Silverback Passing Game

To start off our Top game and Guard Passing strategies, this month I have decided to focus on what I am calling the Silverback Game.

As I first thought about it, I wanted to call it a Top game- but really it is more of a Passing game. Either way, it can be a lot of fun. The name comes from one of my coaches who in a seminar last summer explained one of the concept postures as 'The Silverback Stance'. It kinda stuck for me.

However it wasn't until more recently when I was in Montana that the concept actually stuck in my head. While rolling for my Blue Belt promotion I had the chance to roll with another instructor and Black Belt of the organisation that I had previously not had the pleasure of rolling with before. His game was very unique, and in all the people and body types I rolled with over the entire weekend, his game felt so much different than anything else I had experienced, and I knew I wanted to be able to embody that kind of pressure too. So as soon as I got back from the seminar, at our club we've been slowly moving along these concepts.

Honestly, like the Moth Guard, these are not positions that I've come up with. In fact almost the entirety of the Silverback stuff is just pieced together from what I've seen my coaches teach, or concepts that work for other people combined with my own experiences. But then again, I have yet to have anyone show me a game that delivers the movement and pressure that I am looking for here. This is a Very New Game. It is in its first baby steps phase where a lot of problem solving and adjustments will need to be made. It will change.

For those of you who know what to look for, I am going to try to explain what we are going to be working with over the  month, and how this game fits together. If you look at each piece then I think you can get a pretty good understanding of the progression of our training drills this month.

Step One - Silverback Stance
The game starts out from closed guard, and the 5 step guard passing progression we use. In this progression however, we are passing from a standing position, and this also marks the movements and most of the feel of the game for us. Whenever possible have your postures and positions aligned with this squat stance of a position. So start in closed guard. Top person dive to, or start in -safety position. From there we progress to 2nd base (a variation of base and posture- more extended). And from that position we come to- The Silverback Stance. Now once here, camp out for a sec to get the feel for it and the pressures and defences that are necessary to survive. The next pressure is using the stance to open the legs from a combination of stalling until the person on bottom gets bored, or opens themselves to do something, and pushing your hips backwards into the join of where their feet are crossed. As soon as their legs open, then we are going right into Silverback Stance again, this time with adjusted grips on the pants/legs. If anything goes wrong  throughout the entire progression, reset into safety position and start again from the beginning.

Step Two - Standing Combat Base
The next part of the game, is surviving and controlling the legs once you are in position. Keep your weight really heavy on your heels in Silverback stance so you are hard to move around. This should give you the opportunity to get to our next position of Standing Combat Base. This position is written up really well in Cane Prevost's Blog- The Gentle Art. He has a bunch of stuff written there, and this is where we have been getting some of our drills for this position too. The only things that change for us throughout this progression is what passes we are using as we get the legs and hips under control enough to continue to the next phase.

Step Three - Gorilla Passing
This series of passes were introduced to me by several different sources, and all at different times. Some coaches showed me two or three passes that worked well together, and other passes I have seen and used just seemed in fit into the same concepts. There are a few ways in which I think about passing the guard (and seeing that I'm a Blue belt, all this is probably in the wrong order, ha!).

The first is a playful game against the guard, that I just ride it out and surf on the opponents guard until they give me something. This is quite relaxed and fun (but usually gives my opponent a huge advantage and sees me end up on the bottom working my escapes). The only way I've survived any length of time here is with the ability to hip-in like mad and be sprawl-ready all the time. The ability to drop your weight into the mats and your opponent, while getting low is key here.

The next is a newer one for me, and a great one to play with too- gathering and collecting. Being in the guard and just using all your tools to gather up the legs, and collect them together, or to the ground, or in the air. Basically you are trying to limit their movement, but with no particular pressure or technique. Just keep you elbows tight to your ribs, and keep your posture and base strong. Once you have a opportunity to step-in under the knees to kill the legs in the air, do it. Or if you have the opportunity to pin them to the mats or together, then go with that as well.

The last is an aggressive charge through the guard, much like the Silverback's display in defending their territory. Beat your chest, growl, and smash right on through the guard. If that doesn't work, be stubborn and keep doing it. You'll eventually get the smash, or the jump, or the leg-drag / ankle reap.

The idea with all of these options to get your opponent under control is just that- GET YOUR OPPONENT UNDER CONTROL! Keep everything close and slow and intentional. No big burst spastic movements. In fact all the movements we want to use should be relaxed and intentional. Use the warm-up motions that we practice. Sliverback stance, Gorilla walking (both alternating sides and on the same side), Frog-hops and hip in sprawling from Silverback.

