Reverse de la Riva Guard: A Step by Step Tutorial

[bobby rivers]

If he can successfully stomp you, you never fully established control. If you have control and he tries to stomp you, he just fucked up. If you game is tight, he won't have a free hand to punch with. He needs to be breaking your control or establishing his own.

The arch nemesis of both these guards, especially nogi, is fucking toeholds. You have to be super vigilant at all times. Nothing about these guards can be lazy. All limbs, torso, and hips active at all times. It takes tons of work.

[Liquidrob]

Good stuff, but interesting on the kiss of the Dragon he says to unhook the reverse de la riva hook

Rafa teaches to always keep that hook tight, lift with your hips and get on your shoulder because once you lose hook you can get leg dragged, also always have the other leg controlling the distance so you don't get smashed on

On MBonline they have a bunch of good inverted de la riva (that's what they call it) / KOD stuff with great instruction

[Mike Nall]

The RDLR is so important in modern grappling, and especially no-gi, because it allows you to maintain the distance and not be smashed. Rafa Mendes vs. Rodolfo Vieira nogi is a prime example and so are a lot of Keenan Cornelius' early matches against big guys like Rustam.

Last night at the Expo, Leandro Lo kept Jake Shields' weight completely on the ends of his feet and arms. it's so much easier on your body because you aren't having to pull someone's weight on top of you. There's a time and place for half guard, but in modern grappling RDLR is more difficult to pass. There aren't a ton of sweeping options from RDLR, but it's a great position that's very hard to pass if you know how to stay active and switch back and forth between DLR and RDLR.

You could argue that it's also not good on the body long term to invert and do that type of game, but if you watch the better DLR and RDLR players, they usually don't invert when their opponent's weight is on them. They usually are already mid sweep and there's not too much pressure on the spine/neck.

I'll post it here for good measure, but just pay attention that even though Rafa can't get a sweep or a back-take, Rodolfo is never able to cross Rafa's hip-line, and can't dominate any solid grips on the upper body or the lower body. Even if you try to secure over-unders or a darce or a guillotine in someone's RDLR you have to almost literally dive on it unless you can force your way past their RDLR hook into half guard or a knee cut.