More Advanced Spider Guard exploration

 I went to Rick Spain’s gym this morning to train Jiu Jitsu with Henry, March, Matt, Barwin, and Leeroy this morning. Something I plan to do a lot more often.

We were running through the stuff John Will taught us at his last seminar on Advanced Spider Guard.

We managed to come up with a couple of new options riffing off the “Alternate Side Spider Guard Sweep”, used when you try to get the leg lasso and he pulls his elbow back to his hip to stop you. So you instead get your shin under the alternate side armpit, and kick the leg up and over to sweep him to that side (see the previous blog post for detail on the sweep).

Barwin inconveniently countered the sweep by posting up on his outside foot. Within five minutes we had collectively come up with a counter to that counter, and a variation of the sweep to preemptively prevent the counter.

The sweep modification that prevents the counter:

Set up the sweep as above, but instead of putting your R foot flat on the floor,  take it across the front of him and hook his R hip with your R instep. Sweep similarly to before. You won’t get the same amount of drive unless you are flexible and strong, but anyone should be able to more or less twist his body to the left so he falls onto his back.

The counter to the counter:

You have your L leg under his L armpit, both grips, and have your R foot on the floor. You try to sweep him to your L by lifting with the L leg, pushing with the R foot, and pulling the grips. He counters the sweep by posting  with his  R foot. Throw your R leg over his head and hook behind it with the knee, push the L  knee through so your ankle is in his armpit  and pull hard on the R arm to set up an armbar. He may fall over, no problem, just finish from wherever you are. Similar to the “armbar waltz”.

Similar but different armbar technique shown in the middle of this clip by Caio Terra and a couple of his training buds:

This clip is interesting because it gives a whole new sequence of techniques if the guy has one knee up – “combat base”.

This is Jiu Jitsu. Trying a technique, finding a problem or a counter to it, and working ways to either neutralize that problem or counter, or use it to your advantage. Definitely a thinking person’s art.