“Talking about Lucas is always a pleasure for me. I have never seen an athlete with so many skills like him. He is one of the most complete athletes that I have had the opportunity to train.” Rubens “Cobrinha” Charles
Lucas Lepri has followed up with his guard passing DVD with another 2 volume set. This set is a nogi (but the techniques are easily adapted to gi BJJ) and focused mainly on the reverse De la Riva, De la Riva, Butterfly and Side Control. Lucas also covers some material on the half-guard, back control and turtle. Most of the techniques are sweeps and attacks making it a solid complement to his passing DVD.
Lucas Lepri’s DVD set consists of 2 DVDs and covers ~3 hours of instruction in total. In this article you’ll find mindmaps for both DVDs and some commonalities that I noticed as I broke down the instruction.
Technical Specs:
The audio and video are sufficient for the task of relaying the information to you. Digitsu uses different angles and also picture in picture to show the same technique from different perspectives. Each technique is gone thru in detail twice and then demonstrated several more times (to some groovy 70’s music). Lucas’ English is accented but clear. From an overall production quality standpoint this is very similar to Stephan Kesting’s instructionals.
Check out the clip at the bottom of this article for a better idea of video quality and sound.
DVD 1: De la Riva, Reverse de La Riva and Half-Guard:
There are very few DVDs available teaching the DLR or RDLR guards. There are some solid online instructionals (notably from Jiu Jitsu Lab and covered here) but by and large it’s a huge hole in the world of instructional DVDs. This DVD is not going to teach a full game but it’s not intended to. Lucas shows 13 techniques that will be most useful for someone that has a basic understanding of these guards.
DVD 2: Butterfly Guard, Back Control and Side Control:
The second DVD was almost immediately useful for me. The techniques that Lucas teaches are very good supplements and variations to techniques that a lot of us are already familiar with. Specifically, the attacks for side control were fantastic and very easily integrated into my current game.
Closing Thoughts:
Who’s this for? Mostly blue belts and above but the DVD really is a mixed bag. There are concepts and techniques that anyone with a year or so under their belt can use. Then you have techniques from the De la Riva and Reverse De la Riva that will require a lot of drilling and experience to use effectively. The half-guard, side control and possibly butterfly guard will be easily incorporated into the games of blue belts and above.
At ~$70 for 3 hours of instruction (28 techniques are shown) the DVD is priced competitively with other instructional DVD of similar length and newness. Please take a few moments to check out Digitsu at their website, Facebook and Twitter. Lucas can be found at Facebook and Twitter. As always the study guide is available for download as a PDF at the link below.
