escapologists welcome.
There is nothing more frustrating in BJJ than to do all the hard work of getting to a dominant position only to have your partner escape immediately.
In this short video, BJJ black belt and Escapology BJJ head instructor, Tom Barlow shares a simple way to counter one of the most common escapes from mount; the hip escape.
You can watch the full 15+ minute video now at Escapology Online. Click the button below to learn more:
I have a question for you. Why do Jiu Jitsu players neglect takedowns?
If you think about it, every Jiu Jitsu match starts standing, as does every situation you might need a takedown. Yet most Jiu Jitsu players rarely spend time working on their takedowns.
Yes, you can pull guard, but that won’t score you any points and it gives your opponent an opportunity to attack. It never made sense to me. However, the lack of takedown skill in people’s Jiu Jitsu gives you an opportunity.
My ability to score a takedown at any point during a fight was one key reason for my success at the lower belt levels.
Don’t get me wrong, my takedown skills are far from spectacular, but they’re better than most, and I could rely on them when needed.
Your takedown game doesn’t need to be amazing either to be effective.
All you need are a couple of go-to takedown techniques and you’ll be streets ahead of most BJJ players.
What’s more, developing a strong takedown game will benefit many other areas of your Jiu Jitsu. You’ll be able to scramble out of dangerous positions more easily and, if you think about it, a sweep is just a takedown that starts in guard.
Where most people go wrong with takedowns is they try to learn too many techniques. If you watch most elite level Judo or Wrestling competitors they only use two or three takedowns. However, their set-ups, timing, and counters are perfect.
You don’t need to know hundreds of different takedowns, just one takedown really well. MMA super coach, Greg Nelson, put this perfectly when he said:
“Jack of all trades, but master of none. Master of few and JACK everyone.”
This concept should be applied takedowns and almost every other aspect of your Jiu Jitsu as well.
An excellent example of this concept is when Roger Gracie submitted all 9 of his opponents at the 2009 World Championships with chokes from the mount.
All of Roger’s opponents knew he was going to try to take them down, pass their guard, transition to mount, and choke them. Yet not a single one of these elite level competitors could stop him. Personally, I believe this is the highest level of skill in Jiu Jitsu.
You could argue that Roger Gracie is special, and he is, but almost every successful competitor applies this same philosophy to there game. Here are a couple of examples: Rousimar Palhares and heel hooks, The Mendes Bros and the Berimbolo, Kosei Inoue and the Uchi Mata, John Smith and the Low Single.
As I said earlier, your takedown game only needs to revolve around one grip or position. But from that position, you need to know how to enter it from anywhere and how to complete it regardless of your opponents reaction.
Once I understood that concept, I had a lot more takedown success. I even started competing in Judo tournaments and did pretty well. (Apart from the time I got a concussion, but that’s another story.)
Once I established my grips, my basic flow always goes something like this; off-balance with my initial attack, then follow up with counter attacks depending on their reaction.
If you follow a similar process (grip, off-balance, counter) and train it enough, you can become a takedown machine.
So you may be wondering how you can develop your own takedown game. There are many different positions you can build your takedown game from including the double leg, the single leg, judo grips or many others positions.
It really depends on your style of Jiu Jitsu. To help you get started, I’m going to share with you part of my takedown strategy.
My takedown game has evolved over the years. However, it still begins by establishing a collar grip.
The collar grip is easy to set up, it allows me to control my opponent and neutralise their attacks, and there’s a lot of easy takedowns you can set up from there.
In the video below, you’ll learn how I set up the grip and neutralise my opponents counters, plus a drill to help you improve your grip control.
There are a number of takedowns that can be attacked just from the collar grip. However, I primarily transition to the 2 on 1 position or a modified Judo grip combining the collar grip with the wrist grip on the other side.
Both are great attacking positions, but the modified judo grip is the simplest to start with as it increases your control over your opponent. One of the easiest (and highest percentage) takedowns from the modified Judo grip is the single leg.
Check out the video below to see how I set up the single leg and finish by ‘running the pipe.’
When attempting takedowns, one of the most common areas I see people struggle with is chaining their attacks together.
