Key Takeaways
- A 4-part No-Gi instructional covering the legendary defensive system of Xande Ribeiro.
- It unveils the foundational weak points of side control, mount, back and submissions.
- The instructional also features takedowns counters and defensive tactics.
- BJJ World Expert Rating: 9.5 out of 10.
NO-GI DEFENSE XANDE RIBEIRO DVD GET HERE
The sooner you accept that you can’t figure Jiu-Jitsu out without defense, since you’ll be stuck in bad spots a lot anyway, the faster you’ll start developing a gameplan that makes sense, and even more importantly, works. It does take someone to show you the way, though.
The No-Gi Defense Xande Ribeiro DVD is your best guide in the world of defending everything in No-Gi. After all, Ribeiro has proven himself at all the biggest tournaments and against the most fearsome grapplers that the system works, and ends up offering you multiple options to turn the tables. Who would say no to that?
The Defensive Jiu-Jitsu Game
What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of BJJ defense? Most people see themselves getting out of a choke or armbar, or something along those lines. Well, most people are wrong, that’s why they can’t defend anything.
The defense has nothing to do with getting out of a bad spot – that is an escape. When you defend in grappling, you’re mitigating danger by trying to stop the attacker from having success with anything they are doing from a given position. You might be in bottom mount or have your back taken – defense is surviving and blocking anything, including transitions from the position.
Escape is only possible when you frustrate the attacker with solid defense, and that is the point most people miss. A good attack-minded grappler will make your life hell because they know exactly when to bail out on something and replace it with something else that will work.
When defending, you’re able to turn the tables here, making everything the attacker does ineffective, and opening up not just escapes but direct counters as well. The No-Gi Defense Xande Ribeiro DVD should’ve mandatory instructional for anyone involved in grappling – people should get a copy with their first stripe.
Xande Ribeiro & The University of Jiu-Jitsu
Xande is one-half of one of the most popular brother duos in BJJ. Along with his brother Saulo, they’re not just behind some of the best performances we’ve ever seen on the mats, but also behind developing some of the key advances in BJJ over the past 3 decades.
The Ribeiro brothers were the first Brazilians to open up their doors to anyone, regardless of affiliations. When they established their San Diego gym, which ended up being the University of Jiu-Jitsu, they invited anyone to train there and are still operating on the same principle.
Xande is still an active competitor to this day, showing that athletes over 40 can still be competitive and win stuff at the highest stages, such as the ADCC. Of course, he already has a couple of ADCC belts, along with countless worlds, and pans titles.
When you look at Xande’s game, one thing that becomes apparent is how difficult he is to control, and how impossible it is to even think of submitting him – he only has 6 submission losses in over 20 years of competitive grappling! The No-Gi Defense Xande Ribeiro DVD outlines his principles for setting up a foolproof defensive game for BJJ.
No-Gi Defense Xande Ribeiro DVD Review
The No-Gi Defense Xande Ribeiro DVD is a four-part instructional that outlines one of the best defensive games in the history of BJJ, proven to work at all levels. This DVD contains over 2 hours of super high-quality material delivered by Xande himself.
Part 1 – Standing
As the No-Gi Defense Xande Ribeiro DVD kicks off, the focus is on standing exchanges and how to block all kinds of takedowns. Xande’s system covers defenses of both leg and upper body-based takedowns, through examples that feature classic super-effective moves such as the Uchi Mata, double leg, and single leg takedown.
Given how proficient Ribeiro is with the fundamentals, he uses head stuffing and sprawls to deal with most threats, in a way that makes simplicity seem harder than the crazy complicated stuff we see nowadays. He wraps up this portion of the instructional by touching on the subject of guard retention using his Diamond Concept.
Part 2 – Guard Retention & Recovery
The second volume uses the introduction of guard retention in the previous one to launch into an exploration of the place of guards in defensive Jiu-Jitsu and how to use them to fight off pins. The culprit in this part of the No-Gi Defense Xande Ribeiro DVD is top-side control.
Xande covers different side control variations, including the highly annoying Kesa Gatame while focusing on guard recovery as the main method of defense. There are a lot of hip motion-based defenses in this part, which rarely feature shrimping as we know it.
The escapes Ribeiro piles onto the guard-bound-defenses feature either upper or lower body focus, resulting in clean getaways. Following the setup from the previous volume, he introduces the dangers of mount here and tickles the subject of defending it by demonstrating the rat escape.
Part 3 – Mount and Back Defense
It is already clear that the third part of the No-Gi Defense Xande Ribeiro DVD focuses on the mounts, both full mount and back mount. Starting from the front, which ties in side control perfectly, Xande talks about the best methods to deal with a heavy-pressure mount, which includes lots of hip movement again.
The second portion of this DVD is all about the back mount, starting with recovery principles to prevent it first. The turtle gets an honorable mention in this part, being one of the Ribeiro brother’s signature defensive tactics. A few late defenses and escape options feature towards the end, covering both sides of back mount threats.
Part 4 – Submission Proofing
The final volume is all bout the hardest aspect of defense in BJJ – submission defense. The focus in the opening chapters of this portion of the No-Gi Defense Xande Ribeiro DVD Is on armbars from the guard, featuring stacking and some of those sneaky angles Brazilians have been using to defend them since Jiu-Jitsu left Rio.
ARmlock-wise, Xande also covers Kimuras and straight armlocks, before turning to front chokes such as the guillotine and triangle. In fact, the triangle gets a lot of attention here with several chapters addressing different stage escapes, from early to very, very late (this late one is nothing short of genius).
Fundamentals to Master
You’ll see many people practicing bridges and shrimping along the length of a gym, labeled as fundamental movements. The effects of these movements is what is fundamental, not the movement patterns themselves – they are actually detrimental to success in any kind of defensive BJJ.
From a fundamentals standpoint, you need to understand what’s top and bottom, what defense and escapes are, and that you can defend literally anything in different stages of the attack process. That means you have options and there’s nothing more fundamental than that.
Defending will become easy once you stop thinking about specific moves and think about the effects of what you’re doing. If you’re not safe, staying safe, and getting even safer, then there is no point in doing a move, no matter how many Gracie Jiu-Jitsu books you’ve seen it in!
Xande Ribeiro does an exceptional job explaining this in his No-Gi Defense Xande Ribeiro DVD. I highly recommend it to everyone!
FULL DOWNLOAD: NO-GI DEFENSE XANDE RIBEIRO DVD
Defend Everything!
If you want to learn Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, you need to become boring. To your opponents, not to yourself. Make people want to avoid you in training because of how good your defense is. If you want to attack like the Ribeiro brothers, you need to learn how to defend like them first. The No-Gi Defense Xande Ribeiro DVD is an unprecedented window into their system – they have nothing to hide anyway, so Xande tells everything as it is!
