Bruno Fernandes seminar

Bruno Fernandes has finally returned to my club. With any luck, some of the guys will receive the promotions they so rightly deserve. For me, it was just nice to catch up with him a bit and learn some new techniques. The class started with a sequence from butterfly guard.

Butterfly guard involves keeping your feet on the insides of your opponent's legs, as opposed to wrapping your legs around his body (standard guard). Our goal was to sweep the opponent, despite him having the underhook. Life is a lot easier when we have the underhook ourselves, but sometimes we're not that lucky. First thing we need to break down the opponent's posture, then reach over the back and grab whatever you can. It's probably easiest to grab the belt. Make sure that your arm is more or less draped over his back in line with his spine, otherwise, you're not really maintaining the broken posture.

From there, lie back and load the opponent on top of you. You should feel pressure on your chest. The more pressure you feel, the better off you are. Make sure you've trapped his arm with your free arm. Your opponent is already loaded on top, so kick with the hook opposite the opponent's trapped arm. This will lift him up and move him in the direction of the trapped arm. Roll in the direction of the trapped arm and you should end up in the mount.

In the event that he posts up as you're attempting to load up, release the belt and track down the near arm. Scoot your bottom leg up in the direction of your opponent's head. You're rotating to try and get your body at a 90 degree angle from your opponent. Once you've got the bottom leg/knee up near his head, swing the top leg over the opponent's shoulder and start to close the triangle. You're going for an omaplata shoulder lock. Lock in the triangle and make sure the opponent's arm is at a 90 degree angle, pointing south on his body. Sit up and begin to finish the move.

If you can't keep the arm in the proper position (or if he's defending properly), control the near wrist/sleeve and straight-arm it. Open your legs and make sure your top leg is out of the way. You grab the opponent's belt and, while straight-arming him, pull the belt towards you. The goal is to get him off balance and get control of the back. Scoot your hips back as needed to tip your opponent over. Get the hooks in to control the back.

So let's suppose you've got control of the back, but your opponent starts to stand up as a defense. Walk your hands over in the direction of the arm you want to attack. Hook his arm with your opposite arm, release the hooks and turn your body so that you're at 90 degrees to the opponent. Put your head on the mat for additional balance. At this point, you've got one arm trapped. Now you need to hook his leg, tuck your head and roll over the shoulder that trapped the arm. This should have you in a good spot for an arm bar.

If your opponent starts to spin away from the arm bar, simply unlock your legs, lift them up and as he finishes turning, he's left himself open to another omaplata. Thus, the sequence begins again from the omaplata. I'll get into the details of the private lesson a little later.