The day was hosted by Machado Jiu Jitsu NSW State Head, Anthony Lange and his wife Nikki, at Lange’s MMA, North Manly.
Anthony unveiled his plans for a new competition format which should not require the same cost overheads and logistical activities that IBJJF format competitions with six simultaneous mats running do. Anthony’s format should allow lower entry fees, three mats instead of six which makes finding and hiring venues easier, and not requiring 200+ competitors to break even.
The rules should be similar, but without the complexities of advantages and penalties, and with some leeway for warnings, without the requirement for automatic disqualifications, that occurs with IBJJF rules. There will be two referees and a less formal decision structure, which should allow a shallower entry level for prospective referees, than do the complex and occasionally self-contradictory IBJJF rules.
And … all leglocks for purple belt and above!
The organisers will strongly encourage parents and coaches to be respectful of the referees and their decisions, and of all of the competitors..
There will be fewer weight and age divisions, and way more certificates than medals or trophies.
The format should allow every competitor to get multiple matches on the day for a lower entry fee, if they so wish. The eventual winners will almost certainly need to sign up for multiple matches to accumulate a winning point score.
The three mats all have different scoring methodologies, and these, if I remember correctly, will differ between adults and kids. To be honest I did not understand the details of this, though the coining of the term “Submission Magician” gives an indication that one mat, at least, will have its scoring heavily weighted toward submissions.
I don’t pretend to have grasped the full details of Anthony’s proposal, but if it meets its goals, which I imagine to be a competition format that is comparatively low cost and transferable to many more venues, plus the development of students, referees and instructors, and greater cohesion and unity within the Machado organisation, then it deserves support. Undoubtedly there will be much to learn from the first few competitions run this way, and hopefully the format will improve in an evolutionary fashion to help meet the goals of all involved.
Anthony Lange and Elvis Sinosic, both black belt fourth degrees, demonstrated some back takes and attacks, which we all drilled avidly.
Anthony – a Bow and Arrow Choke Variation
Anthony’s preferred grip for gi chokes from the back is two hands on the one collar.
If you are on his back with your L hand around his neck (John Danaher’s “strangle hand”) and R hand under his R armpit, you grasp his R collar with both hands, The L hand up near his R ear, the R hand below it under his R arm. With hooks in, you can choke him from behind, similarly to the old style sliding collar choke, from here. Or you can take your L hook out, use that foot to move your hips slightly to the R, turn to your L and take your R foot over to the L hip and hook it. Dave Camarillo calls this the “belt line hook”, and it is a Danaher mainstay as well.
From here, you can take your L foot over his L shoulder, controlling the shoulder with the hook of your knee, so he cannot turn into you. You can either hook your L foot under his L arm, or cross your feet like you were doing closed guard (L foot on top is probably more difficult to break. John Danaher calls this position the “Reverse Top Lock.” From here you can do the bow and arrow choke with the grips you have, or by transferring your R hand to grab his pants or grab under his R leg.
If he manages to start countering the bow and arrow attempt by sitting or lying on your L leg, trapping it under him so you can’t hook it over his shoulder, instead put your R hook behind his R knee, and kick him off your L leg and onto his L side. Your legs are now free. Come up to a “combat base” position behind him on your R knee and L foot, with your L shin/ankle right behind his neck. You can now choke him using the L hand and the L shin.
It should be apparent that you can jump straight from side control to this position if you can get the correct grips.
This use of the shin for the bow and arrow choke can also work perfectly well while you are sitting up or on your back and the opponent is successfully preventing you hooking your leg over his far shoulder for the standard bow and arrow. If you are bow and arrow choking him on his R with the L hand in his collar, and he is successfully preventing you from getting that L leg over his L shoulder, just hip escape back on that R hip and put your L knee and shin between his R ear and shoulder. Choke.
Most Lange’s students will have found themselves on the wrong end of that submission while rolling with their head instructor, perhaps multiple times.
Anthony also highlighted the importance of staying chest to back to retain back control as your opponent moves.
We drilled this, did a couple of six minute rolling rounds for a mental if not physical break, then Elvis took the instructional talking stick.
Elvis – Two on One Grip to Take the Back
You have your partner in side control, you on his R, he is facing away from you. You have an R underhook on his R arm, and your L arm is under his head. The kimura grip is popular here, and is useful for a number of other finishes, but is less useful for the RNC (RNS) because you will have to change grips to do the “punch and reach” with the strangle hand for the neck.
Instead we get a two on one grip on his R arm, like an augmented gift wrap. We push into him, using our R elbow behind his ribs to ensure he can’t roll away from us. We drive our L knee up behind his shoulders, and align our left shin with his torso so we can easily roll him over it later.We drive into and over his legs with our R knee, pushing off our R toes. If we can hook his R leg with ours from her or step over we should. We can then roll him over our L shin, and into back control. We may want to get hooks for points, but for control we want him on his R side with our R foot hooked over his L hip and our L foot pressing down on his L hip.
