20/02/2017 - Teaching | Open Guard | Reverse de la Riva Intro & tripod sweep

Teaching #634
Artemis BJJ (MYGYM Bristol), Can Sönmez, Bristol, UK - 20/02/2017

A post shared by Artemis BJJ (@artemisbjj) on Feb 22, 2017 at 3:51am PST

I wanted to introduce a new position this month, the reverse de la Riva. As some of the students are new enough that standard de la Riva is still unfamiliar, I added in some drills at the start to show both positions. De la Riva, named after its most famous exponent Ricardo de la Riva, refers to hooking your foot around a leg. This de la Riva hook can be applied from the outside of their leg hooking around the inside (standard de la Riva), or from the inside hooking around the outside (reverse de la Riva). In order to get that hook secure, you need to bend their leg: if they are stood upright with a straight leg, it becomes very difficult to hook (unless you have incredibly flexible ankles, like a certain Ricardo de la Riva).

I therefore started with a strong cross-collar grip, to pull them down. Hook inside their leg, hooking your instep around the outside of their thigh. Your other foot pushes into their same side hip. This gives you lots of control over that leg, adding the final piece with your hand. You have a choice here, either gripping on the inside with your opposite hand, or the outside with your same side hand. Naturally this will change which hand you use for the cross-collar grip. From there, you have a simple option for a sweep, as you can swing your hooking foot over to the other side to chop out their leg. The position is therefore a useful one for attacking with the tripod sweep.

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Teaching Notes: I like using the inside hand, but I don't think it matters too much which one you go for. I was drawing on a great video by Lachlan Giles from Absolute MMA, who goes through this in some depth. There is also video of Roberto Satoshi doing this sweep set up repeatedly in competition, so it clearly works, but then that's a high level black belt. ;)

Anyway, I thought this worked ok as a way of introducing a more 'advanced' position with something simple, as we've been doing the tripod sweep already this month and I teach it every time we cover open guard. For me, it's a key sweep. The more ways I can apply it, the better.