Below, you will find my notes summarizing and reflecting upon the stand-up grappling practice that I led at Fit Factory Jiu Jitsu, 3814 Boyd’s Creek Highway, Sevierville, TN on March 18, 2024.
Game 1
Game is for the defender (defender dictates the levels of intensity and complexity that the attacker gives)
Start in any tie-up (we initially emphasized arm drag with shoulder on top of shoulder, 2 on 1 arm grip, and single underhook, but opened it up more and more as people become comfortable with the drill)
The aim of the defender is to fight back to a neutral position
Complexity Level 1
Hard reset every time the tie up is cleared. Defender can ask for specific tie-up.
Complexity Level 2
Attacker re-pummels actively for another tie-up as defender is clearing the initial tie. Defender no longer asks for specific tie-up and attacker is encouraged to take whatever is most available.
Lessons Learned
Most of the group quickly progressed to Complexity Level 2. This form of the drill flowed well and people worked up a sweat while getting lots of high quality reps. It had the added bonus of giving the attacker the opportunity to chain together multiple attacks while still meeting the needs of the defender, and it showed the defender where their defensive actions exposed them to counter-attack.
This drill also showed the need for more disciplined awareness of defensive posture. We took time during a rest break to demonstrate how fighting to get your elbows back in contact with your rib cage makes you less vulnerable.
The same idea was emphasized with regard to head position. I like the analogy that the bridge of the nose is like a gun sight and that it needs to be aimed at the opponent’s “center mass”.
This drill may become a go to “warm-up”. People got their feet and arms moving a lot, but we didn’t have any mat impact on cold bodies. I haven’t been insisting on specific warm-ups, but I may experiment with using this in conjunction with break-falls and rolls to prepare people for more impactful drills. Whether we do this or not, I do expect to continue to use this as the first game of practice for the next few weeks. I’d like to see what grows out of it as people become more familiar with the constraints.
Game 2
Game is for the attacker (attacker dictates the levels of intensity and complexity that the defender gives)
Start with a single leg
The aim is to get the opponent’s hands or hips on the mat.
Today we did not pursue control on the ground (the “scramble → jiu jitsu” phase discussed in MATREP #27), though as our group becomes more comfortable with these phases of the game, I’d like to open up this option.
Complexity Level 1
Defender simply attempts to maintain balance
Complexity Level 2
Defender can attempt to free the leg by clearing grips but not counter-attacking.
Lessons Learned
I am of the opinion that the single leg is easy to get to, but hard to finish. The “hard to finish” part proved true in today’s training. I had hypothesized three or four levels of complexity in preparation for practice, but I think we used Level 1 for 80% or more of the time we spent on this game. This as a good thing. The complexity levels are there not as ends in-and-of themselves, but as tools to foster challenge where challenge is needed. I judge the learning environment by its ability to be challenging yet successful. Too much challenge and our success rate would have fallen too low, so the additional levels were saved for another day.
I re-emphasized the same three ways to put the defender on the ground that I described in MATREP #24.
Get their heel at least above the height of their hip. (Yours truly doesn’t get too tipsy until closer to shoulder height)
Externally rotate their knee and drop their hips straight down into the space where that leg would have been standing
Block the movement of their second leg.
These are deliberately generic instructions. Our group contains considerable variety of body type and experience. The grips that I use, given my proportions and relative strength/coordination, can be quite different than someone built differently. But the aims remain the same. I can watch a person take an opponent down and work backward from their specific technique to show bio-mechanically why it worked, and that is my aim in coaching at this level of basics. As our group improves, I expect we’ll “discover” techniques that already exist and then we can troubleshoot, research, and improve our techniques once we have something to build upon. In fact, this process already occurred tonight drawing from my non-encyclopedic knowledge of finishing techniques.
Some good-natured fun was had while figuring out how to keep hips in and head high while driving the defender’s weight off of their lead leg in order to setup the initial shot from an upper body tie-up. We removed the tactical considerations for coordination’s sake and practiced “slouching” ourselves into our opponent. Head, chest, and hip were crashed into the opponent and we half slid half sprawled as the opponent shifted backward. Done without tactical consideration, we sloughed all the way down to the floor without attempting to keep our legs under us. But once people got the hang of not pulling their hips back (and thus dropping their head down into danger territory), we added the tactical considerations of scooping up the opponent’s leg and of allowing our feet to lunge forward to keep us from falling on the floor. I don’t think we’'ll forget that drill, which I count as success.
We’ve only begun to scratch the surface of methodically turning timid stand-up grapplers into confident stand-up grapplers. But we are putting in the reps.
I’m just happy to be coaching again.
Good Hunting,
Charles