It's all about the In Stroke!! Chris Haueter Seminar Report

It's been a few years since Chris Haueter was over in the UK and as usual when news arrived of his imminent seminar tour, places were filled quicker than a Rodolfo Vieira guard pass.  I was lucky to secure a place on the first night of the tour over at Factory BJJ, where brown belt Adam Adshead had the pleasure of hosting Chris.

 

I thought I used a lot of strapping tape, but compared to Chris I only use a fraction of the stuff; every time I see Chris the amount of tape grows considerably and this time around he was literally engulfed in tape on both hands.  He explained this away, telling us when he was rolling with a guy back in LA who was trying to wrist lock him from mount and he stubbornly refused to tap and was now paying the price with a badly injured wrist.

 

After a quick warm up, Chris started the seminar off with getting the correct posture when in guard, what he calls passing posture and showed a number of ways of breaking the guy's posture on top and ways of getting your passing posture back.  As he was teaching Chris emphasised the importance of having your hips forward when in passing posture, which makes it hard to have your posture broken, as well as easily defending arm bars. 

 

To get this message across and in true Haueter style, he said the best way to keep this hip forward position is to always be in the in phase of your fucking and as I write this today, I am sure everyone who attended the seminars will never forget this piece of advice. I'm not sure it would go down well in the kids classes, but for the seniors this advice was one never to be forgotten.

 

As ever, Haueter's colourful language was never far behind as he ranted on about all things Jiu Jitsu, as well as his crummy jokes and rants about the UK economy, politics, religion and all points in between.

 

From the passing posture position, Chris showed a number of ways of opening the guard and outlined the three golden rules of grappling..................

 

1 - get on top and stay on top.

2 - have a good guard and do not let anyone pass.

3 - when you fuck up revert back to #1

 

Once the guard was opened, Chris said there were four ways of passing the guard..............

 

1 - over

2 - under

3 - around

4 - through

 

Chris showed the classic double under hooks guard pass, with some tips on making the pass stronger and more successful and ways to control the guy from side control.  From the passing position, Chris showed the class Knee Staple guard pass and how to make it stronger by adopting the in phase with the hips, one of my favourite passes now made new and improved.  Thanks Chris :)

 

In between all the coaching, Chris was dropping anecdotes about his own training and progression through the belts, as well as stories of him rolling with guys like Megaton, Cobrinha and the Mendes brothers and all were full of helpful info and an insight to the grappling game of elite level players. As well as plenty of profanities.

 

Chris went on to show an awesome sweep using the tail of the opponent's gi from the Knee Staple pass position, which we drilled and then practised live for a good half hour with different partners and at the end of the session Chris opened the mat up to questions from attendees which went on and on, everyone hanging on Chris's words, as he answered the questions in immense detail, leaving everybody with plenty of new techniques and concepts to think over and drill.

 

Thanks to Adam for hosting the seminar and to Chris on delivering an awesome seminar on the fundamentals of maintaining posture, breaking posture, guard passing and guard passing counters.