De La Riva Seminar

Hi all,

Been awhile since my last post, been ramping up the training getting ready for my competition coming up in 10 days! My weight is great, feeling strong and I feel like my jiu-jitsu has never been better!

Last weekend we had our Head Professor from our affiliate Academy in Toronto, Marco Costa, come down and teach us a seminar. I was very excited for this seminar because before he came down our coach in town asked us for some topics for the seminar and mine was the one that was chosen, that being De La Riva guard.

I learned about the De La Riva through a multi-day seminar I attended about 6 months ago but then none of my other training partners had attended that class so I did not have anyone to work with or knew proper technique. At our club we haven’t really gone into too many open guards, it's just whatever someone may bring to class that day so I really wanted to get Marco's input on the subject, as I have found myself opening my guard and then drawing blanks on what to do next sometimes. We went over proper set up and 3 sweeps from that position and their counters. I am very excited to implement this into my regular game once the competition is over, I don't want to focus on something new right now, I want to continuously drill the things I know so come next Saturday I am ready to go!

Also it was great to get some last minute feedback before the competition as he also spent some time just watching us roll lightly.