At length, I finally got what everyone was talking about.  My hope is that with a few visuals, beginning students don’t have to struggle like I did. My intention is give them some thinking tools to demystify groundfighting and the structures they see.  Below are two videos I shot in my spartan home-gym/dungeon while going over some wrestling with my friend John Ares. Certainly, I’m no a master, but I found this type of explanation to help me out a good deal.

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More to come.

Just wanted to put the word out – Brandon Ruiz is having a seminar this Saturday at Fusion, 11:00 – 1:30. Fee is only $20. Brandon is an excellent teacher and really knows his stuff. His takedowns are amazing. If you don’t know who Brandon is, check his bio below. I’ve had the opportunity to roll with him a couple of times and I can tell you, he is an animal. After he beat the pulp out of me, he gave me a number of really good pointers to help my game – which I use all the time now.

Brandon is holding the seminar to raise funds to help him go to a FILA grappling world championship. It’s a true world-tournament, and invitation only. If you want some excellent training and help support Brandon, I’ll see you Saturday.

BIO

2008 Pancrase Submission Wrestling World Champion
“The King of Combat Grappling” & Outstanding Wrestler Award
2008 FILA Grappling World Silver Medalist
2008 IBJJF Brazilian Jiu Jitsu World Championships Bronze Medalist
2004 Greco Roman Pan Am Championships Silver Medalist
3 x Pancrase Submission Wrestling National Champion
4 x Brazilian Jiu Jitsu/Grappling State Champion
8 x Greco Roman & Freestyle All-American
Judo State Champion
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Black Belt (Machado)

A fun time was had at the Utah Submission Challenge. Here a number of videos of the Gi and no Gi divisions. If you guys have any more that you’d like to put up – or that are already posted – let me know and I’ll update this page.

Great job all competitors!

Videos below the bump –

Gi matches:

Ben Gardner vs Fritz : gi finals

Aaron Vs Fritz,  Gi match

TJ vs Unknown – mid weight gi

Tony vs Unknown then Tony vs  Chris gi

Brad vs ? gi heavy weight division

Brad vs ? # 2 gi heavy weight divison

Jonah vs ? mens no-gi mid-weight beginner division

Aaron Vs Demarques Johnson no gi

Another cam angle here -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRwwQLh_9a4

Noah vs Demarques no gi, part 1

My memory card in my cam, of course, fills up one minute before Darmarques finishes Noah via triangle.

Demarques vs Unknown No-gi

Noah vs Fritz  – no gi

Aaron vs Fritz – no gi

Taylor H vs ? – no gi mid weight division

Taylor H vs Coleman

Taylor H vs ?

Taylor H vs Will

Goliath Noah vs David – absolute (no weight classes) no gi division

Noah vs Hank no gi absolute division

Think of it this way – positional dominance is the ability to exert maximum pressure with minimal effort while simultaneously optimizing your mobility and decreasing your opponents.

Take side control for example. The top cross-body position is unquestionable dominant. Gravity allows you to crush your opponent pretty hard, especially when you learn the finer points of posturing for top pressure. You can switch position into scarf hold/kesa gatame, mount, north south, knee on belly, or even stand back up. Your elbows and knee strikes have “umph” and you can force openings to proper strike points. The guy on the bottom has weak control over your posture and mobility, and his pressure (hugging pressures, upa escapes, arm/knee frames) pales in comparison to yours. His hips are often blocked by your knee or arm, his shoulders are pinned to the mat – his mobility is severely restricted. The strikes from the guy on the bottom? Laughable.

Now consider the clinch game, two fighters both having an overhook and an underhook. They both exert pressure that controls movement and limits mobility. However, unless a fighter is skilled at the position, neither fighter has a positional advantage. Many times, over/under control becomes a battle of strength and explosiveness.

One last example – striking. Squaring off against your opponent puts you on an equal position. Cutting an angle behind him opens him up: striking his vitals becomes easier and his counter-strikes are hard to pull off. Often, he has to adjust his position before making any kind of offensive effort or block. Anderson Silva is great at controlling angles and space; see his book Striking for MMA,  for more on that.

Positionally Dominant Game Planning

The overall frame work of your technical training can be broken up into two parts. Taking a dominant position and exploiting it. The delivery system differs on your body type, style presence, and martial art. The question is no longer “why is mount better than guard?” but rather, “Am I training in a realistic way that will emphasize my ability to gain positional dominance and exploit it along the way?”.

