Why do my hands hurt so much? How do I strengthen my grip for BJJ?
Most times when beginners complain about their hands hurting, it’s mostly a technical issue. Beginners tend to grip too hard when they shouldn’t and waste their grip. I see this a lot even with young healthy guys.
When you are grabbing someone’s gi and they aren’t actively trying to break the grip, just grip gently with a mostly relaxed hand. You only need to grip hard for short durations.
When you’re gripping, make sure your wrist is perfectly straight and put a little bit of tension in your wrists so they don’t bend. Bending the wrist weakens the grip considerably. Your opponent will try to bend your wrist in order to help break your grip. Gripping hard with a floppy wrist is very counterproductive. Roger Gracie explains the importance of wrists here:
Whatever you’re trying to do with your grab on the gi, if you try to do it by just using your arms, it will burn your arms a lot more than if you use your body positioning and legs and core properly.
e.g. if I am on the bottom of closed guard and I have my hand in his collar setting up a cross collar choke and he’s trying to push away that hand with both of his arms, if I just try to pull him down with my arms, it will put a lot of strain on my grip. But if I realize that now his arms are not posting on my body, I can easily just sit up, clinch him and pull him down.
In summary, training your grip strength is well and good, and I do recommend doing it, but especially for beginners, problems with grip are mostly technical and not physical, and the fix is technical, rather than just trying to strengthen your grip with exercise.
This post is about principles of escaping side control, using some videos by Marcelo Garcia to illustrate the examples. Note that this is about underlying general concepts, rather than the mechanics of the specific movements that he’s doing. For more on the movements, check out http://www.mginaction.com/ and http://artechokemedia.com/sit-up-escape-system/
First, take a look at the videos.
Marcelo Garcia side control escapes:
Sit up escape:
Elbow push escape:
When it comes time to escape, I’d focus on a few principles, IN ADDITION to the ones already listed in the survival post:
Whichever direction the top person’s weight is leaning, push them more in that direction.
Whichever direction you’re pushing now, you can anticipate that the opponent will push back in the opposite direction, so get ready to go with their force
When you escape, push your opponent and move yourself away at the same time. This is more effective than doing either in isolation
If possible, misalign your opponent’s body.
Whichever direction the top person’s weight is leaning, push them more in that direction.
If you imagine the top person is on your right side, and driving very hard across your body to your left, to turn into them and shrimp away will be very difficult, because you have to go against the force of their legs driving straight forward. In this situation, it’s better to figure out an escape that goes with their energy and pushes them more to the left. See the ‘elbow push’ video for an example. The first part of the video shows how to redirect the energy to the left.
Whichever direction you’re pushing now, you can anticipate that the opponent will push back in the opposite direction, so get ready to go with their force
An example of this would be at about 3:30 in the elbow push video. He talks about if the opponent tries to drop weight back to the right/south, and how to switch to pushing the opponent more to the right/south.
Another example is in the sit up escape video at about 7:00. He talks about how there’s a situation where the opponent holds on to your legs and drives north, so it’s hard to push the opponent more south. In that case, he underhooks and drives north, going with the opponent’s new energy.
A key thing to understand here is that you don’t necessarily have to have super fast reflexes. You know what the most likely defense is, so you’re ready to bust out a counter to the defense by pushing in the same direction that the defense goes.
When you escape, push your opponent and move yourself away at the same time. This is more effective than doing either in isolation
Beginners tend to try too hard to move the opponent. If the other person is bigger, stronger, and on top in a good position, moving them will be hard. It’s better to focus more on moving yourself. But even better still is to do both at the same time. If you watch Marcelo do the sit up escape, you can see the he is pushing on the opponent’s shoulder to elevate that shoulder, and twist the opponent’s body at the hips. At the same time, he also moves his own body away to sit up. When you push the other person’s body away, it’s best to do your push in a plane where it’s weak for their body to resist (in this case, hip rotation).
Another example: If you watch the elbow push video, not only is Marcelo pushing the opponent’s elbow south and to the left, but he’s also scooting his own body north and to the right. See at about 2:14.
If possible, misalign your opponent’s body.
This means you want your opponent to be twisted or bent. They will be much weaker once this occurs. For example, if you watch the sit up escape clip, you can see that after Marcelo sits up, his opponent is twisted. The opponent has his knees facing down towards the ground, but his upper body is tilted sideways. See 2:30 for what this looks like. The opponent is weak and off balanced as long as this condition is true. This misalignment is often set up by pushing on one of your opponent’s shoulders, so that shoulder is elevated while the other one stays low. You can also create misalignment by pushing on the opponent’s neck and causing the chin to look away from the direction the opponent’s hips are facing.
Northsouth is probably the hardest pin to escape, because your legs are the farthest from his legs, so it’s hard to get your guard back. I’d look at it from a reverse perspective.
