Grappling Concepts, Lesson 6 Defense Via Offense

Grappling Concepts, Lesson 6Defense Via Offense

Welcome back to week 6 of the 26 week Grappling Concepts course. Today we're going to work on something really neat and very useful!

The best way to get good at defending against the technique is to learn how to use and attack with the same technique yourself!

One of my coaches, Eric Paulson, was the light heavyweight champion in Shooto in Japan for 5 years in the 1990's. Today he's considered to be a leglock expert but let's take a look why he’s a leglock expert.

Many Japanese fighters in that era had a very distinctive style: you’d see it especially when a Brazilian fighter was going up against a Japanese fighter. The Brazilian guy would usually end up in the guard and be working on his close-guard attacks (especially setting up the armbar and triangle choke, and trying to get to the back).

But as soon as the Brazilian would open his legs, the Japanese guy would jump to the leglock. He’d jump to some crazy spinning upside down leglock, sacrificing his position.

At that point it was a toss-up. Sometimes the Japanese guy would lose position and the Brazilian fighter would mount him and then pound him and then choke him. And sometimes the Japanese guy would successfully apply the leglock, usually breaking the Brazilian fighter's knee or ankle in the process.

So Eric and his coach drilled a lot of the actual techniques that his opponent would use in his upcoming match. As a result, more than once, Eric used his opponent's favorite technique against him.

Defense and offense are joined at the hip. In order to defend against a technique, you have to know how to use it yourself. Today I want to take you through the details of why, exactly, you need a thorough knowledge of offense to have a strong defense.

This is Lesson 6 from the Online Grappling Concepts Course: www.grapplearts.tv

http://www.grapplearts.tv/

THE STRAIGHT ARMBAR

First of all, thanks to Garrett Davis who is going to help me again today.

Every submission has certain critical elements required for the technique to be effective. These elements are also the key to successfully defending that same technique.

Let's take a look at some of the key points for a successful armlock:

a) my opponent's arm needs to be straight (obviously),b) my hips need to be close to his shoulders,c) my knees must be pinched together (not loose or flared outwards),d) the little finger of my opponent's hand must be on my chest.

If my opponent manages to undo those 4 central elements – the arm straight, hips close to shoulders, pinching the knees, and little finger on chest, then he can defeat the arm bar at different stages of the attack.

If I'm being attacked with the armbar, then my opponent wants to straighten my arm out. There is a very basic defense - linking my fingers together – that can prevent my arm from getting easily straightened. This is far from fail-safe, but it might be all you have.

Linking hands to keep my arm bent



Another variation is when you grab your own lapel to protect your arm.

And another powerful variation is to take your hand and put it on the bicep, and then take your other hand and either grab the outside of his knee, or even better, insert it behind the knee.

Two variations of the 'rear naked choke' arm position armbar defense

The above arm positions really locks the armsin. Basically, it’s like I’m doing a rear naked choke on his arm, and it’s very difficult for him to straighten your arm out.

The same arm positions also work to defend the armbar from within the guard. If I have no other option I might link my fingers to protect my arm, but obviously that’s not the best solution.

Linking the fingers to keep the arm bent



A much better option when your opponent has the armbar locked on from the guard is to use the rear naked choke hand position again, with your hand on the bicep, and try to crunch him down. Or better yet, take your free hand and bring it onto the back of his hamstring. Now your arm is fairly well protected and you've got a fighting chance of getting out.

Two RNC arm position variations to defend the armbar

The next key point of successful armbars I mentioned is keeping your hips close to your opponent's shoulder. If Garrett’s hips are close to my shoulder then his arm bar is powerful.

So to escape from the armbar from the guard, after I've protected my arm with the RNC position, I need to increase the distance between my shoulder and his hips. This could take a while to do – you might need to ratchet it out inch by inch.

Increasing distance between his hips and my shoulders



Here's another example of using the same 2 principles to escape the armbar (keeping your arm bent, and then making space between your shoulder and his hips).

Let's say that he's armbarring me and I'm flat on my back.

At first my only defense is my finger to finger grip. He's pulling on my arm to straightenit, and I've got both hands linked together to buy me some time to come up with a plan.

To counter his attack I briefly let go of my grip. I DON'T do this if he's pulling at my wrist, that would lead to an instant armbar. That's why I make sure he's pulling at my elbow before I let go.

When I let go I use the bicep strength to keep my arm bent. I take my OTHER hand, reach up and grab the arm that's hooking my arm. I pull it towards me just enough so that I can free the arm that's being attacked.

This creates enough room for me to slip the arm that he's attacking out, to relative safety.

My right hand pulls his right arm away from his bodyto create enough room for my left arm to slip out



You can train this escape/grip-fighting movement as a drill. You're on your back and your partner just about has you armbarred. You reach up and free your arm, and then he snags your arm again. You keep on doing the movement, drilling the first part of the escape motion.