More and more, when I’m training or teaching, I’m trying to think, “How does this move help the application of positional dominance?” In my personal game, I’m trying to avoid just collecting a bunch of moves and instead try to build cohesive skills to gain dominant position.

Jujitsu escapes aren’t about blocking my opponents submissions – they are about advancing my position. The mantra of “Step every time you strike, strike every time you step” is becoming a way to not only increase punching power, but advance my body position by striking.

I think the overall shift in focus from details-orientation to “big picture” thinking will help my game. Its not that details aren’t important – they are. However, I want my game driven by fundamental principles from a top down approach, not a collection of moves from a bottom up approach. (I see the bottom up approach taught quite a bit)

Summary

Get and maintain positional dominance. When you do:

Strikes do more damage. Counter strikes do less.
You have increased control over your opponents movements, strategy and technical options.
You have increased freedom of body movement, more technical options and an more strategy selection.
Your pressure wears down an opponent physically and mentally, without overtaxing your energy.
Submissions become more viable and easier to pull off.
Almost every form of advantage is boosted when in a dominant position.

In a sense, all grappling begins with a battle of grips.  Even in the standup game, the clinch positions and pummeling are extensions of the grip. Submissions are set-up by a proper gripping situation and to an extent, strikes can be too.

Randy Couture uses his grips to set up his preferred clinches, so does Karo Parisyan. From what I’ve seen, Jens “Lil Evil” Pulver uses grip fighting to set up his favored style of dirty boxing. A lot of fights really get dictated by the flow of the gripping positions.

Here are some videos to get your creative juices flowing.

First things first, the vid above shows some of the two handed gripping positions like the s-grip and the gable grip.

From the guard, there is one particular gripping situation that has both frustrated and delighted me – depending on who’s using it. You have one deep overhook and use that arm to reach over to the opponents non-hooked wrist. You’ve blocked his use of both of his arms and you’ve one free arm to punch, manipulate an armbar, or get into rubber guard’s mission control. In the video above, Kenny Florian uses this grip to stand up from the guard.

I was first shown this by Eric down at Fusion gym – I’ll tell you, it’s tough to escape.

Double wrist control from the guard is more potent in submission grappling than it is in MMA, and even more potent in gi jujitsu. In the video above, Frank Trigg illustrates why. Circling thumb-side and delivering elbows, compressing the hips forward when you do, helps break the grip and deal damage at the same time.

This circling applies both ways though, if you’re on the bottom and a guy is double wrist controlling you, you can swim around like this to break his grip.

Above: Greg Nelson, at Erik Paulson’s CSW, elaborates on grip training, freaky wrestler strength, and training.

For Judo players and gi Jujitsu, grip fighting is huge. Every match begins with a grip, and if you can control the grips throughout, you control the match. The above video shows a drop seoi nage drill that is pretty slick. Tony, one of my instructors, showed me something similar that the Gracie-Baja guys were killing people with down at the Mundials. You set up the same way, entering in for seoi nage, but instead of passing through the legs you disappear on the the side of the legs and remain control of the sleeve. You finish with an easy single leg take down, among other things.

Here’s a Judo friendly grip strategy video and another one about setting your power hand.

I know it’s short notice, but Billy Robinson is one of those old school powerhouses, like Karl Gotch.  Billy has trained some very tough guys – like Josh Barnett and Sakuraba. Not to mention that Brandon also has a serious grappling resume. I rolled with Brandon once at Fusion – he was messing around, let me take his back and attempt to choke him, which was like trying to submit a mighty oak tree with Olympic greco-roman experience. Epic fail. Anyway…

You’ll want to RSVP to see if you can still get  in. Check the Altitude Combat page for more details.

PS – Appearance it’s tough to find the place – it’s in a warehouse like district just off North Temple and 800 West.

PSS – Did you notice the Brock Lesnar catch wrestling hold from half guard?

Thanks Noah for the heads up!

I went down to the Orem Throwdown center for the Utah Champion Submission Challenge XI. First of all, what a blast! This was my first time down to Throwdown and it had a great atmosphere and all of the competitors were very cool. There were dozens of exciting matches, plenty of them taking advantage of the no time limit.  Local MMA’er Steve “Razor” Sharp had a match that must have lasted 20 minutes.

