The beauty of BJJ is the constant innovation. When high level guys fight each other, they are forced to develop new skills. Competition breeds innovation. One aspect of BJJ that has become more common in recent years is the art of inverting.
A got a lot of nice feedback on the list of 10 things to improve your BJJ in 2014 so now I want to share with you a drill that I taught at a seminar at Gracie Barra Corona last month. This is an inversion drill that I like to do. For beginners, it's easiest to start with a partner. You can use your partner for balance as you invert. Notice in the pic below that the standing partner can also help by holding your ankle to his hip for additional stability.
Do this drill enough with a partner and you will soon be able to drill the inversion by yourself. Don't be discouraged if inverting doesn't come easy for you. It's a strange feeling being upside down. Most people's first reactions are "Inverting just isn't for me!" Well to that student I would say "Do you enjoy getting your guard passed?" Inverting is not something to do just because you want to look flashy. It has a very practical benefit that allows you to recover guard when your opponent is well past your legs. To put it simply, by learning to invert, your guard will get passed less. Not only that, inverting will allow you to develop a much more flowing game. And it has the added benefit of looking really cool ;)
Not just for guard recovery though, inverting allows for some really sneaky attacks and transitions. It's hard to anticipate where someone is going when they invert. One attack I like to do starts with a kimura grip from half guard.
In this case, your my opponent is gripping his belt making it impossible to break his grip to get the kimura. Instead, I use an inversion to go straight to a triangle. The beauty of this attack is that your opponent generally never feels like he is in danger. His base never gets compromised and he feels like he's defending the initial attack (the kimura) - the whole time being oblivious to the fact that the kimura is just a set up.
You can watch the drill and the submission clip right here. I want to thank my friend JP Garcia for being my partner in this video and for posting it!
Additional resources: Want to learn more about inverting? Cobrinha covers inverted guard in this on-demand video or DVD. Ryan Hall teaches it on this DVD and Caio Terra uses it on his DVD set also.
So what do you think, do you like inverting? Do you hate it? Or maybe you just haven't learned it yet? Let me know in the comments below!
0 comments