Now keep in mind that this is just a drill. In real life you're not going to be able to do this movement 10 times in a row.

The goal of this movement is just to get enough freedom and ability to move so that you can sharply rotate your body inwards and get your elbow to the floor. That rotation increases the distance between my shoulder and his hip.

Turning in to create space between his hips and my elbow

Removing his grip, even for a second, allows me to turn and pull that arm in. He may follow up with another attack, but once I've turned in I’m not getting arm-barred anymore.

And it's such an unorthodox escape that it often takes even very good opponents by surprise!



The third critical aspect of the armbar is squeezing your knees together.

In fact the # 1 beginner armbar from the guard mistake is letting the knees and legs flare out.

A sloppy armbar with the legs far apart

In a sloppy armbar with the knees wide apart I'm not pinching my his arm and it's quite easy for Garrett to pull his arm out. But if my legs are close together then it’s much harder for him to pull his arm out.

Knees apart = terrible arm bar. Knees close together = great arm bar.

How do you use this information defensibly? Basically I need to create space between his knees!

One simple way to create separation between his legs is to link my hands together and put my fists against his top knee.

When I get his leg off of my head then I don’t want him simply to bring the foot back. So once his leg is off my face I drive my head backwards over top of it. So, now I’m separating his knees a bit and he’s relatively weak, thats the time to turn in to face him.



Driving my opponent's leg off of my face,spreading his knees,trapping the leg with my head,& turning in to face opponent.



So, that was a way to move his top leg up and away from his bottom leg. That works well but against the high-level opponent I actually find next escape often works better.

Let's say that I can’t push his top leg off of my head. Instead I can take the elbow of my free arm and bring it underneath his heel.

Then I turn my hips away from him and capture his foot between my legs.

After I've trapped his leg I can stretch his legs apart. I keep my own legs triangled to trap his foot.

At this point, if he goes for the arm bar, I’ve created so much separation between his legs and neutralized the pinch that it’seasy to pull my arm out of there.

I can also turn in on my own, working to pass the guard rightaway.



Now we've covered defending the armbar by countering the knee pinch, getting the hips away from the shoulders, and keeping the arm bent. \

The other armbar detail we talked about is keeping the little finger against the chest. And of course this opens up other possibilities of defense.

If I'm linking my hands he will often counter by trying to pull my arm straight. The instant before he breaks my grip I let go and hit his chestwith the THUMB SIDE of my hand (NOT the little finger side).

I twist my arm, hit his chest with my hand and then ricochet out. This actually very well no-gi but it can also work with the gi. And if he's straightening your arm out anyhow then what do you have to lose?

What happens after this escape is up to you. He may open his legs and start hunting for something else. He may go back to the guard. If he just stays here, you can sometimes crash him down and work your hand out but the bottom line is you countered the arm bar attack.



TRIANGLE CHOKE KEY POINTS.

To show you how to construct a defense for a triangle choke, let's take a look at the key points that attack.

Here are some of the details my opponent needs to be aware of to apply an effective triangle choke:

• one of my arms needs to be trapped, • my neck needs to be in the crook of his calf and hamstring, • my posture should be broken down,• his instep should be under his knee,• my opponent should angle away from the trapped arm, • and he can under-hook the leg, or under-hook the arm or grab the

back of the head and pull down.

Garrett catches me in a tight triangle choke!

These are some of the key points of the triangle and we can use these key points to build a defense against the attack.

First of all, It’s much better to prevent an attack than it is to defend it when it's fully locked on already. An example of this would be always having both arms in or both arms out when when I'm in his guard.



The first key point was that one of the arms needs to be trapped. Any time I have one arm in and one arm out then I’m in danger.

For maximum safety against the triangle choke, always keep both arms OVER or both arms UNDER his legs.

Both arms over Both arms under

If I'm going one arm in and one arm out (which is a position that I use for some of my favorite guard passes) then I have to take additional steps to avoid getting caught in a triangle choke.

So, when I put one arm under his leg on purpose, the one arm in and one arm out position, I keep my neck and shoulder on his midcalf region, NOT under his knee. Work on developing the sensitivity to know where your neck is in relation to his knee.

Incorrect: shoulder at the crook of the knee



Correct: shoulder positioned about mid-calf

From here with the gi, I would cross-grip the lapel. Without the gi, I would grab the neck. Either way I can stack him and pass his guard.

Keeping my neck and shoulder at midcalf level keeps me out of the triangle, but it also gives me more leverage. If I’m too high on his leg and I’m driving in then he can drive back.

The closer to his ankle I am on his leg, then the more leverage I have. I have a longer lever. Obviously, the longest lever I could have would be right under the Achilles but then he has too much mobility and would be able to move his leg around. So, I split the difference and go midcalf.

