Let me explain…

There is no shortage of different submission attacks from the bottom position.  Most typically you’d attack from the closed guard, open guard or half guard position, but you can also use submissions if you’re turtled under your opponent, or even pinned in side mount.

Of course if you finish a submission from the bottom and your opponent taps out, that’s great!  End of story.  Move along folks, nothing to see here…

But have you ever burned yourself out trying to finish a a choke or a jointlock?  It happens to everyone, and it’s especially common from the bottom!

Here’s what typically happens…

You see a good submission opportunity and lock in your grips, but try as you might your opponent just won’t tap out.

You strain and strain and strain, trying to finish the submission, but you just can’t finalize it.  Maybe your grips are just a little out of position, or you don’t have the right angle, or maybe your opponent is freakishly strong, or flexible, or stubborn, or whatever…

The bottom line is that if you keep on straining and don’t submit him, then before long you’ll be exhausted, your arms will turn into jello and your fingers into useless collections of limp sausages, unable to grip to grip anything at all…

(I’ve made this mistake lots of times and it sucks.)

Instead of ending up like this, sometimes it’s better to cut your losses!

Let’s say that you’re trying to apply a submission but you realize that you probably WON’T be able to finish it from the bottom.

Before you abandon the technique entirely, consider whether you can convert the submission attack into a sweep.

Sometimes you can use the leverage generated by your attacking position to power your opponent from the top to the bottom. And sometimes you can trick your opponent by letting him roll out and  partially ‘escape.’  If you anticipate his frantic rolling then you can follow him to the top and then promptly take away his mobility, locking him down and solidifying your top position.

If you use your submission as a ‘persuader’ in this way, then the best case scenario is that you end up on top and finish the submission from there.  And what’s great is that many submissions are actually more powerful if you’re on top, which then makes it easier to tap your opponent out!

But even if your opponent manages to slither out of the attack and avoids getting submitted, you’ll still often end up on top.  That’s kind of beginning to look like a guard sweep, isn’t it?  You might not have finished the submission, but that’s a pretty good worst-case scenario!

There are lots of specific examples of what I’m talking about…

The Arm Triangle Choke (aka “Kata Gatame”) from the closed guard is a submission that can be very useful if an opponent decides to play the bully and grind into your throat with one of his forearms.  It’s relatively easy to slap on the Arm Triangle Choke from there, but the sad truth is that sometimes this choke can be hard to finish from the bottom unless you’ve got strong, muscular arms.

Even if you can’t make him tap out, however, the good news is that in this position you’ve tied up one of his arms.  If he’s caught in the Arm Triangle Choke it’s physically impossible for him to post with the arm that’s trapped , so rolling him towards that side becomes a very powerful option for you.

And once on  top you end up in a great position to finish the match with the very same choke, except it’s now a LOT more effective than when using it from the bottom!

Using the Kimura Armlock position as a lever to ‘encourage’ your opponent to roll to his back is another very effective way to use a submission as a sweep.  This is a strategy that works from the closed guard, half guard, or even from the bottom of side mount.

A great example of this is the Kimura that was used by Frank Mir at UFC 140. At one point Frank was completely sidemounted, but he maintained the grip on Nogueira’s arm, used it to lever himself to the top, and then finished the armlock with devastating effectiveness.

Click here for a breakdown of the Kimura being used in MMA by Frank Mir.

The Omo Plata Armlock is a very versatile attack that leads into a lot of sweeps and other submissions.  The funny thing about this sweep is that as you face more and more advanced opponents you often start using it MORE as a sweep, and LESS as an actual submission…

One of my favorite sweep followups to an initial Omo Plata attack involves underhooking the near leg and rolling your opponent over top of you.   I call this the “Log Roll” Sweep, and if you have faith in it you can use it on significantly larger opponents.

I use the Log Roll Sweep all the time in actual rolling, and it’s featured in my first, somewhat-dated-but-still informative instructional DVD called ‘Omo Plata and the Dynamic Guard.’

