de la Riva Guard (Jared Weiner Seminar Part II)

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the outstanding seminar BJJ United founder Jared Weiner gave at ECU. There was so much information that I knew I couldn’t do it justice without breaking into several parts.

The first half of the seminar focused on passing the guard, and attacking once we’ve passed. With its emphasis on “mean, nasty, and slow”, it was right up my alley.

The second half focused on advanced guard play. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to participate fully due to my knees. Wanting to make sure I did justice to the second half of the seminar, I decided to bring in a co-writer – ECU Purple Belt and Fundamentals Instructor Eric Guido. What follows what I’ll call Part A of Eric’s account of the second half of the seminar with only VERY minimal edit:

Thanks to a very eye-opening seminar conducted by Jared Weiner of BJJ United, my eyes have been opened to a number of new options for the de la Riva Guard that I have not looked for in the past. The concept of attacking and submitting my opponent from my closed guard is nothing new to me; however the idea of using a more advanced opened guard such as de la Riva to attack was not an option I had considered until Jared's seminar. Let’s take a look at some of the concepts and attacks:

Jared stated that he preferred to use de la Riva when an opponent is attacking from the ground position, having one knee up and one down, using his leg as a shield in an attempt to pass your guard. Getting a deep guard is vital to success when attacking from this position, having one leg wrapped around the outside of your opponents front leg and intertwined deep into his groin area while the crosses over the front leg and goes deep behind the leg.

The first attack from this position is relatively easy but a real "screamer". From this position your opponent may grab your gi lapel in an attempt to pass. You want to break the grip but still control the sleeve. Replace his hand back onto your gi, high up on the shoulder and cup the elbow for an inverted arm bar. Quick, simple and PAINFUL!

The next three attacks will depend on you getting a two-on-one grip and really stretching your opponent out from that de la Riva position. Essentially, you want to rock your opponent’s base and get him to base out using his far arm leaving you with an armbar, triangle or kimura option. As your opponent bases out and tries to stand back up, he will have one arm on the floor and one arm still being controlled by you and this will be your opportunity to open up your guard and secure a triangle position. If he postures up, transition to an armbar.

Another option would be the kimura attack. As your opponent bases out, abandon your grips on the sleeve and immediately transition to a kimura on your opponent’s far arm. He may roll to either side but keep hold of the kimura and complete the submission when your position is stabilized.

Next time will be various attacks from the foot on hip position, still having a two-on-one grip on the sleeve and transitioning to different guards from there.

Thanks Eric!

As always, thank you for reading the ECU BJJ and MMA blog. It looks like Eric and I will be collaborating on a Part III/B, and maybe an "illustrated" version of this post as well..

Finally, thanks to JoJo for arranging the seminar; Jared for giving a great seminar; and of course Eric for helping me write about it.