BJJ 10/26/2011 - Gripwork Continued

Started class by warming up with a guard pass we've been working on. Instead of the traditional knee centered on the tailbone, your knee is slightly off center under one hamstring of your opponent. Your same side arm is based on your opponents belt or the base of their ribs. You post behind you with the opposite side leg and sit back onto your heel while pushing the opponents opposite side leg down to open the guard, then pass as normal. Worked a few variations of it.

Technique was passing the DLR guard by popping the front foot down and out and turning and sitting down into a sort of halfguard. You want to get your arm under your opponents head to control them, or get very high up on their chest, even with your ribs right under their chin if you can, to keep them from pushing you down and escaping.
Second part is when your opponent tries to roll into you, secure the wrist, establish the kimura grip, and finish.
Third part is the fancy variation. Your opponent triangles their legs together, so you reach across with your far hand and grab their foot, then you do a shoulder roll that puts your head on the opposite side of their body, near their feet, and at the same time make a big arc with your legs. This rotates your opponent around and allows you to take the back. It also opens up the knee slicer/calf crushed finish if you want to go for that.

Drilling was starting from DLR with one sleeve grip. Several times I started with the cross grip on the near sleeve since I was only letting myself use one arm (Preserving the injured shoulder) and was able to sweep and take the back or side control with only the one hand. Continuing my gripping study. Being unable to use both hands to help break grips really makes it difficult to avoid getting swept from DLR, but I did manage to get some counter gripping in and make it work a couple of times.

Rolling let me really get my grip work started and first thing I did was try out the "Fruit Roll-up Grip" that BJJGrrl mentioned Monday. She was nice enough to make me a drawing since I couldn't figure out exactly how my hand should align:

This was actually really helpful. I used it from guard and once I rolled it up it was so tight and so secure that I was able to easily isolate the arm with it and just work my way to a casual armbar. This is a great grip. I messed with it thumb towards elbow and thumb towards wrist. I liked it best with thumb towards the wrist since that seemed like the optimal angle for what I was doing, which was jamming my opponents arm across the center line. Then I reach across with my other arm and grip the back of his tricep and just hip my way around for the easy armbar.
Continuing to make gripping a priority had me easily hitting triangles and transitioning them to armbars, completely pinning people from side control and mount with very minimal effort, and shutting down almost every bit of offense that anyone could bring against me today. And all with almost zero effort. I absolutely felt like I had barely done any work even while after a 10 minute roll with a guy 30lbs heavier than me.

If anyone else has some good grips they want to throw at me I would be psyched to see them. Also, if anyone knows a good book or DVD specific to gripping for BJJ I would love to hear about it. I'm becoming a serious convert to the cult of gripping because of the huge jump in my game I've seen in just the 8 or so days that I've been concentrating on them.

Oh! I was also reminded that I promised to film the DLR Ric Flair counter. I will do that next week and get it put up.