We can use our L foot to push him down or ourselves up if necessary to achieve better positioning for our legwork, specifically hooking his L arm with our L leg.
We may be able to immediately secure our strangle hand around his neck with a “punch and reach”. If not, we are now in a handfighting situation. His L hand is free and he should be using it to counteract our L strangle hand by grabbing it. We counter grip his L hand with our L using the thumb to get inside his grip. grasping his little finger knuckle with our L hand. We can now push his L hand down toward his hip and hook it with our L leg, hooking our shoelaces behind his L hip to secure the arm. We may need to use our L foot on his hip to move him to a position where our L leg is sufficiently mobile to hook his L arm. Wit the “deficit problem” now solved, we can continue handfighting to secure his R hand with ours, and apply an uncontested rear naked choke/strangle.
Elvis also demonstrated he uses a twisting motion or wristlock pressure to distract the opponent and reduce the effectiveness of his resistance. He demonstrated this both in how he sets up triangle chokes from the closed guard (Omote Sankaku?) and while handfighting from the back.
To be honest, I am finding handfighting a difficult subject to fully comprehend and articulate in the immediate present, due to concurrent immersion in John Danaher’s Back Attack videos. Some of you may have noticed a tendency for me to write the way he talks in this blog. Right or wrong, I am a human sponge for such things.
Elvis – S Mount Style back take from side control
We have a short base side control on our opponent’s R, and once again we are pressuring him onto his L side facing away from us. We grip his R upper arm with an underhand grip, using the grip and our R elbow behind his rib cage to stop him rolling either way. Our L hand grips his L wrist, pulling it close to his face so as to apply American lock / Americana type pressure on his L arm.
We could also set this up by going for the Americana, and getting our R underhand grip when he turns toward his L wrist in an attempt to counter by grabbing it with his R hand.
Once our grips are secured, we move our weight onto our R knee, so our L leg is free to move. We swing our L foot around his head, landing with it over the top of his L arm, this leaving us in a position similar to an S mount with our L leg having already trapped his L arm. We change our grips to a seatbelt with our L arm around his neck and R arm under his R armpit, or similar. We are now in a great position to get our R hook across his belt line to the L hip, and begin positioning ourselves to move him around with our L foot, and begin the handfight for the uncontested rear naked strangle, with his L arm already taken out of the game by our L leg, thus solving the deficit problem.
As Anthony Lange pointed out, the starting positions for either the two on one back take, or the S mount style back take, both lend themselves to an opportunity to slip your L thumb into his collar, jump up on you L foot so the shin/ankle are directly behind his neck, and apply Anthony’s modified bow and arrow choke. Perhaps surprising your opponent who may be motorset for one of the other techniques.
Hip Bump Sweep and Back Take Combo from Half Guard
Bigger or stronger opponents may like to attack your half guard by getting a far side underhook and near side crossface.
So, if you have half guard on your opponent’s right leg, he may get an underhook on your L arm with his R, and crossface you with his R arm. He may join his hands and push your L arm away from your body, as a prelude to attacking it, by flaring out his R elbow, which also gives him a better base. This is usually a pretty string position for the top player.
Bring your L leg out and up so you can grip the inside of your L thigh with your L thigh. By pressing your L leg downwards and in, and squeezing with your L elbow, you can pinch his R elbow back towards your rib cage, and removing his base at that corner. By bridging on your feet and lifting up and to the L with your R underhook, you may be able to roll him to your L with a type of hip bump sweep.
This may not work on the same opponent more than once or twice. He may post our with his R foot to prevent the sweep. This gives us space to pummel our L leg under his R to get a butterfly hook. Our R foot goes over his R ankle to hold his R leg in place.
We now want to encourage him to relinquish the crossface, shifting his L elbow to the L side of our head, perhaps baiting him with our L arm. If we can grab and control his R elbow with our L hand, that will keep our L arm fairly safe from kimuras, etc.
He will want to square up to us and bring his R knee up towards our shoulders for better base. We make this difficult by grabbing his pants behind his R knee and stiff arming it down toward our feet, even pushing it back under him. We want to encourage him to turn more sideways onto his L hip.
This will be our signal to elevate him using our L butterfly hook and R hand, sliding our hips out behind and to our R, and dropping him in front of us into a back control. We should immediately get good controls with our arms and work toward an uncontested rear naked strangle.
The Primacy of the Collar Grip for Back Control in the Gi
Anthony discussed his belief that the thumb inside grip with the strangle hand on the collar was the better choking option than the rear naked strangle in the gi. The RNC and handfighting is still his go to for no gi.
A Great Day
This was an interesting and very enjoyable day. Many thanks to Anthony and Elvis for sharing their deep knowledge, and to the Langes for providing the venue. Nice to meet some new people and catch up with those I hadn’t seen for a while.