This entire sequence depends on having a good strong collar grip so the point of your wrist is pressing hard into the side of your opponent’s neck. If you can’t secure a good collar grip, there’s no point in trying this sequence. Shawn Williams taught us a cool trick to sink in a deep collar grip. All you have to do is open your guard briefly to loosen your opponent’s kimono. Sink your grip in and then close up your guard.

Cross-choke

1. From guard, opponent is attacking your collar
2. Use 2-on-1 to break collar-grip but maintain control of sleeve with a cross-grip
3. Pop head through window and sit up to over-hook
4. Sink your other hand into opponent’s collar at back of neck
5. Release over-hook and shifting body to side, reach under to grab other collar as deep as you can
6. Straighten body out and pull elbows down towards your belt

Scissor-sweep Variation

If you can’t get a good collar grip to finish the cross-choke, you might want to try a scissor sweep. When I drilled this I had the original collar grip and also a behind-the-elbow grip, but I think I might have better results with an overhook.

1. Open guard and point toes towards in the direction of the sweep.
2. Carve knee across opponent’s chest and plant high at shoulder while hooking his side with your foot
3. Lay sweep-side leg flat on the ground
4. Turn body completely sideways so your shoulders are perpendicular to the ground
5. Without releasing your grips, touch your nose to the ground
6. Land in mount

Arm-Bar variation

If you can’t get the scissor sweep because your opponent sits back on his haunches and strains backwards, you can try for an arm bar.

1. Straighten out the hook leg and drive it up into your opponent’s armpit
2. Shift your other thigh so it’s resting on top of your opponent’s thigh
3. While maintaining downward pressure with the hook leg, swing your other foot out and over your opponent’s head
4. Secure opp’s arm while straightening legs for arm-bar

Arm-bar to Cross-choke variation

This was my favorite transition of the whole series. If you are struggling to finish the arm bar you can shift your hips and end up back in a cross choke. When Shawn unveiled this final transition there were many gasps from the class because of the diabolical simplicity of this transition. I struggled with this move and after class I went over it in my head for hours. Finally I realized that the reason I had trouble with this entire sequence was because I failed to get a good initial collar grip or released my collar grip somewhere in the middle. My error became glaringly apparent when I tried to fall back into a cross-choke from an arm-bar attempt because the point of my wrist wasn’t anywhere near my opponent’s kneck.

1. Cross-grab top of opponent’s shoulder
2. Straighten out your body and relax backwards
3. Pull elbows down towards your belt to complete cross-choke

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 2nd, 2007 at 10:26 pm and is filed under Hollywood BJJ, classwork, gi, technique. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.