Finally let’s talk about the Rolling Kneebar Submission from the turtle position.  This is a really good technique to add to your toolkit because it presents a constant submission threat to your opponent when you’re in a bad position (i.e. turtled).

Once again, even if you don’t end up in a successful knee bar, this rolling attack often lands you on top and in a great position to pass the guard.

Interestingly, there are number of advanced sweeps from the half guard and inverted guard that don’t typically finish with kneebars, but use very similar mechanics to the rolling kneebar.

So the rolling kneebar is definitely a good attack to learn – check out this link  and take a look at the technique #3 of the comic format introduction to the kneebar!

Don’t let me put you off of submissions from the bottom.  By all means, go for them with conviction!

But also remember that not all attacks starting from under your opponent require your opponent to tap out in order to be successful.  Sometimes getting to the top is enough!!

P.S.  If you want to be notified when I publish future articles like this one (and you don’t already receive my email newsletter) then I strongly suggest that you sign up right away.  I will never share or sell your email address, and you can unsubscribe with one click if you don’t like what I’m sending you. Finally it’s free and always will be: click here to sign up right now.

There are a only limited number of positions in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu.  The six most common positions are the Guard, Sidemount, Kneemount, Full Mount, Rear Mount and Turtle (click here to get a free book with a full explanation of this concept).

Now most of the time when you learn submissions – chokes, armlocks or leglocks – you start from one of these six basic, static positions.

And after you learn the mechanics of a technique, you then have to drill it to get your reps in, right?

Once again, 99% of technique drilling occurs from a static position.  You pick a technique, start in a recognizable position, and go through a series of steps until you end up locking on the final submission.

Drilling a single technique, step by step, with a partner in a specific static position like this is a great way to become familiar with the basic mechanics of a technique.

And there’s nothing wrong with this approach, at least initially…

But it’s NOT the most powerful way of applying these submissions.  You can do a lot better, and the key is that a lot of grappling occur BETWEEN positions, during the TRANSITIONS!

If you own the DVD series that Emily Kwok and I did on fighting bigger and stronger opponents then you’ll already familiar with the concept of defending and escaping bad positions during transitions (click here for a video clip about transitional escapes…)

Taking advantage of openings that present themselves during transitions is really important for advanced grappling.  And this applies not only to escapes, but also to the most exciting part of grappling, namely submissions.

Attacking with a submission when your opponent is on the move between formal positions is better because as he’s scrambling he’ll inevitably give you openings for your attack.  His defenses are down. He’s thinking about moving and scrambling, NOT about defending your submission.

In fact, your opponent often won’t even see the attack coming until it’s much too late.

I once saw Marcelo Garcia tap out a really good MMA fighter with a guillotine.  Marcelo slapped it on during a scramble.  Then the dude tried to cartwheel out of it which didn’t work.  He ended up tapping out in mid-air while upside down, with none of his limbs actually touching the floor.

That’s how quick a transitional attack can finish a fight.

Transitional attacks become even more important as you start fighting more skilled opponents and training partners.

Once people become familiar with a specific submission it becomes pretty hard to tap them out with it.  So you’ve got to catch them when they’re not quite expecting it (or at least not as able to defend)…

When people are safely settled down in a position they often become extremely defensive.  They tuck their chin, hold their arms close to their bodies, and are on the lookout for your attacks.

But movement creates openings.

Consider the guillotine choke for example…

Imagine sparring someone who is hunkered down in a really tight turtle position.  His hands are up, his neck is down, and he’s on high alert for any sort of attack.

How easy will it be to apply a guillotine on someone like that?

Right!  Not very easy at all.

But somehow your opponent must have gotten to that turtle position…

Maybe he shot in for a double leg takedown and you sprawled.  Or maybe you had him in sidemount and he turned in to his knees.  Or maybe he turtled because you were about to pass his guard…

There were probably a LOT more opportunities to get his neck while he was moving into the turtle compared to him being fully hunkered down in the turtle.  During that brief period of movement he’s much more vulnerable

This is a super-powerful concept.

