Lucas Lepri Abu Dhabi World Pro 2015 -75kg Final

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4 Years of Battle - Lucas Lepri vs JT Torres from 2010 Brasileiros to 2014 Mundials

I wasn't aware these two had fought this many times until I started watching more of Lucas Lepri and his passing game in the past few weeks. What followed was an interesting sojourn through time looking at how JT's guard game against Lepri has changed and how Lepri's passing game adjusted to JT's game as well. In short, Lepri's passing has improved, and honestly, JT's guard game has seemingly become less effective at least when facing Lucas Lepri.


Lucas Lepri vs JT Torres - 2010 Brasileiros: JT wins by lapel choke from the back

Much of what you'll come to see in JT's early passing game in this post appears here: Cross grip from bottom, De La Riva hook, foot on hip. He does a lot with these tools to break down Lepri's posture and frustrate his passing game and even hit a sweep at about the 4:15 mark. Lepri's subsequent sweep to get back on top occurs off screen at the 6:30 mark (the world will never know what happened?!) and JT sweeps back on top off screen yet again at the 7:30 mark and eventually finished Lepri from the back.




Lucas Lepri vs JT Torres - 2011 - Abu Dhabi Pro Trials - Lepri by points

You'll notice JT gets to x-guard and nearly sweeps.
But more importantly, JT frustrates Lepri with the collar grip that I've heard guys like Augusto "Tanquinho" Mendes talk about as being a complete game changer for them. This collar grip must be dealt with immediately. I remember reading an interview after Tanquinho beat Cobrinha at the Worlds and the thing he mentioned repeatedly was addressing that cross collar grip because of how powerful it is for the bottom guy. The cross collar grip and the deep De La Riva hook repeatedly compromise Lepri's ability to impose his passing game and suck him down into some dangerous positions or if nothing else, stifle the room he needs to work and impose pressure to pass or make space to Torreando/hop around the legs as Lepri often does (down the road when he uses a bit more leg dragging/Torreando style passing in more recent matches as we'll see later in this post).
By the 5 minute mark, Lepri has begun to address/kill the De La Riva hook but is still contending with the leg lasso/ish spider guard hook on his left arm.

JT makes the critical mistake in a semi-stacked position and leaves his right leg upright/dead for a split second too long and Lepri leg drags it across to the back take.




JT Torres vs Lucas Lepri - 2011 Europeans - Lepri by points
Early on JTJT utilizes foot on the hip, a deep De La Riva hook, leg lasso, and at times that strong, powerful cross grip to break down and keep Lepri in a crouching position, but not so much an offensive passing position. It's not until 5:50 that Lepri gets a good passing opportunity when he underhooks a lazy DLR hook and looks to semi-stack pass. JT sweeps after he inverts at about the 9:50 mark and comes up on top.





Now, through the magic of the internets, we hop into our time machine and fast forward 3 years. Much has changed in the sense that JT is now with Atos (after the scandal at that team whose name we will not say on this blog), and Lepri's passing has definitely improved.

Lucas Lepri vs JT Torres 2014 - Mundials/Worlds - Lepri by points
Lepri hits a nice kouchigari to ankle pick near the 6 minute mark and the passing/guard battle begins.
Early on, JT is using a knee shield/foot on hip style guard to keep Lepri at bay. Lepri keeps the pressure relentless alternating between hand or forearm on JT's hi, controlling it as his knee fights through the middle. At about 9:30, JT briefly gets to deep half and for a moment Lepri looks to be in trouble, but he bails and makes his way back to knee through position and JT in a very low, on his side half-guard. The fatal mistake comes shortly thereafter when Lepri gets the crossface and the knee through inevitably follows. JT at brief moments used a spider hook or a leg lasso, but never seemed to have a more offensive open guard the way he did in the match from 3 years prior. Was Lepri's game just that much better? Has JT's time at Atos got him working on a different bottom half-guard style game? Lepri's passing game here seems pretty straight forward throughout. Knee through the middle, continually hunting for the knee through with that hand/forearm to control the hip. In matches against Oli Geddes, he will feed the collar to attack with the choke/assist with the knee through pass/crossface, but JT does a good job of maintaining that distance for nearly the entire match, but once he gives up the crossface, the pass seemingly becomes inevitable. However, JT's different guard game also afforded him far less opportunities to sweep, sit up to guard, set hooks or virtually anything else to stymie Lepri's game.



 

What I'm Watching/Reading/Learning

Ryan Hall is big on concepts and ideas as opposed to just a list of moves or even a series of movies presented as an approach to say guard passing or closed guard or whatever.

He's big on trying to articulate the "why" not just the "how" and after hearing a purple belt and brown belt at my gym saying things they attributed to Ryan Hall, I've begun listening to the man talk.
 

Lucas Lepri guard passing: Lepri recently won the Mundials in 2014 at black belt/faixa preta and defeated the licks of Roberto Souza and JT Torres and in those matches his guard passing in particular was on point. The man has been nigh close to beating Leandro Lo in the past but Leandro has moved up a division and in Lo's absence, Lepri took the gold and the world championship. He runs roughshod over Souza's guard here. Lepri ties together his torreando, to his underhook/knee through, to his hip/forearm control/knee through pass for a swarm that just simply crowds and overwhelms Souza's guard ad nauseum.
 

Hannibal Barca: if you're going to fail, "do so while daring greatly."

 

 

Something I've been reading and re-reading lately is the work of K. Anders Ericsson. Rather than rely on our own taught and acquired through the social construct of life preconceived notions of how we get good at things (often we fall back on the "they must be a natural" myth), I've been seeking out research and data on what it takes and how someone becomes good at something. A lot of the research shows and utterly disproves the socially accepted concept being "a natural". That historically, we lack perspective in judging the genius of most innovations, and historically, in those times, the so-called experts also lacked the ability to discern what was novel from what was just plain poorly conceived. The data and research also goes on to clarify the real qualities you will find in almost anyone who attains a high level of skill and elite level performance has an innate drive to mastery/rage to master as it is called, access to qualified instructors/feedback of a specialized nature, and the will to engage in deliberate/isolated practice that far exceeds their peers.

It also goes on to relate that it's roughly 10 years to mastery, and that virtually no amount of time less will suffice. It's good in the sense that it truly does level the playing field mentally, or perceptually for those of us who have bought into this socially constructed-accepted belief of "naturals" and that natural ability account for a very tiny deviation in actual skill acquisition. It's bad in the sense that what it truly shows is that the only route, the only true path is long, intense, directed and deliberate practice and thousands of hours on the grind of learning, but tied to a will and desire to learn/master.

Onto the raw information/published materials -

Science of skill acquisition, click HERE.

More science of skill acquisition and expertise, click HERE.

And then.....more science of skill acquisition and development of expertise/mastery, click HERE.