Saturday, February 4, 2012

10th planet HQ: Denny Prokopos guillotine

Last night Eddie Bravo invited everyone from 10th Planet Riverside to come down to head quarters and train in Hollywood.  It was a pretty cool experience.  Denny Prokopos was also teaching, and he is a world class teacher.  Man did these guys like to talk though.  Eddie's class was 80% Jiu Jitsu and 20 % stand up comedy.  The guy was freakin' hillarious though.  All in all they were both great teachers.

Denny showed some stuff on the pretzel grip guillotine.  It was pretty cool.  He showed me something that was pretty eye opening.  If you put your hands in a regular guillotine grip,with your choking hand with its palm facing you, and pretend your choking an invisble person, look at the space between your forearm and bicep.



 When you turn your choking hand so its palm is facing away from you, then squeeze the guillotine.  The gap closes.  Pretty interesting stuff.





When you try this grip at first the squeeze takes a lot of effort, it's very uncomfortable.  However, Denny is a pretty nice guy and he gave me some tips on how to practice the squeeze when I am by my self.  Mainly, pretending you thigh is a neck, strap your guillotine around it, and choke out your thigh.  This will help develop your squeeze.  He said, "don't practice to get a tap, practice to put someone to sleep, because if you can hold your squeeze long enough to sleep 'em, you can definately hold it long enough to tap 'em." 

Eddie didn't teach much because Denny was teaching for most of the time, but showed some techniques using Z guard to get the hand to the mat and transition to rubber guard.  It wasn't anything that I hadn't seen before, but it was his attention to detail that impressed me.  From the angles he explained to the various ways to use your wrist control.  The guy really new his stuff. 

After class I said thank you to Eddie and he struck up a conversation with me.  Which, in my experience, is rare for alot of famous Jiu Jitsu guys.  He was an extremely nice dude, super easy to talk to, and really funny.  He ended up inviting me to come back next week and said he would get a roll in with me.  Can't wait to feel what its like to be inside of a real rubber guard.  I hear that his clinch is unbelievable.  I will let you guys know how that goes and hopefully get some videos up here. 

Hope this new guillotine grip helps out your game guys,  thanks for reading.

Nick

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