Saturday we had a seminar with Benardo rather than our usual open mat. He broke it up into two parts, some bottom techniques, and some top techniques.

We started off with a technique to pull half guard from the standing position. Now, I’m generally anti-guard pulling. I see it as passive, and unrealistic. In a fight, you’re never going to voluntarily be on the bottom. This technique though led immediately into the next, which was a sweep. So with the two together, it could almost be classified as a takedown.

We then did another half guard sweep, for situations where our opponents have head control. This one was a little complicated, and it took most of us a bit to get it down, but I really liked it.

After a break, we switched things up, and did some top game techniques. The first was a pass. It was a little unusual, because we started with one arm in and one out…which generally is a recipie to get triangle choked. But Benardo showed us how to block one hip to prevent that. Then we can tripod up, grip and stuff a knee and pass. We did a variation of the same starting from within spider guard as well that worked the same way.

Then we did two submissions. The first was a reverse knee bar, which is an odd thing to teach a bunch of lower belts, because it’s illegal to use in competition. As we’re doing either of the two passes, we can pause and attempt the submission with very little risk of loosing the position. The second submission started from side control. Jack up his inside arm, use his lapel to overwrap and immobilize his other arm, mount and then triangle.