The seminar was held at Higher Jiu Jitsu, in the City of Sydney PCYC, hosted as usual by Mestre Pedro’s Sydney representative, John Smallios.
The seminar was pretty much all Pedro answering questions from seminar participants. While this blog describes “techniques”, he would want them to be seen as particular manifestations of more fundamental and general concepts, that could be applied in a far wider range of situations.
Passing Closed Guard
We want to put the person whose closed guard we are passing in as difficult and uncomfortable a position as possible. Stretch him out. If his legs are pulled in tight, he has mechanical advantage. Make him long. he is now at a significant mechanical disadvantage while trying to use his legs to move you around. Like the difference between bent leg knee raises and straight leg raises while hanging from a bar.
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If we spread our knees wide, it is easy for him to pull us forward and break our posture. If we are in this posture, we will need to keep our arms in play to keep him from breaking us down. Ideally, we want our arms to be free, so we can attack, rather than have them occupied with keeping our posture.
We should bring our knees closer together behind his butt or close enough to frame it ,and stop his pelvis coming under out centre of gravity. We control his hips, using our femurs to stretch his legs out, our knees to frame his hips. He should find it much harder, hopefully impossible, to pull us in with his legs.
You can test this by sitting up straight on our heels and taking our hands up near our chest while he tries to pull us down. We roll our hips under in the posture to increase his difficulties.
He could still take us sideways, we keep our knees narrow but spread our feet wider to stop that. We should be up on our toes, so the toes are engaged.
Pedro emphasised using skeletal alignment, or frames, to maintain and improve our position, rather than muscular strength and energy.
He talked about, and demonstrated, using both our upper and lower arms as distinct frames, rather than using the stiff arm as one big frame with gaps around it. Using “two pieces of wood”, rather than one.
Inside his closed guard, you can control his femur both with the frame of your upper arm, shoulder to elbow, preventing him from moving it upward, and the lower arm, with your hand on his hip or rib cage and elbow pressing into his thigh to stop him pulling it back towards him.
His black belt student Cam, from Singapore, showed how using your elbow below his knee as a frame, your humerus and his femur aligned, can stop him coming toward you as you move back to pressure his ankles open.
Once you have made him long and put pressure on his crossed ankle grip, you can use an elbow frame combined with the hip drop to open the legs. Then try and scoop that leg up. If he goes to heavy leg on that side, push the other leg down and bring up your knee on that side, ready for the knee through pass. He can try to heavy leg but he can’t do it on both sides, and if you can’t lift his leg, you can turn his hips and then look to pass over the leg that is low with your knee and shin.
When your path is blocked, don’t fight against the obstacle but seek a different path.
Use your shin and elbow on the low leg to control his femur at the end of the lever. keep your elbow behind the leg while your shin is up, so he cannot get his knee under your elbow and thus lever it up and put his foot onto your hip.
If he grabs your sleeve and pulls it towards him, that is the time to move with the pull get your knee to the floor in front of his leg and start driving through for the knee through pass. Keep that knee, shin and foot to the floor as you switch the other leg out to pass, so that he has no opportunity to catch your other leg in half guard.
Once you pass, consolidate your side control. Turn your toes out for maximum control if he is energetic.
Do not rush to the mount. If you go to mount while he is flat, you run the risk of being bridged immediately. The best time to go to mount is after you have encouraged him to bridge.
If you place your knee on his stomach from side control (just moving the knee up, not going all the way to the knee on belly scoring position), this may trick him into bridging, giving you the opportunity to mount.
If while in side control, you are using a switched base toward his head (also called the modified scarf hold), take the far foot behind you and come up on its toes, thus making his attempts to slide a knee underneath your hips much more difficult.
Two finger grip the first two fingers are aligned with the forearm, not the others
Passing open guard
We always play the “dirty feet” game, doing our very best to stop him putting his feet on our hips, chest, or shoulders.
While approaching him, keep you elbows and knees together, to prevent him putting his feet on your hips, deflect with your hands to stop him putting his feet on your shoulders or biceps. You want to prevent him getting any kind of purchase whatsoever on your body with his feet. Grab his pants inside his knees and use your elbows to pry his shins apart and come between them.