In my experience, your opponent will normally defend your initial attack. Instead of letting this stop you dead in your tracks, be persistent and keep linking takedowns together until you complete your takedown or if you feel endanger of being countered.
In the video below, you’ll learn a simple follow up technique if your opponent defends your initial attack.
Hopefully, you’re starting to see the benefit to developing a strong takedown game. However, there are still times you may want to pull guard.
For example, you might come up against an Olympic level wrestler or Judo player, or maybe it’s late in a fight and you just want to stall. Whatever the reason, you don’t want to have to switch your grips to pull guard. That would be a dead giveaway something is about to happen.
In the video below, I share one of my favourite ways to pull guard from the collar grip. Even better, it looks cool too.
Now you may be thinking “What if they pull guard?” That’s a great question, and I’m glad you brought it up. The answer is, you have to train that situation too.
You have to anticipate your opponents guard pull and attack before they lock their guard. Typically, I try to attack with a foot sweep or a toreando pass but it will depend on the situation.
The collar & wrist grip I shared earlier is perfect for countering your opponent’s guard pull and allowing you to attack straight away.
As I said at the start of this article, I believe everyone should have at least one takedown they know really well.
If you don’t know where to begin, start with the techniques covered in this article. This will give you a solid base to build your takedown game from.
To help you develop the techniques here’s short training plan to practice these takedowns. Here’s the plan:
This plan should take around 15 minutes to complete and could easily be fitted in before or after class. If you followed the plan for a month, I can guarantee your takedown skills dramatically increase.
If you enjoyed this article, leave a comment below and let me know. I always appreciate the feedback.
If you want a FREE copy of my eBook Performance Drilling and discover how to train like a world champion click the button below.
em>”Position before submission” is a commonly used phrase in Jiu Jitsu. And in my experience when you understand how to control a position the submission becomes a lot easier.
One reason for this is your opponent has to use more energy and give more space to escape, which presents you with submission opportunities.
However, people often focus on the wrong things when trying to prevent their opponents escape.
The first step to preventing an escape has nothing to do with what your opponent is doing with their arms or legs, or how they’re grabbing your Gi. Preventing an escape starts with one simple concept…you have to stop your opponent being able to rotate.
Basically, you gotta keep ’em flat.
Think about it, almost every escape starts with your opponent rotating in some way. If you stop their rotation, you can prevent the escape before it starts.
This video covers some key concepts to controlling positions and keeping your opponent flat, plus how to practice it.
A great way to develop this type of control is to spend a month practicing nothing other than keeping your opponent flat. Make that your goal every time you roll. By the end of the month, your opponents will feel like they’ve got a small planet laying on them and submission opportunities will magically start to appear.
This is exactly what happened to me when Braulio told me to try this. I even got to the point where I could submit people just with my top pressure. Not bad considering the IBJJF think I weigh the same as a feather (about 65kg).
Key Takeaways:
– Almost every escape starts and ends with your partner rotating.
– Use your body weight to kill their rotation and your hands as a backup.
– Don’t rest on their defensive frame.
– Maintain good posture to avoid being rolled.
Do you want more BJJ goodness delivered straight to your inbox? Click the button below to download your FREE copy of Performance Drilling and join the our newsletter:
Despite leg locks being around as long as Jiu Jitsu, a lot of BJJ players find them scary. That’s understandable as being on the wrong end of a nasty leg lock can lead to very serious injury.
However, leg locks don’t have to be scary. In fact, like any submission, defending leg locks comes down to understanding the mechanics and what your partner is trying to achieve.
To help you get a better understanding of how to defend heel hooks, here is a great primer from Dennis Schindler.
Follow Dennis now at https://www.instagram.com/corefightingsystem
You’ll often hear BJJ players talk about Jiu Jitsu being 80% mental yet no one really talks about how you train the mental side of the game. One of the ways we can train the mental side of BJJ is through visualisation.
Visualisation has been shown to be a highly effective way to reduce competition anxiety, develop skills, and improve performance. But what is visualisation and how do you use it to your advantage?
In this video, Tom shares his experience using visualisation and how he uses visualisation pre-competition and in-competition.
This article has most of the references for the studies into visualisation if you’d like to do further research:
http://nancynewell.com/blog/2018/1/21/the-hidden-power-of-visualization