The easiest thing to do is to stop him from sinking a solid pin on side control(prevent tight pin).The next easiest is to stop him from getting to north/south from side control. If he’s solidly on north/south, the next easiest is to just move yourself back under side control.
Preventing a tight pin
As he passes your guard, use your arms to stop him from grabbing your head or especially hooking his arm over your far shoulder.
Check out this video on Marcelo Garcia’s sit up escape and elbow push escape:
If you’re doing this kind of stuff right, you’ll escape before they lock in a deep pin.
Preventing side control-> north/south
But let’s say you’ve failed at that. He’s hooked his arm over your far shoulder and is blocking your near hip and is circling around to north/south.
Walk your feet in a circle with him so he never gets to north/south; he just stays on top of side control. If he is blocking your near hip with his arm, pop your hips up in the air a little bit to lift his arm up a little bit so you have freedom to keep circling. You don’t want his hips to come over your head, so use your arms to redirect his force outward as you both circle. Try to keep both of your hands on one side of his body so you can push him outward. If you have one arm on each side of his body, you’re going to be stuck under northsouth and probably open to the paper cutter choke.
Escaping north/south by getting back under side control
Let’s say you failed at that and he’s got a solid north/south. Obviously, keep your arms in tight posture. Don’t allow his hips to come over your face; he should always be on one side or the other of your head. Keep your face turned towards whichever side his hips are on. He needs you to look away from him to do the northsouth guillotine, and it also helps a lot for the armbar, kimura, and paper cutter. Walk your feet in a circle so you’re back under side control. If he circles with you, abruptly switch directions and go the other way, so you’re under side control on the other side.
Here are two escapes from Marcelo Garcia that pretty much line up with what I said earlier.
North south escape using elbow push vs side control
Get both your arms on one side of his body, work your way back to under side control and escape from there.
One reason this is good is that the ‘escape’ (walk back to under side control) is the same as the prevention when he’s on side control and trying to go to northsouth (walk to keep yourself under side control). So there’s a seamless transition between escape and prevention.
I’ve been focusing a lot on pin escapes in BJJ class lately. Instead of normal rolling, I just allow someone to start pinning me and go live with escapes only. Tonight I did an hour straight of live pin escapes with no rest. I wrote down some notes for my own use and I thought I’d share them here. By ‘pin’, I refer to any form of side control, scarf hold, or north/south. These are considered some of the hardest positions to escape.
To be clear, this post is not about escaping. It’s only about not getting tapped and using minimal energy to do it.
Here are some simple principles for surviving under a pin. If you just do these, your pin submission defense will go way up. Escaping the pin requires more sophistication, but first things first.
You want your head to be free to move. If your head or neck are misaligned, the highest priority is to realign them and free them.
You want your head facing their hips most of the time.
You don’t want your head facing straight up.
Keep your arms between you and your opponent. If your arms are out of posture, get them in before proceeding.
When possible, defend submissions by using small hip bumps, not by using your arms.
1) You want your head to be free to move. If your head or neck are misaligned, the highest priority is to realign them and free them.
If your head is being crossfaced to the left, there’s no way you can do any escapes to your right. If your head is being crossfaced to your right, there’s no way you can escape to your left. If your neck is being bent sideways so your ear moves towards your shoulder, you can’t do any escapes without risking hurting yourself. The first priority is to prevent your opponent from using their arms, legs, hips, etc. to twist or bend your neck.
2) You want your head facing their hips most of the time.
Everybody who does jiu-jitsu knows you’re supposed to turn to face the opponent and start hip escaping away, which is correct and ideal. Turning your whole body to face the opponent is not so easy against someone who has a crushing pin. But often turning your head is easier. Many of the higher percentage attacks from pins involve the top guy forcing your head to turn away from their hips. These would include the north/south arm bar, the north/south kimura, the paper cutter choke, the north/south guillotine, many variations of cross collar choke, etc.
So the opponent pinning you is going to want to crossface you to make your head look away.
With their forearm/bicep like this:
or using their torso or hips like this:
First, you can use one or both hands to try to prevent this as seen here:
But second, to turn your head with a crossface requires pushing hard against the side of your head to twist your head away. If you’re looking at their hips, then the front of your face is pointed towards their driving power. They can’t use their driving power against the side of your head to twist your head. So simply by looking at their hips, you’re making it much harder to crossface you. In the picture above, the guy on the bottom has good head positioning; even if he wasn’t using his hands to defend, the top guy would need to scoop under his head and push hard on the left side of his head, a direction in which he doesn’t have anywhere near as much power. If the bottom guy was looking straight up, the top guy could launch forward driving off his legs, and the left side of the bottom guy’s face would be wide open for cross-facing.
