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 April 1, 2024.
Tonight we began with a drill that didn’t really work.
I wanted to warmup by attacking the quadpod. But I wanted to make the task really simple. So I thought it’d make sense to give attacker to the task of simply hanging on and keeping the defender from standing up.
In my imagination, this was going to be dynamic and flowy and kind of like bull riding.
In reality, one of two things happened. Either the defender stood up immediately, minimally encumbered. Or the attacker locked in a good grip and just camped there with the attacker not able to do much.
It turns out that the impetus to progress the position makes a big difference in jiu jitsu. Unfortunately, this drill rewarded stalling, which had not been my intent.
I’d love to find a drill where the attacker can feel their way through controlling the defender without the urgency of having to break them down. But maybe that urgency is what makes the position worth playing.
I’ll have to go back to the drawing board.
We moved on to a more straightforward drill.
Defender begins in quadpod and is instructed to try to resist being broken down to a hip or have their back taken.
Attacker attempts to break down quadpod to a hip or take their back.
Defender can handfight but should not try to leave quadpod by going to guard, turtle, or standing. If they’re broken down part way, they should attempt to get back to quadpod.
Phase 3 feels like the wild west sometimes. There’s so much chaos in that transition from the clean tie-ups and powerful shots of standup grappling to the attacking pins of jiu jitsu. The more time I spend in these scramble/dogfight positions, the more I feel like there are pieces of technique that are just out of reach, minor adjustments that would have an outsize impact if I had just a bit more knowledge. But I’ve felt that way before with other positions, and in fact, I think this feeling is exactly what this type of training should be fostering.
Drilling discrete phases of the game via positional sparring and small-sided games is less about creating the false feeling of confidence that you “know” the move, and more about mapping out the position and its surrounding context. Once you’ve figured out where the strong and weak points are, and once your body has some context (experience as opposed to knowledge, aka street smarts as opposed to book smarts), only then can specific technical insight be plugged in to the gaps to make the needed connections.
Without the difficult, uncomfortable work of mapping, that technique would go in one ear and out the other like so many other bits of trivia.
But we did gain one insight that I hope to build upon further.
One way of reducing the chaos of attacking the quadpod is to give each of your limbs a job. Consider the following when beside the quadpod in a hip-to-hip orientation, facing in roughly the same direction as the defender.
The near arm is in charge of maintaining connection to the opponent. This is accomplished by
draping over the lower back and hooking onto the far side,
perhaps coiling inside the far thigh as is the case with the spiral ride,
perhaps simply grabbing the hip joint,
perhaps reaching deep and squeezing for some sort of “tight waist”,
perhaps another way. It doesn’t matter how you grab (and in fact it will necessarily vary due to body type and physical attributes) so long as you can keep them close.
Bonus, you can use the grip to pull them toward you as a part of an off-balancing action.
The near leg is in charge of off-balancing. This is accomplished by
hooking the defender’s near leg,
This can be used to hold them in place, pull them toward you, or lift that leg off of the ground.
kneeing them in the thighs and butt (not with the intent to bruise but to make them shift their weight),
blocking their near hip while you pull with your far hand (forcing them to move their hands to keep balance),
or applying pressure to their ribcage as an aid to making them bend their spine out of neutral
The far leg is in charge of generating force and maintaining balance
The other three limbs will be connecting to the opponent in some way or another. This limb’s job is to keep you connected to the ground.
This should largely happen reflexively, but you’ll notice that the depth of your knee bend will allow more or less power production versus balance depending on the need of the moment.
Some study of geometry may yield more specific insights into “optimal angles” but that will have to wait for a later time
The far arm is in charge of attacking the defender’s head and arms and is likely to be the limb that actually brings the opponent to the ground, whereas the other limbs are focused more on control.
As the attacking limb, there are countless details to be shared here (not conducive to a quick list of principled actions). I’ll keep working on this new frame of reference and I expect I’ll be able to dive deep into specific strategies for how to use this arm at a later time.
Tonight’s practice ran more smoothly than last week, in spite of my initial drill being something of a dud.
I still spent more time talking than I’d like. I am convinced that in order to be properly embodied, information must be consumed one bite at a time. But I get excited, or wrapped up in the moment and share too much, too quickly. I’m confident this discipline of brief, precise speech will come more easily with time, especially as I continue to refine the language.
Good Hunting,
Charles