Shin-Buster When Opponent Immediately Pulls Guard

Hi.  Here’s a shin-buster when opponent immediately pulls guard.  Not claiming this is a super-high percentage attack, but it is one of many moves that will make your opponent move their limbs in jerky (and sometimes panicked) ways to get it out of danger… and the less smoothly and less controlled they move, the more of an opportunity for higher probability setups (for guard passes, other leg attacks, etc) you can secure.  Not to mention: any player who has never experienced a shin-buster may simply have the reflex to tap, partially out of surprise.  Good luck, have fun.

Can I Learn BJJ From Videos?

Settling an (Annoying) Debate.

  • “That’s a bunch of YouTube-Jitsu, it’s crap!”
  • “Oh, did you get another junky move from YouTube Sensei?”
  • “You can’t learn jiu-jitsu from videos, only from a qualified instructor!”

Sound familiar? Did your instructor say these things to you after you excitedly showed him a funky move you got from the internet? Did an upper-belt teammate say something similar? Most importantly: are they correct? Can you really not learn jiu-jitsu from the internet?

This is a question that comes up constantly, both online and in person. The fact that it still comes up is both vexing and confusing to me. However, I have to have some humility and patience about that. It is a more complicated topic than one would think, at first consideration. And my own perspective has taken over twenty years to cook and simmer.

Read More

Rubber-guard meathook to shoulder-lock or hindulotine.

 

I’ve historically been reluctant to play with rubber-guard techniques out of fear of popping my own knee.  But, I’ve been doing a lot more yoga and enhancing my flexibility pretty significantly, so I thought I’d give some of these techniques a try.  I’ve been seeing some high-level grappling events feature athletes occasionally winning with some of the variations of hindulotine etc., so that speaks to the possibilities a bit.  Plus, I no longer have a Brazilian teacher who will make fun of me for doing Eddie Bravo’s stuff.  Ha.

Yoga almost-sweep to collar choke

I have been doing yoga (including partner yoga) and once or twice I’ve even done this sort of acro-yoga lift of a partner. For BJJ, I combined this movement with the idea of suspending a tomoe nage sweep in the air. Then a collar choke is sunk in while your opponent’s ability to defend is compromised. Often, you’ll just finish a sweep and complete the choke on landing.

 

Butterfly sweep to banana split submission

Here’s a sweep from the butterfly guard, which leads either into a flexibility-testing banana-split submission or a very pain-compliancey and top-pressurey guard-pass.  You’ll get inflexible people to tap on it if you get the right grips and angles, I assure you; you may even get people with above-average flexibility on it if you hit it right.  But, at the least, you get a sweep and a pass into side-control.

Sweeping the cobwebs, armbars and toeholds

 

Foot-sweep, toss foot to hand / single-leg transition, to knee on belly, to spiderweb armbar, to toe-hold.  The beginning of this video got cut off, but I am doing a foot-sweep that basically kicks the foot up to my hand for a bit of a shortcut to a single-leg grab.

From there, I’m driving the opponent down but maintaining a hold on the leg as I drive my knee down in a knee-on-belly.  Still keeping that leg, I transition to a “spider web” style armbar.

It could very well end there, but if it doesn’t: foot and leg locks open up.  Like, If the opponent yanks his arm back: I transition to a leg-knotted toe-hold with the leg I’ve been holding onto.

Lasso Guard Grip to Bicep Slicer.

Lasso Guard Grip to Bicep Slicer. Careful when training this with your partners; apply slowly until you gain the sensitivity for it. It can cause catastrophic injuries wherein the muscle essentially tears off of the bone internally, and/or there can be bone breaks on either side of the elbow joint.

Gracie kick / stomp to single leg to standing ankle lock.

This technique features three distinct aspects of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in one sequence: old-school Vale Tudo stomps at the leg / knee to set up a take-down, a single-leg takedown flavor which is more reflective of some pure wrestling styles (cutting the angle, getting to the side rather than blasting forward), and a catch-wrestling style standing ankle-lock. These are techniques I’ve trained at different times, in different contexts, and I just chose to weave them together.

Unusual ude opportunities and grips (another heel-hook like grip on the elbow), continued

Unusual ude opportunities and grips (another heel-hook like grip on the elbow), continued. This one assumes something that may be uncommon in BJJ, but common to wrestlers.

Some grapplers may not try to do a back-spin and get rear mount from turtle. Some may have a preference to try snatching the arms out and flattening the opponent to a pin; like my friend Matt Smith.

I actually do this from time to time as well, when I don’t feel like attacking back (and this may be the case for a variety of reasons).

This was driven by a specific student question, like “what would you do if he grabbed your arms for a side-control turnover rather than trying to get the back?” etc.