As they move their hips around, you are always changing the angle of your head to match them. For example, if they’re on their knees, their hips will be a little higher vertically, so your head angle can also be more upward. If they sprawl back away from you, their hips will be down on the ground so you can look more downward. If they change their angle so their hips are more down towards your legs, you can turn your head to look that way. If their hips start circling up towards north/south, you turn your head upward to face them. So when I say turn your head towards their hips, it means a very precise angle that is always moving, not just like “turn my head to the right”.
3) You don’t want your head facing straight up.
When your head is facing up, that means your strongest push is straight up against gravity, which is weak. If you combine this with rule number 1 (your head points towards their hips) it also means you really don’t want their hips to be vertically above your head in the north/south teabagging position.
Like this:
In that position your head has very little freedom of movement and they can use their hips or knees to turn your face away.
Here’s the trick to stop the opponent from getting that position:
Let’s say the opponent starts on side control with his legs on your right side. As he circles around to north south, turn your head to face his hips as he circles, and use your arms to push him up horizontally in the direction of your head and to the right as he circles. This is to redirect his hips away from your head. Your push is kind of with his momentum, so you don’t need much power. At the same time, walk your feet in a circle to the right, as though you’re trying to stay under side control. If you do it right, he’ll feel there is too much space and go back to side control, which is what we want.
If you mess up slightly, he’ll make it to north/south, but he won’t be able to get his hips directly above your head, he’ll be up horizontally in the direction of your head. Your head will have good freedom of movement and you can try to do an escape or just swing side to side until you’re back under side control.
4) Keep your arms between you and your opponent. If your arms are out of posture, get them in before proceeding.
The purpose of this is to make it harder to armlock you, and also so that you can push on your opponent when you need to. As a corollary, keep your elbows close to your ribs, because your opponent will try to separate your elbows from your body in order to get your arms out of posture.
5) When possible, defend submissions by using small hip bumps, not by using your arms.
By hip bump, I mean the upa/bridge/hip lift.
When you use your arms for defending subs, your defensive arm posture will be inevitably loosened. So it’s undesirable to use your arms if you don’t have to. Many times when the opponent goes for a submission while you have good posture, in order to break your posture, they will overcommit their weight in one direction or another. Just give them one or two small, short, low effort hip bumps in that direction and it will off balance them enough that they have to let go of the submission in order to base out with their arms. Since you’re bumping them in the direction their weight already is driving, it doesn’t take much power. If they’re driving hard across your body, this is a situation where you may need to briefly look away from their hips in order to bump in the direction their weight is driving. If you’re not sophisticated enough to feel which direction their weight is driving, you can sometimes get away with just picking one or two random directions.
These are general rules; certainly there are situations which are exceptions. But if you do these things, it really helps. The only times I got tapped in the hour of pin escapes were when the top guy managed to turn my head away.
For more on preserving freedom of movement for your head, a good set of videos to watch are Firas Zahabi’s
Fast and easy Side Control Escape
Lessons on mindset for BJJ competition and training: With Winning in Mind by Lanny Bassham
I just finished the book With Winning in Mind by Lanny Bassham, which I highly recommend.
It’s popular with high level competitors in many sports, as well as groups like the Navy SEAL sniper course. Bassham won a silver medal in his first Olympics, and he interviewed all the gold medalists he could find to find out what they’re doing differently. He won gold in his next Olympics.
One thing that the gold medalists had in common was that they expected to win. Let’s say we have athlete A who has the mindset that he expects to perform well. And athlete B hopes to perform well, but has a mindset of uncertainty. Who would you pick to win that competition? Which of the two is more likely to give up unnecessarily? Which of the two is more likely to lose focus during the match and get distracted by fear, doubt, and pressure? Your conscious mind can only focus on one thing at a time, and thus is prone to distraction. Your subconscious mind can handle many things at a time(e.g. think about driving a car) and can perform at a higher, faster level. So we want a quiet and relaxed conscious mind, free from worry, performance pressure, and overthinking.
Of course, just telling yourself you’re going to win isn’t going to work if you don’t believe it. Your expectations need to be in balance with your ability. So here’s the trick: Focus on process, not outcome. Once you take your mind off of your score and focus on the process of performing well, you are dealing with something you alone can control.
You cannot control what it will take to win a competition. You cannot control what other competitors will show up, or how they will perform, or what the referee or judges will do. But you can control how you train and prepare. You can’t be 100% sure you’ll win, but it is reasonable to be 100% sure that you are going to perform the best that you possibly can. I didn’t say try the hardest, I said perform the best. ‘Trying’ is associated with uncertainty.
Before you step on the mat, say to yourself “There is no doubt in my mind that I am going to perform the best that I possibly can”. Take a deep breath, and even try a big yawn since yawning is naturally relaxing, so a fake yawn can force your body to relax. When the match starts, let your subconscious mind take over during the fight. There’s nothing to worry about, it’s already a done deal that you’re going to do your best.
There’s a lot more useful information in the book. Check out more reviews in:
