Category: Instruction

Catch wrestling is a brutal combat style of grappling developed in England during the 1870’s. It was used by laborers and dock workers to pass the time at work, and picked up by sailors who traveled the world, collecting techniques which helped to grow the style. It has roots in various wrestling styles including Irish Collar and Elbow wrestling, and is also known as “Catch-as-Catch-Can”. Catch-as-Catch-Can refers to the way that catch wrestlers will attempt to grab any submission available. This approach to submission hunting differs from the typical jiu jitsu approach, in that a jiu jitsu practitioner typically aims to establish control prior to hunting for submissions, while a catch wrestler’s approach is to explosively grab for submissions from any position. This approach can take other wrestling styles off guard, and open up opportunities for other submission attempts based off the reaction of their opponent in these attempts.

Catch wrestling found it’s way to America where it was used in carnivals as a type of entertainment combat sport, and today professional wrestling tips it hat to catch wrestling. In Brazil during the heyday of Vale Tudo Catch Wrestling was used effectively by Luta Livre fighters against jiu jitsu fighters. Catch wrestling emphasizes inflicting pain and pressure on a fighter’s opponent to cause them to move in a way that the catch wrestler can take advantage of. Kazushi Sakuraba famously used his catch style to defeat Royce, Royler and Renzo Gracie.

Neil Melanson is a huge proponent of Catch wrestling, and I’ve written about his instructional material here before. His approach to grappling is novel if you come from a pure jiu jitsu background, and well worth checking out.

Today one of my team mates sent me the video below from the Snake Pit. Here we see how to counter the De La Riva with leg locks. There is a nice heel hook and toe hold available when  you’re stuck in a De La Riva guard. After seeing the techniques in this video I was struck by the simplicity of the submissions, and was surprised at how obvious they were as options, and also how I had failed to see them in spite of the many times I’ve been caught in De La Riva.

Check out the video below to learn more:

 

Ramsey Dewey shows variations of the rear naked choke in this video. He talks about why it’s a bad idea to tuck your chin to defend a rear naked choke, and shows how a well connected choke can dislocate a jaw and still choke someone in the process.

I especially like the one armed choke variations he shows in this video. I’ve been giving up on the RNC lately because I can’t seem to get it. My partners will tuck their chins or fight for wrist control and I haven’t been able to get past that. Looking forward to trying some of this next class.

Bernardo Faria just released this video with Xande Ribeiro on guard retention. Ribeiro hasn’t had his guard passed in competition since 2005. That’s 14 years of matches without a single guard pass from his opponents. Amazing.

He talks a little about how he uses his frames to get into a “geometrical position” that allows him to extend pressure into his opponent. He calls this the “Diamond Concept”. I have to study this more, but it seems that there are two factors at play. One is always connecting your elbows and your knees to create frames. The second is to extend yourself away from your opponent using those frames so you can recompose guard.

In this video Faria mentions that there is a video coming out by Ribeiro and it sounds like it’s going to be released at BJJ Fanatics. I’m looking forward to seeing that. My wife bought me Saulo Ribeiro’s book a while back, and it’s got great information. I’m sure Xande’s video will be the same.

I’ve been playing with the rubber guard lately. I like how it frees your hands up when you’re using a closed guard. Seems to make it easier to get submissions going that way. And having one of your legs in the high guard makes slipping into triangles and omoplatas really smooth if you can get them.

This video has some great details. Eddie Bravo walks through a few of the control points of the rubber guard like the “double bag”.

We worked on this throw a few weeks ago. I was having trouble getting the angle right for the end of the throw. After watching this video a few times I think I see what I was doing wrong. I was trying to throw backwards, but Osiander emphasizes laying to your side at the end of the throw. Will have to continue to work on this one.

I’ve been on a Gordon Ryan kick lately. Specifically his guard passing. I’m trying to get my guard passing sharpened up (sometimes it feels non-existent), so I’ve been studying a lot of guard passing on YouTube. I found this great list of videos analyzing Gordon Ryan’s guard passing.

What’s particularly interesting to me is that to pass in the style of Gordon Ryan, you put your hands on the mat, distributing your weight to your hands while your legs and hips float freely, allowing you to pummel your legs around your opponents.

I’ve always that you should stay heavy on your opponents legs when passing, but this style of passing is opposite of that. I guess in practice the style of passing will change depending on how you want to pass, and what your opponent throws at you. It’s nice to have options.

Click here if you want to goto the full list of videos for the Gordon Ryan Guard Pass Study. 

BJJ Heroes has a great analysis of Gordon Ryan’s grappling style. This is a good read: Analyzing Greatness: The Versatile Game Of Gordon Ryan

This video showed up on my YouTube timeline today, it’s Bernardo Faria talking about pressure passing. Some good stuff in this video. He demonstrates how to angle your body so that more of your weight is on your opponents body. For example, using  your shoulder to pin your opponent to the ground when passing can be more effective if you angle your body in such a way that more of the weight is going into that shoulder.

This can be generalized to say that when attempting a pressure pass, if you can focus your weight into a small point on your body and apply that point to your opponent then you will generate more pressure. Pedro Vianna talks about applying pressure in this manner to large muscles. He says that if you can focus pressure in the middle of a large muscle then that becomes like a pressure point, making things very uncomfortable for your opponent.

Check out the video to hear Fari discuss pressure passing. It’s a short video, but has some great info.

Hard 2 Hurt is Icy Mike’s YouTube channel.  But just  who is Icy Mike, and what is his channel about?

Icy Mike is an ex-police officer turned martial arts instructor/enthusiast/fighter. He has been in several fights in episodes of StreetBeefs and his YouTube channel is focused on exploring the effectiveness of martial arts training in self-defense scenarios (aka: “THE STREETZ”).

This post is a bit of a departure from the regular jiu jitsu topics that I write about, but I think it’s valuable to keep in mind real-world self-defense scenarios during training so that you have an awareness of what works and what doesn’t.

Continue reading “Hard 2 Hurt”