The only  downside of this style of attacking is that that your game needs to be sharper…

You fight the way you train, so if you want to catch your opponent during the transitions between static positions then you need to have a deeper understanding of the game, drill transitional attacks, and be ready to jump on opportunities the split second they present themselves.

In the words of the famous philosopher Marshall Bruce Mathers III (also known as Eminem)

“Look, if you had, one shot, or one opportunity
To seize everything you ever wanted, one moment
Would you capture it?
Or just let it slip, yo”

Nailing a tough opponent with a submission is kind of like that…

Your homework is to take a look at some of the more common transitions in your sparring matches, some of the predictable scrambling patterns that occur over and over with your training partners, and figure out how to slap on some of your favorite submissions DURING the transition, BEFORE the position becomes fully stabilized.

This will really boost your finishing percentage, yo!

At first I thought that this was normal.  I thought that maybe things would change after I’d paid my dues for 10 or 20 years…

And then I started training in JKD under Makoto Kabayama.

It’s now been more than two decades since I last saw him, but I will always remember how he impressed the hell out of me the first time we met.

Makoto told me: “Ask any question you want. If I know the answer I’ll tell you.  And if I don’t know the answer then we’ll find out together.”

His invitation to ask questions, and implication that he didn’t know everything, was an amazingly refreshing attitude to me.  I respected him so much for those open-minded, humble and honest words

Even today there are still instructors who hate answering questions.  They’ll blow you off, give smart-ass answers, or just ignore you.

In the present day and age this is is regressive.  So long as it’s asked at the right time and in the right context a good instructor should be willing to help you with just about any question.

Honestly, I’d pack up and leave if I found out I was training with someone who wasn’t open to appropriate questions.

But the flipside – being shown too much – can also impede your progress.

I see this fairly frequently.   For example, a white belt might ask “how do I escape the mount?  Or “how do I finish the triangle choke?”

What that student needs are some simple fundamental techniques that’ll work for just about everybody.

But sometimes the instructor might show a super-advanced black belt level technique that the beginner in question is never going to be able to pull of in a million, billion years.

Occasionally this is ego on the part of the instructor: he wants to show off to the students.

And sometimes it might be concern that the other students in class could get bored unless he shows them new stuff.

(The irony is that even advanced students usually appreciate a review of the fundamentals, because they might pick up new little details they missed earlier.)

Now I want to make it clear that training with someone who shows too much information is way better than training with someone who doesn’t want to give out any information.

But still, you might learn faster if you could (gently) engineer a situation where you get the information you NEED to know, as opposed to the information that’s nice to know.

So what can you do if you train with someone so advanced that they’re always giving you too much information, or variations so advanced that you can’t possibly pull them off?

Here are four magic phrases that often get the session back on track:

1. What is the EASIEST way to get out of this position, or
2. What are the THREE BASIC attacks from here, or
3. What is the HIGHEST PERCENTAGE move from this position, or
4. What is your BREAD AND BUTTER escape to this attack?

I use these four magic phrases ALL THE TIME (and I’m a BJJ black belt who appreciates both the basics AND the fancy stuff).

Suppose you’re working with somebody who is a wizard in the open guard.

When he sweeps someone, his arms, legs and other bodyparts are flying in so many directions that it’s hard to understand the movement and even harder to duplicate it yourself…

You might ask “what are the three BASIC sweeps from your favorite open guard position?”

There are limits to what you can do, of course, but do your part to keep things focussed.

If you think that you need to understand the basics, then ask about the basics.

If you’re missing fundamentals, then ask about the fundamentals.

Keep on finding different ways to ask the same questions until you have what you need.

One high percentage move you can use right away is worth 100 cool variations that’ll take 10 years to be able to use.

And it’s always pretty cool to come away from a Q&A session with a couple of things you’ll be able to use in your own game, right away!

I was finishing up drilling some new guard passes when someone came up to me and said “I’m a big fan, I read your newsletters and I have both your apps…”

First of all, I want to tell you that it’s always nice when readers come up and introduce themselves.  So please come over and say ‘hi’ if we’re ever walking down the same street together.

