Leverage Grappling System Seminar Reviews - Part 2: Half Guard

One month on from the side control seminar the Leverage Fundamentals Open Guard + Passing seminar was running at Leicester Shootfighters.  I was very interested in attending this but the lure of Terror playing in Nottingham that night was just too great.....

Anyhow, the following seminar came up pretty quickly and I decided that I couldn't afford to miss another (it's my aim to attend all six) booking in as soon as it was announced.  This was the final session in the Fundamentals series and covered the half guard and "extras" on which more later...
The half guard portion of the seminar was split in to bottom and top sections, both covering the essentials of posture with bottom taking in transitioning to guard, taking the back and sweeps, whilst top position covered passing.  As is his method, Nathan demonstrated and coached through each step of whatever he was showing before setting people to work in pairs, coaching and correcting around the room.  It bears emphasising that a key part of Nathan's method of coaching/teaching is to break things down in to bite-sized chunks so that, for me at least, there's more chance of remembering the technique and being able to drill it.  Coupled with a very articulate manner and an understanding of his subject that is clearly deep and expansive, this makes for quality and accessible coaching.

From the off, there was a lot of detail in this seminar.  The basic 'safety' position when using half guard filled a page of my notebook with points on posture, basing the foot, the importance of blocking the crossface, getting the underhook, and on it goes........ What's more, looking back through my notebook as I write this I realise that I remember it without prompting.....mostly.  Once we'd got the posture down we started to work on improving position - getting back to closed guard or open guard.  Finally from bottom position we looked at two sweeps including the 'Old School' sweep before moving on to top position.

Again we started with posture and looked at the two main positions; Underhook & Crossface and Sit Through.  I have to confess to never really using the sit-through position previously feeling a little vulnerable when presented with the opportunity to use it.  However, the details taught by Nathan have given me more confidence in the position and in switching between that and the underhook-crossface.  We worked three passes from these two positions, one I was familiar with (if not competent!) and two others that were new to me but easily learnt and practiced and again, given some more drilling I'd be happy to try them when rolling.

The Extras...

First up was learning some flow rolling drills.  Flow rolling - and forgive me if this isn't the best explanation - is non-competitive, non-strength-based, rolling for position with the emphasis on smooth transition rather than speed, and compliance rather than competition.  In order to do this  Nathan showed us two drills:

• Passing guard - transitioning to mount - being reversed to guard - beginning again with opposite roles.
• From being mounted - regain guard - sweep top man - transition to mount position - begin again with opposite roles.

We didn't spend a lot of time on this but I can imagine that this type of rolling can improve your transitions, your techniques and your thinking/reacting.

The final part of the day was spent looking at things that don't fit anywhere else in the Levergae system, for example, dealing with an unskilled opponent on the mat or off it in a situation that requires you to utilise some restraint rather than flatten your opponent, e.g. the friend of a friend down the pub who knows you 'do some of that UFC stuff' and wants to test you out... you get the idea.  Within this we looked at breakfalls and getting up safely, releasing wrist grips, bodylock takedowns and escapes, guillotine defence and standing and ground headlock escapes.  There's some interesting debate going on at the moment - in Jiu Jitsu Style magazine for example - about BJJ having lost some of the self-defence type elements due to the focus on sport BJJ.  It'll be interesting to see how this develops and how the ideas shape schools and styles in the future.

By the end of the five hours I was saturated and really struggling to take any more in, though to be clear, that's about me not about the seminar itself.  Once again an afternoon's top-class instruction in a friendly environment.  I can't recommend the Leverage Seminars enough.

Next up:

Sunday 20th January 2013
Fundamentals 01: Theory, Basic Skills, Mount.  (I'm already booked in for this).

10th February 2013
Leverage Submission Grappling Fundamentals Seminar 02: Side Control (Repeat)


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Leverage Grappling System Seminar Reviews - Part 1

Nathan Leverton in action at NAGA European Championships

Recently I've become a bit of a seminar junkie.  In addition to the Neil Adams and Dean Lister events that I've reviewed here I've also been along to two seminars in the Leverage Grappling System Fundamentals series.  Those of you who check in here occasionally may have seen the link that I posted to Slideyfoot.com's review which went in to some considerable detail about the LGSF Closed Guard seminar. In part it was this review that made me want to check out the seminars although, obviously, as a regular student at Leicester Shootfighters I know the quality of the instruction and training on offer, especially by Head Coach Nathan Leverton whose system Leverage is.

