GRAPPLING CONCEPTS LESSON 21: Get Up, Stand Up! Welcome back to Lesson 21 of the Grappling Concepts Course. When you're using your guard you've got a few options. You can survive. That means not letting your guard get passed or, in MMA context, not getting pounded You can submit your opponent using armlocks, chokes, leg locks, etc. You can sweep your opponent, using any one of a million different sweeps You can strike your opponent (this is sually not as effective as striking from the top position, but it is an option But if none of the above options are working, then you should stand up. There s no point staying in the guard if it s not getting you anywhere. In the late 1990's the general perception was that the guard 'was it'. In MMA, even when the top man was landing heavy leather the commentators would still be saying stuff like Oh man, look at how that guy in the bottom is doing. He s doing really well. He s winning the fight. But it was pretty obvious that the bottom man WASN'T winning the fight - he was getting pounded. At that time, the proguard bias was so strong that abandoning the guard position was heresy. Then I got introduced to, and started training with, Marcus Soares, an old school Carlson Gracie BJJ coach. Like many Carlson Gracie fighters he had a preference for fighting from the top, and playing the top crushing game.
Marcus taught 'strange' techniques, like those where you started in guard, got back to your feet, fought for the takedown and ended up in your opponent's guard. He also taught more orthodox guard sweeps, of course, but his preference was to stand up, take the guy down, and end up on top. Same result as a sweep, different methodology. That was old school Carlson philosophy. But if you look how MMA has evolved in recent years, this 'old school' approach is actually quite well suited for MMA. Chuck Liddell, in his prime, was one of the fighters who most exemplified this. Of course he was difficult to even take down initially, but if he ended up on his butt then he'd just scoot, scoot, scoot, and stand up back to his feet. The fighter taking him down would waste a whole ton of energy fighting for the takedown and then fighting to hold him down, all for naught. So MMA has evolved, but in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and submission grappling there s still a blind spot when it comes to getting back up to the feet from the guard. Standing up is a really good way to push the pace of a match, especially if your conditioning is better than your opponent s. Also, some opponents whole plan is to take you down and then stall inside your guard, but you don t want to lose that way! If you get taken down and the guy is stalling, then get the hell out of Dodge. Stand back up.
We ll start with the basic self defense stand up that every BJJ guy knows - it forms the foundation of most of the other stand up techniques. Start on your back, arms up and legs up, feet pointing towards your opponent. Kick at your opponent's knees and shins to make him back off and give you some room. Come up on your elbow, bottom leg chambered and your free arm protecting your face. You can kick from this position too, mostly using your bottom leg.
You then come up onto your hand. From here you can kick again, the only difference is that your hips are floating above the ground so you can reach a lot further with your leg. All your weight is on your left leg and right hand NO WEIGHT ON YOUR HIP! With my weight on my hand and my foot, I retract my kicking leg back and stand up. Coming up to a balanced fighting or wrestling stance.
You should be able to do this entire standup sequence in slow motion (although you wouldn't apply it that way. Some guys bring their feet together and then jump up to their feet using momentum. This is wrong. If you do the standup sequence properly, you should be able to do it in absolute slow motion. Eventually you're going to use the basic standup motion for other purposes, like finishing sweeps, If you have bad form, and if you're compensating for it by using athleticism, then what are you going to do when you have 50 pounds of your opponent s leg on your shoulder and you're trying to finish a sweep? You re going to be pinned to the ground! You'd better have a structural way where you can stand up with your opponent's weight on you.
Here is a simple little drill where you get up on one side, stand up, sit down, switch legs and do it on the other side too. It starts out just like a day at the beach...
Let s apply this same standup to a grappling match. This isn t so technically different or unique it just requires a different mindset. My opponent has backed away. I stiff-arm him to maintain separation and retract my right leg backwards, between my supporting right hand and left foot. Now I'm back on my feet. I can either hunt for the takedown from here, or if I happen to prefer the closed guard I can come in......and pull guard again! Obviously I would only do this if I felt a lot more comfortable in the closed guard than in the open guard. If that's the case, then this is a very effective way to regain the closed guard position.
I should be on red alert any time that my opponent is controlling my feet in the open guard. It puts me in danger of having my guard passed, and it also makes the standup much harder. Two ways to control the legs in open guard: pushing them to the floor, and holding them in the air My legs being controlled is a very bad thing. And if I want to stand up out of the open guard I need to remove his grips from my legs. Below I show how to 'chop' his grip off of my legs this works both with and without the gi. I use a scissoring motion: my forearm strikes inward while my foot kicks forward. He needs to have an incredible grip to retain his hand position. He grips my left ankle I knock it off with my left forearm
Here's a technical standup out of closed guard. It's easiest to show it with the gi first, and then adapt it to submission grappling and MMA. Most of the time when you have a lapel grip, you ll be pulling and he'll be pulling back. You're trying to break his posture. So first I pull hard......and then I change directions. I come up on my hand and push, knuckles against the collarbone. If he pushes in on me, it actually kind of hurts him. I then bridge my hips up. I have one hand and two feet on the ground and I'm bumping him with my hip. Then I retract my right leg underneath my body.
