You never want to give up back control. It’s the most dominant position, so there’s no good reason to transition to another less dominant position. . . unless you don’t have any choice. When your opponent is escaping back control and you know you are going to be incapable of recovering back control, your only […]
Escaping Mount The Upa is your friend. One of many, for sure, but when someone is sitting on you and threatening your well being, the Upa should be your BFF.
If an attack from side control isn’t happening, it means that the person on offense should be considering transitioning to a better position for more attack opportunities, or the person on defense should be using the successful defensive position to launch their escape.
This class covers the fundamental closed guard break and a scissor sweep that takes advantage of it. Done correctly, they are both difficult to prevent, but everything has to go smoothly for each one to succeed.
The Toreando open guard pass has a number of variations, but for all the variations, it’s basically all about throwing your opponents legs past your hips.
This class covers two ways to drive your knee from combat base to pass the guard. You only have two choices for the direction of your lead knee when doing this style of pass, and one direction will feel more natural than the other. There are many shared features, like getting an underhook, but there […]
The elevator hook sweep is a common sweep. . .for beginners. It’s rare to see this exact sweep executed at higher levels, but that doesn’t mean that it’s just a low percentage sweep to fill out another checkbox in your training. The main reason I want to show this sweep is to show how even […]
This class looks at a sweep that works well at all levels, especially when you take into consideration all the natural variations based on it. It looks like a sweep only a white belt could love, yet this scenario comes up pretty frequently. Much of the hip bump sweep maneuvering is reused for the kimura […]
When I was promoted to blue belt and purple belt, I had to deal with a endless stream of lower level guys getting in my guard and attempting to pass. Although I mixed in some other sweeps, the scissor and pendulum sweeps by far the most common sweeps I use for closed guard sweeps. As […]