My training time is limited so any opportunity that I get to work in more mat time I try to take.  Spending 5 hours of a Sunday focusing in detail on an aspect of the ground game seems good training economy to me, especially with my grappling needing all the work it can get and jits being such an important part of amateur MMA.

Back in October I signed up for the side-control seminar.  I've always felt comfortable in side control, it seems more stable than mount although sometimes the attacking options aren't as obvious.  This was the first Leverage seminar that I'd atttended and retaining the information  gleaned over 5 hours seemed daunting.  It's for this very reason that Nathan recommends bringing a notebook, and why wouldn't you?  You wouldn't attend any other workshop, lecture, seminar or training without some way of recording the information being imparted.

Prior to beginning Nathan distributed an agenda for the day and gave a little bit of background to the Leverage system.  Essentially, Leverage is his response to student grapplers learning techniques on an as-and-when basis, depending on what classes they attend where and at what time.  Through Leverage Nathan is presenting a system that, starting with the fundamental series, gives fighters/students/coaches a solid grounding that builds on the basics and adds in complexity going forward.  After all, what use is the Peruvian Necktie if you can't pass the guard? 

After taking us through the fundamentals of hip movement - shrimping, bridging, etc - and getting from a lying to a standing position, Nathan moved on to the top game focusing on the correct way to pin the bottom guy with side control.  The thread throughout the seminar, and, in fact, all Nathan's teaching, is the attention to detail, and it's often these details that make all the difference.   It's easy to lie across someone but to optimise your position to get real pressure through the points of contact...... that's where the details prove their worth. 

Nathan discussed the 4 positions that arms and legs can be in and the merits or otherwise of these - staggered offers better control with elbow and knee pinching hips.  We worked through under/overhook positions, the 'VW' pin and sitting through to regain control and position.  Once we'd established some competence in holding the pins we moved to transitioning to mount.

The seemingly most obvious submissions from side control are Keylock and Kimura and Nathan demonstrated both of these, again with attention paid to the details that may determine whether you get the tap or not.  The mistakes with hand/arm position that Nathan covered can be seen at pretty much every MMA event, preventing finishes from such a dominant position.  Following the armlocks we looked at the Side Choke and Nathan was able to use a bout from the previous night's UFC as an example of a common mistake being made by a very high level fighter leaving him unable to finish the submission (Nog Vs. Herman in case you're wondering).  The final submission of the day was the armbar.  I've trained transitioning from side-control to armbar before but being able to focus on it in this session has really embedded it in my mind and I can actually see myself trying it at some point.

 

Throughout the seminar Nathan stopped so that people could write up what they had learned.  He was also cool with people taking video as long as it's for their own use and not publicly broadcast.   I tried taking video of the teaching segments but I found that this doesn't work for me.  I may have a video to refer to afterwards but I take almost nothing in at the time!  I made two short videos and then just concentrated on watching and learning.

The final session of the day covered being pinned in side control, surviving and escape.  Starting with positional theory Nathan taught escaping to guard and to the knees.  Another key feature of Nathan's teaching, for me at least, is his emphasis on principles that are applicable in various situations.  For example, underneath side control 'framing' with the arms in order to maintain space is a key principle that also applies to half-guard (more on that in Part 2).  

The whole five hours was tiring but extremely valuable and being able to focus solely on one aspect - albeit many facets of that aspect - brought improvements in my understanding and hopefully in my game.  The quality of the instruction was awesome at any price but Leverage seminars are priced extremely reasonably.  Attending these seminars has to be one of the best ways of building or reinforcing your ground game.  I really wanted to get down to the Open Guard + Passing Seminar that Nathan taught next in the series but Terror were playing Nottingham that night so.....  I did, however, book in for the Half-Guard Seminar as soon as it was announced and I'll be posting up a review of that soon(ish).

 There will be further 'Fundamentals' seminars next year, if you love ground fighting and want some quality instruction that will impact your game, there can't be many (any?) better ways to spend a Sunday afternoon.  See you there.....

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