Every grappler needs to have a basic understanding of takedowns.  You don’t want to be so uni-dimensional that you have no idea how to take somebody down.

But the problem is that not every takedown you learn from Judo or wrestling will work on someone a lot bigger and stronger than you. In fact you can get pretty badly hurt if you try  the wrong throw on someone and they collapse on you, pile-driving you into the mat.

In our brand new DVD set ‘How to Defeat the Bigger Stronger Opponent, Series 2‘ Brandon Mullins and I spend quite a bit of time going over throws and takedowns that are ‘big guy proof’.  By that I mean that they’re techniques you can use even when the other other guy is 20, 50, or even 100 pounds bigger than you.

(I’m about 80 pounds heavier than Brandon. I can vouch for the fact that when he hit these takedowns on me I had absolutely no choice but to go down!)

Here’s a video with Brandon’s very favorite takedown.  This is a very versatile takedown: you can use this technique on people your size or a lot bigger than you, and it works great both with and without the gi.

You’ll probably want to watch ALL of  this 5:19 video because we’ve included some pretty cool competition footage to show what this technique looks like at top speed against a fully resisting opponent.