Step Four - The Silverback Knee-Ride
This position is one that I am still trying to understand. I have only felt it once, and it was such a strange feeling that I immediately wanted to figure out how to hold the position for myself. It is basically a squatting knee-ride. The only couple times I have tried to keep a similar position it hasn't felt very strong for me, but I am determined to make it work. It does require that your hips are fairly flexible and that you can squat all the way down and keep your weight on your heels. If anyone knows, has seen, or has tips for a this position or one like it, let me know please.

The first step is the positioning of the limbs. After you are passed the guard, squat down with the near side foot right up and under your opponents near side hip. The far side hip is controlled by your arm and hand effectively pinning the hips between your shin and arm on one side. This leaves the one foot and arm free to position themselves for base. The grip I have been using lately is a single hand pry-bar by gripping the back of the collar from the near side and rotating your arm so it prevents your opponent from shrimping and getting on their side. I am also tempted to grab the far side and look for a control hold but as of yet haven't found anything that I like.

As we experiment more with this position, I will be posting the complete findings and thoughts here, along with any troubleshooting I can do, or tips from those that are helping me get a grip on the position.

A look at Top Game and Passing combined

Once I began to look at what was going on as far as my own thoughts about passing the guard and top game are concerned, I realised that I have been thinking along these lines for longer than I realised, and only now have been able to describe them. My body needed far longer to come to terms with the motions and explanations than my mind does, in fact only after my body has absorbed all the movements necessary does my mind even clue into the fact that maybe I should begin to understand what I am doing. I think this is a natural progression for most people, and in light of this... here are my latest thoughts and what we have been working on in the gym for the last few classes. We begin by combining guard passing and top game together into a whole field of movement, where we can progress seamlessly from one area into the next.

In using all the passing motions and the pressures from top game sections, you are still only trying to achieve a few things. First is to not fight your entire opponent at once. Angle off to the side, and separate their limbs to fight them only one at a time, we describe this as Zone Theory. Then fight through each zone step by step, one at a time. Complete the one your are working with currently before moving on to the next one. Don't try to skip over or jump ahead of any of them, and if you run into big trouble, then retreat back to the previous Zone and hold there to regroup -before you embark on advancing through the next one again.

Zone One

The Legs, The Hips, and The Angle

In this Zone we are attempting to gain these 3 things. We want to control the legs (if they are closed, then open them first- duh), and control them in front of us. We want to control the hips and limit their movement. We want to gain (or create to gain) an angle on our opponent to create limits. These things can happen in any order, but must all happen before we move on. So, sometimes by controlling the legs to get an angle, helps us gain control of the hips. In other situations, we need to gain the angle to get the legs in the first place, and only by getting the legs do we have a chance at the hips. And then, it could also be that we've been able to get the legs, and the hips, but the opponent is still centered and we have that barrier in our path, so we get the angle last to open a path to the next zone. I think you'll get the idea.....

Zone Two

The Body and Alignment

From here, we are moving past the legs to look at the upper body. The first thing I consider when I approach this is the Alignment of the body itself. What does it look like? Is it straight, curved, shrimping? The body is strongest when it can be used as a single unit, with everything working together. By getting the angle on the legs and the hips, we have taken that out of the formula for a time. Once we move past this point, they suddenly have the ability to come back into play, so we must make sure that we can control the upper body alignment, so the legs don't add in extra strength that we can't adjust to. Entwined with this is how we are going to be attaching to the upper body. What grips are available, and where we can easily reach to. Once those options are considered we can move into this zone in two phases. Phase one- moving to the other side of the legs. Without letting go of our hips control or our angle, we move to just the other side of the legs, while keeping our weight and grips on our opponent. Heavy use of our weight through our hips can aid in this movement. Phase two- we are gripping and securing our attachment to the upper body, in an effort to control the alignment. And by control the alignment, I mean that you pick one and direct your opponent into this position. Observe the spine from the head to the hips, and keep it from being straight- as in break the angle of the head in relation to the spine, as well as the spine in relation to the hips. Also, keep the opponents back on the ground, keep them flat. This will make the spine manipulation easier. If you are stuffing your opponent to keep them curved, or balled, make sure you are over stuffing. There is an optimal curve line, or amount of crunch which your opponent is trying to get to. If they get there, add to it to make them uncomfortable stuffed- oh, and take their back. You don't want this in front of you, get behind it.

