Masafumi Matsumoto Your head is an essential tool when you pass your opponent’s guard. I’m not being metaphorical here. You can literally use your head in various ways to control your opponent’s movement. You can place your head next to your opponent’s head or below your opponent’s chin. You could even use your head as an underhook. …
The success of your defensive efforts in BJJ depends on how well you use frames against your opponent. You create a frame by connecting your body part with your opponent’s body, typically your elbow, forearm, knee, shin, or foot. And to achieve the best result, you should create a frame against your opponent’s bone structure …
Think of judo and wrestling. In these grappling styles, two players aim to take each other down so that their opponent’s back will be pinned to the ground. If you take your opponent down and they fall facing down, it doesn’t count as an effective takedown. To some extent, this is the case in BJJ. …
Some of you know who Kenta Iwamoto and Jozef Chen are. But I’m guessing most of you don’t know about them at all. Kenta Iwamoto is an ADCC vet from Japan. He has a Judo background, is a BJJ black belt, and practices MMA these days. I don’t know much about Jozef Chen, but he …
By now, you should know I love Lucas Lepri and how he passes almost everyone’s guard. And Levi Jones-Leary is one of the few people Lepri couldn’t make his guard passing magic work. Levi is an excellent guard player known for his DLR and berimbolo. Levi faced Tye Ruotolo recently at World 2022 and… Tye …
This may sound obvious when you hear it… … but here’s a Mexican Ground Karate insight I’ve been thinking about: You can measure your offensive success by how tired your opponent gets. First, let’s look at a typical scenario from a point-scoring perspective. Let’s say you pass your opponent’s guard cleanly, but your opponent escapes …
Hailing from Australia and representing Unity Jiu Jitsu… Levi Jones-Leary has impeccable guard skills. As far as I checked, no one has managed to pass Jones-Leary’s guard at a black belt competition level except Renato Canuto (edit: Tye Ruotolo passed Levi’s guard at Worlds 2022). Lucas Lepri couldn’t beat Jones-Leary’s defense either. In this post, …
Let’s do a quick study of Tainan Dalpra’s guard passing sequence from the Tainan Dalpra vs. Italo Moura match from Pan Championship 2021. The match result shocked me because Tainan scored 29 points against Italo, whereas Italo didn’t score a single point against Tainan. I’ve trained with Italo when I was at PSLPB in the …
In the past and especially in lighter-weight divisions, takedown skills were “nice to have” but not essential. This is mostly because guard pulling is allowed and players tend to spend most of their match on the ground. If you are good at playing the guard, you probably don’t care so much about giving up 2 …
What’s your typical reaction when you are presented with a new move? Is it like… “Duh, it looks impossible and too complicated for me. I can’t do it”? Or more like… “Well, I don’t know what’s going on and the move looks difficult, but let’s try and figure it out”? (Some of you may talk …