I believe Ben Gardner snatched up the first place in the Absolute division, so congrats Ben.  For all other division’s results, they should be posted on www.utahchampion.com soon.

Videos:

Bart vs Brandon  (HQ) – 162 meg

Bart vs Nick (HQ) – 475 meg

Aaron vs Ben (HQ)  – 534 meg

As I get more vids, I’ll get them posted up.

Also, if your looking for the March 28 competition, check out the  last Throwdown CSC here.

It’s basically the high school wrestling “sit out”, and I think it works pretty well. I’ve been experimenting with a couple of other ideas for this situation, and when I refine them I’ll post. If you have any techniques you like from this position, let us in on them!

[Bill and Ted meet themselves]
Ted: OK wait. If you guys are really us, what number are we thinking of?
Bill, Ted: 69, dudes.
Bill, Ted: Whoa.
[quadruple air guitar solo]

- Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure

The north south position is a very dominant ground position, and in my opinion, is both very dangerous (for the bottom) and wildly under-utilized. Part of it comes from ignorance and part of it comes from people’s natural discomfort.  The whole face-into-crotch thing makes for a weird experience when you’re grappling. However, you just got to get over it.

Striking From North South

Depending on the rules, you may or may not be able to knee to the head while on the ground. In BJ Penn’s book, he details two knee attacks from side control which work well in the N/S  position. The first is a quick jabbing knee thrust from kneeling crossbody and the second is a “drop the bomb” style knee smash where you raise the knee up as high as you can before you hammer it down.

You have similar striking options while 69′ing as you do while in the mount.  Little rib hook punches, elbows, hammerfists.  Experiment with a heavy bag lying on the floor to get a sense of the uniqueness of striking in N/S.

Also, don’t be afraid to squeeze your knees together or sit on your opponents face.

Strike To Submit

There are several submissions covered later in the article - with all them remember that you can preface them with some ground and pound to make them easier to lock in. It’s one of my all-time favorite strategies is to soften an opponent up with a few elbows or punches and then transition directly into a submission. Many fighters will try to intercept your fist as it approaches their face – it’s a natural reaction – and when they loosen their arms, extending or moving them away from their torso, their arms become vunerable to joint lock attacks.

Pulling To The Back

It’s just like you’d think it works. You hook under the arms and drag your opponent into your rear guard. Admittably, it works much better in the first round or with a jujitsu gi.

Knee On Belly To N/S … And Back Again

When you get the N/S position, opponents will often try to spin out like a ninja turle on his back and pull guard. If you can’t prevent the spinning, just prop yourself into the knee on belly position and fire off some strikes.

See if you can bang down on the abdomen when they spin out – it’ll help take the smile off their face and wear them down. PLUS – their head will often bob up off the mat when you do this, allowing you A) punch it or B) weave your arm under their neck and drop back into a north south like position and pull off a choke shown below.

You should eventually be able to learn to tranisition from N/S to knee on belly to side control and any combination thereof. Instead of having an opponent escape, transition into a new position and keep the pressure on. Contiunially defending his escapes takes away from your momentum and gameplan. Smart grapplers will stack their escapes in combinations, and these transitions will help keep you dominant.

Submissions From North South

One thing I like about the 69 position is that the attacks seem to be higher percentage – maybe due to their relative lack of awareness among grapplers. I see people get into the north south position but give up submission opportunities and fall back into guard or side control instead. Once you get a handle on N/S, you’ll be looking to transition into it and nail a sub.

The Anaconda / D’arce

These head and arm chokes can be used in a variety of positions and are great in the 69. Basically, trap the head and one arm in the crook of your elbow, lock your wrist in the crook of the other arm and squeeze the dickens out of them.

The videos below will show off both chokes. In particular, watch carefully how they shift weight on their opponents and how they compress the head over their arms. Also see how they go in and out of 69′ish positions.  Fun fact - the D’arce choke had a huge popularity boost due to Kendall Grove’s submission victory … in UFC 69. Coinicedence?

Anyway, if you’re not familar with the specifics of the D’arce or Anaconda chokes, check out the details here.

Here’s an example where you see the interplay of N/S and the D’arce choke.

Here’s the ultra-fabulous Marcello Garcia at ADCC 2007, submitting his opponent with the anaconda choke from N/S.