Try to get to where you can control his knees with yours from the inside. Carlos Machado talks of getting to a position where your belt knot is directly above his with good posture, during any standing pass. His leverages here are compromised.
Try to underhook his legs with your elbows or press down his legs and use your shins to pressure his thighs. Eventually you want to get your hips past his leg frames so you are pressuring his hips with yours. Look to control his arms anytime the opportunity arises.
if he grips your sleeve or reaches for you, look for ways to exploit that. If he grips your sleeve, counter grip and move his arm out of the way of your pass,
If you are controlling his R leg underneath with your L arm with his R leg on your shoulder, and he reaches for your R collar with his L hand, grab his R hand with your R and pin it to your chest/shoulder as you continue to pass under his R leg, pressuring with your hips and chest. This will result on an armbar of opportunity on his R arm.
Use every attempt he makes to counter your pass as an opportunity to exploit by taking his arm out off the game, or counter attacking it. Don’t necessarily fight off grips and frames used against you, look for opportunities those grips present for you to exploit.
Aligning your elbow and knee and keeping them together can also work while consolidating the pass,
If you can get to him to face away during you have an opportunity to get his top collar from under his neck, to apply a variety of chokes – half nelson lapel, bow and arrow, etc.
The Two Finger Collar Grip
Pedro demonstrated how, from sitting back control, he likes to open the collar and turn it over to provide a better “handle” for extra control.
From the seat belt / harness grip with your L arm going under his L armpit and R arm around his neck, use your L hand to open his L collar, allowing the space to zip your R thumb inside deep.
If you use the regular grip using the thumb on one side and all four fingers on the other, say with the R hand on L collar, when the opponent grips the collar below your R hand with one or both of his and pulls it out to your L, to strip the grip. The force of the strip hits your little/pinkie finger first, then the ring finger, and it seems that this progressively weakens the grip of the hand – presumably the interplay of the fingers as controlled by the nervous system causes them to fire or weaken as a group.
Instead, try gripping the lapel with the thumb inside, and only the index and middle fingers gripping the lapel on the outside. You should still curl all your fingers into a tight fist, only with the lapel under the index and middle fingers, passes between the middle and ring fingers, with the ring and pinkie now inside the lapel.
Pedro explained that if you look at your hand from above, the index and pinkie fingers align with your forearm, while the other two are slightly offline. A training partner pointed out that the tendons controlling the index and middle fingers are on the radial side of the forearm, while the others are not.
I’d really need to consult someone with a strong anatomical background to take this discussion much further. Suffice to say that in experimentation, the two finger grip is significantly more difficult to strip than the more conventional one.
I am not sure how far this goes, e.g. whether it will make all chokes using that grip more or less effective, whether it can be effectively applied to cuff grips, etc. That is left as an exercise for the reader (and the writer, for that matter).
Escaping Front Control / North South
He is on your R side, with his L arm under your head and his R arm under your L elbow. You block his L hip with your R elbow, to stop him coming around to front control. Use the elbow and lay your hand on his back to use the frame of your upper arm, rather than trying to use the forearm and muscular strength, which he can fairly easily crush with bodyweight.
Arm and shoulder strength will not be enough to stop him moving around to front control. Instead, use your legs to follow his movement by scooting sideways, clockwise, your R hip following his L. You legs are doing the work, not your arm.
Also, experiment with bringing your legs up and crunching slightly, to get your head and hips slightly off the ground, presenting a small surface area to the mat so you can spin easily and thus you get pushed around by his movement to follow him.
If you stay flat, you entire back is on the ground, and friction is greatly increased. He can then get sufficient purchase to lever your arm out of the way with his hip
We are looking to reduce mat friction, but more importantly not relying on the elbow in his hip as the sole means of stopping him coming around but allowing our body to follow his. From our perspective, we want it to require less force for him to spin us thna it does for him to remove the frame of our elbow.
