19/12/2016 - Teaching | Half Guard | Twisting Pass

Teaching #612
Artemis BJJ (MYGYM Bristol), Can Sönmez, Bristol, UK - 19/12/2016

A video posted by Artemis BJJ (@artemisbjj) on Dec 21, 2016 at 4:16am PST

Start by flattening out your opponent, driving your free knee into their hip, then walking your trapped leg across. Apply a heavy cross-face: this is absolutely central to the technique. Without a solid cross face, they will be able to turn towards you, perhaps even getting a reversal. If they manage to get an underhook, you'll still need to be wary of getting rolled over: hooking an arm by their leg should block it.

Once you've got that cross-face firmly locked in, raise your hips slightly. This is in order to switch your hips, bringing your free knee up by their hip (sliding underneath your trapped leg). Shift back slightly, in order to make some space in front of their bottom leg. Using either the knee or your shin, wedge that against their lower leg leg. With your free arm, grasp their trouser leg and yank it towards you, in order to open up enough space to free your leg. Ideally you also want to keep your head low and turned towards their legs, to make it harder for them to push into your throat.
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Teaching Notes: Not much to add, this is a good standard one I use quite often now. I could perhaps add in more about freeing the leg. At the moment, I talk about using your free shin as a wedge to provide leverage, along with heavily emphasising the importance of the cross face. I didn't talk about that last bit so much, though I was going with the Paul Schreiner version, which is a bit different to the Xande option I normally teach.

Also, we did more xmas fun tonight, hooray! I played the reindeer game again, as it was xmas. This is the same thing I did last year, where we split into two teams. One group wearing a sock on their hand, the other a sock on their foot. There was also a designated reindeer, with a reindeer hat. One team was defending the reindeer, the other team was trying to capture it (by pulling off the reindeer hat). If you are able to pull the sock from somebody, they become part of your team. The other rule is that you can't stand up.

A video posted by Artemis BJJ (@artemisbjj) on Dec 20, 2016 at 12:38am PST

I think next time, I should emphasise the sock thing, as I don't think people fully got it. Also, your bum can't leave the ground, too many people were doing a sort of running crouch. Still fun though, which is the main thing, get people laughing. :)