Money-Jiu Jitsu (Part 3)- Effective Techniques

We have previously discussed how black belt matches at the 2012 Pan Ams were being won, and how you could tilt the odds in your favor. I want to take a quick moment to point out the significance of fully-understanding and applying this information to your daily training. Most of us would agree that understanding the rules of jiu jitsu offers a clear advantage, right? Of course, you know how to score, win, and how to be safe. It makes sense that understanding the rules makes you better and offers an advantage. What if I told you that the rules said that the guy on the bottom wins more, but the guy on the top holds more power, as a rule of the game. This would offer clear insight into things you might want to focus on. If you play the bottom your focus should be to get there first and to have a style of offense that defends the pass and lends itself to scoring quickly (math and science say executing those things will significantly increase your chances of winning). If you go back and read the previous articles you can clearly see there are ways to tilt the odds in your favor across the board. It’s up to you to drill these elements in relation to what you do best. If you can tailor your training and game-plan to what the numbers predict are the greatest advantages it’s like having the rules tilted in your favor.

With that all in mind, we are going to discuss specific techniques that are executed at a higher percentage and were proven more effective this year at the Pan Ams. We are also going to highlight which positions these elements occurred from.

Let’s start with guard passing. The most effective position to pass guard from was the half-guard. Over 46% of passes completed this year were initiated from the half-guard. Another 28% were initiated from a standing position, and pulling up the rear were passes initiated from a kneeling position with only 25%. Analyze the information however you wish (i.e. the guy who puts his opponent in half guard obviously is better at winning the position battle , so it’s obvious he would pass more) the fact of the matter is that half-guard offers the greatest area of success when passing, as a general rule.

If half-guard was the most effective passing position what type of passes were most effective? The most prevalent and successful pass this year was a variation of the leg drag pass, 62.5% of successful passes from the standing were variations of the leg drag. The second most successful pass was an “around the legs” variation from half-guard, accounting for 54% of passes completed from the half guard. The third most successful pass was an knee cut (or knee through) variation from half guard accounting for close to 30% of passes initiated from half guard. The fourth most successful type of pass was a variation of the toreado pass from standing which accounted for 31% of passes from a standing position. These were the most successful and prevalent passes. These passes would seemingly be the ones you would want to train the most as they seem to lend themselves to effective results against this years top guards. Some may be better for you than others, but it would best to pick 1 of these 4 as a “go to” if you find yourself in a top position.

Maybe you’re a guard player though, and you want to know about the most effective sweeps and guard positions. Well wait no longer, because the top position sweeps from the guard occurred from what was some variation of De La Riva guard. De La Riva accounted for close to 33% of all sweeps from a guard position. Sweeps from half guard accounted for 27% of all sweeps, closed guard accounted for 16%, and spider guard accounted for 11%. Below is a breakdown of percentages by most guard positions…

In terms of the types of sweeps that were most effective there was a clear runaway favorite, but it’s hard to categorize. I call it “running over the opponent”, but it’s simply a bottom to top reversal- here is a good example. I would say it’s a mixture of off-balancing the opponent and achieving a bottom dominance, but however you wish to explain it, the sweep is worth 2 points and is responsible for 36% of successful sweeps. It is actually the runaway favorite. The next closest effective sweep is a variation of the Berimbolo accounting for only 13%. The only other type of sweep offering a strong statistical impact was the Omoplata sweep which accounted for 11% of sweeps. Together variations of those three make up more than half of the successful sweeps executed at the Pan this year. This would tell me, as someone who might train the bottom game, that I better be practicing one if not all of these techniques as they provide the best statistical completion rate. Remember your job as a bottom guy is to score first, so you better have some effective sweeps to make that happen (your welcome, I’ve just given you three).

In conclusion to this part of the series, I want to reiterate the importance of all three parts of this series so far. If you read part one you know that there are things that occur in every match that predict who will win the match, it is to YOUR ADVANTAGE to be the guy playing the positive side of the numbers. In part two we told you what you would have to do to statistically to put yourself in the best position to win (according to your game-plan). And now in part three, I’ve shared some of the techniques you can use to score first and win the match.

The last parts of these series will be released later this week and will focus on submissions and dominant positions, and the least effective techniques from the entire tournament.

Note: All data is pulled from a total of 60+ macthes from the 2012 Pan Ams at black belt (both adult and masters) from a cross-section of every weight class.

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