I see your micro position and I raise you another

  • June 13, 2018

Let’s chat about the micro just a wee bit.

At a certain point, focus must shift in that direction in order to take any position or technique to a higher level. Little things like understanding the significance of specific grips, body placement and angles make a ridiculous amount of difference.

Don’t believe me?

Psh.

Alright.

Here’s an example for you to ponder on.

Once upon a time, I learned the hard way that the head is a hard tool that can be used to devastating effect in a wide assortment of situations.

Yes, it is an experience that I’ve never forgotten.

It happened right around the time when half guard was really starting to click for me as a blue belt while I was visiting a different gym.

All the guys there were really focused on the grind. They went hard, and there were no qualms about it either.

You either sunk or you swam.

There was no other option.

And during one particular roll, I got to half. That’s when it happened. The guy (who is a cool dude) dug his top of his skull under my chin and drove in with all the pressure he could muster.

I was stuck.

He couldn’t pass, but I couldn’t move.

Every technique went out the window.

And it became nothing more than a battle of wills.

Guess what though?

First of all, I stole that (of course). I use it whenever I want to smash through a flexible guard or make my dope mount more hellish and hard to stop.

But it also forced me early to start thinking about the position beyond just the techniques I had learned in class. I also became conscious of my own head position so things like that wouldn’t happen so easily again.

What if I mess up though?

Let’s say that I get hit with the most vicious crossface known to man, my shoulders get flattened to the mat, and I feel the force of the ages drop down on my chin as my opponent drops their hips to the mat.

That’s a situation where half guards get smashed all over the globe.

Enter the “Half Guard Trickery” course.

Within, there is a lesson that deals specifically with that scenario, and the focus is on one micro adjustment that absolutely destroy the structure of your opponent’s position.

All learning occurs here:

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Ridiculously powerful pajama grips

  • June 12, 2018

About two years ago, I had the opportunity to train for several weeks with Fabricio Bicudo.

He’s one of those old skool jiu-jitsu players. In fact, when I met him, he had already spent more than three decades on the mat.

Shocking, I know. And he’s not even that old. He just started when he was 11.

(I wish I had started that early.)

Anyhow.

He used to do one thing that frustrated me. It was so bad that I spent countless amounts of time just thinking about how to counter it. But no answer came at first.

So I did what I usually do in such cases.

I committed robbery in broad daylight.

What? You got a problem with that?

It’s part of my philosophy.

If it works on me, it must be stolen. And there’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Now I’ll share it with you, but be warned, your ability to implement from words alone may be limited.

If you’re confident though, here’s what he did:

He was ridiculously good at stapling one leg with two hands. It completely shut down the hips. And once that happened, it was hard to stop the pass.

Now if you take both your hands and touch both of the thumbs together, you would be able to see the alignment of his grips. The bottom hand grabbed the pants close to the ankle and the other was right below the knee.

Then the weight would come down. Gravity at its most fierce. And the pass afterward was effortless (way too many times for comfort).

I had a burning desire to figure out a counter.

And I now have a ridiculously simple one in my arsenal.

Expect to learn it here soon:

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A blatant assault on all that is half guard

  • June 5, 2018

Half is life.

I would like more people to understand that.

But many moons ago, while I was at a seminar, almost an hour was spent on how to slice through it like butter and make your opponents suffer so much that they just want to let you pass.

Underhooks were stolen left and right. Shoulders were driven into faces with no mercy. And hips were locked down so bad that they couldn’t even move babies.

Such wanton destruction of my position…

But understand this, it all comes to micro battles.

There isn’t a position in the world that can’t be beat. Never forget that. But the fight for the position is fought over and over again long before any pass happens.

Case in point:

A part of my creed for playing half guard used to be that I will win any battle for the underhook because I will not stop. It’s a war of attrition that I refuse to lose. And if, by some fluke, I do lose it, I’m going to immediately frame against the face to prevent my opponent from flattening me out, which keeps my hips mobile.

Doing just that would have killed the whole passing strategy that was taught at that particular seminar.

Why?

Because it all depended on flattening your opponent out. If an opponent fails in doing that, passing the half becomes a nightmare against anyone who understands the battle.

It is a micro battle in the truest sense, and micro battles matter. Hell, they matter a lot.

And that’s true for all positions.

It’s the thing that separates the experts from the exspurts. You don’t really know a position at a deep level until you understand the micro battles that are fought in the transition.

And on the topic of half guard, it’s time to strengthen the half guardian army with additional lessons. Expect to see something new before the end of the week.

For those who haven’t enlisted yet though, you can head this way if you wish to do so:

How the bear of the west plays good ol’ half

  • May 25, 2018

One of my absolute favorite half guard instructionals isn’t on anyone’s radar anymore.

It came out way back when I was just a not-so wee little blue belt. And at the time, it was revolutionary because its core premise was that one of the sacred commandments of playing half guard wasn’t absolutely true.

Yup, it took the whole idea of only playing half guard on your side and threw it out with the bath water.

I remember watching it over and over.

And even now the two core techniques I learned from it form the foundation of my counters to the smash half position.

One thing that I love especially, though, is that every technique thrives on creating black holes in your opponent’s base. And that catches them off guard because technically they’re in a strong position. So their confidence is high, and in the mind, they just know that they will pass.

Then boom.

It happens.

They get swept.

Fun times.

Here’s something else interesting though:

The guy, Vince Quitugua, who made the instructional goes by the nickname of Bear, and nowadays, he’s known more what he has done off the mat than on.

Hell, he has one of the most popular gi brands in the world.

It’s hard to find someone who’s been in the game for awhile who doesn’t know what Shoyoroll is.

But he created the Lost Secrets of the Half Guard before that fame. In fact, back then, he was just a brown belt under Mauricio “Tinguinha” Mariano, who I only knew about because of his activity on Sherdog.

Perhaps, that’s why the instructional isn’t more well-known.

I don’t hear it talked about much.

And never once have I found someone else that has studied it either.

It’s a shame.

But if you’re a true half guardian, it should be on your list. And that’s especially true if you suffer straight up underhook theft in broad daylight all the time.

Smash half won’t seem so scary anymore.

And of course, if you want to take your education in all that half guard even further, the institute of higher half gyard learning also awaits.

Step right this way:

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Ye shall NOT choke me with that thar ezekiel

  • May 21, 2018

Let’s talk about a problem that I experienced often while playing underhook half coming up through the ranks.

One of the first lessons I ever learned for half guard was that I had to always fight for the underhook. I was a good student (in this at least), so I paid attention and implemented it in practice.

I was relentless about that battle too. If you tried to beat me on the underhook, I had no problems with just sitting there and fighting you for it the whole match. I REFUSED to lose that battle.

But then I started to run into guys who didn’t care about the underhook. Hell, they even wanted me to get it.

In my academy, there was a guy like that. In the past, I have spoken about him. He’s the guy who taught me how effective the ezekiel choke is. But he never explained it to me. No. He demonstrated it, by choking me over and over and over again.

He especially loved to let me get the underhook. Then he would smother me and like a snake, he would slither his hand inside for the choke. He was not kind about it AT ALL either.

Lesson learned?

The underhook isn’t everything.

There is more to playing the position than getting it, but I also learned how you get the underhook matters.

I talk about all the small adjustments you can make to improve your position in my half guard course, but in the past, I also taped a short lesson on an entry you can use in the gi to absolutely dominate.

(And you’ll also learn one of the attacks that forms the foundation of the underhook half guard game.)

Learn it here: