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 25, 2024.
Phase 1: Handfighting to the Tie-up
We began practice with a repeat of Game 1 from MATREP #28
Today the drill helped me to see which pieces of the puzzle aren’t fitting properly for people. So instead of the drill serving primarily as a warm-up, today it served as a skill-screening and I did a bit more instruction that I have in previous practices.
We looked at a couple ways to get our hands “on top of” our opponent’s hands. This is the “our palm to the back of their hand” orientation that I detailed in MATREP #27. From simplest to most complex, we looked at:
Close the distance, getting chest-to-chest and crashing on top of their hands in the process.
Catch their hand as they reach for a collar tie
Strip their hands from an existing collar tie using a cross grip with our thumb in-between their wrist and our neck. (This is a common setup for various 2-on-1 arm ties.)
To help emphasize the collar tie connection, we played a game that I made up on the spot, but that I liked and that I think I’ll continue to tweak and re-use. Both players were free to attack but they could only aim to get on top of their opponent’s hands or on top of their opponent’s head. A win was both hands “down” or both hands “up”.
Special emphasis was placed on how the control should feel at each point.
When controlling on top of the hands, the aim is to punch them downward and hang your weight on them. This is best achieved by getting your chest over top of your hand which is of course over top of their hand. This necessitates that you are very close to your opponent, chest-to-chest or nearly so. If you are too far away, you’ll be pushing their hands as opposed to hanging on them. The force of pushing can serve as a source of momentum for a counter-attack in a way that hanging heavily will not.
When controlling the top of their head, the aim is to make them look between their legs. This is best achieved by grabbing as high on the back of the head as you are able without slipping off the front. It is totally acceptable to incrementally increase the height of your grips by successively re-gripping.
We did not emphasize the snap-down motion, just the hanging of weight at the end of the lever. But once a good feel for the leverage has been established, the snap-down mechanics will be integrated.
Phase 3: Scramble to Jiu Jitsu (AKA Mat Wrestling)
This is a tricky area of the game and at first glance appears to be the most chaotic. I have a lot of experimentation ahead of me to find ways to simplify it. For starters, I’ll be building small-sided games around what appear to be the most common places that players wind up after Phase 2 (Tie-up to Scramble). Clearly, a really superb takedown can transition straight from the tie-up to a dominant jiu jitsu position like side control, but I believe that is too lofty a target to hit consistently during live rounds against a skilled opponent. Hence the need to train Phase 3.
My current chaos-reduction hypothesis contains three main areas of emphasis for Phase 3: the quadpod, the late guard pull, and the “both hips pointed up” (better name forthcoming). For today, we focused on breaking down the quadpod.
Two principles were key right off the bat.
Drape your weight across their back.
Keep their hands heavy.
I mocked up another simple game. No specific grips or tactics, just drape your weight and try not to let them stand up. Destabilize their arms or legs as needed but don’t try to actually restrain their movement or break them down further. Kinda like bull riding, but you’re allowed to use both hands.
From there we started adding techniques.
The kosoto hook (This is what Craig Jones calls it. I don’t know whether a judoka would agree or disagree.)
Attacker’s hooks their nearside heel around the defender’s nearside ankle from back to front. Attacker hamstring curls, lifts leg into air behind, extends hip and squares hips is the same direction as defender, looking to match hips up parallel.
I like this move, but I think its usefulness is very case-specific. I like it best as a means of destabilization when the defender has proven very hard to otherwise crack. I also like it as a means of quickly stopping an athletic maneuver if the defender is about to break free since they’ll have to pause and clear the leg. However, I find that this technique doesn’t work that well to fully break the opponent down if they are of similar or greater size/skill. Also, it is a lot of work for the attacker to maintain the posture of lift and extension (though likely even more work for the defender.)
Bonus! We did accidentally discover that this move can force the defender into a really wide stance which will allow the attacker to pull backward on the far hip (like a standing rear trip) to bring that hip to the ground if the defender cannot get their stance back narrow quickly enough.
The claw
Attacker brings outside arm into defender’s near armpit, reaching up to the far side of the defender’s head and grabbing hold of their far side trap muscle.
This works well in conjunction with a far hip grip by attackers nearside arm (i.e. Spiral Ride) Unlike the kosoto hook, the claw seems to have a high rate of success in setting up the total breakdown of the defender’s quadpod.
We looked at two methods of breaking the quadpod down from the claw.
Punching through for the far elbow and driving over top of the now-compromised support
Blocking the defender’s near side knee with the attackers outside knee and either dragging the defender down to side control or rolling/kicking through to a back control.
We also explored the destabilizing effect that flaring the elbow of the claw arm can have. Done with enough force or the element of surprise, it tended to make the defender shift their near side hand forward, mis-aligning their spine and impairing their preferred weight distribution.
Today was more experimental. It didn’t flow as smoothly as some of the past couple sessions have, and I didn’t quite know where I wanted to go for more than half of the practice. This is likely because I prepared too much material and then was forced to go back and shore up prerequisites, abandoning much of the lesson plan in the process. But now, upon reflection, I realize that I developed two new games “in the moment” during class, games that I’ll be able to refine and reuse. I call that a win.
Good Hunting,
Charles