Dave Camarillo Seminar

I just got back from Dave’s seminar, and jumping right into documenting it all while it’s still fresh in my head. Big crowd today, there probably was 50 or 60 of us, so the mat was pretty crowded. All of the usual characters were there, plus some rarely seen ones, plus some complete strangers.

The techniques of the day were a combination of things. We started with the stack pass, the very first pass most jiu-jitsu students learn. As with everything Dave does, he’s added his own twists and optimizations on it. Instead of using a gable grip when passing, he just cups the thighs, keeping compact and tight on the bottom guy, posts up with one leg, and just slides the hips along to pass to side control.

From there, he taught us a really slick technique to take the back. He talked about the two types of control…the type where you prevent any movement, and the type where you only allow one type, the type you’re expecting. So from standard side control, we learned to switch our hips to neutralize the inside arm of the bottom guy, grip his near side knee, circle our head side hand around and grab his collar, and then pressure into him. His only option here is to attempt to get to his knees, so when he rolls away, we can shoot our bottom leg in and get the first hook. Dave spent alot of time demonstrating the next step, the correct hand position. The hand that was on the collar now circles the neck, and in a “vampire stabbing motion” establishes itself on his shoulder. Then we move the other hook in, and grab our own hand. We then learned some subtleties of the rear naked choke, and two variations of it.

Next up was what to do if he actually does make it to his knees, or if you’re attacking the turtle position. With one hook in, and using your other knee pinch his hip, you use one forearm to push his forehead to the mat, loop your other under his armpit, and gable grip on top of his shoulder. You can open your elbow and push down with your forearm as you roll back, and he can’t defend the second hook going in. Establish your vampire stake grip, and you’re good.

Lastly we chained it all together. Stack pass, take the back, choke. Very good stuff.

Dave’s a very good teacher, plus he had Damian, Klint and Brock Larson (with his brand new black belt!) roaming around fixing all of our mistakes.