Escapes

Good BJJ session this morning.  I’ve been working on escapes lately.  Reviewed the mount escapes we worked on last week including:

1. Using my arms to frame against their hips, followed by hip bump, hip escape, and pull guard.  We went over the variations in arm position afterwards.  If I’m first shrimping my butt out to my right and bringing my left knee up to my left elbow, Dave, prefers to go for the underhook using the right hand and then use the left hand to block the opponents left bicep to prevent the cross-face.  The other option would be to reach my left hand past his face and grab the opponents left shoulder.  When I finally shrimp out the other way to free my leg, use my right hand to under hook his left arm, taking out his base and almost ending up with a telephone arm-lock.

2. Upa.

3. When the opponent has mounted me and establishes a grip behind my neck (say with his left arm around the back of my neck, as in trying to establish an Ezekiel choke).  The escape has me “comb my hair” with my right hand to trap his left arm, place the palm of my hand on his right hip, and then bridge and hip bump him, using my left arm to “upa” him to his left side and then onto his back into his closed guard.

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4. Escape with foot sweep – Keep my arms framed against his hips, hip bump, shrimp my hip,  and turn my legs so that I can bring my left leg over the top of my right leg and using my heel hook the outside of his left foot.  Then I can bring up right knee up under his left knee, giving me half guard, and then eventually full guard.

We then continued the escape series to work on escapes from side control when they use a cross face grip.

1. Establish Guard – The first part to remember is to establish good arm position.  If I am lying on my back and the opponent has me in side control with his body on my right side and his left arm around my neck, I first position my right forearm by his left hip to control his hip motions, and then I use my left forearm to control his neck right by his adams apple of possible.  Bridge towards him using my left forearm to further push his neck up, and then as I come down, scoot my butt out to my left to create enough space to slide my right shin against his abdomen and hips.  Then extend my right hip using my right arm to bring his left arm with me creating space.  Hip out to my right side to free my right leg and the pull him into closed guard.

2. Establish open guard – Start out the same, and at the point where I try to slide my right shin in, if there isn’t enough space, I can move my right hand under his abdomen facing up and holding his right hip.  Then as my knees are down towards my right side, flip then quickly to my left side, and at the same time rotate on my back (as if I had a turtle shell), spinning my head out from under him, and ending up in the open guard.

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3. Escape onto knees – Start out the same as in 1, and after the initial bridge into him to create space, slide my left arm under his right armpit to establish an underhook.  Then turn onto my belly and then get onto my knees.  Right hand combing my hair to protect against the cross face and then I can attack his left knee with both hand for the take down to end on top.

Some observations during our free rolling:

– My guard is pretty porous.  Dave just cuts through my guard and gets mount at will.

– Getting out of side control using the techniques that I learned is much more difficult when the opponent is constantly shifting with from side control to knee on belly or changing his hips, and I almost always end up giving the mount.  I probably need to work more on my escapes to execute them faster before they can engage in all those transitions.

– Dave is really good at re-establishing butterfly guard and I should really pick his brain on how to do that.

– I should also practice my butterfly guard pass, since it seems like that is the preferred open guard the guys I spar with use.

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