MATREP #4, 2023FEB04
Everyone's Biased, But I Know For A Fact, Our Gym Is Special
Location: Fit Factory, Sevierville, TN
Training Style: Saturday Open Mat, Nogi, Anything goes
A New Look at an Old Move
Gene showed a finish for the rear naked choke that I haven’t seen before. He said he got it from Danaher.
So you’re attacking the back, you have hooks or whatever leg control allows you to be symmetrical. You’ve pulled them to their side with your overhooking arm closest to the mat. They are handfighting too well to finish the choke. So you free your underhooking arm without allowing them to change their body position. Then you reach down across their face with your palm facing down, hooking their chin with the back of your hand and pull their chin upwards so they’re looking towards their top shoulder. Sink this new choking hand deeper if able and then lock everything in place like normal with your second hand, the one that was originally the choking hand.
It is surprisingly tight, and definitely a savvy way to get deep on the choke when they’ve hand fought for a 2 on 1 control on your choking hand.
Winter/Spring Study Area: More reps with the over-under pass
I quickly made the adjustment from last training session and made certain to pinch my knees together when controlling the “over” leg. It made a big difference in limiting the mobility of my opponent.
I was also able to successfully drive the “over leg” away from me into a leg drag position and I’m really liking the new, more upright version of leg drag that I described in MATREP #3. There is a surprising synergy with the leg riding that Craig Jones details in his Power Ride instructional. From this higher, more upright position, you can drive your down-side leg over their top thigh and pin their knee to the ground, or reach back with your head-side leg and hook their bottom thigh to widen the spread of their legs. Regardless of the specific technique, you can easily take advantage of one of Craig’s key principles: the opponents legs are weaker when they are separated/pointing in different directions. I’ll play with this position some more and provide more specific commentary on which transitions seem to work best.
I haven’t touched on single-under passing yet, but it is another key component to my broad study of passing under. I had one particular success today on this topic. I was able to very smoothly execute a long-step pass from the single under setup. Lachlan Giles has a really solid video talking about transitioning through a number of passes. He gives a couple of options that I really like. I’ve used the single under as a gi pass for years, and with the collar grip, it’s very easy to simply force the opponent to do the split until they give up the pass, but in nogi, the pressure is a little tougher to manage. Lachlan seems to prefer long-stepping the one way and stack-passing the other way. So far these two options have allowed me to level up my single-under, and that makes me happy.
Good Hunting,
Charles Batey