For a step by step breakdown, Marcello shows the 69 choke over here at Gracie Magizine.

See Jeff Monson finish an opponent using the 69 choke -

Americana / Key lock

You are pinning your opponent down with your chest and he’s hugging you. You do a sit out, bringing your left leg to the right side of his body (now you are really in reverse kesa-gatame aka reverse scarf hold) While you do this, you grip his elbow to your chest and crank back as you get a leg hook to prevent him from rolling over. See pictures here.

Armbar And Kimura

The 69 position has it’s own flavor of armbars and kimuras. Karo Parisyan’s excellent book, Judo For MMA has some good ideas regarding these moves.

I know of two solid variations of the kimura from N/S – the first is shown here. The one I’m most familiar with is shown, more or less in the video below. The first few seconds of the video is only gi-jujitsu relevant, but the last part is great in showing how to squeeze the head and posture up from N/S to get this shoulder lock.

Although I’ll leave out the variations on this theme, the armbar goes somewhat like this. Starting from N/S, get one arm of your opponent to cross his body and pin it down with your chest. Let’s say you pinned the left arm down -continue by grabbing the arm and holding in to your chest. Step up on your right foot, placing it on the right side of your opponents face, leaning forward to control the arm. Drag your knee to the left side of his body as sit down to that left side. Your right leg will be over his face and your left foot should be hooked underneath the armpit of the opponent’s left arm. Sqeeze your knees together and armbar.

Conclusion

Knowing how to use the north south position will  help your ground game. If you know of another particular submission or technique you like from this position, share it!

Waaaagh! Wrestlers. They’re a tricky sort, and as big names like Randy Couture, Matt Hughes, and Brock Lesnar have shown. The purpose of this article is to help fighters who have difficulties in dealing with wrestling based mixed martial artists. Certainly, I don’t know it all. Hopefully though, you’ll get some tips and ideas to take to the mat and gain an upper hand against wrestling MMA’ers.

In part 1, I discussed the basic wrestlers strategy, side control management, preventing the guard pass, and striking from the guard.

In part 2, I want to add some details about dominant positions, submissions from the ground and elaborate a bit about the standing striking game.

Get Dominant Positions

If you want to improve your chances of winning a match, focus on gaining and keeping dominant positions for greater percentages of your fight practice sessions. In jujitsu, we have a mantra that applies well in MMA: Position Before Submission – make sure you are secure in a dominant position with all the various technical points under control and the submission will be WAY easier. Instead of struggling to lock in your choke, transition to a more dominant position. Don’t fight strength against strength in neutral positions, focus on getting some place where you have a leverage and body advantage.

Part of what makes wrestlers such frustrating opponents is that they are good at putting you in disadvantageous positions. The take down, the guard pass, the ground and pound – it’s all about being on top, weighing you down, smacking you until KO or an arm/head becomes undefended enough to submit it with ease.

Your job is to do essentially the same thing. Get into a dominant position and work the techniques you know.

It makes sense when you review all the fights you’ve seen through your mind. How often does a fight get finished once one competitor takes the others back? 60-80%? It’s almost natural to just call the fight done when someone gets back mount because it’s so common to see TKO due to strikes or rear naked choke in a few seconds.

In striking realm, the essence of position before submission is no different. Beating down an opponent from the mount position is much more deadly than being restricted in guard and trying to grind out some ground and pound. Position matters.

Gaining dominant clinches assures that you’ll be able to get in some punches by controlling the body position and angles made between your body and your opponent’s. Randy Couture takes a good deal of time talking about this in his video on “Learning to fight and win.” Get a good single collar tie, step off to the side and land a straight punch to the face. Anticipating that an opponent will get wise to this, he’ll angle back toward you to try to defend. Respond by “swimming” to the other side, hooking the arm or head and keep the dominant position.

Create Angles To Land Strikes and Frustrate Take Downs

I love a still-photo that can capture the exact moment of a knockout punch in all of its sweaty head-snapping, rippled cheeks and fist to face glory. It’s a special moment, really (unless you’re on the receiving end). Just like in Sesame Street where today was brought to you by the letter Q and the number 7, there’s a big chance that the KO blow was brought to you by good attack angles.

