Feedback please

Discussion in 'Brazilian Jiu Jitsu' started by Van Zandt, Oct 24, 2014.

  1. Van Zandt

    Van Zandt Mr. High Kick

    Hi everyone.

    My wife fought this past weekend at the London International Open. She went out in the first round, sadly. Video of her fight is below, which she's taken a few points from to work on. But I'm posting it in the hope some of you BJJ wizards will watch it and give some feedback (good and bad is welcome).

    Some things to consider: she's been doing BJJ a little over a year (and judo about six months longer than that), this was only her second grappling comp (she won silver at the Hereford Open back in Feb), and she was giving away about 7 kilos/a foot in weight/height.

    She's the one in the black gi, btw.

    Thanks. :)

    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_0tonnr3Fw"]Fransisca Nelson - London Open - Match 1 - YouTube[/ame]
     
  2. Mangosteen

    Mangosteen Hold strong not

    I'm no wiz of any kind but heres my tuppence

    Mrs VZ is very good!
    Her coaches were giving some good advice, by far the best thing she did was trust her team and listen to them which is hard for most friends ive gone to comps with.

    I'll just reiterate what her team said:

    - She played the stand up game a little too safe (at the end she should have just gone all out because she was down on points) but to be fair, she lost points to the takedown and got ragdolled a bit because of size.

    - Triangle failed because there wasnt enough of a posture break or positioning but its a lot better than my triangles.

    - and she could have got some faster transitions with moving faster shrimp to turtle motions and more stiff arming. the arm was bent and will collapse because its relying on muscle and not alignment. bent arm will not provide decent protection or balance when the opponent pushes, you'll end up getting steam rolled if the opponent drives as you transition unless youre faster (she is very very nimble).

    - I dont know what her stand up game strategy is like but she drives/forward pressures a lot (almost driving the opponent off at the beginning of the match) and with her size you could see the second takedown the opponent scored relied on that. maybe drill varying takedown strategies?
     
  3. Mitch

    Mitch Lord Mitch of MAP Admin

    Wot no headkicks? :D

    7kg seems like a heck of a lot! Aren't there enough people to make up divisions in this funny non-kicky sport? :D

    Best of luck to your Mrs and sorry I have nothing of any use to say. Again.

    Mitch
     
  4. Rebel Wado

    Rebel Wado Valued Member

    Better luck next time. Look good to me over all, could have gone either way.

    I realized most of the on top position was half guard, but near the end there was side control. I would suggest checking the hip better when in side control, either hip to hip or with her hand.

    These two are shown in this video:

    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZAs-ZrjsdQ"]Controlling Side Control Concepts with Xande Ribeiro (BJJLIBRARY.COM) - YouTube[/ame]

    Half guard and side control are going to be very common positions when you are against a heavier opponent. Mounting a heavier opponent doesn't have as much advantage as mounting someone that is lighter than you. IME.
     
  5. Simon

    Simon Administrator Admin Supporter MAP 2017 Koyo Award

    I don't have the knowledge of BJJ to be able to comment on technique, but like Mitch, I though the weight made a lot of difference.

    She stepped up though, so full props for that. I'm glad she has taken positives from the event.
     
  6. Dead_pool

    Dead_pool Spes mea in nihil Deus MAP 2017 Moi Award

    Nice match.

    Her scrambling from Turtle to standing - guard runaround was great.

    In full guard she needs to work on posturing breaking, it looked like the ladys front posting hand was causing her problems.

    She got caught a little in lockdown at one point, she worked the niceslice well but maybe working other options to free the foot will help too.

    There was one moment when the other lady was halfway passing that a rocking chair sweep would of fitted nicely in, might be worth a quick yt search.
    The most Important thing is to work through the advice given by her coaches Really.
     
  7. Van Zandt

    Van Zandt Mr. High Kick

    Thanks for this. You articulated some things very well that she and her coach(es) hadn't thought of. Particularly getting faster transitions with more stiff arming, as this is something she gets told off for in her judo classes and hadn't thought of using to her advantage.

    She's very much a forward-moving takedown-er (again, I think because that's the style of her judo coaches). Her favourite TDs are ko-uchi/ko-soto gakes. She was actually drilling more drop shoulder throws and firemans carry in her last session ready for future comps.

