18th March 2010

Technique

Arm Bar Defence

Omaplata

Concept

Transitioning

Today we had a small group so we went a bit 'off topic' and had a looked at some flow drills designed to train the abilty to transition from one technique to another. 

So far the group has trained two submissions, the arm bar and to a lesser extent the triangle, both from closed guard.  Escapes are incredibly important in Jiu Jitsu and the plan is to spend a lot of time ensuring we have the ability to escape from each offensive position we train.

BJ Penn illlustrates the defence below (apologies for the no-gi clips, but these are the best I've seen):



BJ Penn uses the non arm barred arm to grab his partner's leg, behind the knee.  We drilled this escape but also drilled it without grabbing the leg.  This allows the opportunity to reach around the leg and secure a pass or a collar choke.



We then drilled a counter to this defence and introduced a new submission, the omoplata. and worked this into a 'flow drill'. 



We used this new submission create a flow drill, this drill can be trained in a number of ways, for example we drilled the arm bar to omaplata to triangle.  BJ Penn in the clip below trains the arm bar to triangle and then omaplata.



Transitioning is incredibly important to your Jiu Jitsu, in essence its the ability to move from one submission, position or defence to another.

We worked this flow drill numerous times and ended the session with two five minute rounds of sparring.  This is considerably less sparring then we normaly do, but sometimes its worth sacrificing rolling time to drill specific techniques.