He should eventually realise this isn’t working, and change hand positions so his R hand goes next to your L hip, thus stopping your hip from following his, as he tries to move to front control.
Now, trap his R arm and elbow with your R arm and elbow and pin his R arm to you. He will probably also move his L elbow to the L side of your head, you can reach over his L arm with yours and at least partially trap his L arm on that side as well.
AS he now moves around to front control, push back into him the R, to get a reactive push back from him. With timing, use the force of his pushback and a bridge and roll him over to your L as your bodies align like a pencil.
There are quite a few subtleties with this move against higher level people. Against them and big guys. the fundamental strategy, as it is anywhere, is first to survive. Do not feel you have to compromise a safe position to escape for ego driven reasons. Wait in safety for your opportunity.
Butterfly sweep to Mount
Oscar Loudon complained that he could get the sweep to mount, but was often getting rolled immediately out of the mount and reversed.
As you sweep, and come to the mount, get the knee down first, then the foot with the toes pointing outward, heel to the mat. You want to try and finish in high mount, not low where he can bridge you easily.To prevent the elbow/knee escape, use your heel on the mat to track and control his knee, which is the end of the lever that is the femur. Dig the heel in, and lift the toes, which makes it much harder for him to slide his knee under your leg. Carlos Machado calls this “sinking the stirrups”, and he uses it all over the place.
To avoid the mount situation entirely, it makes sense to hook sweep the guy into side control. rather than mount. Per John Will – If you are butterfly sweeping him to the R, as soon as he starts to fall, turn face down and get your L knee next to his torso, “building a wall”. Flatten him out and wait for your opportunity to mount him, best time is when he bridges or tries to get his knee under.
This video of John Will gives some excellent reasons NOT to butterfly sweep direct to mount, but to go to side control instead. The relevant section is at about 05:00, but the whole video is well worth watching.
Back Defence
We are sitting up, he has back control with two hooks in behind us.
As before, we want to do our best to compromise his position and its mechanical advantages. The best way to do this is to slide down towards his feet, this making him long once again, and also making ourselves more difficult to choke. Try and make ourselves heavy on him by getting on our heels and slightly lifting our hips.
From here, it will usually be reasonably easy to free one leg, say our R, by kicking our R leg straight. The hook should slide off and we can bring our R knee back inside his leg, and our knee to our elbow to stop him putting the hook back in.
It may be possible to remove the second L hook that way, but unlikely.What we should do here is fall on our L side, killing his left leg by putting our weight on it, turning face up and sliding our butt out to the L over his L leg. If he has the seat belt on, you should fall to the side where his arm is under your armpit as your weight can then trap his arm as well.
You can sit on his L leg to stop him crossing his R leg over it and trap your R leg in a form of half guard from the back. You could put either foot on his L shin as well. Slide your butt over his leg, perhaps blocking the outside of his shin with your L foot, as you slide your R knee under his L leg. Start turning towards him and come on top as you step your L foot right over both his legs. Come on top and triangle your legs around the bottom of his thighs in the Leg Mount Ride / Leg Clamp / Khabib Mount position.
Here’s a video by my training bud, BJJ black belt and MMA fighter Sonny Brown giving a detailed breakdown of this position as used in MMA, and some BJJ:
From here you probably want to move up to full mount and get your points and increase your submission options. If he pushes/frames on your back or side with stiff arms as you try to move on top of him and up to mount, do not push directly back into him – instead move up obliquely so that his arms must move up and over his head ot follow you, putting him at a mechanical disadvantage and removing the frame by changing the angle.
Once his arms are up and over his head, this gives you the opening to control them, and to move your knees one at a time up under his armpits to attain the high mount.
If he has his R thumb in your L collar in back control, looking to choke, but you manage to slide down and get your hips over his L leg, you cna work on escaping the choke by moving your hips out to the left and counter clockwise so that you are a bit less than a right angle to him. Try and get the point on the top and back of your head into the crook of his R elbow.
Come up on your heels and lift your hips slightly so your weight is on him, making it harder for him to reset his choking arm. If you sit in the floor, he has way more freedom to move. Lift those hips.
