29/11/2012 - Rolles Gracie Jr Seminar in Houston

Seminar #11
Rilion Gracie Houston, (BJJ), Rolles Gracie Jr, Houston, TX, USA - 29/11/2012

I don't know much about Rolles Jr (and I'm still not completely sure whether his father should be spelled 'Rolls' or 'Rolles', as I've seen both. I think it is the former, but then why is it 'Rolles Jr'?), except that he is probably the largest member of the Gracie family and has had a successful MMA career, despite that one slip-up the UFC. These aspects of Rolles would both feature prominently in the seminar, which kicked off with a refreshingly humble tribute to his uncle Rilion (who has influenced his teaching too: the style felt similar to yesterday). Rolles noted that it felt strange to be the teacher while his own mentor was stood a short distance away.

My last bit of training for the Texas trip kicked off with a takedown, where Rolles noted that he prefers the upright posture of judo. My groin injury meant I couldn't really take part, but there were still a number of handy details I could take away. The initial grip looks especially useful: reach over the back and grasp a clump of gi near their shoulder blade, then bring your elbow down past their shoulder. This gives you a brace that can prevent them driving in for their own takedown.

I can't remember the actual takedown very well, but from what I recall, drop down with your knee raised on the outside, wrapping their leg, still holding onto their gi. Pull on the gi as you drive and lift into the leg, corkscrewing them into the mat to establish side control.

Getting to the ground, the focus was on closed guard. Rolles commented that as a big guy, he found that people often clammed up in his closed guard, staying defensive with elbows pinning his hips,head in his stomach and knees tight. It is difficult be offensive when confronted by that lack of space, but Rolles has developed a solution.

For the armbar, start by grabbing their same side armpit to get a fistful of gi material, then clamp your elbow to your side. Your other hand goes into their collar, again on that armpit side. At this point, many people won't react as they don't worry about the choke until your second hand comes into play.

Your hips are stuck, so instead, open your legs and straighten them, then swivelling off their thighs, bring your knee on the collar arm side in front of them. Shove that up by your collar grip (or the other side of their head, if you prefer), bringing your other knee up as well.

From here, you can squeeze your knees and pull on their collar and armpit, trapping that side of their body. With the foot of your collar arm leg, push into their same side knee, just like the push sweep. This will put their torso to the mat, flat on their stomach. Due to your grips, it should also stretch out their arm.

Bring your armpit side leg up their back to pin their shoulder, mirrored by your knee on the other side (rather like Levo's pressing armbar). Switch your collar grip to your own collar, in order to secure their wrist. It is now possible to turn your top knee down to the mat past their shoulder and go for a belly down armbar. If they roll, maintain your grips and follow them, then complete the submission from mount.

If they are a bit more savvy and grab the foot of your collar side leg, to stop you pushing their knee out, turn towards the other side, pressing into their hip with your armpit side foot. This sets you up for a triangle. Swivel the leg they are holding around their grip (you should be able to beat their grip on this, though that becomes more difficult if they manage to slide their arm further down your leg), then move into a triangle as normal.

Finally from that position, you can sweep them over your head. This time when you've got your knee into position, they stand up. Pull them in, raising your elbows up by your head, then put your feet on their hips and roll them past your shoulder. Again, my injury wasn't up to this, so I just continued with the previous techniques from earlier.

The second half of the seminar was nogi, or more specifically, MMA. I wasn't expecting quite so much relating to working off strikes, but then I guess Rolles is known for his MMA, so that shouldn't be too surprising. The initial takedown begins with a few jabs to judge the distance, after which you move straight into the clinch, reaching through to their far shoulder. Shuck their shoulder (particularly if they push on your head) then slide to their back, gable gripping your hands together.

You want to control a little below their hip, twisting you lower hand to dig your forearm in firmly. This isn't comfortable. Move forward to put them onto their knees, so that you can then progress to attacking the turtle. You have one knee on the mat, the other leg over their back. Punch their head on the leg-down side to get them to cover with that arm, to create some space to insert your hook.

Your arm on the other side wedges inside their leg, effectively becoming a hook. Roll them over, then either establish your second hook, or go straight for the rear naked choke. A quick tip on that was to grab the shoulder with your choking arm, not releasing it until your second arm was most of the way into position. That's because it is harder to pull your arm down if you're grabbing the shoulder, as opposed to open because you're about to weave it by your other bicep.

If you can't get that initial hook with your foot, simply jam your elbow into the other hip, bring your knee out slightly on what would have been the initial hook side, then drag them into that space you've created. That should roll them, so you can now insert your hook and move on for either both hooks or the RNC like before.

