Berimbolos, Inverted Stuff, Blah Blah Blah!!!

In case you have been living under a rock, Berimbolo, Reverse De La Riva, basically anything inverted seems to have been the rage over the last year and currently in BJJ competitions.  BJJ is a constantly evolving sport and while some of these movements aren't necessarily new, the competition is also evolving and picking up these techniques.  The ability to find the techniques on YouTube and various DVDs is always growing so it's hard to not find it.  That said you are silly to not want to learn this so at the VERY LEAST you can recognize it and even better....avoid or defend against it.  I wouldn't say I'm building my game around it but since a large part of my game revolves around the 1/2 guard I think it's imperative to know how to attack from multiple angles and situations.  A lot of people I roll against will stand up in a combat base or simply stand up to try and open my 1/2 guard.  I have found that the "Terra Guard" or "Spiral Guard sweep" are very good options to counter this.

I have not spent much time working the Berimbolo and find a lot of variations on Youtube.  Unfortunately one of the best practitioners of this move, Rafael Mendes, has not made a good instructional of this.  I imagine he will at some point down the road.  Funny thing is he has been using this move for a while now.  I ran across some competition footage of him using it back in 2005.  Anywho, here is Rafa showing a version of Berimbolo that he has a lot of success with.



The last couple weeks we've been working some De La Riva options (not Berimbolo) and wanted to park this here as it's very similar to what JD's been showing us.  The only difference here is the opponent isn't nearly as broken down, you can't reach across, grab their back and roll them.  Rafa shows to break them down and expose their back which is a little different.

Not wanting to be completely defenseless in this position I found a nice Berimbolo counter that I'm going to start working into my training.  This works well on the ground once your opponent initiates the Berimbolo sweep.

This is an effective counter if your opponent is deep into the Berimbolo sweeping position while you are standing.