My instructors view on half guard lockdown

During our roll sessions today, my instructor saw me pull half guard to lockdown and addressed it after class. He said I am limiting myself because I'm pulling the person on me and forcing lockdown that can be easily defeated by sitting on your hip opposite the lockdown and turning towards the lockdown to use your hands to break free. He stated once you sit your hip/butt cheek down, the lockdown is basically defeated.

I didn't want to argue with him and explain about getting double under hooks so they can't do that. He's the teacher I listen. But, he gave an option. He said since I seem to be a fair half guard player, he wants to work with it and teach me deep half/ open half(I beleive he means Z guard). He stated lockdown should be my last option from half guard. Keep the weight of my opponent off me unless I have no choice. I can see the logic behind this. I am very happy he seems to want to work with my half guard game even though he is not a fan. He stated he'll work to give me a well rounded half guard instead of just the lockdown.

What is your thoughts on defeating lockdown by simply laying the hip opposite of lockdown side on the mat?

If someone puts their hip on the ground transition to the dog fight. That means there weight is off you. As far as your instructor, mine does not like the lockdown as well, but it's tough to argue good results. That being said, learn what he teaches you and practice it. There is no downside to learning different forms of half guard. In fact you're probably going to need traditional half and z guard as people learn you like the lockdown and try to stop you from getting there

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Originally Posted by Joe Mayall

If someone puts their hip on the ground transition to the dog fight. That means there weight is off you. As far as your instructor, mine does not like the lockdown as well, but it's tough to argue good results. That being said, learn what he teaches you and practice it. There is no downside to learning different forms of half guard. In fact you're probably going to need traditional half and z guard as people learn you like the lockdown and try to stop you from getting there

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I agree, but I don't think he understands the philosophy of getting double underhooks. This is a Gi school so I am not sure he is getting the concept of what and why I do things the way I do. I'm not there to try and make him understand either. When he appears more receptive due to my results I will start maybe explaining the logic. Dog fight is a great idea but he doesn't even consider the double underhooks, he only explains from having an over under, thus his explanation makes sense.

That confuses me, as double underhooks is best with or without lockdown. Lucas Leite, one of the best half guard players does not use the lockdown and is all about double underhooks. In fact I remember Eddie giving him props for it, can't remember what MTS though.

I am confused as well but my instructor is all about using the Gi for leverage and gripping your opponent. I Need to explain to him that in my line of work (police), I don't have the luxury of always having a Gi, so I focus on no gi grips. I try to apply most of my JJ to how it works in the field. The lockdown is killer with my work boots on, of course that is worse case scenario if I'm on my back.

One thing I will say about real world fights is that the lockdown, or any half guard is TERRIBLE for self defense. In MMA, you are not allowed to hit to the back of the head, which is why the lockdown with a double underhooks clinch is so effective. In a street fight, you are going to eat elbows to the back of the head, which is going to be detrimental. And I'm absolutely no Combatives expert or anything, but I would be focusing on creating distance using an open guard, and getting back to your weapons (handgun, taser, pepper spray, etc.). The last thing I would want in an altercation is a suspect reaching down an pulling my weapon while I have him in a lockdown. I would suggest looking into Gracie Survival Tactics, it's designed for law enforcement and military, with emphasis on not only protecting your self from strikes, back protecting your weapons from being used against you. Again, I'm no expert.

Lockdown is worst case scenario. I am actually one of our control tactics instructors so yes we work from distance. Lock down is used for control in a fight where you are out matched. It's made to be used as a stall until back up can get there. The idea I've developed for officers is you've been surprised knocked off your feet, doesn't matter the reason but you're on your ass and your bad guy has fighting experience. He's getting past your guard what do you do? Lockdown will get you through until help arrives. Double underhooks will help keep him off your tool belt, especially your weapon side.
He won't advance to mount, just keep his posture broke down and rest, he's the one that has to do the work. I would like to think bad guy will feel uncomfortable enough to reach back and try to pry the lockdown at which point you can reach a weapon.

Of course we teach to try and get back to a position of advantage to maintain distance, but it doesn't always work that way and moving around on the ground with a gun belt on is not as easy as rolling on a mat.

