Mizblog

Greggo taught this Tuesday morning class. We had a couple of Kyokushin champions on the mat for an intro to BJJ today.

We did the lesson on cross collar choke from the guard, where you get that deep cross-collar grip on the gi, then reach UNDER that hand to get the second collar grip, hang your weight off them with your legs and arms as you row them into your belly button, scissoring your hands to pull the gi fabric tight behind their neck, and digging your wrists into their neck to tighten the choke.

Next method was to counter the situation where your opponent blocked that hand from coming underneath to get the second grip. In this case, you pull them down to you and reach over their back to get an overhand grip on their gi, on the other side of your existing cross-grip. Then you use your legs and arm to shuck them across as you bring that arm around tight and cross your forearms in front of them to finish the choke same as before.

But what if they block that second hand preemptively, like at the elbow? In that case, you open your guard (keeping knees pinched) to put the foot on the floor on the other side of your blocked hand, and move your hips away from that free hand, then slip that knee up across their chest so that it touches the wrist of your cross-gripped hand. The other leg blocks their far knee on the mat as you pull them toward you, then twist them over on their side using both arms and legs to do the scissor sweep. If they counter this with a wide base, then instead of blocking that far knee, you can use your foot to push it out from under them as you pull them over.

After finishing the sweep, you end up in the mount with a cross collar grip. To finish this, you reach your free hand over and slide your elbow/forearm across their jaw to turn their head away, leaving you with a clean grip on their gi shoulder material. You ground your head on the mat on the same side as that second grip, establish a wide base with your knees, and use your toes to push your hips forward for the finish. I think the forward hips gives your hands a better choking angle.

Then we rolled. My rolling partners were Jen, Jeremy, Aiden, Greggo, and lastly coach Mark asked me to roll easy with the karate black belt guy. That was an ego boost, that Mark can count on me to kind of know what I’m doing and not risk injuring someone who’s vulnerable. Anyway, I felt I did kind of okay in every roll. I managed to avoid all of Greggo’s submission attempts, and nobody else really threatened me. The inexperienced people kept trying to do the cross collar choke from inside my guard, and I kept teaching them why that was both useless and dangerous, because I can use my legs to keep them from the finish, and I can tip them over and take their back.