Checkmat 17/7/12

After the mammoth write up to the Lucas Leite seminar that I put on last night, I need some spare time to get my non-blogging stuff together. Consequentially, even though me and Marcus did two lunchtime sessions Monday and Tuesday, I'm not going to bother writing them up as the Monday was just me showing Marcus everything from the seminar (he was not fortunate enough to attend) and Tuesday was just a No Gi version of everything we learned last week on the X Guard.


So basically I'm firing straight ahead to Tuesday evenings class under the amazing tutelage of Chico Mendes.

Venue: Bristol Combat Legion, LA Gym, Bristol, Uk.
Instructor: Chico Mendes (2nd Degree Black Belt, Checkmat)


Warm Up:
For the warm up Chico had us do laps of the mat with butt kicks, knee ups, arm stretches, arm windmills and side steps. We then did some lengths of the mat of hip escapes, forward rolls and backward rolls.

Chico then had us do a stand up grappling drill where you collar and elbow grip your opponent and with quick motion, raise the arm you have the elbow grip on and drop to your knees whilst circling to the opponent's side where the arm was raised. When you do this you grab hold of his leg and hold it on the outside of your body (not in between your legs) and press your head high against the front side of this leg. You can now stand with the single leg to shake your opponent's balance and kick his leg away to get to land him on his back with you coming down into side control.
We drilled this for a bit as a continuation of our warm up. I was with my regular training partner and good buddy, Marcus Hedley.


Techniques:

Chico soon moved us on to techniques and for the first we started in closed guard so Chico could emphasize the fact that a guy who closes his guard well but doesn't do anything from there is not really helping himself. Chico then showed us what he calls a transitional stage where you control the opponent's sleeve cuffs (as if for spider guard) and open your guard to bring your knees up and put them up against the opponent's elbow crooks. From there, Chico showed us two moves to omoplata but unfortunately I can only remember one.

From the above mentioned start position, release the left hand cuff grip and reach over to the opponent's left arm and pull his elbow up and over your right knee. You can then shoot your leg through, up and over his shoulder the come round under his head. With this movement you should move your body out at an angle so you are nearly perpendicular to his left side so you can use your left leg to close around the end of your right leg to keep the position. You must grab the opponents legs or back or gi to stop him from rolling out of the hold, but don't wrap your arm around his near leg or he can still roll and reverse the hold on you. To finish the hold you shift your body weight forward so the opponent is forced down flat on his front, with his arm bent up between you legs and off to your right side. Apply the pressure by leaning forward until he taps.


The next move was moving us on to the De La Riva Guard. From the above mentioned transitional position, your opponent raises one leg in a combat stance (let's say his right leg for the purpose of this description). You then bring your left leg out of it's previous position and around and thread it underneath his raised leg so your foot hooks upwards across his inside thigh. Your other foot can push against his hip. This is the basic De La Riva Guard position though there are lots of variations on where you put your hands and legs, this is a good place to start. To ensure a tight DLR hook, make sure your foot is solidly hooked up and your are pressuring his leg as if trying to extend yours, to stop him from turning his leg out and easily bucking your hook.
Chico showed us two techniques starting from here.
The first was a kick away sweep. The guy is in your De La Riva Guard with his back leg left) pulling away slightly. As he's trying to pull his weight away from you, his left leg is angled in toward you. If you kick this with your right leg at about the knee, the opponent will fall back with you using his weight to pull you up into mount.
The second was where you push his left leg back with your right foot to off balance him a little, then sit forward and pass control of his right arm from your left to your right, so you can then pass if under his leg back to your left hand. You can now lean right forward on this hold, to a sitting position with both your legs around his front (right) leg. You now make to stand up drawing your right leg back as you do, to take out his trapped leg and remove his base, effectively putting the opponent on his ass. You can get either side control of mount in the scramble. If you're unlucky you'll end in half guard.


Another exceptionally cool sweep Chico showed us was an overhead sweep from De La Riva. You get to the De La Riva Guard position, both arms secured at the cuffs, your right foot (non De La Riva hook) is firmly planted in the opponent's hip. What you do here is push the opponent away with your feet (whilst keeping the cuff grips secured close) and when he tries to push back to resist you pull him hard towards you with the cuff grip and flip him over your head and onto his back using your hold on him to roll over with him. to come up in mount. I love this technique and will be trying to hit it occasionally against a resisting opponent in sparring to see if I can get used to using it fully.


Rolling:

I rolled against Rich Long, Tom Hill, Ian Rossiter and Andy Bremerkamp. I tapped Rich (omo), Tom (darce) and Andy (achilles). Ian got me with a pretty cool inverted arm bar.


Sorry about the rushed ending to this but it's now Sunday and I have a whole week of Bjj to plan out (and a monster hangover). ¬m/