Finally, should they attempt to escape your back control, Rolles did a body triangle type counter, which I definitely couldn't do with my injury, but I was able to follow the head and arm choke counter he finished off with. This was quite similar to John Will's technique, where from the seatbelt grip you pull your arm through and turn. Block their arm from escaping with your head (keeping in mind this only needs to be tight enough to block) until you can turn all the way. From there, sink down and jam your head in place, then cinch in the choke.

28/11/2012 - Rilion Gracie Houston

Class #478
Rilion Gracie Houston, (BJJ), Rilion Gracie, Houston, TX, USA - 28/11/2012

The next stop on my Texas training trip was Rilion Gracie Houston, taught by Rilion himself. I had a chance to rest on the Tuesday, using it to get some typing done, then on Wednesday Conor drove me down to train at Rilion's academy (Conor also took some pics, so I'll be adding those in once he puts them up). If you haven't heard Rilion's name before, he is probably best known for two things: Rickson once said he had the best guard in the Gracie family, and Roger trained with Rilion at a pivotal time in his BJJ career. He is known to be very technical, which always gets me excited as I love learning more about the fine details.

The warm-up was fairly standard, running round the room followed by some star jumps, press-ups and sit-ups. Rilion runs a relaxed class, although there were quite a few people in official Rilion Gracie gis with their name written on the collar. I had thought that was a Gracie Barra thing, but perhaps it's just an old school Brazilian thing (Roger does it too, and I think Renzo as well, but then they both have ties to GB).

Rilion's teaching was every bit as thorough as I had hoped. His process was to run through the whole technique once, with plenty of emphasis on details, then run through it again in even more detail. He also regularly paused to note that if you didn't grip a certain way, you were liable to get swept or lose your control. He described it as 'invisible jiu jitsu', something most commonly associated with Rickson but I've also heard Braulio use the term (he had a video series with the same name).

The technique was actually several techniques in sequence, beginning with a takedown. From standing, you grab their same side collar and go into a low stance, elbow tucked in. Pull on the collar and step, so that they will naturally step as well. You are waiting for the opportunity to drop to their collar-side leg for the takedown, depending on their footwork. Generally they will leave that leg trailing. When the moment is right, drop down into a sort of kung fu stance, with your same side leg bent, the other stretched out horizontally.

Wrap up their leg with your arms, hooking around the back of their knee with the outside arm, then behind the ankle with the inside arm. Jam your head by the inside of their knee. Pull their leg back as you drive forwards to put them on their back. Immediately move forwards to sit on the leg, so they can't simply pull it free by turning away from you and wrenching. You still have your arm wrapped behind their knee.

At this point, the technique moves on to passing butterfly guard, as most likely they will now insert a hook and try to sweep you. To prevent that happening, wrap around the outside of their other leg with your arm, below the knee. That enables you to provide enough counter-pressure that they can't lift you up with their hook. To being the pass, reach through to the bottom of their trouser leg with your other arm and grab the material, taking out any slack.

Drive your head into their chest to put them flat on their back: if you go off to either side, they may be able to establish some kind of control, so keep your head in the centre. At this point, there were a couple of variations to complete the pass, so I may be missing bits, but I think you next grab the collar, then move forward to crunch their knees towards their chest.

Move around to the collar grip side while shoving their knees with your hip. You also need to make sure you are still grabbing the bottom of their trouser leg and stretching it out. This should prevent them from shrimping out. Keep moving until you can establish side control. IIRC, Rilion also showed the option of popping your hips up and pressing down into the trouser legs in a bullfighter pass type motion.

Sparring was light, due to my injured leg and Conor also has a dodgy knee. He did a few takedown entries, then we played around with some positions on the ground, mostly side control and guard. I had an opportunity to work more top side control, focusing on trying out the Relson style some more, along with using my head to control the hips and getting my elbows into armpits for control. I was also grabbing the back of the trousers quite a lot, which was another useful grip to test out.

I wasn't able to do much in terms of passing, though I had a go at the technique we'd just learned. There was also lots of maintaining open guard, which has been a theme this trip (and tends to be something I do a lot when visiting a new academy, as I don't feel as comfortable trying to immediately drive forward and pass to side, not that I'm any good at passing anyway ;D).

Conor reminded me that when I'm in the running escape I have to be very careful they can't drive a knee across the bottom leg as then you're stuck. This is what Sahid does to me, so I need to work out a defence to that, or simply be aware of that control and keep the leg out of range. I attempted to block that control with my other leg a few times, but that potentially leaves me vulnerable to something else.

He also mentioned a simple arm drag type motion that can be done off an initial collar grip where you have your arm posted behind you. This is a position I find myself in quite often, but I haven't been using it to arm drag (or 'collar drag', which is more the case here). You simply move to the side and pull them down into the space you just left. Something I should be trying more often.