Demian Maia Seminar: Part I...

Here are a few of the quick takehomes from a seminar with Demian Maia. 

i) Tighten armbar from side mount by grabbing arm and trapping with shoulder when in tripod; leaves options for straight armbar.

ii) Push arm across opponent's chest via elbow to weaken muscle strength when opponent is gripping gi and defending armbar attack.

iii) North-south choke from tripod; trap opponent's head between rib cage and arm after securing opponent's arm in armbar attack; then reach under opponent's neck and use own ribcage and bicep to apply choke.

There were also a few things on generally tightening the armbar attack by denying the opponent space and ensuring you apply your weight to his body. 

There will be other things I recall but I am still digesting the wealth of information and processing it!

Classes 296 & 297...

A couple more classes working on full guard with an overhook. 

Overhook closed guard options included: omaplata, triangle, then kick arm up and hook with other leg for kimura. 

Important details of the two hands pulling arm of opponent in guard to collapse opponent also using knees.

Sparring was OK, but I am missing a definite game plan with butterfly guard because I am no staying connected. 

I also seriously gassed in the second class. But I am into my third straight 50-hour week at work so fatigue was going to hit at some point! 

Things to remember: Frame and keep hooks active!

Class 294 & 295...

A few classes on involving overhook attacks from closed guard. 

i) Overhooks from closed guard: gives you instant omaplata and triangle options; there is also a surprise kimura option by kicking the opponent's arm up and hooking it with the other leg for the kimura. 

ii) The detail of using two hands to pull the arm of the opponent in guard and collapsing his posture with the two-handed grab and the knees is important.

Sparring was OK but I was a bit haphazard. I was just rolling with little purpose, apart from simply defending.

The second class saw us work on a takedown from standing using an opposite collar grab and sleeve control. This went something like this: 

i) Secure opposite collar and sleeve control; drop to side of opponent and pull him down; then leave left foot for opponent to trip over; scramble to position on top and secure combat base or pass to side. 

Specific sparring was OK in this class once I remembered to get a frame in place. Normal sparring was fine, too, and I hit a wrist lock and a nice omoplata.I only got these once I secured superior position, though.

Things to remember: Drill frame basics and work on side control escapes.

Class 291, 292, 293...

I am back from holiday and I've managed three classes in quick succession. 

Class one was about half guard retention and escape. In this, we covered: 

Lockdown for man on bottom, who interlaces legs in figure four lock with the inside foot hooking onto the opponent's leg and prevents opponent from escaping position easily.

 

The second and third classes were all about takedowns with same side collar grip, pull opponent down on the gripped side, then attack opposite leg for single leg takedown. You end up in half guard and pass to side mount. 

Things to remember: keep hooks active and whip up in lockdown.

Demian Maia Seminar: Part II...

I recently attended a BJJ seminar with Demian Maia. 

For those unfamiliar with Maia, he's a welterweight title contender in the UFC, an ADCC champion and a high-level BJJ competitor with various titles under his belt. Interesting Wikipedia-discovered fact: he also did a journalism degree. We could have ended up in the same industry!

The seminar was fun as two very good white belts I know got promoted to blue belt, then a very high-level blue belt got promoted to purple belt later in the week. All three got their belts for Maia, which is a great story to tell the grandkids! On a selfish note, it was particularly reassuring to see the blue belt get his purple belt because he ruined me without trying the last time we rolled and the gap between us was so massive I feared I was getting worse! But big differentials in skill levels within the same belt can happen at BJJ because the belts are so deep, with three years plus between promotions.

The teaching bit of the seminar was the most impressive bit, though, not only because of how it was taught but because of what was taught. So what do you imagine a top-of-the-food-chain BJJ competitor and UFC fighter was teaching? Some fancy reverse De La Riva sweep or a complex new attack from some funky new guard? 

No. Maia spent a couple of hours dismantling a basic armbar attack from side mount, which is something most white belts learn in the first few months, and he showed how he's worked on refining and tightening up the attack from this position. It may not sound that impressive, but the depth of knowledge and the detail he delivered was hugely impressive. 

In my other martial arts life as a hapkido student, the head of the school, an astonishing man from Korea who's been training in hapkido for about 60 years, is always saying 'Basics!' As a lower belt, I was sometimes annoyed about this because I always wanted to learn the next new thing. But now I've been around a bit longer, I fully appreciate the sentiment. Knowledge and learning can be horizontal to cover lots of ground, but real learning has to be vertical. It has to contain a depth of knowledge that is continually excavated and re-examined.

The Maia seminar had lots of genuinely nice moments, but that was probably my key takehome from it because it was a point when my hapkido training and my BJJ training connected. As I get older in martial arts years, I realise it’s better to have a smaller and more refined skill set than a larger and less developed one. You can know lots of stuff, but you rely on your go-to moves and combinations. Seeing Maia dismantle this technique and demonstrate that depth of knowledge helped make me feel better about not wanting to know more but to know less more thoroughly. 

I realised some time ago that my BJJ ‘game’, if such a thing ever materialises, will never be a complex thing. It will be based on simple and solid fundamentals that are drilled and continually refined over time. This is a development that started to happen in my hapkido, which I now see as a small skill set based on key principles that adapts to different circumstances and entry points, a few years ago. 

So it was nice to sort of have this approach also demonstrated by a high-level grappler like Maia. The lessons on leverage and keeping things together and closing down space were about attacking the armbar from side mount. But they were also applicable to everything else. 

To quote another martials arts man, one Miyamoto Musushi, ‘From one thing know ten thousand things!’