Monday, and a hot one. Last night we opted for NoGi simply because it was way too warm to cuddle in the Gi. Luckily, my plan was to show some back control details that didn’t depend on Gi grips. So it worked out perfectly.

Jumping right into things, I took the opportunity to introduce the newer students to my line drills. Don’t forget, we don’t do these to “Warm up”, we treat these as important skills for grappling. I always stick with the four main movements that I think covers all of our ground actions. We always start with forward rolls, then proceed to backward rolls, granny rolls and finally sidewinders. We talked about my expectations with these. I do each of these in a very particular way. This way is not perfect, and its not the only way to move through these drills, but I want to see how effectively the students can replicate exactly what I demonstrate. This translates later when we start getting into the techniques. I need to know they can watch me demo a technique then go drill it correctly with their partner. You’d be surprised by how many experienced grapplers can not do these 4 line drills with the exact details for which I’m asking. These get better with time, but it really shows me the students need lots of reps before they are able to do something correctly, even though they swear they are nailing it haha.

The technique of the day was pretty simply, in theory. I started the class by showing the students the two main ways our legs work. I demonstrated this from closed guard to give them a familiar point of reference. When we have closed guard our legs struggle to elevate our partner but they work very well to clamp and control our opponent. Conversely, when we switch to a butterfly guard we have an easy time elevating our opponent, but we cannot clamp them. This is the exact same from the back. When we have our hips aligned we can use two hooks to control our opponent. However, when our opponent is able to escape their hips we need to elevate them to get back to that centered control. So to do this we switch from a hook to a butterfly. I connect my shoe laces to my opponents hamstring to elevate them and return them to center.

Today we worked in pairs with cooperative drilling. Our defensive player moved to escape their hips, then the back player used the rear butterfly hook to return the escaping player to center.

Discussion: Overall this technique proved to be easy in theory but difficult in practice. Not unlike traditional butterfly guard. Conceptually they are the exact same. If I try to elevate my opponent with traditional butterfly guard and their weight is low and towards my heels, I’ll never be able to elevate them. They will feel like a ton of bricks. So, I need to clamp tightly with my arms, pull their center of gravity high up onto my chest then elevate with my legs. Nothing changes when we flip this to back control. As our opponent sags their center of gravity low on my hips the will be way too heavy to elevate to return to center. So we need to strengthen our seatbelt grip, pull them up onto our chest, then work to elevate with our rear butterfly hook.

Drilling Round 2: With these details the students had a lot more success. So we moved on quickly to the second concept.

Discussion: Controlling the head, when to bail and use an arm triangle. When our opponent is able to get their head lower than our head we need to correct this. Our goal should always be to have the head closer to the mats. Think of it like a pillow, our opponents head should be on top of ours like its resting on a pillow. When our opponent is able to win the head position I will use my opposite hand to literally just pull the head off the mat and then replace it with my head. If we cannot win this position the defender becomes the escaper. So we need to move to a corrective movement. This often results in us landing in mount, but we should also have an arm triangle along the way. This, of course, only happens when our opponent escapes towards the choking arm.

Drilling Round 3: Drilling the back escape sequence ending in an arm triangle.

Conclusion: It’s incredibly important for the students to have some context before I flood them with details. So often times the first round of drilling determines which details I focus on during the discussion. If the group gets the technique it’ll show immediately, then I’ll know they are ready for the finer details. If they are struggling then I know I need to keep the details more basic. I’m never looking for them to drill it perfectly. I just need them to understand the flow of the technique. Then when we move to a more practice based evening they should be able to identify those techniques. Even then they will certainly not perform the technique exactly as I’ve shown it, but they should be able to make an attempt. Then, with time, they will learn their own details to make those important sequences work. Just like our 4 line drills, each time they attempt them they will get a little bit better. No amount of reps in one day, with endless monologues from me with help, they simply need time and opportunity.