Grappling on the ground

Some good internet resources include the Bullshido Grappling Arts Technique forum and the Sherdog Grappling Technique forum.

Most of the info here focuses on no-gi grappling (i.e. no martial arts uniform).

For some good introductory tips on BJJ with the gi, see the video BJJ Intro - White Belt Do's and Don'ts.

There are a few good BJJ blogs. Aesopian from the Bullshido Forums has Aesopian's Totally Awesome Journal. Melbourne-based Machado BJJ black belt John Will also maintains a blog. Matt Thornton from Straight Blast Gym has a blog called Aliveness 101.

1. Keep your upper body either all the way up or all the way down (not in between).
2. Don't let your arms cross over the center line.
3. Keep your hands on your opponent, not on the floor.
4. Keep your elbows in.
5. Either have both hands inside your opponent's legs, or both hands outside their legs.

This assumes you are in your opponent's half guard (i.e. you are on top, he has your right leg).

1. Try to keep your opponent's shoulders pinned to the ground. Don't let them get onto their right side (assuming they're to your right).
2. Don't put your weight too far forward or too far back.
3. Don't spread your legs too wide or keep them too close. Lock your feet/ankles together to help them from spreading your legs apart.
4. Don't let them underhook your left leg with their right arm.
5. Don't let them underhook your right arm with their left arm.

If they do try to come up, grab their collar with your left arm, and chicken wing your left elbow up under their chin while at the same time rotating your fist towards you. This will force them back down.

Under construction.

These are gi techniques.

Say you have your opponent in side control such that you are to their left side, with your left arm under their head and right arm over their belly linking up to your right.

1. Hook the thumb of your left hand in behind their collar behind their head.
2. Chicken wing your left arm over so that your wrist is now resting across their throat.
3. With your right arm, reach down (near your own knees) and grab onto their gi at their right elbow.
4. Apply weight to their throat with your left forearm as you twist your body to the right and lift their elbow.
5. This should cause them to choke.

1. This is identical to the above but instead of grabbing their right elbow with your right hand, you reach under them and grab onto their collar.
2. You then apply the choke by pulling with your arm as you twist and apply pressure to their throat with your left wrist.

These are gi techniques.

Say you have your opponent in side control such that you are to their left side, with your left arm under their head and right arm over their belly linking up to your right. You get into knee ride by popping up your right knee on their belly and straightening up. In a good knee ride, your upper leg and upper body should form a straight line (vertically down) to maximize the weight on your opponent. Your left arm should be grabbing the gi of their right arm at the wrist, and your right arm should be securing their left (opposite) knee.

Once in knee ride, you can go for arm bars on either the close (right in this case) or far (left in this case) arm.

Under construction.

If they are not giving up their arms for an arm bar, you can slide your left knee up next to your right knee on their belly and then wedge it in between their shoulder and their right arm, then force their right arm to the ground and pin it. Their arm should sit under your left leg, low down the leg where the shin meets the foot. Your body weight should be directly above it and you should be quite comfortable; they should be unable to get their arm out.

From here you can attack either their far arm or their neck. In either case, you continue to keep their left arm out of action by pinning it. The right knee can come off their belly if you want. Should you attempt to go for their arm and they manage to stop you, straight away go for their neck. Keep alternating from one to the other, as them defending one usually leaves the other open.

To attack their far (left in this case) arm you can simply go for a figure-4 with both arms.

Should this fail, slide your left thumb in behind their collar on the far (left) side of their neck, and press your left forearm down across their throat. Grab the closer half of their gi with your right arm and pull it away from their head towards their feet (in this case to your right). Apply downwards pressure to their throat in a rotational movement with your left forearm while you pull their gi towards their feet. This should choke them.

These assume you have your opponent in the closed guard position (i.e. your are on your back with your legs wrapped around your opponent's waist and your ankles hooked together).

This video with Cesar Gracie shows how to do an arm bar from closed guard (with gi). This one from the Fight Clinic shows it with no gi.

Had a private session with Troy from 12 noon to 1pm on Sat 14 April 2007. Asked to work on basics - escapes etc. Focused on escaping from side control

The core bit of escaping from side control is the hip escape. It creates the space to allow you to do other stuff. Shuffle your feet out a little (away from your opponent) and do a big hip escape, and push off with your arms and straighten them fully. Note that there is no such thing as “too much space” when escaping - hip out as far as you can.

It is important that your arms are straight, not bent. When your arms are straightened you can hold your opponent off easily even if they put a lot of weight on. When you arms are bent they will fold in if your opponent tries to come forward and put weight on.

Once you've created space by hip escaping, you've got 2 main options:

1. pull guard
2. get to your knees

To get guard, rotate around and put your inside knee/leg across their chest, and at exactly the same time hook your outside leg around their body and hold on with it. Hooking the outside leg is important is it enables you to stick to your opponent as they try to walk around you etc; it prevents them from easily passing your guard. Once here, shuffle your body backwards to create a bit of space, and get your inside leg off their chest and around their body into a fully closed guard. Alternatively, you can get a hooking guard by keeping your inside leg where it is and bringing the outside leg down under their right leg.

The alternative to pulling guard is to to get your knees. To do this, once you've done the initial hip escape and straightened your arms, do another hip escape (or as many as it takes) to rotate your legs around behind you, so that you are 180 degrees (head on) to your opponent. You will be flat on your stomach but don't stay there; keep your knees where they are and slide your upper body back over your knees to get to your knees. Once at your knees, there are two more options:

1. Get up on your knees and begin wrestling normally.
2. Dive in immediately for a single leg.

To get the single leg, dive in between their legs and and drive your head on the inside of a leg and claim that leg with your arms, pulling it tightly and deeply under you. From here, you normally scoot your legs around and drive the opponent sideways onto their side and get side control. If your opponent senses you doing this and starts basing out too much, change direction and go around to their back, and pull the knee towards you while driving into their bum to flatten them out onto their stomach. If your opponent tries to sprawl on you and ends up on your bag, you can do an “Iranian double” which means you get as deep as you can under them (in a praying position) between their two legs and then lift them up above your head and dump them (like a double leg). Try to control their legs so that you end up in side control and not their guard.

So to summarize, we did the following escape sequences from side control:

• hip out, pull closed guard
• hip out, get to your knees
• hip out, go for the single leg
• hip out, go for the single leg, but then come around the back
• hip out, go for the single leg, they sprawl, you go for the Iranian double.

Troy recommended that I should try to work my bottom game by deliberately starting from under side control or mount when I wrestle people.

• Attacks from guard - arm bar (push their head away, put your leg over their head, etc), chokes
• Arm bars from knee ride - close or far arm
• Guard passes (I keep getting swept)
• Rear naked choke (?)
• Practice double and single leg take downs - drill them!
• Attacks from side control - T-bar choke