submission

s-mount

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We’ve touched on s-mount a little bit before. See S-Mount Warm Up Drill and Mounted Armbar. We’ll start with the s-mount warmup shown in the first post, and work on some attacks.

Here’s some quick and simple advice for advancing your mount position. What if your opponent has tight, defensive arm position?

If you don’t have a collar to grab, can’t fit your hand in to grab a collar, can’t separate an arm for an armbar attack, and can’t get your knees up into the armpits, start by forcing their arm into an Americana position.

Here’s a longer explanation of protecting the mount from Roger Gracie:

I strongly prefer Roger’s insistence on keeping weight on his opponent, but as an entry to s-mount, this is a nice start. Note how Jean Jacques isn’t opening any space for his opponent to sneak out the back:

His arms are too low to force over his head and you can’t slide your knees up? Trap the arm down and step over:

This is probably the most like what I do from this position. I love starting with a cross choke grip and using that to turn to the side:

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shoulder attacks

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By request, we’ve spent some time recently working on movements in this video:

I like elements of it, and have issues with some others. I still don’t believe in the sweep at 4:45. I think it requires too much cooperation from the top player. If he sat back or posted with his right arm, it wouldn’t work. I didn’t like it in Lachlan’s video and I still don’t. I am open to the idea that I’m missing something important here, but my experience is that the Hughes arm bar of GSP is the more likely outcome.

I forgot how poor GSP’s grip was, but I still don’t like it. We played with variations based on the hip bump advice in the next video, but that still didn’t resolve it for me:

If you can explain to me how to turn the kimura grip into a reliable sweep from a position where the top player is passing the guard, I’m interested. I’m not knocking the half butterfly sweep though. I’ve hit this one a lot:

Back to the shoulder. Here’s a useful explanation of Tarikoplata vs the Baratoplata:

There will probably be another post following this to investigate more of the entries to ‘platas.

This looks pretty agreeable to me:

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ham sandwich

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If you just have a minute to ponder the beauty of the ham sandwich, here’s a quicky:

Of course B Mac has a lot more on this topic:

Rolling footage of repeated ham sandwich attacks:

If they keep their leg straight to deny the ham sandwich, get even more 10th Planet on them and switch to an electric chair:

He continues deeper into the dark arts with a toe hold if the ham sandwich doesn’t do the trick

and one more from another favorite of halfguardlife:

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New Years 2023

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We’ll be moving on from the half guard emphasis at the beginning of the year, but I like this video and I don’t think I’ve posted it on this site before. Jason Scully’s videos are the opposite of Danaher’s: quick demonstrations of moves without long monologues. Sometimes you just want ideas for some options and don’t need a research paper.

By popular demand, we’ll start to dabble in the dark arts. Since I’ve spent nearly all of my recent training time in the gi, I am not fully comfortable playing footsie. I have more work to do on my own understanding of it. To get started, I want to pick moves and positions that complement things we’re already doing and won’t be illegal for everyone in their normal competition contexts.

That brings us to footlocks/straight ankle locks. Here are a pair of finishes. The second finish accounts for positioning that acknowledges heel hooks but doesn’t require us to break IBJJF rules:

Below is my obligatory inclusion of Lachlan Giles. I agree with him that I don’t want people in class to get focused on footlocks from top position rather than working on passing the guard. Still, we gotta start somewhere.

I’m less bothered by leg attacks initiated from the bottom. It feels less like giving up on positioning. Single leg X guard attaches nicely to footlocks, so we can work on transitioning into and sweeping from SLX.

Watch Gers escape the footlock attempt in the middle of his match by clearing the bottom leg. His opponent didn’t step over with his other leg to keep Gers away. Gerson shucked the leg and went directly into a dominant top position. This is also a reminder of why everyone is encouraged to work guard passing more than footlocks. Gerson’s opponent could have taken the top position and worked a pass but he fell back for the foot and ended up getting smashed on bottom for it.

Here’s a version of establishing SLX from half butterfly:

From butterfly:

Leg details from Marcelo on the butterfly to SLX transition and sweep:

More Lachlan on sweeping from SLX:

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Ezekiel strangle from the back

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I like the attacks from turtle. I encourage everyone to try it on Travis:

In Galvao’s video above, he mentions using the Ezekiel against Eduardo Telles, who is known for his turtle guard. Here is video of that match:

Since I love bow and arrow chokes so much, I naturally enjoy moving into the “cross back” position that Danaher applies in his video. Putting your legs in position to trap an arm and also add leverage to the choke is powerful:

Travis Stevens goes cross-back earlier in order to establish the grip:

Just for fun, sauce distribution:

Ok, it’s not about the back, but I fell into a Youtube hole looking at Ezekiels and this is rad:

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