But it was also a wake-up call for me that I haven’t been doing my marketing well…

You see, this was the third time in two days that someone has come up to me and told me that they love both my apps.

There’s only one small problem…

I don’t have two apps: there are actually THREE Grapplearts apps not two!!!

Here’s what I’ve got for your iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch:

1) Grapplearts Submissions.Learn how to do the most powerful submissions in grappling, including the key details that allow you to tap out bigger, stronger opponents.

2) Grapplearts Sweeps. Covers 29 powerful sweeps from closed guard, open guard, half guard, spider guard, butterfly guard and X guard to get you from the bottom to the top in any grappling match.

3) Grapplearts Pin Escapes. Easily escape bad positions and get back in control of a match…

If you have an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, you should totally pick up these three apps.  There’s an entire DVD’s worth of information on each app and using the indexing system you can get access to the exact technique you need anytime.

(Well, maybe looking techniques up while sparring would be a little awkward, but you can still can look up what you should have done in the locker room afterwards…)

Seriously, at $3.99 each these apps are a great value.  Get one, get ‘em all!

You’ve GOTTA have a basic idea of how to defend strikes on the ground!!!

(This grappling stuff is a lot of fun, but it is still a martial art. And that means knowing how to apply your techniques in a self defense situation when someone might be trying to rearrange your face with wild haymakers).

Click here to open our comic-format instructional on how to defend strikes on the ground!

This is an important subject presented in a kinda fun way.  The direct link to the PDF is

http://tinyurl.com/2b72w2f

Here’s my official permission to spread this PDF on Strike Defense any way you want.

This includes Facebook / Twitter / Email / Forums / Blog Posts / Website.  No charge; it’s free!  Now and forever.

A while ago I shared something about the two fundamental techniques and the three most important movements for escaping side mount (click here for the original blog post).

Both of those fundamental techniques referred to in the post above are among the escape techniques broken down for you in my third iPhone app: Grapplearts Pin Escapes.  (This video-based app made it to the number one spot in the sports apps category almost immediately upon release.)

Thanks to the miracle of YouTube and streaming online video, here’s Jennifer Weintz and myself demonstrating the first of those super-important side mount escapes.

Because I saw this position working again and again, several years ago I decided to add it to my repertoire.  It’s a bit like regular half guard except you insert yourself right under your opponent’s center of gravity, which opens him up to some very powerful sweeps.

It wasn’t easy at first: it took a lot of experimentation and research, but eventually I had a series of ‘aha’ moments and it became one of my bread and butter sweeping positions!

Here’s a video clip of the specific revelation that made the biggest difference in my game, and converted the Deep Half Guard into an aggressive sweeping position for me:

You see, I’ve been working like mad on the Online Grappling Concepts course that I’m delivering at my new site, Grapplearts.tv. I’m really enjoying creating those lessons, but it takes a lot of time to write, film, edit and encode each weekly lesson. And the 15 to 25 page PDFs that accompanies each weekly lesson. And the occasional bonus video.

Anyway, that’s the reason I haven’t been posting quite as much recently. Thought you might want to know why!

But I HAVEN’T completely forgotten about you. That’s why I want to talk about an easy way to prevent injury.

This tip comes from my heart, because I learned this lesson first hand when I injured my first BJJ teacher (and friend) Pshemek Drabchinsky.

Once upon a time we were grappling. I was on top and things seemed to be going well (this was unusual at the time because he was way more skilled than I). However on this day I almost had him pinned! Pshemek is one of those Daddy Long Legs kind of grapplers, and he was trying to put me back into his guard using his long, flexible and agile legs.

He was pushing on my hip with his hand to make enough room to bring his legs into play.

To thwart his defense I twisted my hips: this is one good option, because changing the angle of your body this way often collapses your opponent’s arms.

Unfortunately this time I did it a little to abruptly and a little too fast.

The bottom man is stiff arming my hips
(over-exaggerated for clarity)…

…so I twist my hips to collapse his defense

There was pop!

And he gasped in pain.

