Your Advice My Friends

[AJ Camacho]

Von flue from side control is legit, I hit it all teh time.

Good to know.

[Chris Herzog]

take off your socks.

[Louis Hermann]

Louis,

If I was to give you some advice (other than just roll as often as possible), it would be to look for opportunities instead of trying to force the action.

An example of what I'm saying is at 4:40 you decided to get the twister going, but it just wasn't going to happen because your opponent knew what you wanted to do and was just not going to let you get it. You spent 40 seconds trying to force it and ended up getting in a bad position (and tiring yourself out). You could have easily gone to North and South control when the twister wasn't happening and tried to make something happen there.

My point is that the best players are the ones that recognize opportunities and take advantage of them. They seem effortless, they don't force things or use excessive force to make things happen. If you try to force things, you'll be unsuccessful most of the time and you'll exhaust yourself.

You are still pretty new to this, so you going to miss tons opportunities that are there, but try to look for opportunities when rolling and it'll shorten the learning curve. Blue belts recognize more opportunities, Purples recognize even more, and so on.

Good advice, very much appreciated. Yeah, my buddy was on to all of my tricks when we rolled. I got him with a Von Flue earlier that day, demonstrated the Twister and how to defend it (though he still turned into me) and tapped him with armbars all day the prior training session. I feel that I do my best work from guard, but he's timid and never takes the opportunities for top when he has them, so I ended up playing top that entire session. I don't know why I just feel so off when I mount, especially against a bigger guy like him.

[Tony Toffolo]

take off your socks.

+1

[Louis Hermann]

take off your socks.

Beat's wrestling shoes :/

[Justin W.]

Von flue from side control is legit, I hit it all teh time.

Agreed. Side control Von Flue is a go to when guys don't let go and I'm weak as shit.

[Mike Dewitt Jr]

Keep training, keep looking for new stuff to add to your game, and what helps me the most is to visualize me performing the techniques. I have done hundreds of reps in my mind and I guarantee that others will agree with me that it helps with body awareness to be able to see yourself doing this stuff.

[J Grooms]

If you don't feel comfortable in mount, and forcing the grapvine isn't working.. then north south might be the way to go for your top game. If you've been rolling less than a year then you have plenty time to experiment. Just have fun with it...

[Jason Hyatt]

The Von Flue Choke is done from within your opponent's full guard like this.



From half guard, the best you can do (at least from what I know) is to setup the grip for the arm triangle and then advance position to mount or side for the finish. When you advanced to side and drove your shoulder you were just applying shoulder pressure to his neck. I'm sure a ripped dude could finish from there but you probably would have had a better shot cinching up your grip to an arm triangle and jumping to the opposite side or mount for the finish.

Naming conventions aside, spiking your ass up and increasing the angle of your upper body is an effective defense against a half guard guillotine. Easy to defend but embarrassing to get caught in, especially with a dude who won't let go of your head.

I love this vid! I've seen it a couple of times and it's great. Came close to teaching a new guy a lesson with this one in drills the other night. We weren't working the guillotine AT ALL but he needed to win one-minute drills like it was Abu Dhabi so he grabbed my head and started squeezing like hell. I stacked and was working my shoulder to his carotid when I heard Coach yell at him for not working on the techniques we were drilling. I don't know if I could have tapped him with it but I've used it to good effect before. My legs are long enough to stack pretty much straight down on that carotid with my bony-ass shoulder. Just a great choke if you enjoy that "WTF?!?" moment on their faces...