This is definitely the most times I’ve seen them used in a competition match at such a high level. Of course it helped that the match was 20 minutes long and JT Torres is such a good guard passer.
At 3:32, Rory used an elbow push to hip roll in response to a stack pass.
The commentators referred to it as the ‘Turkish get-up escape’ , which is an apt name.
At 4:24, a sit up escape.
As a bonus, around 11:55, Rory does an interesting mount escape where he put his hands on JT’s hips and popped his legs up in the air repeatedly until he got his guard back. We’ve seen this before from Garry Tonon.
At 13:40, elbow push to counter a stack pass, in the top right of the video.
At 17:49, sit up escape to hip roll escape.
These are a great example of how effective these escapes are, to be used against a great top player like Torres.
Bernardo Faria vs Leandro Lo Pan Ams 2015 Lapel choke from side control with your own lapel
This choke is one of my favorites. You can see the finish (blurrily) in this clip: Leandro Lo vs Bernardo Faria Pan AMs 2015 Open Finals:
Here’s a breakdown from Renato Tavares, “Bernardo Faria x Leandro Lo Pan Ams Choke”. At 1:30, Tavares brings up an important point of moving your own shoulder south onto their neck, instead of the chin, to make that side tighter.
Here’s a breakdown of the choke from Professor Buck, “How Bernardo Faria finished Leandro Lo”.
Bjj AfterForty has a variation called it the “ninja roll choke” which involves doing a roll:
Marcos Barros of Gracia Barra shows a very similar move here, ‘
BJJ Technique – Learn How to Apply 2 Lapel Chokes From Side Mount Control’:
Ricardo Cavalcanti shows a similar choke here, with a different roll, ‘
Jiu Jitsu Techniques – How To Use Your Own Lapel For Lapel Choke’:
Update: Some time after I originally posted this, Bernardo Faria himself released a video explaining the choke. Interestingly, in his version, he uses both hands for the finish.
‘Pan Am Scarf Choke with both hands’ by Bernardo Faria: https://player.vimeo.com/video/156126898
I like to set this choke up myself from reverse scarf hold, the reason being that when you’re on top of reverse scarf hold, the opponent can’t see what you’re doing, so they can’t see your lapel coming over their neck until it’s too late. The reason this choke works so well is that once you throw your own lapel near the opponent’s neck, they have 2 choices.
They can ignore it, in which case you do the choke.
They can try to grab it or otherwise block it, but if they do that, then they’re opening their arms up for attack.
So once you put your own lapel near their neck, it’s like you have 3 arms (your two arms, plus your lapel) attacking their neck, and they can only defend with their two arms.
CarnageBJJ shows an example of a similar attack from reverse scarf hold here:
‘Daily BJJ: Near-Side Lapel Gi Choke from Side Control’
and
‘Exclusive Jiu-Jitsu – Lapel Choke from the Side Control – Essence Of Jiu-Jitsu’
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.
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
