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Brazilian Jiu-jitsu Techniques
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Killer Wrestler. Great title! This is Rick Lucero's addition to the very crowded tape market. The question is "can Rick come up with new and effective moves that we all haven't seen a million times." You bet!!! Way to go Rick! This is a solid tape set with a fresh set of moves that don't show up on any other tape set. Rick has a winner in his first outing. I should mention that Rick is a black belt under Joe Moreira. You might not have noticed from my review of Joe's tapes that I did like the moves on some of his tapes, it was Joe's performance that detracted from the set. Rick seems to have picked some of Joe's best moves and added his own ideas from his wrestling background.
This is not to say that these tapes do not have a few problems. The biggest is the mis-marketing of the tapes. I think the tape set name and ads lead you to believe that this will set will contain moves from BJJ that will neutralize a wrestlers most common attacks. This is only partially true. This is, for all intents and purposes, a sport BJJ tape set. That means that you are facing a wrestler who is wearing a gi! Hmmmm. I would have expected a set on how to beat the Mark Kerr's of the world who seem to mainly wear Speedos. Maybe it is me. What you have is a tape set that mainly focuses on how to deal with a sport BJJ opponent who uses wrestling moves against you. I am not trying to downgrade the value of this set, it was just not what I expected. I just want to make it clear what you are getting when you buy this tape set.
The other gripe is the fact that Rick included an 8-minute drill section on each tape. The SAME 8-minute drill section on each tape! Doh! The drills are great, but please give me new drills on each tape or included this material once where it fits best. Don't "Panther-ize" me and kill time to make your tapes appear longer.
The tapes cover a wide spectrum of moves. Rick covers takedowns from a wrestler's perceptive. This is something that BJJ is weakest at and what wrestling does best. Then Rick moves into defending wrestling takedowns. There are two tapes devoted to open guard fighting with your opponent standing and sitting in your guard. Rick leaves the best for last with his advanced passing the guard tape. This tape had little to do with beating a wrestler. Despite this, the tape had some interesting and unique methods of passing he guard. The move that I liked best, is the simplest move on the tape. You are standing in your opponent's open guard trying to pass the legs. There are ton of things you can do from here and most of them involve grabbing a hold of your opponent's pants on the inside of each knee. Rick's commented that he learned this embarrassingly simple method of passing only as a brown belt. What Rick shows is to change the way you grab by simply securing the same hold, but with your arms crossed. One of your arms will be under the other. Drive this hand and your opponent's knee to the ground and walk around your opponent to that direction. Then go for knee on chest (or one of the other moves shown on the tape). Your opponent may have his feet on your hips to control you. You have to hop back and sprawl a little to clear the one foot left in your hip (your opponent's other foot is pinned to the floor remember). Give it a try and let me know what you think.
Bottom Line
Overall, Rick has put together a set of moves that has little overlap with other tape sets. A hard thing to do these days. The moves are well grounded and Rick does a good job of explaining and breaking the moves down. This set is geared for sport BJJ practitioners that want to make use of wrestling moves and counter them. While the tapes mainly focus on dealing with or executing wrestling moves, you could happily buy this set if you just wanted some advanced BJJ techniques. I would have liked to have seen more moves on the tapes, but I think the pricing of the tapes clearly brings the cost-per-move to a reasonable level. Overall a great first effort.
Rick covers the basic of wrestling takedowns like changing levels and then goes into a series of wrestling takedowns (i.e. single leg, double leg). Most of these takedowns have been modified for BJJ and do not show up on other BJJ tape sets.
Both tapes end with the drills. This set of drill shows up on most, but not all the tapes. Which leads me to the belief that this part of the tape is the "Time Killer" section. You can deduct 8 minutes of time from each tape set that includes this drill section to get a better idea of the running time of a given tape. The drills cover sprawling, changing your base and foot dragging for takedowns. Useful and practical, but repetitive when place on multiple tapes.
These two tapes cover how to counter the moves shown on the first two tapes. Again the drills are included on these two tapes.
Tape 5 contains a series of advanced open guard sweeps that mostly start with you sitting on one of your opponent's feet and then doing a number of different sweeps. The tape ends with a series of moves strung together from the closed guard. There are no drills on this tape.
Tape 6 has a unique series of moves based on a modified key lock from the open guard with your opponent kneeling. It would be hard to describe in words, but the moves on this tape do work. All the moves either build on each other or deal with counters to the modified key lock shown. There are no drills on this tape.
This is my favorite tape of the set. The material on this tape is not on any other tape set that I have seen. Rick states as much on his www page and he is right. Rick shows a series of open guard passes that involve "lacing" your opponent's legs. This involves obtaining a grip on your opponent pant legs in such a way as to tie his legs up. Rick walks through how to get the proper grip and then several passes. Also on this tape set is the cross arm guard pass I described earlier. Last but not least is the "helicopter" guard pass. A little fancy, but it could work. I think this s the best tape of the set. Ironically, this tape has the least "wrestling" related stuff on it. There are no drills on this tape.
Bill Lewis BJJ33@aol.com
© Copyright Bill Lewis 1999 all rights reserved.