Dan Of Earth

Rafa can literally berimbolo you from anywhere but I was still surprised when I saw this sick counter on a video of him rolling with a Brown Belt named Jason Vigil in Hawaii.

With his opponent vying for a solid deep half position Rafa pushes his opponents knees away using a grip on the side of his opponents right knee. At the same time he scoots his left thigh in to block his opponents head. Then he takes his left hand which had been acting as a post and grabs the side of his opponents right leg where his right hand had been.

From here, he grabs the back of his opponents pants (at the waist) with his now free right hand and does a tuck and roll, being sure to clear the head and to swing his left leg out far enough to clear his opponents legs. His trapped right leg acts as the pendulum for forcing his opponents back to show itself.

I almost got a headache trying to write out “De La Riva’s De La Riva’d leg” a bunch of times, but it was worth it. This is actually a very viable sweep. I even got to try this out in class today with great success. One of my favorite aspects of De La Riva’s style is that it’s very efficient. It’s all about taking away the opponents ability to post and exploiting that hole, not with strength, but with craftiness.  I made this GIF from a video BJJ Library recently shared on Youtube. (BJJ Library is Saulo and Xande Ribeiro’s Online Instructional Website).  You can check out all of his amazing double De La Riva sweeps HERE, for free, on Youtube.

I’d like to add that I think too many people use DLR just to solely attempt berimbolos which gives them a very skewed view of the position as a whole. If you want an awesome De La Riva game, you should be studying Ricardo De La Riva especially.  A lot of people I know have great berimbolos, but a terrible DLR game. There’s tons more goodness out there from the DLR position. Just go find it!

GIF Magic!

Here’s an awesome sweep courtesy of Andre Galvao from the Arte Suave documentary. You may notice he’s a brown belt in this segment! And so is his opponent, Cobrinha himself!

This is a Lasso guard sweep where one foot is lasso’d and the other is on the hip of your opponent. There’s even a nice counter to a counter in there!