    Again, thank you for taking the time to respond. :)
     
  8. Van Zandt

    Van Zandt Mr. High Kick

    Ha :D

    It's all good Mitch. Thank you for your support. :)
     
  9. Van Zandt

    Van Zandt Mr. High Kick

    Thank you for the advice.

    I think the difficulties with mounting a heavier opponent were not something she had really encountered before this competition. Maybe due to the different mindset between training partners in a gym and opponents at a tournament, I don't know? The video looks very good and it's given her extra ideas for her top game. :)
     
  10. Van Zandt

    Van Zandt Mr. High Kick

    I respect pretty much anything you post Simon. Thank you for taking the time to give your support, it means a lot. :)
     
  11. Van Zandt

    Van Zandt Mr. High Kick

    Thank you, Fusen. I think rocking chair sweep might not be something she's covered in training yet. I'll do a search on YouTube like you suggest and present it to her with the hope it can be something she can work into her game.
     
  12. Van Zandt

    Van Zandt Mr. High Kick

    I want to say a big thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read/watch and post. It is probably a little selfish of me to ask for pointers for my wife (any surprise she's my favourite BJJ player? :D ), but I know MAP has some talented jiu-jitsu athletes who are a treasure trove of knowledge, tips and tricks.

    Thank you all again. :bow1:
     
  13. Simon

    Simon Administrator Admin Supporter MAP 2017 Koyo Award

    Not selfish at all and it's a touch of class that you've replied to everyone individually.
     
  14. Southpaw535

    Southpaw535 Well-Known Member Moderator Supporter

    I'm bored so I'll throw in some stuff. I'm typing this as I watch so I apologize if I repeat things that have already been said. Plus because I obviously don't know anything about her so I'm just going to give whatever advice I can think of. If it doesn't match well with her experience or normal game then feel free to ignore it :)

    Single leg at the start: She kind of got caught with that too fast to say much about it, but instead of grabbing her and jumping she would of been better off trying to underhook or frame off her neck/face and stamping her leg away. It was a good entry for her opponent, but she had time there to try and counter instead of hugging her and jumping. If you get caught you get caught, and jumping guard allowed her to decide she would end up there, but for me that was giving away two points too easily. There are cases where jumping guard works, but with the rule that them holding your leg means its their takedown it shouldn't be the first resort.

    Related to that is that she made the normal white belt mistake of jumping and then trying to lock her opponent down. While breaking posture is the idea in guard, from a jump you want to drill to immediately try and hit a sweep before they get a chance to sort their base out. This bit is entirely my opinion, but the pull she did where you clinch and drag them down isn't the best. Her opponent had time to adjust to it and came down with her meaning she could adjust quickly. Personally, from that sort of scenario I prefer to just drop, take the dump and the hit to my back (which probably mean this is really dumb advice :p) and then try and hit a standing sweep while their off balance. Normally just grabbing the heels and kicking their hips away.

    As others have said she seems to struggle with posture breaking. I'm still bad at it and I'm a blue so I can't dog her for that, plus with the opponent being bigger its just a sucky place to be. What I will say is it looks like she's trying to posture break by pulling the collar. Its what's normally taught so fair enough, but a solid frame off her hips will stop it which seems to be what her opponent's doing. She would be much better off attacking those arms first. I normally faff about with kimuras and bump sweeps with that but that's personal preference. Robson Moura has a good system for breaking that arm posture and I'll dump the video at the end of this post.

    The triangle setup was nice :) My advice there would have been to shoulder walk backwards to help break her posture. I struggle to finish them too so take that for what its worth but shoulder walking improved my success rate for breaking them down a lot. Especially combined with walking backwards then kicking off their hip to cut the angle. After her opponent breaks out it looks like your girl's hips are too high on hers which would make breaking her down damn hard. More reasons to shoulder walk :)

    Bit afterwards (1:47 or so) when she's struggling to break the grip I' tempted to say there was a chance to try a scissor sweep. There seems to be a brief chance for a butterfly one on her right leg after she stands up too. But the big bit there is she let herself get way too out of position. The basic rule I remember when defending guard is that for your opponent to pass properly they need to get perpendicular to you. When I defend passes all I really think about is how I can stay parallel to my opponent's hips. I fully get how she ended up like it, but your girl ended up at so far an angle she did a lot of the work for her opponent there. But, the recovery and the sweep attempt were very nice. Also a huge fan of how she stood back up when she had the space. Its not something I see people do enough in bjj now I've had a lot more exposure to it in mma so that was cool. And obviously getting on top from there is a yay.

