg (this bit can be quite tight but if you work for it you'll get there in the end) and push it down so your left leg can bend in and hook it and pull it off down and then to the left into an uncomfortable position. From there you can either: a/ pull the opponent's right arm in tight with your left while your right hand reaches down and under his left leg. Then using your right (free) leg as a plant you can bridge over flipping the opponent over and coming up in side control top. Or b/ reach around with the underhooking left hand to the back of the opponent's gi pants and bring your free leg up through a bit so you have space to base up and you're back in the original strong Half Guard position to take back. Two very good options from the one disadvantageous position.
The last part of this first set of techniques Lucas demonstrated was once again from the Half Guard with the opponent's trapped right leg hooked off by your left leg and you with the left arm under hook reach around (oo-er) to gi pants at back. You have the strong half guard position basically. This time though, instead of going meekly to your impending doom the opponent has over hooked your left arm into a whizzer and is blocking your attempts to take his back or overhead sweep him. This time, you can sit up as in the second technique so you're both pushing weight against each other, then you reach your right hand over and pull on his left leg at the knee whilst continuing to push your weight forward. The result is (or should be) that your opponent topples to his back with you able to push forward past his right leg into side control.
We then messed about with all four of those techniques, mix and matching the lot so you eventually work out that have just learnt an option for just about every counter he can think of when you're trying to sweep him from your strong half guard.
Moving us away from the Half Guard, Lucas' next technique was attacking the opponent's turtle (so you have rear side mount on him basically). The opponent is turtled up with both hands blocking his collar so you can't get an easy lapel grip for a super quick finish. For this I was at Glenn's right side. Whilst putting your weight against his back (so he cannot easily move out of his turtle) you reach over his back and around under his arm on his left side to grab his right lapel at about the bottom of his chest. Now you position your right knee into his side at the space where he is connecting his left elbow and knee together. If you now fall backward while pushing out with your leg the opponent will come over with you, neatly giving you space to slot first your right hook in, then your left hook in. You now have a perfect seated rear mount. With the left hand that is on his right lapel, hold out the lapel so you can grab it with your right hand to hold it open and slide your left hand up to take a very deep grip at his right collar. Now your right hand can cross over and grab his left lapel low and you can lean back for the very tight choke. This would almost definitely finish a sparring round or a competition match by itself but Lucas also added in your right leg releasing from it's hooking position and going over his shoulder to be used to pull the guy's right arm away. This choke is pretty sick. great stuff.
Another move when you're attacking an opponent's turtle was started by pulling the guy down on his side with you next to him in a combat stance with your right leg flat on the floor with knee in back (he has his back to you at this point). There was two variations to this move: The first had you reaching your right arm under the guys head to make a play for his arm, reacting to this he attempts to turn back down and turtle again. To stop this you grab your right hand with your left. Your right forearm is underneath his face at that moment so you can easily pull the arm, painfully crossfacing your opponent and forcing him back over. The magic of this move though, is that when you're pulling him back with your crossface, you have created enough space to slip your left hook in and you are pulling him over with enough momentum to end up laying over on you other (left) side and you can slip the right hook in nice and easy too. You have now beautifully taken the opponent's back and can slap a decent rear naked choke on or whatever your poison.
The second variation to this move was if the guy on his side didn't turtle back up so you are able to grab his wrist with your right hand (remember it was going under his head) and under hook his left arm with your left, reaching up through to take your own wrist (like for a kimura). You now use the additional strength of this two armed grip to bring the guy over to the left where you slip you right arm over his head (still maintaining the grip on his wrist) and drive that forearm up against the side of his head/neck. This makes space for you to bring your right hook up and around over the top of the face to finish with and arm bar.
The last move in the gi session was a cool Ezekiel to back. You have got both hooks in but the opponent has laid over on his right side. You drive your left arm up underneath his left arm so it pops out at the opponent's right shoulder. You then use that hand to grab in the sleeve of your right arm and bring the blade of the right arm down across his neck, going under the chin with your right hand. Push outwards with both arms to finish. Very tasty. Works well.
As a really cool touch then, Lucas ran through all the techniques again and got us to do the all a few times each once more. This really helped with my ability to remember specific points about the techniques which is pretty cool. To be honest I only had a little bit of difficulty remembering the moves for the gi portion of the seminar which is unusual for me as I suffer from severely crap memory syndrome most of the time. Oh, plus I wrote a lot of notes ;o)
No - Gi
After a very brief drinks break and change in to shorts and rash guard, we were quickly brought back on the mats for the No-Gi portion of the seminar. And this too did not disappoint.
Lucas said straight off the bat that for Gi seminars he has a tendency to work a lot of control and positional stuff, where as when doing a No-Gi seminar, he very much likes it to be submission heavy. So lots of cool finishes were the order of the day here. (Big smiles all round).
The first move he showed was a where you are seated on the floor with an opponent standing in front of you. (For the sakes of my training and so for this description) The opponents left leg is slightly forward in a sort of wrestler's stance. You pull yourself right in to his legs using a butt scoot, so you are nearly in between his leg. Pass your right leg in between his legs then snake it out and around the opponent's left leg whilst pressing your left foot into his hip. Ensure that your hips are raised off the ground for this for manoeuvrability in case the guy tries to move around you for a pass. From here you can just grab the back of his left ankle and pull on it whilst pushing forward with your legs to drop him down to the floor on his butt. From there you reach over and then under the secured left leg at the ankle (so your forearm is pressed against his achilles tendon) with your right arm and gable grip that hand with your other hand for pressure. To finish (and this is an awesome tip), pull the leg a little under you and then lean back and tense on it to apply the pain. It really is a great finish and I've always been a fan of the achilles lock. This little tip has really added to my application of this technique. I've used it twice already since the seminar.
