Sergio “Babu” Gasparelli is a legend within the sport of MMA grappling. Babu has coached hundreds of successful fighters including Anderson Silva, Rashad Evans, and Lyoto Machida. He is the BJJ coach at Brazilian Top Team and former coach at Academia Black House MMA. If Babu shows you a technique or he is refining your own, it is going to change your game for the better. One such technique he shows in his Babu: BJJ Mastermind Series 2 is a new unique way to finish the kimura. I was lucky enough to get a sneak peak at the footage and wanted to let you know how it was! Check out the full review at Micro BJJ!
Sneaky Submissions and Grip Breaks
Although Babu is an excellent MMA coach, this particular technique is designed for the Gi. Sergio is a well-respected black belt and has most of his experience in the Gi. But let’s breakdown this technique, when we go for a kimura a common defense is for our opponent to step the leg up of the hand that is being attacked and grabbing his pant legs. This voids us of being able to cut the angle to get the tap. These days are no more. In a standard kimura, we reach near our opponent’s elbow or bicep to secure our grips. Sergio begs to differ; instead he says we should put our armpit over the shoulder of the arm we are attacking. This sets us up for success when our opponent decides to grab their pant leg because it better positions us for our counter. Once our opponent has grabbed their pant leg we will turn the angle of our forearms so the ridge of them is on our opponent’s forearm. We crank on the arm and wrist to create a bicep slicer, if not our opponent will break the grip on their pants and then we can finish our original kimura attack. The technique can be seen in the video below:
The BJJ Mastermind Series
Some of you are familiar with Babu’s techniques from his first BJJ Mastermind Series. If you are wondering if the course is for you, you can check out the full review of it on Science of Skill! Recently he has decided to release the sister course to his first, Babu: BJJ Mastermind Series 2. This series, like the first, will be covering techniques in MMA, No-Gi BJJ, and Gi BJJ. After getting a sneak peak of the course I would highly recommend it to anyone who is series about improving their game. He shows new techniques that you probably wouldn’t have thought of and he also amplifies your current favorites by showing better positioning, new set ups, different ways to get the tap, and new responses to our opponents’ counters. I’m more than excited to see the course coming off the shelves and please let me know how you liked it!
Train hard
Dan Faggella