    For top half guard all I can really say is that if she doesn't know it, the turning pass is awesome. One of my highest percentage techniques and is basically how everyone in my old club passes half now. I'll dig a video up for the end. The knee slice is one of my biggest weaknesses so I can't give any advice how to improve it. The only thing is that my opinion is, tempting as it is, trying to slice into mount isn't that high a success in comparison to sliding to the side. I understand the appeal to take mount, but if instead of trying to slide into mount and getting her knee pushed back into half, she'd twisted her opponent's hips like that and then sliced to the outside I think she would have passed. Plus in pure competing terms, taking side and then grinding your opponents face for a bit before then attempting to take mount kills more clock and grinds them down nicer. At least for me, mount is far easier to escape and they tend to thrash about trying to escape it more than they do for side.

    3:25 where her opponent back doors out was a mistake on your girlfriend's part more than anything her opponent did. I assume she was trying to get the armbar but when your opponent's turned that much you're better off sliding your leg through and turning back into side (I can't describe that better, sorry) than taking the risk of them escaping like that.

    Scissor attempt after she just didn't get her knee to the mat. Easy mistake. And the attempt to kick out the knee after and return to standing was nice.

    Second throw is a heavier opponent ragdoll. Sucks. Her posture was a bit too far forward with the aggression on the head control but I doubt that would of happened against someone her size.

    As other have said, that next pass defense could of done with a stiff arm to push her head away. I get its a foul in judo so its not natural for her but stiff arming is an incredibly useful skill in bjj, especially for pass defence. Again works in to what I said earlier about keeping your opponent parallel. That stiff arm is often the thing that saves me when I get to the late stages of pass defence like that.


    That's all I got. I might be talking out of my butt for all of that but hey. Still a very good match for someone at her level.

    Videos!

    Can't find the video of the grip break I was thinking of, but this is another good one. Actually, this whole dvd is great and I would recommend it. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulh5s6qwGkU"]Robson Moura Fusion Series 1 - The Full Guard - YouTube[/ame]

    Turning pass: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL2tTtDHRs0"]BJJ - Half Guard Pass - YouTube[/ame]
     
  15. Van Zandt

    Van Zandt Mr. High Kick

    Wow man, nice! Thank you so much for taking the time to post such a lengthy reply. I really appreciate that fact people are posting videos too, helps me picture what you guys are talking about (which will help her when I get back to being her training dummy). Every point raised will surely help her. She's planning on competing at the Europeans in Jan so every bit helps.

    Cheera dude. :)
     
  16. Southpaw535

    Southpaw535 Well-Known Member Moderator Supporter

    No worries, you made me laugh last night when I read about your new name so it seemed fair.

    That turning pass video is the best one I could find but I'd add that he adds an extra step with controlling the wrist before you turn. A lot of the time you can get away with just elbowing the mat under your opponent's arm and diving into it.
     
  17. MaxSmith

    MaxSmith Valued Member

    I thought she did really good overall. I didn't read through all of the comments so I may be repeating things but here's my quick 2 cents...

    She seems to rely on ko uchi gari in the stand up. Might help to work a few combinations off of it, so she has somewhere to go when her opponent counters.

    In the guard she could stand to work on breaking her opponent's posture. Looks like she was going for a nice high guard which is great to attack from, but hard to get those attacks if your opponent is maintaining posture.

    I'm not big on going for full mount on bigger opponents... Let me rephrase that, I'm not big on going for full mount on bigger opponents when they can get points for reversing position. Better to work from side control where you can keep a more stable base while working for subs.
     
  18. Mangosteen

    Mangosteen Hold strong not

    Yeah most the small guys I train with love side control for all the variation it provides and safety in options.
     

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