For the second technique we were offered a little bit of the forbidden. You don't often get taught heel hooks and for very good reason as they are an extremely dangerous move that can essentially put someone out of action for up to six months due to severe ligament damage in the legs. You really need to guy lightly with this move if practising it and it's probably a good idea to have a confident trust in anyone who is practising the move on you.
From a standing position with the opponent on the floor with legs up (as if you're readying to pass his open guard), offer your left leg for his de la Riva hook and while he's taking that bait with his right leg, (he should also have his left leg up) reach over his left leg as if to secure the achilles and drop backward to the floor. The move was shown to us as if the achilles lock was unattainable for whatever reason so instead you use your left leg to push his right leg to the side, so you can pass your right leg over the top over his left and have enough space to tuck it underneath your left leg so you have a triangle around his leg. With this motion however, you will also have reaped his knee inward so his foot is tucked up at your armpit with his heel out to the side, while his knee is pointing inward toward his other leg. From there you just need to tuck your right forearm underneath his heel (you can use your hands to pull it up to get the position with little worry of loosing it from here) and then gable grip your hands together and raised your right elbow to apply the pressure. REMEMBER, do this very lightly so your opponent only just feels it. It you ram this on you risk seriously damaging your training partner. Every class I have ever been too does not allow this move in open sparring. There is a reason.
The third move in the No-Gi was from the same set up as the first. Seated on floor, opponent standing as if to pass guard, you pull close in between his legs and snake right leg out and around his left. This time however, you pass your right leg over the top of his left and under your own left to form the triangle. You can now reap (turn inward) the guy's left leg to take him down and leave you already perfectly set up for the Heel Hook. In some cases the opponent may try to power his leg straight moving the angle away from you but a simple twist of your body inward toward his leg while you bend back a little bring the position back. You essentially hold all the cards in that position. Lucas also showed that if the opponent attempts to roll away from the move you just roll with him and when you land back straight, it's still easily applied. Simple and exceptionally dangerous.
Moving away from leg locks, Lucas moved on to a Guillotine from Half Guard top. The guy has the strong half guard position on you but you have reached your right arm over his left and back inside to stop the back take. From here you bring your left arm around the guy's head (the head is off to the side of you) and under his chin (across his throat, use the blade of the forearm for maximum effect) and gable grip it with your other hand. To finish this, pull you left arm up into his throat with your right arm. Another fantastic little tip Lucas showed was that if you bring the left elbow in to your side and lean that way a little it piles on the pressure, taking away most peoples resolve to fight the choke.
He also showed another finished from there though. You get all the way to the guillotine but can't be arsed with the possible gassing out of your arms, instead, you roll over forward to land on you back, with the opponent facing up in the air, fully secured in your grip with his arm in. Now, using your right elbow you can push the guy's left arm out of the way and the release your gable grip and fully push your left arm over, so you can wrap your right arm around it. You are now in the position for the Anaconda choke. You just need to walk your body around toward him to apply the finishing pressure. Brilliant.
Next was from Side Control Top. I was working on this as if I was laying across my opponent with his head to my left. Your opponent is working hard to escape your side control so you offer up your right leg as if you're going for a lazy transition to knee on belly. The opponent sits up a little and grabs around the leg with his left arm as if for a single leg transition. The space between his arm and torso lends itself perfectly for going for the Darce Choke. Drive your right arm in between that gap, past his head (at about the chin) and out the other side. You can now wrap your other (left) arm around the first, on the other side of his head. You can clench this tight here but will rarely get the tap just like that. Lucas showed us three ways to finish this hold:
The first was to roll forward (almost like the Anaconda, but you don't need to move you body round after that) and clench the arms in tight. This finished the move well but was a questionable risk because if the opponent does manage to buck the move you're in a really bad position.
The second was to lean froward into the opponent (as if to sprawl) and kick out of the single leg grip he has, then lower your hip close to the floor to apply the pressure.The third was to curl him into you as if you're pulling guard.
All three methods work well. Awesomely in fact :oD
The next technique was my personal favourite for the No-Gi portion of the seminar as it forms part of an amazing Escape from Side Control. Your opponent is laying across you, your head is to his left. To initiate this move you may need to pummel your hands it the correct positions a bit which may take some effort but it is thoroughly worth it. You need to have your right arm down below, against his right side, and your left arm should be across his throat with hand passing his left shoulder. Use this position to bump up to make space as usual for a side control escape, but use your arm positions along with the strength of your legs, to rotate underneath him, moving you in a sort of North South bottom position. The difference being though, that your right arm should have moved his right arm up (from his perspective) and out of the way, and your left arm would have shot over and wrapped around his head, moving into position to be over wrapped by your right arm for a very beautiful Inverted Anaconda Choke. That move is priceless. Me and Glenn were both raving about this move. Couldn't practice it enough.
The last set of moves Lucas demonstrated to us were from a double leg takedown defence position. They were all pretty simple and obvious though, being a transition to Guilltine, a Darce Choke and an Anaconda Choke. I won't write these up as they were fairly straight forward anyway.
The same as with the Gi, Lucas ended by running us through ALL the techniques again and then had us drill them all in succession a couple more times each. Good trick that.
So that was it. Some brilliant techniques learned. Lucas was a class guy and a fantastic teacher through out the entire seminar. Very friendly, very chatty, extremely helpful. And, such as is always the case with Checkmat instructors as I've found, he was constantly watching his students and picking people up where their technique had gone awry, making sure they we had the moves perfectly. It really was a pleasure to learn under this guy, even if just for a day. Who knows? Maybe one day he'll come back again. One can only hope. ¬m/
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