The next detail we discussed is breaking posture and getting the head down. So let's say that I screw up and and he starts triangling his legs. At this point, his next goal is to pull my head down and break my posture.

To counter this I posture up like crazy and look up (or keep my eyes level).

A lot of people think they’re posturing correctly but they're actually tilting their head and



looking down. This enables their opponent to grab the back of their heads, wiggle his hips backwards, and break them down.

So if I’m making posture then I literally look up at the ceiling.

The next detail he needs to do is to get his legs properly triangled with his instep under his knee. Anything I can do to disrupt that is good for me.

One good option to untriangle his legs is to get your knee behind his hips. Then you can move your body backwards and push your knee forwards, which opens up his ankles.

You have to do this with conviction because if I do it at half speed he's going to use a triangle armbar to submit me.

Here's another escape which works on the same principle. First you have to control this wrist (gi or no gi).

Controlling this wrist does 2 things. First, it prevents him from pulling my head down with that hand.

Second, it stabilized his arm so that I can step up and put my foot in his arm pit.



Keeping my grip on his wrist, I sit back and I use the strength of my whole body to uncross his triangle legs.

The finishing touch for most triangle chokes is for the attacker to rotate his body away from my trapped shoulder. Now we'll cover one last ditch technique to escape: preventing the body rotation aspect of the triangle choke.

Garrett using body rotation to finish the triangle

To prevent the rotation, I take the hand that is trapped and put it right beside his neck.

If I'm sparring with the gi, I grab the lapel. Without the gi, I just put my fist on the ground.



Once the hand is in position I rotate to the opposite way of how he wants to rotate.

(I might use my knee in his hipto stop him from following me.)

I then step over his head...

… and spin to the other side, escaping his triangle and passing his guard!

There’s a brief moment halfway through this technique when I’m vulnerable to him switching to an omo plata attack.

But since I'm about to get choked, the risk of getting caught in omo plata is better than the certainty of getting triangled. And if he goes for the omo plata, then I just have to continue spinning through and I end up in a fairly good counter position.



ANKLE LOCK MECHANICS

Next let’s take a look at the ankle lock.

To do a proper ankle lock, the wrist needs to be at the small part of his ankle. It’s much less efficient if I've got my wrist at midcalf.

The next thing I want to do is hyperextend the foot to apply the lock. But to do this I need to control his leg so that it can’t move around.

If I'm hyperextending the foot and I'm not controlling his leg then his knee can move up and down, taking pressure off of the ankle. But if I'm pinching his leg like crazy, then his knee can’t move.

The final thing I want to do is arch backwards to apply the lock.

Now we'll look at how these key details can be used to counter the ankle lock instead of applying the ankle lock.

The first key detail is wrist and forearm placement. He’s got a couple of options to change that.



When he sees me setting up the ankle lock he can rotate his foot. When his heel is angled inward and his toes are angled outward then it's much easier for him to pull his foot completely out.

Another option is to push his foot in deeper, which also makes it a lot harder to hyperextend the foot. He grabs my elbow and pushes his leg further in, which disrupts the wrist and forearm placement essential to the ankle lock.

The next aspect of the ankle lock you can disrupt is leg positioning.

Let's start with a very common leg lock control position. First you might buy some time by pushing your foot in deeper. Then you get to work on countering his leg positioning by sitting up and pushing his bottom foot to



the ground. When you hop your hips over his leg then he no longer has control over your leg, and that means that you're basically out of the lock.

But if my legs are double-triangled then it's a LOT harder to escape:

If Garrett were caught in a leglocks where my legs are actually in the double triangle position, he could buy some time by controlling my elbow and pushing his foot in deeper, but what he really needs to do is untangle my legs.

To do this he has to open his legs a bit and neutralize the control of my foot over his thigh. Then he has to untangle my legs. This can take a long time, and he's vulnerable to the ankle lock the whole time.



The final thing that activates the leglock is arching backwards. So if I'm applying the ankle lock, he can stop me from arching back by grabbing the head or the lapel.

Standing up is another way to stop your opponent from arching backwards, and it both with and without the gi.

When I'm applying the ankle lock and he stands up over me then I end up in a crunched position, especially if he grabs the back of my head and pulls me in. Here it’s really tough for me to extend my hips. Also he can put his weight on me with his knee, and now I’m in trouble.

So to summarize, some of the counters my opponent can use against my ankle lock attack include:1. countering my the wrist position, 2. countering my ability to hyperextend his foot, 3. countering my ability to control his hips, 4. and/or countering my ability to arch my body backwards.



COUNTERING THE KNEEBAR

I covered the key points of the kneebar on the “13 Techniques” DVD that I sent to you, but we’ll quickly review the main points again here.

