The Gathering 2017
I travelled to Melbourne to attend the Will/Machado Gathering, a competition organised every year by John Will. This year celebrating thirty years of BJJ in Australia.
“Fawlty Towers”, where I stayed with the Langes, the Lazichs, Pete King and Elvis Sinosic. Unlike the TV namesake, staff are professional and the stay was quite enjoyable
Saturday the ninth was a competition held at the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre. I was refereeing and otherwise officiating. I saw some excellent matches, including many at brown and black belt level, refereeing some myself with Anthony and Pete.
The next day was an early start at Dominance Mixed Martial Arts.
Group photos, promotions:
among quite a few other degree promotions.
Then we began seminars with Rigan. The first was brief, ostensibly for school owners, though no one stopped everyone else there from joining in.
Apologies for video and sound quality – I was breathing heavily from exertion, plus suffering from the death throes of a sinus and throat thing, plus had to sprint and weave through masses of humanity each time to grab a reasonable camera position. Everything goes sideways in one video. Sorry, but, um … what you get is what you get.
Rigan showed some drills he teaches at his school to facilitate hip and leg movement, and overall mobility, from guard.
Drill 1
You are on your back. Your partner has your feet in his elbow joints and holds your ankles like spider guard. You bend and extend your legs, this spinnig on your back to lightly touch each of your partner’s lower legs with your hand. AS you get used to the drill you partner can start to step arond, so you need to move with him. You can also look at extending this to go underneath him, garb or underhook his ankles, inverting, etc.
Drill 2
You are on your back with your feet up near your partner’s hips, your partner does a light leg drag on your L leg and steps around to the outside of the leg. Raise and turn your hips and bring your R leg across to his hips, then square up and reestablish your open guard. Repeat both sides, keep swapping.
Drill 3
You are on your back facing your partner. He steps around, bringing his L foot up near your R shoulder. You grab his L ankle with your R hand, crunch and ball up so you can spin to face him again. Repeat on the other side, keep swapping.
Drill 4
You are on your back. This time your partner is standing up behind your head. Make sure you have enough room between you and him for the next move. Grab both ankles with your hands, then reverse crunch up, lifting your hips, ankles crossed until you can place your feet on his hips. Using his hips as a pivot point, spin on your back so as to uncross your legs and face him again. He walks around behind your head again. Repeat on the other side. Get used to spinning back toward him in the way that uncrosses your legs. Repeat on both sides and keep swapping.
Do each drill for time rather than number of reps, and also mix all the drills together during a single time period.
The next seminar was for coloured belts, including black belts. It dealt with what Rigan calls “distance passing”, where we try to gain control over the opponent and initiate the pass from a distance where the opponent does not have an easy opportunity to establish a proper guard.
Ankle and Leg Control Drill
Stay well out of range and look to grab an ankle in a parallel grip (e.g. R hand grabs his L ankle) from above. Fingers around the achilles tendon. You can drag his leg to one side and step around, change the grip to the other hand, push one or both ankles down, lift both ankles up and change the grip to underneath, grab the other ankle if he uses his free foot to block etc. Experiment with a partner at low levels of resistance, which you can probably ramp up as you become more proficient.
Pass 1
Push both his ankles down, step in and more or less sit on his shins. Push his knees forward and to your L as you grab his R collar with your L hand. Your L shin goes over both his R ankle and thigh, your L knee toward the floor so as to pin his R leg, while your L hand goes to the floor under his L armpit. Lean forward and put your chest oh the outside of his L knee to push his L knee towards you L / his R. You should be able to backstep over his R shin with your L leg and complete the pass.
Pass 2 – Leg Drag
His L foot is on your R hip. Grab his L ankle with your R hand, fingers around the achilles tendon, thumb over his shin. Grab under his L knee with your L hand. Step back with your L foot and trun slightly to dislodge his L foot from your hip, and drag it over past your L hip and you step your L foot in close to his butt. drive your L knee over his R thigh, pinning it, dropping down. Trap his R thigh from the other side with your L elbow, grabbing his R collar with the L hand. You can move around behind him (to your R) to complete the pass, ideally catching his L arm between your L arm and your chest, making it hard for him to roll away from you.