And back off, squaring up and possibly coming back to my feet. Whenever I do this technique, I know that he s going to probably grab at my trailing leg. I need to have some answers pre-prepared in case this happens. Here he is, looping my left leg with his right arm, hoping to get a single leg takedown. One of the simplest responses is simply being prepared to sprawl my left hip down to the ground HARD as soon as he tries to grab it. Sometimes it's very useful to bring your hand up under the chin. This ll get him worried about a choke and also lift his weight up a little bit. Less weight means easier movement for you!
The bridging and hip lifting movement is important. Here's why: if my hips are on the ground then it's tough to retract my right leg (as in the pic on the right) But if I bridge up and in first then it freaks him out about possibly getting swept, and it also creates a whole lot of room......making it relatively easy to get my right leg out.
You can also do a very similar kind of hip-heist standup without the gi. Start in the closed guard. You're pulling his head down, so naturally he's fighting against you, wanting to establish his posture Cupping his shoulder and levering up under his chin with your forearm, you come up onto your hand. You bridge into him, still applying pressure against the throat with your forearm. And then retract your leg out between your right hand and left foot.
With a few modifications, this technique also works in MMA. Start in closed guard and move to a safer position by shoving his head to one side. Sit up with one arm across his shoulder, using a heavy elbow to keep him down. He's worried about the guillotine choke and the hip bump sweep at this point. Scoot your hips TOWARDS his head (in the photo I'm moving my hips about 6 inches to my left, away from the camera). This change of angles will really help the next few moves, trust me! Then, just as in previous variations, I bridge my hips into him to fake him out and to create room to move... I escape my leg backwards, and then sprawl back, applying the front headlock...
...or stand up and use the Thai clinch to deliver some knees to the head. I ve trained with fighters that were so good at getting back to their feet, that even though I knew exactly what they were going to do, it was very hard to stop them from doing it. And if I tried too hard to stop them, they d use the standup as a setup to hit me with another attack (usually a submission). So on that note, let's take a look at how a standup can actually be a setup for a submission technique: I start in the closed guard with a lapel grip, pulling him down. When he postures up I follow him, getting up onto my right hand.
I bridge up, but my opponent knows what I'm trying to do, so he wraps the leg I want to retract with his left arm. I can't stand up now......so I fling my hips out to my right side and bring my left foot in front of his face. I sit up and apply the omo plata shoulderlock. Don't worry if you can't extract your second leg out from under him. Simply use your arms to apply a Kimura shoulderlock or a compression wristlock.
Let's take a look at a slightly different style of standup. This one starts in the butterfly guard, and it works in BJJ, MMA and submission grappling. Start in the butterfly guard with a bodylock around your opponent's torso and your head buried in his neck. Hop your hips forward and rock your bodyweight backwards......and elevate him as high as you can using both of your legs. Now drop him down and kick him away from you. This will create a lot of space between your hips and your opponent's hips.
You can use this space (plus his backwards momentum) to initiate a quick standup......either coming back to your feet......or sprawling back and catching him in a front headlock. The initial movements of this technique the rocking back and lifting him up are just to allow you to develop enough momentum to really throw him away and create separation.
MMA is not the focus of this course, but I'd be remiss not to talk about the role of standing up in the context of a cagefight. Adding a cage (or even ropes) into the equation really changes things... One of the keys to standing up is the relative height of your head. If you want to stand up your head needs to be HIGHER than your opponent's head. If my head is lower than my opponent's head then standing up is tough! If my head is higher, then it becomes much easier. Many MMA fighters will try to sit up from the guard, getting their head higher than their opponent's head, and then start working their way back towards the cage wall. Once they're against the wall there are a couple of different ways to stand up. The first method basically uses the exact same motion we've been talking about this entire lesson the technical standup except that since you're against a wall you have to modify it by moving your leg out to the side rather than straight backwards (where the fence would block you).
Another method of standing up involves planting both feet and wriggle-walking your shoulder blades up the wall of the cage. So long as you keep your head higher than your opponent's head, its's very tough for him to stop you. Head higher than opponent, back to the wall, and wriggle-walking the shoulder blades up the wall Any successful standup against the wall pretty much guarantees that your opponent is going to switch to a takedown attempt. Usually a double leg or a single leg takedown. Be aware of this and start defending the takedown IMMEDIATELY! Defend the takedown immediately after getting back to your feet! The next time you watch a UFC, look at the relative head position during standup attempts. See if you can spot the difference between the guys who successfully stand up versus the guys who can never get back to their feet.
Here's one more little concept for you. What if you're on top and your opponent wants to scramble away and stand up back to his feet. How do you keep him down? In that situation I'm always thinking about lifting one of his feet off of the ground. With one leg elevated it's really, really, really tough for him to stand up to his feet. I ve only met a couple of people who could stand up when they had a foot in the air, and they were definitely in the extreme minority! Nothing is 100% foolproof, but lifting someone's leg into the air to shut down their ability to stand back up is pretty close to foolproof! Elevate a leg to stop the standup! Lesson 22 Preview: Next week we're going to take another one of Bruce Lee's methods of attack, and apply it to our grappling. You'll be able to use some of this material in your training immediately. Stephan Kesting www.grapplearts.t