Musings from the BJJ Gi #18, lesson 19; clinch (aggressive opponent) & straight armlock (guard)

Clinch (aggressive opponent) is not much different to the strategy for clinch (conservative opponent), except for the obvious; that the aggressive opponent is approaching you with strikes, and the conservative is just approaching you. Both drills involve first maintaining the safe distance of two arm lengths, the 'bad guy' takes two steps towards you, and you maintain that safe distance for those two steps by stepping back, leading with your rear leg, maintaining a solid wide base the whole time (never step so that your legs cross at any point), hands out towards your opponent to keep measuring distance, and maintaining eye contact. Also in both drills, you close the distance/shoot for the clinch upon the third step taken by your opponent, and regardless of whether it's a conservative opponent or an aggressive one, you close the distance with the same strong step forward with your 'helmet' on (hands touching the top of your head, eyes still looking forward, elbows protecting your face), make contact with your elbows/forearms/'helmet' to their chest, take another step closer with your rear leg to get hip-on-hip closeness, and at the same time attain the clinch grip behind their back and glue your ear to their shoulder.

The straight armlock from the guard has 3 variations; low variation, high variation, and triangle transition.

The low variation starts with your opponent down (head low) in your closed guard, and they swim their arms in to attack your neck with a two hand strangle. You keep their head controlled and low with one arm, and with the other, reach underneath their leg and turn your body towards that leg. Your grip on the back of their neck now switches to putting your forearm across the front of their neck to lift their head up, and that creates the space to swing your leg around to in front of their neck; the same place where your forearm was lifting. You now switch both of your hands to holding onto the trapped arm by the wrist, bite your legs down around their neck and back, glue their wrist down to your chest, and raise your hips towards the ceiling to finish the armlock. I'll attach an image of Rener in the armlock finish position here:

The high variation is a similar situation, except that your opponent is sitting up high in your guard, strangling your neck with both hands, but this time their arms are fully extended and locked straight, their head is high. This one is faster; you grab a hold of one of their wrists with your hand on the same side, then reach underneath their leg again on the other side, and as you pull your own torso towards their leg, you also swing your leg and hips up and around the arm of the wrist you are holding, so that you end up in the same armlock position as in the previous slice, and finish in the same way too.

The triangle transition is super cool (I love triangles), and the indicator for it in this situation is when your armlock is a bit loose and/or your opponent sees it coming and pulls their arm out before you can successfully lock it up. You make a quick transition to the triangle set up position, keeping your hips high, and moving the leg you swung around for the armlock back half a step, so that goes over their shoulder, trapping their head in the triangle set up position, and you lock your feet tight behind their back. You then progress through the steps of the standard triangle setup/finish; get their inside arm over to the other side of your body, hold it their by the wrist, hold the back of their neck with your other hand, unlock your feet, put your foot which is on the side of their trapped arm on their hip and push to help you walk your shoulders back away from them to lower their head closer to your hip level, use the hand gripping the back of their neck to quickly switch to grabbing your own shin (the one behind their head), now take your foot off their hip and quickly lock it over the top of your other ankle, both hands grab the back of their head, squeeze your thighs together, lift your hips up, and pull their head down, and booyah, triangle!
Cheers!

• David