Guro Chuck started out by laying down two guildlines for grappling: don't lay flat, and don't flail your arms. Laying flat gives you very little ability to counter and flailing arms tend to get broken.
So starting from back control, we want our hands in close to our body and stacked on one side or the other of our face. Daniel and Robert here show the basic position: Daniel being on back and Robert showing the hand positioning.
As Daniel tries to chock Robert, Robert's palm out hand will pull Daniels hand that is attempting to chock. Notice Roberts left hand on Daniel's right(the chocking attempt hand). As Daniel attempt to chock on the other side, Roberts right hand will move to the other side of his face and pull that arm and his left hand will goto the side of his face. Basically what we have now is a reverse hubud.
Next we add a "butt-walk" to this. The butt-walk allows us to get below the line that he can effectively chock us on. As we hubud, we force ourselves downward by walking our butt out of their grip. Again we are just looking to survive and make it harder for our opponent.
To finish up with back control we added the knee dive. The idea here is to aim for the knee, dive over it and turn into our opponent. Here Cory and Jim will show you the basic idea.
Again we want to keep our hand and arms in tight. Once we are on our side we want to push our hips out over their shin so we can turn towards them.
After back control we moved to mount. Mount was a simple concept: framing. Basically we apply the 2 rules that Guro Chuck layed down at the start: arms in and not flat. To survive this position we want to roll to one side. Whichever side we roll to we want that elbow in the mat: left side/left elbow, right side/right elbow. With us on our side we will clasp the wrist of the opposite arm; this arm will be wrapped across our stomach. This frame is then forced into our opponents hips.
This next video will show a transition from mount to knee-on, but if you take notice of Guro Chuck's hands you will see the basic framing position.
Next we will move to cross body. In cross body we again want to turn into our opponent. We want our far arm wrapped around us while our near arm will be hooked on their bicep. Here Guro Chuck shows the basic arm positioning.
This video shows Jared and Randy free rolling just with the cross body techniques.
As you can see from the video, Mr. Randy is using very little energy to counter Jared: as it should be. If we spend a lot of energy to stop or counter an attack then we will have less to throw our own when the time comes, but if we can force him to use his while we conserve ours then we are in a much better situation.
For those that made the class I think we can all agree this was a valuable set of skills to add to anyone's game. For those wanting to gain that little extra edge on the ground then come see me when you have a chance and we can go over these drills.
Again I want to thank Guro Chuck for taking time to conceptualize these skills for us. As he said there is no set standard, only a concept. And to show that not everything was sweat and tears: here's the youngest Warriors Way International Student demoing with her Dad: Keep those arms in Nikki!!!
