Hermes Franca Seminar

Today was an AWESOME BJJ seminar with UFC star and BJJ black belt, Hermes Franca.

Hermes is a super nice guy and has a sick BJJ game. I attended his gi seminar, but not his MMA seminar, since I'm too pretty to get punched repeatedly in the face. Actually I'm just too old, if I was 20, I'd be all about it.

Hermes showed us several series of techniques. He showed us De La Riva sweeps set up from the spider guard. The first one he showed us was to obtain the DLR hook and sit up, keeping both your grips. You push out the opponenets back leg and fall on your side to the floor. Follow on top of the man to knee on belly.

The next one is also when you have the DLR hook. This one you let go of your spider guard grips, lift your ass up a little, and push forward in a single leg motion, straightening out his leg you have laced. This causes him to fall backwards. Stay LOW and take caution passing as you are open for a triangle.

The final one in this series was spider guard to oma plata. A similar version is shown below.



Another series that Hermes taught was a couple gi chokes. The first one was from what Robson Moura calls the "little hands choke" position. Once you have established this position you grab the guys gi in between his neck and "little hand" palm up with 4 fingers. You then baseball slide out, bringing your elbows together for a vicious choke.

A different choke Hermes showed was a knee on belly cross choke. You obtain knee on belly, get a deeeep cross collar grip. A good opponent will then try and defend your free arm from finishing the choke, so you take his wrist and pull it down acrossed his body, sprawling out on the arm. This puts a lot of pressure on the man, and leaves the other side of the neck open to grap the gi and finish the cross choke violently =)

Hermes showed a couple more techniques as well, and moved around pretty good considering he just had knee surgery a short while ago. I have been doing BJJ for 16-17 months now, and I have had the priviledge to train not only with black belt Clint Crabtree (the Big Dawg himself), but also black belts Jorge Gurgel, Fernando Neto, Roberto Tozi, Robson Moura, Carlson Gracie Jr., and now Hermes Franca. I am so proud to be part of a world class organization like GRBJJ! It's hard not to take for granted what Clint has built here! Thank him next time you see him!