This past Saturday, the head of our association (Scott Devine) came to town to do a free seminar for the grand opening of Devine Jiu Jitsu Charleston. With roughly 40 people on the mats (including nine black belts), Scott gave a great seminar as always--providing some nice details on fundamental techniques from top side control.

For the next two weeks, in the morning class, we will be reviewing three techniques per class from the seminar--with the goal of getting all of the details distilled from my sometimes messy notes from the seminar. This morning, we went over the three versions of the "key lock" (or Americana or paint brush) from cross side control that Scott went over this weekend. Just keep in mind, these notes are a work in progress:



Technique One:

Start in top side control (on O's right side).

Your backside arm is under/blocking your O's nearside hip and your frontside arm is on O's cross side.

Use the elbow of your cross side arm to (gently) pull your O's head offline.

When your O attempts to get his arm under your chin/neck, you will pin his arm to the mat with your frontside arm [if need be, you can also use your chin to peel off your O's hand so you can get a hold of it]. Use your weight and structural support to pin the arm--don't rely on strength.

Once your O's wrist is pinned to the mat--using a thumb out grip on his wrist--bring your backside arm to the cross side and slide under your O's elbow and grab your own wrist (also thumb out)--thereby securing the "key lock" position.

Now that your backside arm is no longer protecting your nearside hip, you will need to re-position your legs/hips so that your O cannot get his knee/leg inside/under your nearside hip.

Pull your elbows together--which will narrow the angle of your O's arm--and retract your O's arm towards his hip/side while keep the arm on the mat.

Once you have removed all of the slack via retraction, simply lift O's elbow (here again, while keeping his wrist on the mat).

The motion needed for the submission is a very small one so long as you have secured everything else properly.

Technique Two:

When trying to secure Technique #1, your O will likely try to straighten his arm.

The goal of Technique Two is to prevent this while at the same time finishing the submission.

To accomplish this, before O straightens arm, you are going to rotate your body while putting pressure on your O's elbow.

Then, with your backside arm, you will pull your hand + your O's hand towards your body as if you were starting a law mower (take it easy on your training partner here!).

At the same time, make sure you keep your O's hand/wrist on the ground.

Imagine drawing a circle with your O's hand while pulling it towards his hip.

The submission comes on very quick and doesn't require much.

Here as before, if everything is locked in correctly, it takes a very small motion to finish. If you find yourself having to make big motions, you've allowed too much slack to enter into the lock itself.

Technique Three:

Given that your O's main goal will be to straighten his arm before you get your lock set into place, this is one of the main hurdles you have to clear to finish the submission. We looked at one way of addressing this issue in a more reactionary fashion with Technique Two.

Technique Three is preemptive. As soon as you get the key lock set into place, you're going to bend your O's wrist with your front side hand and pass it to your backside hand so that you have it "trapped" as if you were catching a wrist lock.

At this point, it's no longer possible for your O to straighten his arm. Moreover, you can now finish a one handed key lock.

Simply remove all of the slack per usual by retracting your O's shoulder and then once all of the slack is removed, you will raise your O's elbow for the submission.

Be easy with this one as it's pretty tight once it's all sunk in. While the transfer from traditional key lock to one handed wrist hold is a little odd, once you get the hand of the transfer, this is a great option as it shuts down one of the main defenses of the key lock.

OK, that's it for now. Stay tuned for the next two weeks as more of the seminar notes make their way onto the blog. Hopefully, the black belts who were in attendance will also be adding some additional details once they read what I put together. This is just meant to be a first pass!