Back in the Gi - Transitionin' and Submissionin' (diary entry)

The butterfly guard being used during Judo training. The judogi of the top combatant is grabbed to prevent him from moving away. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My client requested a lesson focusing on groundwork and transitioning for the gi. I haven’t done work in the gi for a long time, but I obliged andwe looked at what could benefit judo. My gi work is largely in Brazilian jiu jitsu, so I had to adapt concepts to the rule-set of judo, being wary of what permitted and what would be relevant.

We began with butterfly guard, a position that isn’t very common in judo and yet is present and permitted. I emphasized the importance of retaining the integrity of the structure, which generally means keeping a strong core (my apologies to my conditioning instructors who getting sick of hearing this term). A good standard butterfly guard involves hooking both the opponent’s legs with your feet, turning your toes out. You should be sat up in an active posture as opposed to lying down and should establish some hold on your opponent’s upperbody.

I first drilled the arm-drag to back mount position. Then we looked at a simple sweep. After this we covered controlling an opponent’s arms with your legs. This moved into spider-guard and we covered attacking with the triangle choke and the arm-bar.

Looking at transitioning from a less than successful throw, we drilled passing a single knee into knee-on-stomach. I felt that if my client was having trouble transitioning then the best base to work from was an examination into actual transitioning. I ran him through a simple round body series of pins. This exercise encourages the student to maintain control around the body and to leave out gaps where the opponent might escape. We then layered the transitions into pins with individual submissions. Next we looked at tactic for chasing a single arm submission.This exercise can be improved with increased levels of resistance.