Rodrigo Vaghi Seminar

What a great seminar. Almost too much to fit in my head.

We started with butterfly guard passes, focusing on killing the hips, getting our head lower than the person, pinching our knees together and then flattening them out. Then the "twitch" to get a two on one leg position, raising then knee closest to the head to use to push the knee out of the way for the pass.

To counter that, we learned to frame the head and arm, avoiding the cross face and either "x" the far leg by reinserting our hook that was cleared or preparing to swim with the underhook if they switched hips.

Next we worked on transitioning to the x-guard from butterfly if they attempted to cross grip our leg and swing it by to pass. That led to a nice x-guard sweep. We also learned how to avoid the x-guard sweep by putting our knee the chest, getting a cross grip with the hand nearest their head and then putting our knee on the mat (twisting in) when the extended the X.

Finally, we worked on back escapes, remembering to keep our core, block our face and neck, straighten a leg then fall immediately to the side....not backwards. We use the leg opposite the direction we fall to frame against the ground so that we can not be pulled back up. We then use the arm closest their feet to brace their top knee and start shrimping towards their feet. The knee grip allows us to ensure that they can not sit back into mount and we end up in their guard.

It was a great time.