It’s tough to over-state how useful proper angles are in fighting. Whether standing up or on the ground, moving position to get an angle on a opponent will open him up for nearly unblockable punches/submissions while simultaneously diminishing the strength of his attacks or obviating them altogether.

Leg take downs are initiated in a very linear manner. The wrestler drops his level and bursts forward. Upper body throws all have to be worked from a body clinch. Both are well countered by circling, angle movements.

It’s a deep and rich subject, one worthy of it’s own post, so I’ll keep it brief here and post a couple of specifics.

As you drill for take downs, one variation is to train as if you see the take down coming. Remain light on your feet and angle off to the side, push the head and shoulder girdle to the side of you, letting them go past you as you side step and angle off their attack line. If the take down is already underway when you notice it, you’re probably too late avoid it altogether, but you can still angle a bit as you begin to contact. As they close that distance, see if you can gain advantage via over/under hooks. See if you can notice which leg they try to grab first – either by intuition or fight videos – and get that leg back first. As you “retreat” that side, turn or pivot and parry their driving energy forward to that side behind you. Punch to the face or send a knee up to the head.

Watch the fight where Lyoto Machida defeats Tito Ortiz. It’s almost like Lyoto’s a matador, and Ortiz a charging bull. Ole!

When exchanging strikes, always trying to work your way out of the power zone of your opponent by circling around them. In a nutshell, that striking power zone is shaped like a round support pillar – imagine your opponent hugging a stone column, barely able to connect hands. Looking on the floor, the power zone can be seen as a circular arc between where their feet are pointing.

There is a good boxing DVD on the market that deals with attack angles specifically – see Fight Resources bottom of the post for the link.

Create Angles To Get Submissions

My Sensei summed up getting jujitsu with two words – hip movement. In this context, I’ll throw in an extra word – lateral hip movement. If you’re not a jujitsu player, this advice may be lost on you. If you are a jujitsu player, this advice might be beyond you. I certainly haven’t achieved that level of grappling nirvana where two words is all I need. Still, it’s the root of the idea and I’ll try to do my best describing it.

If you’re in guard, don’t let the guy get his posture. Even if you’ve broken your opponent down so you’re chest to chest, their body laying directly on top of you like the two hands of a clock at 12:00 is bad. In this case, you will always need to push or pull off on one side and try to isolate one half of their body – either an arm or the head and one arm.

Think of the omoplata submission; you start off in a twelve o’clock position but push off one hip to move your body to the side, going to a body position that’s about two o’clock. As you do this, you get your leg up the back of your opponents body and in front of his face, trapping his arm – you’re probably at three o’clock. Continuing on, you go into a jiu-claw position (six o’clock) and sit up and start tweaking the shoulder joint. Check out the article “Omoplata Omoplata Omoplata” here to see what I mean.

Angle off the body line and see how your opponent may expose himself to submissions. Additionally, one of the great pluses to this is that angling off gives less for an opponent to strike.

Fighter Resources

I’ve mentioned a few things you might want to check out.

First of all, if you didn’t catch Dealing With Wrestlers In MMA Part 1, check it out here.

The learning to fight and win DVD with Randy Couture is well worth the money. He breaks down the clinch game really well. As it’s a wrestler staple that he’s been using, you can use it to fight with or avoid it. To really know how to defend an attack, you have to know it yourself.

With all the talk of clinches, you’ll want to bring yourself up to speed on pummeling and the different clinch positions. The article Basic Pummeling, can be found here.

here

The other DVD I mentioned was the Title Boxing Attacking and Punching at Angles. It’s a solid video from some of the best in the business.

As for hip movement, I mentioned that it’s a tricky thing to describe. Instead, watch grappling guru Jean Machado perform his 5 favorite submissions. The armbar recounter (2nd shown in the vid) is very instructional on lateral-hip-movement. See it below, or click here.

Also, three posts in the archives were mentioned directly, or indirectly.

Omoplata instruction : Tons of omoplata variations and how to pull them off. Watch the hip movement!

Extra Bonus:

Here are some pics that show some good attack angles.

On this one (above) notice how Rich Franklin’s right foot is out side his opponnet’s left foot.

Above, Liddell is square up to Rampage. Both of Liddell’s feet are the same distance away from Jackson, “squaring” his shoulders and face for impact.

Side step and uppercut: It could equally be a failed take down attempt.