Listen up my Grappling Brethren! I’ve managed to get my grubby little hands on exclusive video of 14 matches from this years Mundials with guys like Kron Gracie, Cobrinha, and Marcello Garcia. I’ll be releasing these videos one at a time here on the blog over the next couple of weeks.
The first video will be up this afternoon featuring Alliance powerhouse and rising star Ian McPherson vs one of the best in the world Edwardo Telles.
Now, with that out of the way, I’ve been hitting my S&C workout nice and regular on schedule and I already feel a difference. We worked on takedowns last night and in the clinch I could feel the additional strength and stability in my back and was able to maintain a lot more control and execute a whole bunch of sacrifice throws. I only hit a couple of things that weren’t sacrifice throws, but still that’s more successful takedowns in one night than I generally get in a month.
Technique was a continuation of open guard passing techniques based around the knee cut pass. First one was for what to do when you can’t get the kneecut to work, you secure a grip behind the collar, and a grip on the far pants leg, then backstep and drop down laying next to your opponent. The control of the pants leg is CRUCIAL to stop your opponent from rolling up on you. Next you use your free leg to shove your opponents bottom leg while you pull their top leg with your Gi grip to free the trapped leg. Settle in to side control.
Second up was the same beginning sequence, but your opponent lets their elbow get a little loose from their body while trying to prevent you from freeing your leg, so you switch your pants leg grip to their wrist and move your collar grip to scoop under and secure the kimura grip. Use a combination of the Kimura grip and your free leg to apply pressure and free your trapped leg, then finish the kimura. You also have the option if your opponent makes a mistake of locking up the kimura grip at the same time as you move to backstep at the very beginning of the sequence. But that can get very scrambly, so you want to be pretty confident of your ability to control the position if you take that route.
Third was the “Fancy” technique of the night. Same setup as the first two, but instead of going for the wrist you free your opponents lapel and feed it under their armpit to the hand with the collar grip. Suck it up nice and tight. Next kill their far arm by either pulling it down between your bodies or pushing it up over their head and trapping it with your hand. Now step your free leg (The one you backstepped with to get here) Over them and pin them down on their side.
Now you can try to finish with a modified armtriangle/brabo style choke, or you can put your shin in their back and roll, allowing you to secure hooks, and work to finish from the back.
After that we did some drilling from open guard, I swept and passed a lot, but JC managed to trick me into a really wicked tight guillotine while I was passing. Very nicely done.
Next up we worked takedown sparring and as previously mentioned I had a ton of success, even against Kris who usually shuts me down pretty well during standup. Eventually I got tired enough to screw up a takedown and flubbed a sacrifice throw against JC.
Rolled with Casey, Johnny, and Brian for a couple of rounds and had a blast with Casey. He dials it down to just above my level and lets me work and I always have a great time with it. Johnny and Brian are a completely different story. I’m able to get on top and pass guard against Brian for a while but eventually he generally manages to dump me over and then I spend a ton of effort just defending. Johnny pretty much immediately smashes into me and I spend the entire time defending against subs. I’m kind of a jerk with them though, I don’t tap unless they are doing things EXACTLY right, so sometimes I end up getting my head crushed for two or three minutes while they try to sink in a choke using more muscle than technique. That’s getting less common now though, which is nice. They tend to set them up and sink them in properly before starting to crank up the power.
S&C Again tonight, then 2 days off since I’m going down to Florida to hit up Disney with my in-laws.
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