Yeah, lockdown's pathetically easy to counter with a simple hip turn. Royler proved that at Metamoris once and for all.

It's not so much of a bad thing to pull lockdown if you're constantly attacking. Where I can see people getting annoyed a little bit would be if you just got it to prevent their pass and make their life difficult rather than attack and transition to other half guards or even full guard. Think of guards and points of contact as lines of defense, and lockdown as a tool that can bail you out of a desperate situation while also giving you some attack options. It shouldn't be the first line of defense. Start with full guard, work out to butterfly guard, de la riva, reverse de la riva, x-guard, you name it. Basically any guard that utilizes the feet as the line of defense. After that, there would be knee-shield game. You could swim for underhooks, build the pyramid, get triangles/armbars, and always recover to earlier lines of defense. There no shame in that. If he's more than progressed past your feet and he's coming past your knees, then you can start entering half-guard, deep-half, and lockdown game. Think of each layer of your game though as lines of defense. If you're not that good at any one particular thing, butterfly or closed guard for example, you identify that as a hole in your game, you review resources, drill it out a little bit, try it in rolls, and analyze. But it can understandably be frustrating if a guy is always pulling lockdown and it takes up the majority of the round. It should be used liberally on the offensive front, and defensively only to get on your side and to generate movement, but sometimes it's even ok to let it go in non-competition simply to generate more movement and collaboration.

osu

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Originally Posted by ErikLavigne

I was not taught how to stretch in JJ as a new student. They have us jogging around the mat and shrimping and shit, but no stretching at all. Coming from a TKD background where we spent 15 minutes formally in every single class stretching, this seems crazy to me.

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See Z-guard utilizes the feet as points of contact on his hip & thigh. It's a perfect guard for managing distance and timing your shot for the double underhooks. From there, you can take a quick turn straight into lockdown and hit an electric chair. But utilizing the feet and knees as points of contact are going to have literally a thousand different names, but they're all built into the same principles and follow the same template. Don't ever feel at odds with your instructor or combative. Always listen and take his knowledge. Keep building the pyramid, and eventually your bottom game and top game will come together as a unit and you'll become super comfortable. Give it about 2 years of consistent training and it'll start to get really fun.

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Originally Posted by Arman Fathi

It's not so much of a bad thing to pull lockdown if you're constantly attacking. Where I can see people getting annoyed a little bit would be if you just got it to prevent their pass and make their life difficult rather than attack and transition to other half guards or even full guard. Think of guards and points of contact as lines of defense, and lockdown as a tool that can bail you out of a desperate situation while also giving you some attack options. It shouldn't be the first line of defense. Start with full guard, work out to butterfly guard, de la riva, reverse de la riva, x-guard, you name it. Basically any guard that utilizes the feet as the line of defense. After that, there would be knee-shield game. You could swim for underhooks, build the pyramid, get triangles/armbars, and always recover to earlier lines of defense. There no shame in that. If he's more than progressed past your feet and he's coming past your knees, then you can start entering half-guard, deep-half, and lockdown game. Think of each layer of your game though as lines of defense. If you're not that good at any one particular thing, butterfly or closed guard for example, you identify that as a hole in your game, you review resources, drill it out a little bit, try it in rolls, and analyze. But it can understandably be frustrating if a guy is always pulling lockdown and it takes up the majority of the round. It should be used liberally on the offensive front, and defensively only to get on your side and to generate movement, but sometimes it's even ok to let it go in non-competition simply to generate more movement and collaboration.

osu

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Yes this is pretty much what my instructor said. He said I am letting people blow past my levels of control and distance and forcing my opponent to put all their weight on me. So I am excited to learn these levels of defense as you put it.

Your coach hates us, cuz he anus.

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Originally Posted by bobby rivers

Your coach hates us, cuz he anus.

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I'd agree that he may be peanut butter jealous bro

send him the link to Metamoris 3 with the comment 'sit on this!' :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6344FL3T-bU

This recent Gracie breakdown on street fights is a good reference too (they do talk a little about HG).

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.

Does the same advice I'm getting a lot of in my RG thread apply here as well?

