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Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Tip For Beginners

If you are new to BJJ, here is a tip that will save you some time and energy: Don't try to gi choke someone while you are inside their guard.

Twice today, someone tried to gi choke me from inside my guard. What they did was try to stack me from inside my guard and then use pressure to keep me pinned and try to gi choke me.

It didn't work. Why? For a number of reasons:

1) Their arms are outstretched, in my guard, just asking to be arm-bared. Because their weight is forward, my hips are mobile and, even when you are trying to smash the ever loving crap out of me, I can maneuver around to get an armbar from guard.

2) Because their weight is forward, they are in prime position to be swept, with me ending up in mount.

3) When you are in someone else's guard, your primary objective should be to pass. Any submission you try on the person's upper body will only be exposing your arms and neck for submissions.

Now that I've gotten that off my chest... :)

7 comments:

Aparna said...

NOOOOO!!! Don't take away all the fun--that's how I won matches as a white belt!!

BJJ Judo said...

Well put, I make a particular point of really punishing people when they try that against me. My favorite way of driving the point home is to sweep to mount. While sweeping I make sure to leave one hand under my opponent's back (something I normally would not do). Then a make a fist with that hand and pressure my knuckles into their back. Yes, it is an evil position.

Darthsid said...

How about an Ezekiel from top position in closed guard? I've been having success hitting that on some of the higher level white belts in my gym.

BJJ Judo said...

@Darthsid - You will continue to have success with that against White belts but good Blue belts and above will take advantage of your mistake. You are much much much better off working on passing the guard. There is a specific sweep for the guy that goes for the Ezekiel from inside the closed guard. Too long to discribe but at our gym we call it a log roll. I would say it works 99% of the time.

A.D. McClish said...

@Darthsid -- I echo what BJJ Judo said. Not only will that submission not work on higher belts, but it probably wont work on people who are bigger or stronger than you.

The reason why submissions from guard are a bad idea is that you must extend your arms to do them. When you are in someone's guard, their hips are mobile. Even while you are applying an ezekiel, the person on bottom can be swiveling their hips to either get a sweep or to attack your outstretched arms.

I would save the ezekiel choke for while you are either in mount or guard; preferably mount.

A.D. McClish said...

@ Aparna --lol! Don't worry. Wherever there are new white belts, the gi choke from inside someone's guard will be attempted!

Georgette said...

I blush to admit that it took me a LONG time to be able to armbar someone who was choking me inside my guard. I was well into my blue belt, and I got REALLY sick and tired of "telling" guys they didn't want to do that instead of "SHOWING" them. However-- a little trick from a brown belt that helped me: say they're putting their left hand into your collar (cross collar). You should go for the mirror-image cross collar (so your left arm) because it helps to stop their forearm from coming down across your throat, and helps to trap their arm in the stretched and vulnerable position (because of the pressure of your underarm/tricep across their forearm), and may help you if you need to push/protect their face a little when you get your leg across.