Omoplata: Posture and Roll

If the triangle choke were God's gift to long legged jiu jitsu players, then maybe the omoplata was His stocking stuffer for the rest of us.

The omoplata came up recently in a discussion of Scott Bieri's match against Ryan Hall.

What makes this match so interesting for me is that we've got a copy of Bieri's gameplan against Hall, including some of Bieri's thoughts about how the match finished. Bieri's comments were posted at the Jiu Jitsu Gear Message Boards and are included below

Alright here is now I prepared and executed my gameplan for Ryan Hall.

Ryan's game is in my opinion a "counter grappling" game. He waits for his opponent to set himself up and he capitalizes--I was going to throw him off by making him attack and then countering. I wanted to pass his guard by counter his triangle attempts and then use the pass to transition into a arm lock or RNC.

The Match

Just as expected Ryan sat right to guard. I tried to get him to play a butterfly guard in order to negate his triangle choke, but he wouldn't take the bait and went to a tight closed guard.

Ryan went for all the attacks I had prepared for, he tried his sit over sweep and I countered, he tried to control my arms and I broke his grip, he tried to jump his legs and I went for my pass. After my first pass attempt I noticed he reached his arms out to counter my pressure. I thought I could leap into an armbar if I could momentarily clear his legs.

I think Ryan got frustrated that I wouldn't open up and so he started to initiate, he went for the triangle adn I did my back door escape. He moved his legs into position for the omoplata but made a big mistake by not pressuring down with his legs, allowing me to sit up. He also controlled the wrong leg--IMO it is important to control the far leg for an omoplata he only had my near leg.

I immediately swung my far leg over Ryan's head and straight into mount. Just as before I noticed Ryan has his arms extended to push me away to regain his guard. I immediately clamped my knees and fell back with his arm. I didn't pass his head with my legs so he had the opportunity to roll out, but I clamped my knees and arched my hips so much it didn't really matter ...

Bieri goes on to compliment Ryan for his toughness and thanks his students for helping him prepare for the superfight.

There's a lot worth catching. And I'll probably come back to this match in a few posts before I'm through. But I want to focus on the omoplata part here, insofar as the omoplata is an integral part of my "King Crimson" attack/sweep series, and the more I know about how it works--and doesn't work--the better.

From the beginning, though Bieri doesn't mention it, the problem is Hall's failure to get his hips high enough to bring them down with real pressure and keep Bieri from posturing up. In Rodrigo Gracie's book, Path to the Black Belt, it is called the "lazy shoulder lock" and avoiding it is critical in order to keeping the guy's posture broken.
Bieri talks about Hall failing to pin the far leg. I'm not sure about that. Traditionally, we're told that all you have to do is wrap your arm around the waist to keep the guy down. But Bieri employs a roll, kicking a far leg over, that might be enough to counter the arm-around-the-waist. It may also have to do with omoplatas when sparring no gi ...

But the big thing is breaking the posture by getting your hips up high, really attacking the shoulder. Second, pin the waist or the far leg to guard against the potential roll into mount.