For the past 20 years I have taught that your basic guard strategy is to always threaten a sweep, submission, strike, or standup constantly. If you are playing in a way that you can't at all times have at least a reasonable shot at all four, then you are misunderstanding guard.
Most of that comes from not understanding the fundamental principle of ALWAYS maximizing your control while minimizing his control.
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I've already found guys are 100% not expecting me to get to my knees and then stand up. I like doing it in general, I work better from standing. A lot of folks aren't working on their takedown game and thus have no idea what to do if I stand up. I love starting from standing for the same reason, guys don't know what to do*. I am really in my element in terms of stuffing takedowns and executing my own against lower level guys. It's a nice ego boost from usually getting destroyed.
My coach, seeing my ability to stay standing, is mean. He now only lets me start standing with brown belts or purple belts who are competing regularly. Suffice to say, my success rate at stuffing takedowns has now been...taken down.
Though if he wants to be mean to a white or blue belt he makes them start standing against me. I guess I'm weapon in an arsenal now...
*I've found white and blue belts tend to just pull guard. That's what they know how to do and can do it decently well. But since my discovery of the Ezekiel choke from the top while in guard I've already made the guard pullers irritated with me.
It is my feeling that a lot of what's coming to BJJ might actually be an emphasis on wrestling up instead of trying to get in on leglocks.Originally Posted by Cecil Burch
I may be wrong, but it always looked to me like a lot of those leglock entries from open guard could sorta be converted into a wrestle up/stand up instead...especially now as leglock defense is something that a lot of guys are putting serious work into and nowadays I'm more likely to get my back taken or get countered by a leglock if I start playing the leg attacks.
Am I far off base here?
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It's absolutely where things are headed, especially in no gi.
The nice thing is that they work really well with each other. There are so many leglock entries off of failed shots, or even successful ones -- if I have your leg isolated to finish a single, I can drop into a heel hook just as easily.
I disagree a bit. Only because I think the wrestle ups have already been in the fold for a few years now (it’s been one of the most common sweeps at ADCC for years).
I think the next big thing will be more focus on Greco style take downs that don’t risk winding up in the front headlock position. We could see more leg weave passing too to counter wrestle ups.
Rousimar Palhares. Leg locking hormone cyborg devil monkey. True story.
I'm making my living on seated ankle picks right now. It will stop working soon, but I'm enjoying them while they last.
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Memento Mori
No, you are not far off. But it is the typical cycle of jiujitsu. It always happens. Some new cool thing comes along, a few people start beating everyone with it, it becomes the "ultimate move that will revolutinize BJJ", lots of vids/DVDS, lots of seminars, and then at some point people figure out how to deal with the move, and it fades back to just part of the arsenal. It is happening with leglocks, and it will happen with wrestle ups.
Open gaurd, triangles, turtle guard, DLR, lasso, rubber guard, wristlocks, leglocks originally (circa 1997), x guard, single leg x, berimbolos, lapel attacks/wormguard, and leglocks again. Now wrestling as a new emphasis. Wait 1-3 years, and it will be something else.
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Whatever people haven't been training as much. I know in the gym it feels like cheating when I come in with some technique off a video that no one is used to dealing with. I kind of hate that, by the way -- I never get to the "counter" techniques in the video if the first one works!
BJJ folks in general (unless they wrestled previously) just have awful wrestling fundamentals.
Most of what I hope comes out of the current wrestling focus is a some kind of "standard" set of wrestling fundamentals that are well-adapted to submission wrestling and are actually taught consistently across BJJ gyms. It's so hard to force yourself to learn, say, singles and doubles when a) statistically speaking, you're a 30+ year old dude with shitty knees b) until you get really good at them, you're just diving into a guillotine c) you're probably not practicing the set ups enough to do more than just blast them against unsuspecting white belts anyway. I want blue belts to have the same level of wrestling *fundamentals* in terms of stance, pummeling, and movement that you see out of a JV high school wrestler, at least!
My goal for the last two years has been to address that gaping hole in my game (I absolutely started out at a traditional Gracie gym, where lip service was paid to "get on top, stay on top" but then we started most of our rolls in closed guard). But it can be so hard! Most places I go, people don't *want* to stand with you unless they wrestled in high school (AKA, have 5 years more stand up experience than you do), so you don't have that natural ramp up of "do it in drilling, then on a white belt, blue belt, etc."
Not to mention that all of the really *good* wrestling instructionals (thank you again, Cecil, for the recommendations! They have helped massively!) are aimed at a different ruleset, so you're piecing together how they should adapt to BJJ (or your 40-year-old knees) on your own.
Danaher's efforts in that direction are a step, but you can tell he's still not a high level wrestling coach in terms of the quality of the technical instruction (compared to his jiu jitsu stuff, which is top notch, if long-winded).
I guess what I'm saying is that I'm glad that this and leglocks have both been added to the meta, because today's meta becomes tomorrow's fundamental techniques. And these ones seem actually general purpose useful (as opposed to people trying to tie me up in lapel guard... ugh!).
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