Zone Three

The Arms Advancing, The Arms Retreating, and The Trenches & Obstacles

In this Zone, we are dealing with how your opponent is reacting and moving to your advancements. You have an attachment and are looking at control of the opponents alignment, and they don't like this. So they begin to use all of their weapons and movements in order to knock you off of them, or gain their own control and advance out of your position. The arms advancing is how I describe what your opponent is doing with their arms to stall you, slow you down, or stop your advance. It is usually the inside arm or elbow, often pushing. Whatever they are doing, they are presenting an active resistance with their limbs and you will have to navigate that. There are lots of way to do this, but make sure you don't sacrifice your alignment control to do it, after all that is why they are resisting like this in the first place. The next issue is the arms retreating, and by this I mean the arms are moving away from you, against you opponents body or into other close positions. This is an issue because it means that things are about to change, the opponent is getting ready to move into another position, and readying their arms for the next battle or position to help ensure that they will be in a better position than they are now. When the arms begin to move away from you, it is time to go after and chase the elbows. What this does is slow down the transition between the positions and movements, so you can prepare for the position to come as well, or even stop the transition from happening. While doing all of this we are encountering what I call the Trenches and Obstacles. These are the arms and elbows while they are framing and in neutral positions. When they are not actively pushing or retreating tight against the body, they are just presenting frames so that the opponent has some room to move and adjust and get their bodies back into play in the way they want. To get past these frames, it takes weight and patience. There is no trick, just slowly relax and rest on top of them while you look for a way around, or through them. Use your body shifting and movement to see your way through. You may have to move up, down, in or climb over to smash or pass the obstacles and get your weight settled against their body, instead of settled against their frames.

Zone Four

Advanced Base Camp (ABC), Rest & Refuel

This Zone is where we must be diligent. You climbed a long way, and you are tired. It has been a tough battle through several Zones of conflict and you need to rest. Just hold on a little longer. One or two last pushes. This is the place where we are building our Advanced Base Camp or ABC position. I call it ABC because this is where the fundamentals of good positioning are crucial. There are several versions of  a good Top Game position, and each has its own place. What all have in common is what we focus on with the ABC concept. Keep it simple. Build your defences and dig-in for the long haul. Make sure you have something blocking and monitoring the guard attempts. Also make sure you have the arms out of the way. Finally make sure you have your weight and position where you want it, keeping your opponent out of alignment. Once here, then you can settle into the position by relaxing. Let yourself become heavier. Keep a strong attachment and make your opponent uncomfortable. Bit by bit, begin to constrict and tighten your hold by improving your own alignment, frames, and position. The way you are attached to your opponent will make a huge difference, you want the attachments themselves to do most of the work for you. This is the way you can recover in preparation for the upcoming battle for the submission or fight ending.

Zone Five

The Finish Line

The Finish Line. This is the final battle ground, and depending on your position and the ending you are attempting, each finishing fight will be different. One of the key areas that I have noticed in this battle is in the transition to the finish from the position. Stay close to your opponent. In this transition is where they usually have opportunity to escape and change things around. Because there are so many variation in these transitions to various different finishes and endings I am not going to go into particular details here. The only guidelines I have in general for going into the finishes is to pay attention to your control. Keep all the progress you have made thus far in isolating the limbs or gaining position for a choke. Work from your settled position as much as possible. These things will aid in facilitating your transitions to ending the fight.

Moth-Guard Month wraps up

This past month we have been focusing on the Moth-Guard game progression that I've come up with.

Every time I work this game, I like it more and more, the trouble is that it keeps getting bigger and much more involved every time I work with it too.

In a effort to simplify how I'm thinking about it and how to teach it, we've been looking at each part of the guard separately for the most part, and then working on combining them into an overall game.

So, this is an open guard game, and something I add into the regular spider guard and butterfly guard games we practice here. As with any open guard, the position we want is one hip on the mats, along with 3 point of contact with your opponent.

We started the drill progression talking about what it is that we are trying to achieve with the guard, along with how we are going to go about it all. The first series we worked was all about affecting your opponents base. We got the basic 'Shinzon' position (inside joke for any who worked this up at the 517 club), and experimented with the leg motions against light resistance, to feel for ourselves how we can use this position to create movement, and to exploit the motions we are looking for. This then becomes the platform to work all of the attacks to our opponents base.

But you have to start from somewhere....so we also talked about the options we have for our foot positions and the leg positions, in relation to how we want our posture to be. We did a getting to guard series from cross-sides bottom, that ends in our first sweep- technically this sweep comes out before we achieve the full Moth-Guard position, but the principals are what we are looking for. We then followed up with the other 5 common sweeps that I like to hit from this guard (although in going through the material, I think I'm adding in a couple more now). Anyways, work all 6 sweeps from active positioning and movement based upon light resistance from your partner. We finally wrapped up this section talking about the 3 main goals of any guard- being threaten to sweep, threaten to submit, and threaten to stand-up out of guard. This section was obviously the first of the list.

We then moved onto the second type of base attacks, namely the shooting series. This part of the game is set-up from the under-hook kick-up and diving for quarter position bottom. We explored a cycle of about 6 or 7 options that I use as my complete quarter bottom game. It  involves turn overs, peekouts, double leg shoots, and lots of turning the corner and circle running in a Bear Walk pose. After this general concept, we began working on the next threat from our guard- Submissions, particularly in this case harvesting the arms.