Obviously to apply the kneebar your opponent has to straighten your leg. That means keepng your leg bent (by triangling your legs, for example) is a good idea.

Leg straight: kneebar! Legs triangled: one kneebar counter!

Another key point is that he wants to have my kneecap on his pubic bones. So, if I can push his butt and/or his leg using my own arms or legs then I’m breaking the positioning of the knee on the pubic bone.

Pushing with both arms Pushing with the leg



Also, to do the kneebar properly he needs to pinch his knees together to make it effective. So one last ditch option I have is to un-pinch his knees. This allows my leg to rotate free and nullify the lock.

Unpinching the knees

As he applies the kneebar he wants to prevent my leg from rotating. That’s why his head is pinching my foot between his head and the mat.

If he forgets to use his head, or if I can sneak my foot past his head, then I might be able to rotate my leg out of his kneebar attempt.

Rotating out



Finally, in order to apply the knee bar he needs to arch his body backwards. So anything I do to stop his arch helps me. If you can grab the head it ties your upper bodies together and prevents him arching away from you. That’s a good thing, especially if you combine it with some of the other counters.

Holding on for dear life

Of course, for each of these counters, he's going to follow up with other techniques but at least I didn’t get kneebarred. If I'm un-pinching his knees or rotating my leg, for example, then probably he's going to go for a foot lock. But I'm expecting him to do that and am already thinking about the footlock counter.

So to summarize, we’ve shut the knee bar down at about 5 different stages by interfering with his attempts to:

1. straighten the leg, 2. position the kneecap at the right depth 3. pinch his knees 4. prevent our leg from rotating5. arch his body.



CROSS COLLAR CHOKE DEFENSE

This same concept applies to gi-based grappling as well.

Let's look at the steps and key points of the cross collar choke from the guard:

1. the first hand goes in deep on the lapel,

2. the second hand gets a grip (palm up or palm down)

3. the head of the opponent gets pulled down to the chest

4. the elbows get flared out to activate the choke.

His first step to get one hand in deep. Anything I can do to prevent that hand from getting in deep is a good thing when it comes to countering the cross collar choke.

Most of the time you can prevent that deep grip by using good posture in guard. With good posture its hard for him to get his fingers right on the back of my collar (which would be serious trouble for me).

Posture prevents a deep lapel grip



But let's say that I screwed up and he gets his hand deep in my lapel. In that case I try to stop his second hand from grabbing my other lapel (countering step 2 of his attack). If I block his other bicep then I can at least buy myself some time and make it much harder for him to get that choke locked in.

Blocking the second arm at the bicep

But what if he gets that second hand in anyway?

The next thing he'll want to do is apply pressure to the sides of my neck. To block this I weave my hand above the bottom arm, bring it behind the top arm and put it on my own face. This prevents the deep hand from really cutting into the side of my neck.

The hand weave defense



But what if I can't weave my hand in because he's already got the choke locked on? To apply the choke he needs to flare his elbows out.

One possible counter is to pinch both of his elbows together. If he’s got a crappy collar choke or a shallow lapel grip then pinching his elbows will sometimes work. But if he’s got a really good grip then this counter (pinching the elbows) probably won’t work.

The elbow pinch defense

Let's say that I've screwed up on everything else, he's got the choke locked on and is trying to pull my head down. I can counter by keep my head up and create separation between my head and his chest.

Since we're both wearing the gi I can use his gi to apply a thrust choke. I take both lapels with the thumbs towards me and put one lapel across his neck. I then stand up and apply the thrust choke.

The thrust choke defense



Not only does this move choke him but it also creates distance between you, making his choke a lot less effective. Your arms are straight, but we’ll cover an easy way not to get armbarred from here in a future lesson.

SUMMARY

My goal today was NOT to show you a bunch of defenses. The point was to show you how figure out defenses yourself, based on your knowledge of the offensive aspects of a technique.

A classic mistake for a BJJ guy is to say “I don’t like leg locks. I hate leg locks. I’m scared of leg locks.” But because he never learns leglocks he has no idea how to defend against them. So even if you hate leg locks you should still learn a little about them - then they won’t be as scary. You’ll have a much better sense of how long you can resist before you have to tap. Also figuring out and remembering the defenses becomes much easier.

And of course this is true not only for leg locks, but also for armbars, for gi chokes, no-gi chokes, wristlocks and every other kind of submission.

Learn the details of the submission; once you know the details you'll also know the counters.

Lesson 7 Preview:

In the next lesson I’m going to give you a concept that completely changed my open-guard game. You’ll be able to plug it into your game pretty easily and it will really bring your guard level up.

Also next week, I’m going to give you Part 2 of the ‘Leg Lock Trigger Position Seminar’ to round out your leglocking game!

See you then!

Stephan Kestingwww.grapplearts.tv




Grappling Concepts, Lesson 6 Defense Via Offense

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