Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Attacks from side control

I hardly ever post (I think) about techniques any more, which is good, because that can get boring. But Christian (BJJ Globetrotter) posted today that he's back home on his mats again, so I started prowling around his site just a bit, refamiliarizing myself. And I came across his side control attack flow video which has some useful details for me, so I thought I'd write a little compare-and-contrast thing in the hopes that it crystallizes perspectives for me.

Here's his video, which I think is superbly done btw...



And his game plan:

My game plan is more like this (sorry, text only..)

Side control > nearside armbar or farside americana or bow and arrow choke.

See, this is why writing posts like this is a useful exercise. I know I've made SOME progress since whitebelt, since I KNOW I have reached these points in the past. When I was a whitebelt it was merely theoretical that this was possible.

But when I start thinking about what happens next and what do I do in response, it's like there are too many variables and I get distracted. I know I almost always do a slightly different side control than Christian shows (more like the Daniel Moraes one, less like the Relson one, much to my chagrin since I'm a Relson student.)

From there I spend a lot of time with both arms isolated and the majority of my control and focus on their upper body (which gets me in trouble since I don't control their hips so much.) With the nearside arm isolated, I go for nearside armbars (of the traditional kind, or of the straight, behind my armpit, sitting upright, using my knee kind) and from there I've ended up in kind of a lurchy "oh crap" kind of spider guard when they come up and stack me... (I see why Christian advocates the omoplata here. And then my training with Gene where he emphasized the omoplata comes to mind and the lightbulb goes on. Ding ding ding!)

I don't go for americanas too much on guys, they're usually too strong for me to catch the hand and keep it. I almost always get the farside underhook though, so if they pass the hand in front of my face I'll try for it. Usually wrapping their gi lapel around the far side arm helps tremendously with that (credit goes to Hillary Williams and Chris Gunn for that stuff.)

And while I'm messing around with the lapel, if I can, I'll reach under the head and back across the neck to the nearside lapel, using my head/face as a blindfold so they can't see the bow and arrow coming.

Good mental exercise. What attack flows (and from what position) do you prefer?

4 comments:

AJ said...

I like the farside armbar, far side kimura/americana, baseball bat choke. I tend not to mess with the near side arm...

A.D. McClish said...

I have realized recently that I don't go for many submissions from side control. I usually am looking to move to mount or north south, where I am more comfortable submitting from. All of these are options I need to think of more!

Liam H Wandi said...

From side control, my goal is to mount. I may transition to knee-on-belly or attack with bread cutter choke, head and arm choke or farside americana ala Fedor, and I get them often, but my goal is and always is to mount.

I do like my mount :)

Afrorican said...

I am also pretty much on the prowl for mount. I will go knee on belly or north south just to keep moving an feign submissions while looking for the mount. In Gi I will try to trap the farside arm with the lapel and maybe work a choke from there. I usually do not look for armbars, kimuras, or americanas.