A big trend and emerging focus from my guard recovery block has been progressing to turtle and working to a stand up. I think this is an incredibly important transition. Both for guard recovery and for working to a topside position. We found this to be very effective during that block. So its important to learn to deal with a turtled opponent.

Game 1: 3:00 x 4 rounds. Each player gets 3 minutes on top to work. This one was quite simple, bottom player is on elbows and knees. No other details or restrictions. Top player starts hip to hip with both hands on the back of the bottom player. For this block we will be in groups of 4 students. The active player will be on top and will stay in for 3 minutes. Bottom player rotates in as the rep has ended. Top player has two ways to end the rep. They must either pin bottom player in side control or they have to score points with back control. Bottom player needs to establish a guard or stand up.

Discussion: we talked about the importance of the outside arm in the tight waist position. This acts as our rudder and allows us to trace our opponents movement. Whether they decide to roll towards us or away from us that arm becomes a vital under hook that is the staple of our side control pin. However, Our primary goal when attacking the turtle is to establish a strong head trap seatbelt and look to advance to full back control. This also begins with an outside arm tight waist position.

Game 2: 3:00 x 4 rounds. Rules are defined as the same in game one.

Conclusion: Lots of improvements on this round. Turtle players learned that there is a risk vs reward scenario from turtle. Standing up without proper defenses risks giving up the back. So a more effective route to win was to move towards a guard position. Top players learned to lead with the outside arm tight waist and surf to secure the pin outside of the guard. After a few quick victories from both top and bottom players, the game evolved quite nicely. This is only day 1 of attacking turtle so I assumed the bottom player would be successful 80 percent of the time and I think thats pretty accurate. The turtle player was able to scramble their way to a guard position, often times leaving the top player lost in the confusion. They tried to follow that tight waist rudder but didn’t quite understand the correct pathways to take. Day 2 will focus more on keeping the bottom player stuck to the ground to avoid a stand up, then using our tight waist rudder to act as an under hook for the pin.