Key Takeaways
- A four-volume No-Gi DVD teaching you how to initiate wrestling from your guard.
- Includes attacking from different guards and positions such as Ashi Garami.
- Contains pro-active and reactive tactics regarding using real and fake guard pulls.
- BJJ World Expert Rating: 7.5 out of 10.
SLAY THE WRESTLE UP GUARD NICK RODRIGUEZ DVD GET HERE
Feeling too old or beaten down to wrestle with the young bucks at your academy and trade takedowns? Pull guard then! What if I told you that you can pull guard and still outwrestle those super athletic purple belts and end up conquering top position easily?
There is even a blueprint on how to best set it up. The Slay The Wrestle Up Guard Nick Rodriguez DVD will show you how one of the best grapplers in the world wrestles from the guard, utilizes fake and real guard pulls, and annoys opponents into submission.
Keeping People Down
For folks who practice an art that allows us to control people on the ground, we’re particularly horrible at keeping people on the ground in the first place. Yes, in a BJJ setting, where the other person accepts that they want to stay on the mats, the game is great and pins work like a charm.
Then you go against a Judoka or a wrestler and you start asking yourself why you can’t keep them down. Well, the reality is that you can’t keep anyone down because you don’t focus on it. Even your regular training partners can get up, they just don’t see it as an option.
So, knowing that people in BJJ lack the ability to keep you on the mats if you have the opportunity to try and use that against them when you’re the bottom player. The Slay The Wrestle Up Guard Nick Rodriguez DVD offers a great set of ideas on how you can develop a complete system around this premise.
Nick “Nicky Rod” Rodriguez
Millionaire, ADCC silver medalist, and overall badass representing the B-team, Nicky Rod is one of the most recognizable names (and physiques) in the BJJ world. He was the first-ever CJI champ in the +80 kg division, winning the biggest prize waiting for pro grapplers to date – $1 million.
The 28-year-old is a black belt under Craig Jones, but he was submitting world-class black belts long before that promotion. Previously a member of the DDS, and one of the main instigators behind the split, he co-founded the B-team with Jones in a bid to establish himself as one of the best in the sport.
It is undoubtedly true that Nicky has tons of talent, is a hard worker, and has the results to boast. The two lingering questions surrounding him are whether he’ll ever be able to best Gordon, as well as the burning question about the heavy use of PEDs behind his performances.
These questions are no reason to skip over his instructionals, though, with the Slay The Wrestle Up Guard Nick Rodriguez DVD covering a very specific subject. But, then again, al the B-team members tend to focus on things others don’t in their instructionals.
Slay The Wrestle Up Guard Nick Rodriguez DVD Review
Nicky Rod’s 4-part, No-Gi instructional dubbed ‘Slay The Wrestle Up Guard Nick Rodriguez DVD’ contains just over an hour and a half of material on how to set up takedowns and wrestling attacks from open guards against standing opponents:
Part 1 – Fake Guard Pulls
Fake guard pulls are quite often a method used in BJJ to set up certain takedowns, such as the ankle pick. They have been proven to work, especially with the Gi but are no longer as surprising these days, as they were some 10-15 years ago.
Nicky Rod tends to have a different take on utilizing fake guard pulls to end up with top control. He literally goes all the way down to a guard, re-launching into takedowns from there and wrestling up.
He does it often and always ends up both surprising and frustrating opponents by doing it. The first part of the Slay The Wrestle Up Guard Nick Rodriguez DVD contains the blueprint to allow you to do the same by using his proven tactics.
Part 2 – 2 on 1
The second part of the Slay The Wrestle Up Guard Nick Rodriguez DVD is the shortest one, with Nicky talking about the 2-on-1 position and how you can use it to wrestle up. For the most part, he uses it to drag people into overcommitting when they try to release their arm, which ends up lifting Rodriguez up to the feet.
The reason why his takedowns seem effortless from there is that the top person already lost their balance by overcommitting – something he lays out bit by bit in this part of the instructional. He also addresses how to approach the dilemma of pulling guard to staying up, with clear directions to help you make a choice.
Part 3 – Reactive Wrestle-Up Tactics
As far as I am concerned, this part of the Slay The Wrestle Up Guard Nick Rodriguez DVD is where the real value of this instructional is. It is counter-grappling at its best, with Nicky covering how to make the most out of defensive actions that you force your opponent into making.
The ankle pick I mentioned earlier makes an appearance here, working mainly as a sweep rather than a takedown, but, then again. that’s what Nicky is teaching in this entire instructional anyway. He demonstrates it as a way to cause a reaction you can then use to capitalize on, but I find that it works great on its own as well.
Part 4 – Guard Wrestling & Leg Lock
The final part of the Slay The Wrestle Up Guard Nick Rodriguez DVD blends the best of the Danaher leg lock system and the B-team’s wrestling tactics from the guard. If you like leg locks, then this DVD is going to teach you how to sweep using takedowns when you can’t seem to get a finish on the legs.
Rodriguez mixes in Ashi Garami attacks, offering different ways to wrestle up, organized by Ashi position and given a number for each variation that starts from a given position. The X guard, Straight Ashi, and Saddle all feature in this part.
‘Mexican Ground Karate’
There is clearly a method to the madness behind most of the B-team’s recognizable tactics, well hidden behind the massive amounts of trolling done by it’s most prominent members. Craig is great at identifying areas of BJJ where people lack the skills to resist and finds highly effective ways of turning them to his advantage.
He might not have been the pioneer behind leg locks, although he is a very early adopter, but the B-team certainly leads the way in the wrestle-up realm. Craig offered the idea of standing up, which spread like a virus. However, people never really figured out how to do it.
Nicky Rod now goes further in ticking out imagination by offering his set of takedowns done from guard, which really sums up what wrestling up is all about. if there is one lesson to take away from the B-team’s approach it is to try and find weaknesses that everyone in BJJ does and exploit them as best as we can.
Until you can pinpoint specific weaknesses to exploit, jumping on the wrestle-up bandwagon seems like a very smart thing to do. The Slay The Wrestle Up Guard Nick Rodriguez DVD can help you with onboarding.
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Up you Go!
Next time you have no idea who to play guard against a standing opponent in No-Gi – don’t! Opt to stand up, but instead of completely disengaging, focus on forcing your opponent to the ground as you get up. In other words, wrestle up! The Slay The Wrestle Up Guard Nick Rodriguez DVD is all you need to start scoring more points and feeling more like a wrestler, even if you pull guard.
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