As the new year approached, I made a list of resolutions for my jiu-jitsu training with “Get better at no-gi” and “Beef up my no-gi chokes” at the top. This has been changing the direction of my training, which you’ll see in later articles and tutorials.
I was fortunate enough to talk to Jeff Rockwell about my new goals. It turns out his main game revolves around no-gi chokes. After some badgering, he went out of his way to film a tutorial of them for me, and he’s happy for me to share them on my journal too.
Below you’ll find 17 minutes of instruction on no-gi chokes by Jeff, as well as a highlight reel of him competing, where he gets half of the chokes he shows.
No-gi Chokes – Part One
The papercutter/baseball bat choke, the brabo, two arm triangle finishes, and two Monty Python guillotine setups with one recounter.
Part Two
Two drop guillotine variations, foot drag method of taking the back, and finishing the guillotine from the mount.
Rockwell Submission League ’06 Highlight
SBG Submission League Highlight, Spring 2006, 175lb. Advanced Division, Beaverton, OR.
Jeff is my hero.
totally awesome stuff 😛
Awesome stuff. Hey.. I recognized one of the guys on the tournement video. Chris Davis.. gettin choked.
Jeff answered some questions on a mma.tv thread about this that I think add a lot to the tutorial.
Q: I’ve got a question about your head and arm finish from the top. You try and get perpendicular with your opponent to tighten the choke, but what is stopping him from following you so that you two would be running in circles?
A: For the most part, nothing prevents him from circling. The main thing that makes that an inefficient defense for him is that you can circle just as fast if not faster than he can, and you are continuously choking him at this point. But there are three things I do to get ahead of him if I feel like we are starting to do a silly circling dance.
a. Start using my arms to finish the choke, as opposed to relying on the circling action of my body. You’ll be amazed at how quickly he slows down. 😉 Of course, you don’t want to burn your arms, so you are still looking to get that angle on him and finish with positioning.
b. Fold the leg that is closest to his body (so he can’t hook it with a leg as he circles), and place the tip of your knee by his hip. Now try to use your knee to press off his hip and continue to force your upper body in a circular motion around his. This is kind of how Marcus Aurelio finished Gomi, though Aurelio actually had the hip of his knee ON the tip, not just beside it.
c. You are circling towards his head, he is chasing you. Do a quick sit-out towards his head, then switch your hips back over the top. This is like taking a big giant step instead of lots of little steps, and will usually put you far enough ahead of him to finish.
The main thing I’ve found with arm triangles is that they are just like leg triangles. You need lots of little adjustments, you can’t just slap it on and squeeze against good guys. Your adjustments depend a lot on how he is defending.
Q: Second, with the one choke, I think you call it a monty python, it’s the one from the first clip where you sit back into it with your knee in the armpit, then how do you stop your opponent from passing the guard ?
A: My shin across his belt line and the leg across his back do a nice job of immobilizing his body and preventing him from passing. It appears as though he could tap my knee out of the way and pass over, but because of the grip on his head and arm, that moves him deeper into the choke. If you are able to view the HL vid where I finish with that choke, you’ll see my opponent is trying to do just that, pass over the knee. Fortunately for me, that’s not a good counter. 😉
What he can do (if he does it early enough) is spin his upper body away from me, on the side of the knee. It gives me his back, but at least he’s not getting choked.
For those of you having trouble with myspace videos, you can watch them on youtube now:
I have a problem, how do you get someone who hasn’t seen this video help you practice a “Monty Python”. I need a more descriptive name or some better language to help grappling partners figure out what the hell I’m trying to do.