Erik is a whitebelt, at a school who does not teach lockdown, teaching himself some 10p techniques. I would expect the advice to be similar. Things like:

1. your partners may not respect you
2. learn what your instructors have to offer
3. wait until you are bluebelt
4. don't teach yourself 10p techniques

I'm not being sarcastic or anything. The situations just seem quite similar to me but I haven't heard quite the same response.

Craig the big difference is I used to do 10p. I did 10p 2007-2011. Military move forced me to stop, then kids, then crappy gyms that didn't offer no-Gi. Moved to Texas and now 5 years later I'm getting back into. I'm not teaching myself 10p, I'm reverting back to muscle memory and previous training.

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Originally Posted by ErikLavigne

Craig the big difference is I used to do 10p. I did 10p 2007-2011.

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What rank where you when you left?

Blue

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Originally Posted by ErikLavigne

Blue

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Just out of curiosity, did you demote yourself to whitebelt when you came back after the long break, or was that at the request of your new instructor? If it was your choice, what made that decision for you? A respect thing, or were you just not confident in your rusty skills?

I moved myself down. I am in no way a blue belt in my opinion. I can't consistantly hit basic techniques, body positioning feels off still...just a lot of factors that don't add up. Plus I could care less about a belt honestly. I'm in it to learn for my line of work,to stay in shape, to have fun and to pass something on to my kids. The belt doesn't matter. If I do a tournament, I'll let my instructor tell me where he wants me to compete in. I do feel bad for the white belts in class though, they thought they had fresh meat when I first joined lol.

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Originally Posted by ErikLavigne

I do feel bad for the white belts in class though, they thought they had fresh meat when I first joined lol.

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Not only are you not fresh meat, you're coming at them with stuff they have never seen before! I bet they crap themselves when you EC sweep them.

It's the rubber guard that they are most intrigued with. Most admit to playing around with RG but didn't realize there was so much to it. Some told me they've grabbed their ankle to hold people in a crappy RG, but could never control anyone. So after nailing the Carni a few times they realized I actually had steps and a path to take. Most of the class realized quick it was not wise to let me break their posture.

Now I'm stuck in that position where the blue belts and white belts want me to show them stuff, but I don't want to offend the instructor. Most of the time if they ask "what did you do to me?" I'll just demonstrate real quick on someone else with no break down.

There's nothing more annoying than when you're working on a new technique and someone tells you its a waste of time because there is a counter. There is a counter to every technique.

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Originally Posted by ErikLavigne

Most of the class realized quick it was not wise to let me break their posture.

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How are you fairing with this once they know, are you getting them broken down in the gi? And how is your Zombie working out? Do they like to grab you belt, your lapels?

What most of them have been doing is once I zombie the arm they reach around my leg and grab their own belt. Kind of like a triangle defense. They just don't understand what to do yet. I usually zombie all at once, they haven't had much chance to defend against it.

I caught some flak learning lockdown because a previous instructor said it tied me to my opponent too much. But that's just because I wasn't good at the mini stomp transition yet. Your instructor may be a bit narrow minded at the moment, but looking at his advice in another light is he not just saying to perfect your transitions between lockdown half and other half guards and guards? Good advice. And as a ronin you got to ignore the narrow mindedness (last resort/etc. comments). Work/drill your game.

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Originally Posted by ErikLavigne

What most of them have been doing is once I zombie the arm they reach around my leg and grab their own belt. Kind of like a triangle defense. They just don't understand what to do yet. I usually zombie all at once, they haven't had much chance to defend against it.

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Wow, that sounds like a blast :) So they are giving you free New Yorks pretty much all the time. Do you get free Chill Dogs as well?

If they hook around your leg and grab their own belt, isn't that like asking for an omoplata?

What are you finishing them with?

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Originally Posted by Craig Murray

Wow, that sounds like a blast :) So they are giving you free New Yorks pretty much all the time. Do you get free Chill Dogs as well?

If they hook around your leg and grab their own belt, isn't that like asking for an omoplata?

What are you finishing them with?

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Yes, usually get a free pass to chill dog. Me still not being as sharp as I was tend to go through the steps instead of jumping right to it. I typically finish with a Carni. They love to try and push that foot on the hip in between their legs. I think they believe they are gaining some control, but I prefer the Carni over the omoplata.