Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Guest Review: Drysdale's Cradle nogi instructional

My buddy Pete (in the red shorts) has been training for six years, predominantly nogi, and currently trains at BETA Academy in DC under Nakapan Phungephorn, a Pedro Sauer bb.  He kindly agreed to review Drysdale's nogi instructional for me since I hardly train nogi but once a week.

He blogs at selfimprovementninja.com  and also runs a company helping people move-- a super green, super easy alternative to finding cardboard boxes when it's time to pack.  Check it out at elfboxes.com.




*****

"I give this DVD an 8 out 10.   It’s definitely worth the money, but it has some shortcomings.

First, I’ll give the pluses.  This DVD is dedicated to using the cradle (a common wrestling move, but fairly uncommon in brazilian jiu jitsu) to pass or submit someone who has you in their half guard.  If you have trouble passing or submitting from half guard top, this gives a useful game plan for that and goes over any common reactions to these moves that you can think of.

You can find a LOT of videos on very specific things in BJJ (both as DVDs and free on YouTube) but I haven’t seen anyone teaching these moves, so it’s not as if he is just repackaging moves that you can see anywhere.

Also, in terms of valuable material he corrects a very common misconception about the brabo choke that I have seen everywhere.  If you’ve ever seen Ryan Hall’s Triangle DVD where he says that you don’t need to pull the trapped arm across your body, and you thought it was sacrilege until he explained it, but then you realize that even though top level black belts all teach you the same way to do the triangle and that this brownbelt (at the time) was telling you they were wrong, you have that a-ha moment and realize he’s right. Well, sorry for the run-on sentence, but you’ll have an a-ha moment about the brabo choke too. I won’t tell you what the correction he makes to your brabo choke is, because you need to buy the DVD to find out, but I will say that I had a lot more success finishing with the brabo after I incorporated his version of the choke.

Now for the minuses,  the video is not as professionally done as you’d expect from other BJJ videos from the big companies.  That alone is not fatal if the content is good. (I still recommend Erik Paulsen’s leg lock DVDs to people even though the production quality makes gonzo porn look like a Steven Spielberg movie by comparison).  Another minus is that it's only 58 minutes long.  If it was even a half hour longer he could’ve included other ways to use the cradle (from standing to a takedown? From turtle? From sidecontrol?).

It’s $35 from Budovideos or you can order it on his website..  It’s worth the cash to learn these techniques that you won’t be able to find in other teaching materials (free or paid).  And you’ll fix that brabo choke that’s been haunting your dreams.

Now get off the internet and go roll."

There are a few other reviews out there, hope this helps!

http://jitsmagazine.com/articles/entry/review_robert_drysdales_cradle_series_instructional_dvd

http://bjjaddicttv.com/2013/07/robert-drysdale-cradle-series/




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