Aesopian’s Totally Awesome Journal

Leo Kirby and his training partner John Davis filmed two more excellent tutorial clips. This time it is John showing details on how he finishes the RNC.

Here’s what Leo has to say:

Two years ago John started coming to my regular Saturday morning class at One Dragon at just about the time I had become interested in Marcelo’s game. My Saturday class was always an experimental class and the experiment at that time was X guard.

We trained together for a couple of years and attended all of the Marcelo seminars and privates together and worked like hell to break down his game.

Last year John’s game had just gotten to the point that I was no longer one of his coaches, but we had become training partners. We would exchange submissions most of the time when we wrestled.

So I tapped him with something during a night class and proclaimed myself the champion of the civilized universe, and the best part was that he was going on vacation that weekend so he could not attend my Saturday morning class. It would be at least a week before he could get revenge.

Just at the end of my Saturday class that weekend John came running into the gym, kicked off his shoes and attacked me. After a hard fought match he caught me in a rear naked choke, tapped me, grabbed his shoes and ran out. His wife was at home waiting to leave and John had told her he needed to run out and pick up …

I’ve wanted to do a piece on the harness grip for a while, and it seemed like a good topic for the first new content on the just-launched journal.

First of all, watch this excellent instructional video on the harness grip and finishing the rear naked choke by Stephan Kesting of GrappleArts.com. This will fill you in on all the issues I’ll address later (and probably improve your RNC).

When Stephan posted this on the mma.tv, I replied with this:

When I went to Marcelo’s seminar and he covered how he grips, he made a point about how he doesn’t grab his wrist, but over the back of the hand itself. He felt it was important to hide your hand, since if they grab your wrist or forearm, you can still tiger claw their shoulder and the leverage on your arm won’t be as great.

Does that make sense?

Stephan’s reply:

I am aware that Marcelo likes to grab the hand, not the wrist, and I’m not saying that I could defend his RNC, but I currently prefer to grab my wrist not my hand.

The reason is that it forms a tighter loop around his neck and upper torso, giving him less room to twist, turn and insert hands between my arms and his chest. Perhaps this is because I have fairly long, skinny arms and gripping the wrist takes up more of the slack in the system. If my arms were shorter, if I was more barrel chested, then perhaps grabbing the hand would be tight enough.

Jiu-jitsu is like cooking, and everyone has a slightly different way of preparing the same dishes.

I felt that was a good reply, especially the last line. But I also felt the urge for some Iron Chef action so I took a …

My instructor gave me a great addition to the monkey feet game from rear mount. He saw me doing my monkey business on the back and showed me another way to lock them down without having both hooks in. He said that Marcio Feitosa does this as a signature way of keeping the back.

It goes like this:

I am on their back with the harness, they’re turn on their choking side, choking-side hook is in, yadda yadda yadda. My top hook is free to do its monkeying and my bottom hook is in really deep.

Fearing I’ll put my second hook in, Trog is bringing his knee up to block it out. I could go to trap his arm or get the reverse half guard like Marcelo does.

Or I can do Marcio’s position. I bring my bottom hook up behind their thigh and my top leg over their hips and thigh, then cross my ankles.

Opposite angle:

Holding them like this, I’ve trapped their leg and locked myself to their hips. This completely kills their ability to bridge or roll to the escaping side.

I was playing around with this and comparing it to the reverse half guard and I think I’ll enjoy using this a lot more. It completely kills their hips movement.

I should be charging for all this awesomemess.

Leo Kirby, a purple belt in South Florida, and I have been conspiring to breakdown Marcelo Garcia’s game from the back. Leo has been to four seminars and done like 16 hours of private lessons with Marcelo so he’s got more hands on experience with what I’m going to share. I picked up a lot of the same points from watching footage of Marcelo competing and watching him roll at the seminar.

Here’s the basic formula: When you’ve got the harness, the arm that’s over the shoulder is the “choking arm”, the one that will attack the neck. You want to roll them to the side of the choking arm. And you only really need to worry about keeping the hook in on this side.

So what can you do with the other hook?

From watching footage of Marcelo competing and observing him roll at the seminar, I’ve picked up several options. Leo has confirmed these and given more several more. You will see Marcelo constantly working on his opponent with his free leg, busily hooking and dragging and locking it all over the place.

Here are the tricks we’ve gleaned thus far.

You can take it out and step on their hip to monitor it. You could even take it out and step on the floor to shrimp back and keep your hips free.

When you’ve got someone like this, one of their main escapes will be to try to roll to the other side and drive their back to the mat as they turn to face you.

When the bridge to try to do this, you can put your hook behind their knee and lift, preventing them from turning.