We began looking at the trapped arm first, exploring arm drags. Conceptually this is the first concept aligned with my own triple attack on the arms from guard. We began looking at cross drags to take the back, it also sets up some of our sweeps (but we worked that earlier), and to set-up the trapped side armbar. We also looked at straight drags to set-up our overwrap game which leads into a choke, armbar, and triangle options, as well as setting up a rear naked choke from not quite the rear...

Looking framing attacks next, the second of the triple arm attacks, this time beginning on the free arm. We looked at attacking the frame as that arm hits the mats (or your body- with some shifting). Grabbing the wrist and sitting into the arm side we explored our hip bump sweep, the kimura on the free arm, and both the arm out, and arm in, -guillotine chokes. We also looked at the 100% sweep from failed guillotine, and put it back into the cycle of movements.

While we moved onto the free arm, we looked at catching the arm there as well. These catches are circular movements to trap the free arm in motion (or sometimes from the posting frame). Although they are a little harder to catch, their usefulness is great, and I still use them as a go to move from this guard. Because we are only using one arm here, this was the way it ended up, catching the arm from the outside and using a circular motion to stuff it towards the centre. The first circle is quite small, and you are catching the arm in a telephone grip on your shoulder to set up the straight arm bar. If the circle becomes bigger the arm goes right over your head to catch on your hip and sets up the triangle choke from the hip shin.
I also use the small circle catch on the leg if the opponent steps up on the outside, but this sets up our pivot sweep and because we had already worked this too, we skipped this set-up for now. However if this catch on the leg is turned into a big circle catch then the foot is brought up onto your chest, stepping under the leg and standing up to turn the game around on your opponent.

Using the framing attacks on the trapped arm, we can use the kick-of concept of the drags to set up a kimura on that side as well, or if you continue through, you could turn it into an oma-plata on that arm.

The other attacking concept on the arms is the attachment movements. This usually comes up when using the circle catches for the arm bar or triangle set ups and the opponent grabs onto you, usually at the back of the neck. This attachment sets up our oma-plata attack. Attaching the far arm as in an over-grip arm drag also sets up our next sweep to that side as well.

Now up to this point, all of these motions have been completed from our backs and spinning under or around the opponent. There are a few other things that I do from off of the back and one hip and these include diving attacks moving underneath and inside the opponent for our old school series. Or used as last ditch efforts to save ourselves if we start getting passed to spin under to the arminator submission and the like. But what we have covered so far gives a good impression on how we begin to use the basic position. Moving onto the next point, we are attacking our opponents posture as our last main concept. This by its nature involves some more movement on our part.

The first option is the snap-down to stand-up out of guard and to take quarter top position from the front, and from here I have been following this with my new favorite cross-collar sweep direct to choke movement. Other than standing up though, we also have 3 main concepts from the guard to affect the posture. We start this drill section by reviewing all the possible grips on the body from the guard, and adding in the basic motions of: pulling you opponent down on top of you, of sitting up into your opponent, and of angling off to one side with a side crunch from your opponent. Using the pull is quite obvious from the rest of the guard motions we have already worked on, so we just filled it in with whatever came naturally to us from here. When using the angle, we are also looking for what one of my coaches called 'the invisible wall', of where their head is in relation to their lead hand and how this affects their posture and ability to resist the pulling motions, or other set-ups. Then comes sitting up into them. The movement from here is similar to the hip bump, except that the initial arm position is different, use a hug on the same side, and the pressure with your hips leads your legs in a different manner. It looks very much the same from the outside, but I think of this as a guard pass from bottom, more so than a turn over or heist. The other quick moves of catching someone sleeping like sitting up into a cross-collar choke, or single-lapel are there, but are hard to catch people with, but then again, anything sets up a reaction that can lead into other areas of the game, so go for it.

The last part of the game we worked on was the transition to the sitting game. Moth guard sitting up is a little different, but the concepts are the same as far as pressure. Underhook the arm with your arm in place of the leg, and wedge your shin across the front of your opponents base. Most of the time this comes about because the opponent has switched to combat base and is preparing to pass or stand. At this point, your movement becomes constant. Always try to take the back, and do it continuously without stopping. Use your underhook. This is also the set-up for our attacks to the combat base, as they all involve moving around to the outside of the opponent. The two options we worked from here were, underhook arm to take the back if the opponent drives into you, or ankle pick and drive in if the opponent tries to pull away. If they attempt to stand, we shoot in with a single leg in much the same manner as we pick the ankle.

So all in all, this game keeps on growing. What started out as a position and 4 movements, now leads into several areas of my game, to all my other guards, and most of my submissions. Even now as I type this out my mind is racing on new information, and redefining current applications. Have fun exploring it in your own games. Cheers.