Dedeco has one of the most dynamic guards in sport BJJ. A good open guard is all about the details and this week, Dedeco shares one of his secrets for controlling and unbalancing your opponents upper body. This technique is very effective, become proficient at it and it will jump your open guard to the next level.

Space is one of the most important things you need to control in BJJ. Sometimes you need to create space to escape or off balance your opponent and other times you need to take space away. Nic demonstrates a quick technique on how this concept can be applied.

This is a question I was asking about a month ago in my preparation for the Abu Dhabi World Pro Trials in Montreal. The short answer for me is YES, I do need to supplements to compete at the next level. I need to recover faster, feel stronger and keep my body firing on all cylinders. Gaspari Nutrition gets BJJ. In this interview we chat with Dan Pierce. Dan is in charge of product development for Gaspari Nutrition and he also does bjj. Dan explained to me that when formulating new products he always has bjj in the back of his mind. What this means for you and I is a guy who speaks our language on the mat is building products that work for us. The problem is most of us are uneducated when it comes to supplements. This is the beginning of a new section (yet to be named) we will be running in BJJW. It will include both articles and videos on nutrition and strength and conditioning. Lets first chat with Dan and get you all up to speed on a few things...

On our bjjweekly trips we get to spend lots of time with our experts. Sometimes you the viewer don't get to experience their personalities. This week we threw together some quick "outtakes" of Rafael Rebello. He had us cracking up so much it was hard to film, here are a few of the "PC" outtakes…enjoy!

Shark has shown us why swimming in his waters is full of traps. In his final week he demonstrates an dynamic move when your opponent tries to apply the leg drag pass. Shark moves into the reverse spider guard position and then to a nice omoplata sweep. Revisit the past three weeks and get proficient with the techniques to make your open guard dangerous.

Emyr "Shark" continues this week with a really fancy sweep. This works well when your opponent tries to sit into inverted half guard. You need to be on time with this one and make sure to execute it before your opponent drops their hips on the tatami. Shark calls this sweep the lawnmower because you need to catch and stretch.

4th Degree De LA Riva black belt Alexey Cruz knows the guard like the back of his hand. When fighting at the next level, it truly becomes a chess match, and it's important to leave no holes for your opponent to exploit and pass. If you make this simple change to where you place your foot it will allow you to get more sweeps on higher level guys.

We are quite excited, as the folks with Gaspari Nutrition sent us some sample product for review.    Having never used a preworkout supplement in the two or three years that I have been interested in health and fitness, I was especially excited to try out Gaspari’s newly improved pre-workout formula:  Superpump Max (Watermelon Flavor).  Being somewhat of a scientific mind, I decided I would wait to try the product until shoulder day.  Shoulder day is by far my favorite resistance session in the gym, and knowing this, I would best be able to gauge the impact of the product on my performance.  Before getting into the trial, lets first review the claims on the label.

Rafael Lovato Jr was in the UK last week, after competing at the Euros in Lisbon; Rafael visited UK black belt Eddie Kone and gave a seminar on guard passing at Eddie’s club.  I was fortunate enough to grab a few words with Rafael, who kindly took time out of his busy schedule to answer my questions, prior to the seminar.  Thanks to Eddie Kone for allowing the interview to happen and in bringing over Rafael once again to the UK.

Hi Rafael, thanks for taking time out for the interview; you’re in the UK for a few days, after competing at the Euros in Lisbon right?

Thank you Carl and that’s right, I was at the Euros again this year, it’s a great tournament as it’s at the beginning at the year and it’s always full of tough competitors and world champions.  Any mistakes I make at the Europeans I can adjust and go back and fix them up and get better and better throughout the year and get ready for the major comps later in the year.

It’s like a testing ground before the Pan Ams and Mundials?

Exactly right Carl.  The Worlds is all that matters, you can lose at every other tournament but if you win the Worlds you’re the world champion that year.

What brings you to the Euros year after year?

The level of competitor at the start of the year is huge here at the Euros and although I didn’t get the result I wanted, I got bronze in my weight bracket and Absolute, but I felt like I performed fairly well.  I was playing my game that I had been working on you know, so with all that said I felt pretty good.  I beat some pretty tough guys, but I lost to Bernard Faria in the semis in the Absolute, it was 4-2, a really close match and at the end of the match I swept him with a kimura position and if I had picked up the points I would have won, but the time ran out ya know.

Again in the weight class, I competed against Tussa Alencar, we have fought many times and they have been really close matches and this time it was his time win, I lost by takedown and once again at the end of the match I swept him and got to his back and finished the match with both my hooks in and didn’t get the points.  I felt at least I could have the points for the sweep which would have given me the match, as I was ahead on advantages, but it didn’t work out that way but that’s OK, better to lose here at the Euros, so I can go back and correct my mistakes.

Controlling the head movement of your partner is a good way to take control of the fight and puts you in a dominant position!