I don’t use this control much, but Leo was adamant that I include it since he says Marcelo …

This weekend, I had planned on shooting a series on breaking posture from closed guard, but my training partner Trog showed up. We’ve been working on a series of back attacks and chokes together so we felt it’d be a better use of our time to shoot these instead. We’ve got some awesome collar chokes we’ve been doing that we wanted to share.

But before we get on to the awesome ones, there are some fundamentals I wanted to cover first. Nothing below should be that new to anyone who trains, but I am trying to build up the number of detailed tutorials of basic moves that are available online. We’ve already got plenty of advanced moves and a lot of poorly done basics, but I’d like to see more solid fundamentals done in great detail.

So with that in mind, here is the…

Rear collar choke

We are in a sitting rear mount. I have both arms under his armpits, gripping both lapels. This gi grip is very secure grip, giving you a lot of control over his upper body and allowing you to easily stay behind him if he tries to turn to face you.

I have both my feet hooking over his thighs, with my heels pulling into his thighs. Do not cross your ankles or they’ll triangle their legs over your feet and ankle lock you. Do not grapevine their leg by hooking your toes behind their knees. This is just awkward and can lead to knee injuries.

I pull out my right hand and reach over his shoulder, grabbing the opposite lapel.

I reach deeper into his collar, using my left hand to pull the lapel down and feed it deeper. This is the detail I see most often forgotten, yet it can …

So we’re clear, a re-counter is a counter to their counter. I stole the word from Stephan Kesting.

If you’ve been following along with this series, you would have seen the basic rear collar choke, the totally awesome bow-and-arrow choke and the basics of back control and using monkey feet.

Let us now return to the bow-and-arrow choke, only this time there are complications. You’ll often run into a problem when you go to spin out for the choke.

Everything looks good: they’re on their choking side, I’ve got the collar, I’m gripping the knee and ready to spin. But one big problem: my bottom leg is trapped.

As you can clearly see from this side, my bottom leg is pinned to the floor. This prevents me from spinning out like I need to.

This may happen when you’re going for the choke when you’ve already rolled them to their side. Or they will often try to escape this choke by driving their back to the mat. Or both. Regardless, you need to correct this before you can finish the choke.

To free my leg, I pull their knee towards me to lift their hips as I take out my hook and bring it under their body.

Alternate angle: You can see me sliding my leg out from under their body. I am pulling their knee up to raise their hips and take their weight off my leg.

As my leg comes out from under them, I’ll drive forward and push their knee away so I can come up to my knee.

Once I’m on my knee, I’ll slide it up towards their head.

From the other side, you can see that I am stepping on the floor …

It’s time for me to reveal my secrets. Below is my current favorite choke. It is extremely high percentage, so much so that you’ll actually feel like it was too easy. Oh, you think I’m joking but I’ve had people come back to me and say just that. You’ll have maybe two or three fingers in the collar and spin out for this and think there’s no way it’s really that tight. It doesn’t feel that tight to you. Then they tap. It’s magic. And I’m going to share this magic with you.

I am going for the basic rear collar choke (as seen here), but they are keeping their left arm tight to their body, denying me from reaching under to grab the collar.

Notice how low my grip is on the collar. This may be because I am unable to feed it deeper, or I just plan on doing the following choke already. This choke actually works better with a looser grip; gripping too deeply in the collar can actually put stress on your wrist later.

Unable to get under their arm, I reach down and grab their knee with my left hand.

I pull myself to the knee as I throw my left hook across their body and take out my right hook.

I need to spin out and bring my right leg behind their head before they can put their weight on my leg and prevent me from doing so.

After spinning out, it should be like they’ve fallen backwards into the space you opened up. Notice how I am sitting up, not letting my hips be trapped under them. You know you’ve got it right when their head is resting on your thigh. Keep ahold of their knee …

This is the next installment in the stupid simple sweep series.

Starting from knees. I have combat base, where I’ve got one knee up and I’m sitting on my other leg.

Jon reaches for my lapel to get the match started.

I grab his wrist with my left hand and pass it to my right.

I cross grip his sleeve with my right hand, using a pistol grip.

I kick my left leg out and step on his knee. If you saw the first stupid simple sweep, you’ll know the extremely important detail on how I do this. Hint: push on the inside to the outside, then back, not straight back.

I kick out my other leg and plant it on his hip to keep him stretched out. I am also crossing his arm to the other side.

I fall back using my upper body weight to stretch and keep crossing his arm. I keep kicking out his knee and pushing on his hip, going for the sweep.

SURPRISE TWIST! He bases out and postures back to defend the sweep. This is what I said would happen when I taught the stupid simple sweep: they will often be able to defend it. So I sit back up and get ready to take advantage of this.

My right hand comes off the sleeve and grabs his triceps. My left hand is still gripping the wrist and passing it under my right arm.

I lean forward, getting shoulder to shoulder. My left hand comes off the wrist and grabs the belt.

Wanting to just finish the sweep, I fall back again with my new super deep grip on the …