The armbar, as it is usually taught, involves using BOTH of your hands or arms to control ONE of your opponent's arms. This two-on-one control can be used when trying to break through your opponent's defenses, as in the photo below: The two-on-one arm control is usually retained right until your opponent taps out to the finalized armbar, as in the following photo: Now this regular … [Read more...]
How To Use Moves You Already Know to Do Advanced Techniques
We've just launched the latest Grapplearts BJJ instructional mobile app with my friend Brandon 'Wolverine' Mullins. It's called Advanced BJJ Fundamentals. The name of this app isn't accidental, because it's all about using the fundamental building blocks of jiu-jitsu to make learning easier, to amplify the effectiveness and reliability of your techniques, and to build an advanced … [Read more...]
The Simplest Mount Escape for MMA and BJJ?
In BJJ the Mount is one of the very worst positions you can be in. And if punches are flying in either an MMA or a self defense context then things are much, much worse. The truth is that if you find yourself mounted in a fight then you screwed up a long time ago. Your opponent is either more lucky or more skillful than you. That being said, if you have good mount escape techniques it IS … [Read more...]
The Three Ways to Escape ANY Submission…
Jiu-jitsu has hundreds of submissions including chokes, cranks, armlocks, wristlocks, kneebars, footlocks, crushes, and many other ways to make people tap out. But if you're caught in a submission - any submission - there are only three ways to get out. This relates to the timing of the defense: before, during or after. Let's go through them, one by one... … [Read more...]
A Little-Known Move to Recover Guard from Turtle
When BJJ world champion Brandon Mullins and I started talking about doing a second instructional set, he was adamant about including a section focusing on the advanced applications of fundamental movements. I was initially dubious. I didn't think that most people would be interested in this. But the more we talked about it, and especially when he started showing me what he wanted to cover, I … [Read more...]
How NOT to Get Triangle Choked While Passing the Guard
The very first guard pass I learned was the stacking guard pass (also known as the smashing guard pass or sometimes the 'over under' pass). Initially I was doing this pass all wrong, and I can't even begin to count how many times I got triangle choked trying it. But eventually I learned a few tweaks that made it much harder for my opponents to apply the triangle choke, and now it's one of my … [Read more...]
BJJ Self Defense Part 5: Defending the Low Tech (and Deadly) Headlock!
One of single biggest errors you can make when you're practising a martial art is to assume that everybody else practices that same martial art. Let me explain that... Boxers spend 99.9% of their time learning how to fight other boxers. Wrestlers train to attack with, and defend against, wrestling techniques. … [Read more...]
BJJ Self Defense Part 2: Escaping the Mount
The first time I ever saw the Mount position was during a schoolyard fight in grade one. One kid pushed the other kid to the ground, climbed on top, sat on his chest in the classic bully position, and then absolutely dominated the fight. He punched and slapped and taunted the other kid who was completely unable to do anything about it until the fight was broken up by the teachers. The kid on … [Read more...]
A Time to FREAK OUT!
When it comes to sparring, many BJJ rookies just freak out for the whole session. Every grip is a deathgrip, they spaz out when they're in the guard, and then push with every bit of their strength the whole time that they're pinned on the bottom. And then they get tired... … [Read more...]
Five Great Followups to a Failed Triangle Choke
The Triangle Choke is definitely another one of those Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu signature moves. It's a super-powerful submission and it is responsible for ending a LOT of BJJ, MMA and submission grappling matches. But the sad fact is that no submission works for everyone, or on every opponent all the time... For example, sometimes your legs can be too short to apply an effective triangle … [Read more...]
The Highest Percentage Rear Mount Escape
There's one specific rear mount escape you'll see more than any other in high level competition... It's also my 'go to' escape when I'm sparring with tough training partners... And to top it off, this technique works with the gi, without the gi, and in MMA! … [Read more...]
A Sneaky Armbar Escape
The armbar escape in the video below is one of my favourite armbar defenses. I like it because it's simple and effective against a wide variety of grapplers, but also because of the reaction it gets from people who were oh-so-close to armbarring you. They'll either laugh or swear out loud after you get out; either reaction is pretty gratifying! I learned this from MMA trainer and former … [Read more...]
My Bread and Butter Armbar Escape
The armbar is one of the most common, most popular, and most powerful submissions in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. If you train with anybody your own level or higher then you're gonna get caught in it… often. You need to have answers for this problem…. In fact you need to have multiple escapes that work for different variations of the armbar. You need a Plan A, a Plan B, and a Plan C, D, and … [Read more...]
How to Defeat The Judo-Style Rolling Armbar
Love her or hate her, Ronda Rousey is an armbar machine. At UFC 168 she defeated Meisha Tate with her eighth armbar in eight MMA fights. This armbar streak is an amazing achievement, and a lot of people (including a lot of people who don't actually train) have been asking me how to counter this attack. I was thinking about doing this but it turns out that someone beat me to it. Ronda got … [Read more...]
How to Counter the Cross-Collar Grip
When you're in your opponent's guard one of the most annoying things he can do is secure a really good cross-collar grip on you. True, this grip doesn't have much utility for MMA or no-gi training (in fact being too reliant on it can create some really bad habits for when the gi comes off), but in BJJ the cross-collar grip is a serious problem. When your opponent snags a cross collar grip on you … [Read more...]
How to Stabilise Mount Against a Bigger, Stronger Opponent
Many smaller grapplers avoid the mount position because they feel it's too easy for a larger opponent to simply throw them off or roll them to the bottom. It usually takes a TON of work to get to the mount, and it really sucks when some big doofus simply sits up and rolls you to the bottom where you have to start all over again! … [Read more...]
How to Maintain Rear Mount, Improve Guillotines, and Thwart ‘Combatives’ Experts
Rear mount seems like such a simple position: I mean, you're basically just piggybacking on your opponent, right? Well, success in jiu-jitsu usually means doing simple, fundamental things with a high degree of sophistication and attention to detail. And rear mount is no different - switch your grip by a couple of inches, have your hand open instead of closed, do the wrong thing for even a … [Read more...]
The Highest Percentage Sidemount Escape in BJJ?
Sidemount is arguably the pinning position you're going to run into most often in BJJ. Most guard passes lead into sidemount, and from sidemount you can get to almost every other position (it's kind of like the Grand Central Station of BJJ pinning)! So it's not surprising that there are a ton of different sidemount escapes involving shrimping, bridging, spinning, reguarding, etc. … [Read more...]
My Favourite Kneebar Defenses and Escapes
The kneebar is one of my very favourite submissions - it's become a bit of a signature move, in fact. So it's always a man-bites-dog moment whenever someone attacks me with the kneebar and I find myself on the receiving end of this powerful leglock. (The nerve of some people! Sheesh!!) Anyway, here's a YouTube video excerpt from my Submission Defense app (available in Apple, Android, & … [Read more...]
How to Defend and Escape the Rear Naked Choke
There's a reason that the Rear Naked Choke (or RNC) has finished so many matches in MMA, BJJ and submission grappling: it's a very powerful and super-difficult to escape submission! This effectiveness is the main reason that we've devoted so much time to this choke on Grapplearts - (click here to see the RNC archives). But even if your opponent is getting close to sinking this submission don't … [Read more...]