only had time to watch another 30 minutes tonight. i'm about an hour in. very good stuff. getting a lot of insight into many different things. i like andreh's approach to the hip bump sweep. his emphasis on attacking for the sweep during your opponent's transition movements is making things click for me.
so far i'm also liking how all the techniques transition from each other. the flow and order of all the techniques shown seem very natural.
the instruction is top notch. andreh seems to be very talented as a teacher as well.
30 dollars well spent. this will definitely be my go to reference material for the guard. this dvd should be a standard for the type of quality expected in instructionals.
on a side note my high praise of the video might also be because i have only been training since jun08 and am a very low rung on the blue belt ladder . . . so if you are a very seasoned grappler you might not take away as much as i did.
andreh, how long was the whole planning process for this dvd? i'm always curious as to the whole process of making these instructionals. what made you want to focus on the closed guard, and sweeps in particular? is it something you are good at? is it something you focused on because you feel it is neglected? was it because this type of dvd fills a niche in the instructional market?
after you decided on doing a dvd about sweeps, how did you end up selecting which sweeps you wanted to show? are these moves that you excel at? or did you want to show them because you felt you had unique insight into these moves?
First, thank you so much for the great review. I really appreciate the kind words, and I'm so happy that you got your money's worth.
Now on to your questions:
"andreh, how long was the whole planning process for this dvd?"
It's tough to give an accurate amount of time because I had been thinking about doing a DVD on sweeps in general for a long time, and taking notes when I taught or sparred so that I could use the information if I ever got around to really doing a DVD. I would say that from the moment I resolved to do one to the time I shipped out my first DVD was about 5 months.
"what made you want to focus on the closed guard, and sweeps in particular? "
Here is where it gets to be a long story, but I'll try to be concise. In 1998, while training, I suffered a pretty bad injury to my rib and it punctured my lung and the lung scarred up. Since that time, my lung simply doesnt work as efficiently as it should, and it's extremely hard for me to breathe not long after I start rolling. I've tried to improve my cardio and I can usually make it decent, but it's really hard work and the end result isnt much better than if someone without the injury never worked out at all. So as I was coming up in the belts, I found that if I ended up on the bottom I would suffocate quickly and if I scrambled too much I would gas quickly. But I still loved training so I found ways to use my opponent's momentum or mistakes to reverse and get on top where I could stall until I could breathe again. I dont want you to think I invented anything, because I didnt, but out of desperation I think I became a little more aware of moments when the opportunity to sweep was at its best. So it became one of the parts of my game that I think stood out from the rest of the parts.
I wouldnt say that my closed guard is that much better than my open, but I do think that there are a couple of sweeps that I do from the closed that I can do as well as anyone else who does them. While my whole game isnt world class, I think a few of my sweeps are near that level. Please dont misunderstand... I'm nowhere near the top in even the local BJJ scene, much less the world, and I have no delusions about it.
"after you decided on doing a dvd about sweeps, how did you end up selecting which sweeps you wanted to show? "
My very first instinct was to try to show people something they hadnt seen before. I thought that the DVD would only be good if it had techniques that people were surprised by...stuff that made them think, "Wow...I had no idea you could do that from there." But when I first tried teaching those things I realized I had no unique insight into them. I didnt use them regularly so all I could do was teach them as I learned them, which was step 1, step 2, step 3, done... I realized that there were thousands of DVDs and youtube videos like that so what was the point in adding to that mix.
Then I resolved to only show the things I use everyday because they work reliably for me and I had a lot to say about them. I had to control myself as I was teaching them on DVD to not say TOO much because the viewer would be lost in the details and miss the overall point. I actually shot the entire video once with a different partner (my student Josh) but I wasnt satisfied with the way I presented the info so I deleted the footage and reshot everything (with a different partner because Josh wasnt available).
I would say that all of the sweeps on the DVD are the ones I use all the time. The two that are my best in terms of reliability are the Rey Diogo Sweep (and variation) and the bus driver sweep.
Thanks!