Controlling Your Opponent; Part 1

Over the next few weeks I'll be covering some critical concepts for making your techniques work by applying proper pressure to control your opponents.

Having control over your opponents is vital to making your techniques work, it's safe to say that one of the biggest reasons why techniques fail is because the one applying the technique didn't properly control their opponent and so their opponent was able to take advantage and prevent the technique from happening.

Let's take a deeper look at this simple concept and how you can make the control of your opponent the focus of your game.

Let's look at passing half guard as an example.
A critical component of making the pass work is keeping your opponents back and hips flat on the ground.
Where the pass usually unravels is when the one passing stops controlling his opponent leaving him able to move his hips and shifting to his side. This can happen because of either poor technique in terms of where he is attempting to control his opponent, like using his opponents knee to control him which leaves his opponent free to move his hips instead of properly controlling his opponents body by using his shoulder to pin his opponent flat so he can't move his hips, or incorrect pressure or timing is applied where the opponent has an opportunity to move his hips to escape.

Common mistakes are made when attempting to control an opponent so to end off this first part on control, an exercise that you should complete if you want to make this blog post useful in your training is to take whatever you're working on right now and ask yourself the fundamental question, what do I need to do to make sure I have proper control of my opponent for the technique to work?

If you're not sure then write it down and ask your instructor the exact points that need to be covered to make sure you are completely controlling your opponent throughout the move. Take notes and focus on implementing the proper pressure and timing to make sure that you have control of your opponent and don't lose that control throughout the technique.

Make sure you follow through and do this exercise as it's going to make a huge difference in your skills and I'll continue with more on control in the next post.