His fingers had got caught on my body and when I twisted my hips he couldn’t get his hand out in time. In effect I had applied a hard, uncontrolled wristlock on my training partner without meaning to do so. His wrist took more than a year to heal completely, and I felt bad about it the whole time.

There are eight small bones, and a lot of ligaments and nerves in the wrist. Unfortunately if something is broken in there, then the fractures is often missed by a non-specialist looking at an X ray. (So if you or someone you know severely injures the wrist, or if a nagging wrist injury just won’t heal, then get hand specialist to take a look at you, and not just the regular ER doc…).

Anyway, I don’t mean to scare you you, but I hope I’ve made my point that wrist injuries are not to be taken lightly.

If someone is pushing your body then go ahead and use the body twist to neutralize his arms. Just don’t do it super-abruptly and with a lot of weight on his hands.

And if you’re pushing from the bottom then be aware of the dangers. Be aware of the angles and positioning of your wrists and hands, and be ready to collapse your arms in before you get inadvertently wristlocked. Better to live and fight another day from the bottom of sidemount than have your training cut short by a hyperextended wrist.

Train safe, because as BJJ black belt David Meyer says, “Injury is the enemy!”

The first time I saw the Reverse Mount I was at an Erik Paulson seminar. My reaction was something like “yeah, right….”

I honestly thought that Erik had run out of high percentage things to teach and was now just making stuff up.

Knowing Erik though, I really shouldn’t have doubted him…

As soon as I used the reverse mount in sparring I realized that my opponent had no clue about what to do. In addition, the pressure on his diaphragm turned out to be quite intense, making it hard for him to breath.

This is an application of choking your opponent’s diaphragm instead of his neck.

Difficulty breathing = panic = doing something stupid = easy submission! I finished my partner with a submission and that was the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

After that I started using it fairly regularly. I even won the a BJJ tournament with it: I started in North South, jumped up and forward to get to Reverse Mount, and then sunk in a kneebar (a breakdown of that finish, and a video of it, made it into my Dynamic Kneebars DVD).

It’s funny, before you identify something as a position it just looks like a wacky tangle of legs and arms. You think to yourself “how could I ever end up in that silly position?”

But after you isolate it and give it a name you start seeing it much more often. Grapplers may not mean to end up there, but they do anyway.

And you see this position even at the highest levels: I remember watching two top ranked fighters in Pride end up in this position and stalemate there for what seemed like hours (in reality it was probably only a few minutes).

It’s so unusual that the vast majority of people trapped on the bottom have no idea how to escape from here or even what kind of submissions to expect

(To my loyal readers I’ll spill the beans and tell you that most of the attacks from here involve leglocks, but don’t tell anyone…)

Knowing how to apply a few so-called ‘specialty’ positions can be an absolute ace up your sleeve!

About 5,000 people receive these newsletters, and many more read it on the website, via RSS feeds, etc. If we all got together and combined our knowledge we’d make Rickson Gracie look like a three-stripe white belt.

A few days ago I talked about one of my favorite unorthodox positions: Offside Kesa Gatame. I also said that, to the best of my knowledge, there aren’t any formal names for this position

Well Chris Beaver from Canada and Pierre Henry from Belgium both wrote in to tell me that Judo DOES have a name for this position, namely: “Makura Kesa Gatame.”

The funny thing is that, before I wrote the article in question, I’d asked about 5 Judo black belts if they’d ever seen that position and they all said no.

After I got those two emails I did some additional research and found out that there are a couple of variations of Makura Kesa Gatame. One of those variations is very similar to what I call Offside Kesa Gatame.

It’s a bit of a digression, but one thing to keep in mind is that while some Judo players may use this as a PINNING position, knowledge of the submission potential of this position will be more rare. In Judo the pin itself can win the match, so why risk going for a position and losing the position.

(Back when I did Judo going for a submission from a good pinning position in competition would have been considered insane).

I’ve often said that we should look beyond the borders of our own specific martial arts for additional information. Chris and Pierre helped me do just that!

Thanks!