We have been cross-training a lot at a local Gracie school because they have a lot of high-level guys, and we want to work out with as many high level folks as possible. They are very self-defense based, and sort of look down on sport focused JJ.
While rolling with one of the purple belts, he immediately started to comment on my lockdown with, “Man, that’s tough to get out of. I’ve never experienced that before”. These were positive comments, but they quickly turned sour, “I’d hate to do that while someone was trying to punch me in the face though, not very effective”. I responded and said, “Throw some fake punches if you don’t mind…I’d like to see if I can defend them”. As soon as he raised his hand up to posture for a punch, I whipped him up (forcing him to post his hand to the mat), got an electric sweep. We went through about 10 iterations of this, each time I was able to either sweep, move to dogfight, wrap him up (5.0 sweep style), etc. When we finished our roll, he made some more comments about the lockdown and finally asked if I would mind staying after class and showing him some of it. This was positive; however, some other dude in class walked passed us and pointed at me and said to the purple belt I had been rolling, “yea, he sure likes to wrap that leg up and hold on don’t he?” Not really an accurate assessment in my opinion.
Fortunately, the resident black belt and brown belt are a bit more open minded (although still primarily self-defense based). The brown belt especially wanted to learn the defenses to the lockdown, as he had immediately seen the effectiveness (no brown-belt wants to get swept over and over by a blue belt, right?). We were happy to oblige, because the better their defense becomes, the better our lockdown will have to get.
I hope your training partners will learn to embrace the efficiency and effectiveness, and start learning how to defend it instead of expecting you to use lockdown as a last resort. To me, the beauty of the lockdown is that I can control a huge aspect of what’s happening from my back (or thereabouts). I can clinch and hold them on top of me, I can whip up and get their hips away from my hips, I can whip down and steal an under-hook, I can do a variety of things to make them so uncomfortable that they give me some space to take advantage of. I think any position where you can dictate where your opponents hips are is not to be simply brushed off as a “last resort” position.
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