Turn your head to look at his face, and you should be able to slide your head under his arm and escape the choke, If your weight is on him as advised, that will make it easier for you to come on top in the likely ensuing scramble.
You should try to work your way out of his arm controls using small, conservative progressive mechanics, creating angles and space that perhaps you can dig an elbow into or slide a hand through to gradually improve your position. The most immediate threat is getting choked and that is your prime directive for survival. Try not to present him with armbar opportunities by keeping ypur elbows close.If you can clamp both his arms under your armpits, you are probably pretty safe.
Ears
If you are stuck in a hold and feel your ear is folded over and likely to get mashed if you move, think (and survive!) for a second before you try to rip your head out. See if you can move your head of the other guys arm just enough to free that ear up before you continue working your way out.
This is how Pedro has managed to train for fifty odd years without cauliflower ear.
Freeing the arm trapped from the back
Many people like to hook one of your arms with their leg whne they catch you in back control. This can make your defence more difficult and opens up different submission opportunities for them.
Trying to free your arm by moving it around, trying to get pull it out, will almost certainly never work against a competent opponent.
Instead, hide that arm by placing it against your side and the top of your thigh, so it effectively becomes part of your torso. Now you can lift your hip, kick your leg straight, and/or manipulate his foot so that your hip comes out in front of it, with your arm along for the ride.
If he is in your Guard
Once again, let him start but don’t let him finish. Anticipate and intercept. If he goes to push down on your leg to open your closed guard, open your guard and get your foot to his hip, shoulder or hooked under his leg before he has a chance to control your leg.
For your long term benefit, get comfortable with opening up your closed guard and play using your legs. A pretty old Jiu Jitsu maxim is that it should be you, not him, that opens your closed guard. look for the opportunities his movements present to use your legs and feet as controls, or to set up attacks of your own.
Learn to get good at guard by playing this way,
Leg Locks and their Counters
As with most things, it is much easier to escape by doing so before the control is fully established. Rather than concentrating on escaping, and thus perhaps injuring yourself by using strength and speed, try to undo the control instead, but opening the legs, knees apart, or pushing the control down below the knee line. If Cyborg Abreu decided to tap to Gordon Ryan’s heel hook rather than try to roll and thrash around when he knew he was caught, you probably should too.
Pedro advocated developing an accomplished guard game before trying too many footlocks. However, this was the same advice given to me way back when I was a white belt, and a long time before the Danaher Death Squad, Craig Jones, etc. At least get good at fundamentals before becoming a leglock specialist, or any other type of specialist for that matter.
A few other videos featuring Pedro Sauer from other Australian seminars:
General
Pedro talked about training with longevity in mind. The importance of a playful attitude and developing sound technique using frames, levers and proper posture and structure rather than muscular strength.
First, survive. Survival before escape. Survive until the opportunity to escape is presented. This is a fundamental them of Saulo Ribiero’s Jiu Jitsu University book as well.
A roll is like a negotiation or deal – you take what he gives you and do with it what you can. Timing is paramount – you don’t try to escape while he is controlling you, you escape while he is attacking or transitioning. A white belt will probably make less advantageous deals, but blue and purple belts should be rolling as if trading and negotiating.
Let him start, but don’t let him finish. Use his grips, defences and attacks, not so much as threats to be fought against, but as potential opportunities to advance your own position and goals. Whne you encounter obstacles and roadblocks, not opposing them directly but looking to see what toher paths may be open or what opportunities the obstacle may present.
It’s difficult for beginner and intermediate practitioners to cultivate such an attitude when many such attempts will probably fail, but the mat culture should be structured so as to allow trail and error without undue punishment for failure.
Jiu Jitsu should help you develop confidence and ways of dealing and negotiating effectively with others from a confident position, both on and off the mat. How to proceed in a deliberate and stepwise fashion toward your goals, to develop and employ strategies, and so on. This is obviously a huge subject, but one you should definitely consider. You spend so much time on this, it seems only sensible to try and leverage it into other areas of your life.