Pass 3 – Leg Drag to Knee Ride
Grab his L ankle with your R hand and his L calf with your L hand. Leg drag as before, but this time push his L knee down and away with your R hand as you step around to his L and go to knee ride.
Pass 4 – Leg drag, he Blocks with the Free Leg – Shoulder Control and Knee Slide
You start the leg drag on his L leg as before. This time, before you can consolidate the knee pin, he brings his R log over the top to block your R side, stopping you from dropping down. Underhook his R thigh with your R arm and push his R leg forward and down using shoulder pressure with your R shoulder. Push his L leg down with your L hand and knee-slide your R shin over it, dropping onto your R side and turning towards him to complete the pass. After some practice the shoulder control and knee slide can be done quite quickly.
Pass 5 – Leg Drag, he Blocks with the Free Leg, Wax On Wax Off and Leg Drag on the Other Side
You drag his L leg, he brings his R leg over and blocks your R shoulder with his R foot. Your L hand circles inside and to take the leg off your shoulder and then bring it down and across to your R hip, near the end of this movement grab his R calf with your R hand and drag his leg past your R hip. He may black with the L foot on your L shoulder, do the same thing on the other side. Can repeat as a drill or eventually beat his block with one of the previous passes.
The arm movements are very similar to the defence against an attempted lapel grab where you parry the arm to the outside and then take it down and across into an arm drag.
Pass 6 – Shin and Shoulder Control to Knee Slide Pass
Get a grip on both ankles, then lift them up and change the grips to under and behind the ankles. Drive both his legs back and to your L. Get your L shin over his R thigh, and trap his L calf with your shoulder as for a basic under leg pass. You could now pass either way. If you elect to do the knee slide pass, or he gives you his R sleeve – grab his R sleeve with your L hand and pass it to your R hand, your R arm under his L leg. Drive forward and crossface him with your L arm, using an L collar grip to move in progressively, as you backstep with your R leg and drop onto your L hip, keeping his R leg trapped with your L knee. Once your backstep is complete, you can take you L ship off his R leg and drive your R knee into his hip to complete the pass. Gripping and pulling in with your R hand on his sleeve will torque his spine and greatly affect his abilities to block the pass.
Pass 7 – Shin and Shoulder Control to Under the Leg Pass
You get the position as for the previous pass where you control his R thigh with your L shin and his R calf with your shoulder and R arm. This time he pushes on your chest or shoulder with his L hand. Grab his L sleeve with your L hand, using your R hand to pass it to your L if necessary. Move around to your R under his L leg, getting your R thumb in his R collar at the earliest opportunity. Drop your weight onto your R elbow, adding a nice amount of forearm choke pressure, and pull your L elbow to your hip as you complete the pass.
Pass 6 and 7 and probably well know to most blue belts, but adding the sleeve controls and various pressures turbocharges them.
“Pass” 8 – Pass Pressure to Back Take
Grab his ankles, lift them up and swap the grip to behind as before. Push his feet up over his head. Use your R shin/knee to temporarily control his L leg. Change the grip on his L ankle from your R hand to your L hand. Grab his belt with your R hand and use it and pushing his L foot back over his head to lift his hips off the mat, drop down onto your R knee, placing it close to his butt and ideally slightly to your L of it. Now drop onto you R hip and slide your R knee under his hips. Get your L hook in over his L leg and roll him to your L into back control, getting your R hook in and upper body controls as you go.
Super Review
Final Thoughts
TL;DR: I had a fun, interesting and worthwhile weekend based around Jiu Jitsu, spent some great times on and off the mat with Rigan Machado and some of the best Jiu Jitsu people in Australia. Heard plenty of stories about the early days of MMA and BJJ in Australia, Learned a nice and effective passing strategy that does not appear to require superhuman athleticism. A weekend very well spent.
