A Better Back Escape?

I’m going to share a chain drill with you that connects the back escape with a rolling back take.

There’s two techniques in the flow. So by the standards of chain drills, it’s a simple drill. And it also combines a basic technique with a more advanced one, which can make things a little more interesting.

Beyond this particular drill though, I want you to understand the power of chain drills, in…

Wednesday 08/19/15

Back Escapes/Defense

Defend with cross side hand. Grab the choking arm, bring your arm up through and trap it under your lat. Follow the fingers and drive with your legs to fall back and put your head on the ground away from the choking arm - much harder for them to choke you on that side - best for escaping. Frame the high side knee, bring your low side knee up high to keep pressure on their hips and get out of the bottom hook, put your feet on top of their bottom foot as you get your hips out, press into them as you roll toward their hips and come into side control.

Saturday; where I get my ass beat and love it.

Pat taught us some movements to escape turtle and get the other person in turtle and attack their back.

From turtle, with the opponent north-south and seatbelt, you reach across, pull their elbow and spin your head out while getting hip control. As they try to stand up, you switch to north-south/seatbelt grip and snap them down. They you can spin back to being hip-to-hip, or work your chokes, take the back, etc.

Went back for the evening class today, which was such a great idea as it was 95 degrees and hot as hell at the gym. I was sweating before I even got on the mat.

Coach was Chaun Sims, a black belt. This was my first time in one of his classes. His style was a bit different, warm-ups were more drill oriented as opposed to jogging/cardio.

As the theme for the week, we continued with back escapes. 

This time, we only drilled one escape, which was the "Safe Side Escape". Fall to the safe side, trap opponent's leg under you, slide up, shoulders on mat, foot over the trapped leg, grab the top leg and slide into side control.

My partner for the night was a Russian or Eastern European guy whose name I can't pronounce...Predov? I've rolled with him before. 

He is one of those guys who gives resistance the entire time: drilling, sparring, practice... Usually, that kind of annoys me when you're practicing a new move, but since this is one I had drilled earlier in the week, it was actually nice to try it against good resistance. 

He was also a good partner as he is the same size and weight as me, which is rare. I'd say I'm more quick and have slightly better technique and he is stronger. He caught me in a few submissions, but I won most scrambles. 

Skipped out of work for an hour to hit the morning class at High Altitude.

Coach was Trey; a brown belt. He usually doesn't teach the classes as night and I've only been to his day classes. I like his style and he focuses on the little details that make things work a little easier; especially when it comes to putting your weight on your opponent and making life difficult for them.

We continued with back escape work today.

The escapes we did were all the same ones from yesterday and Monday with the exception of one. It was similar to the baseball grip escape, only this time you don't do the grip at all. The escape only really works if the opponent hasn't gripped anything on your upper body yet, so it's probably going to be a rare opportunity to try it out.

Essentially, you lean forward and fall to your side (similar to the baseball grip escape). Controlling one of the opponent's legs under your body. Then you grip the pant leg, spin and can end up in half or side control. I think a lot of the time it would end in a scramble. 

We didn't do any live rolling.

One of the best parts about the gym I chose here in Denver is that there are multiple affiliates around Denver where you can train. 

Tonight I went to the 8:30 class at the Highland's Ranch location for their fundamentals of BJJ class. 

The class was taught by a purple belt named Isiah.  The class was pretty small. There were only four students and they were all no-stripe white belts.

We began by doing a drill where your opponent is on their back and you put all your weight on their knees with your hands and basically swing your self from side control to side control. (I really have to learn the names of these drills so in the future I don't have to use these weird descriptions).

After warm-ups we spent most of the class drilling the baseball grip back escape taught by Avery in Monday's class. Isiah's teaching of the move was a little different than Avery's and since we spent most of the class on just the one move, I got it down pretty well. 

Isiah added a part to the move of falling forward first, then to your side with the grip, getting your shoulders down, then moving your hand to the armpit, pushing the arm across the face, turning and posting on your head and getting in to guard. I found it much easier and more effective.

We didn't do any live rolling to practice the back escapes, which I would have liked. 

Today was a no-gi class taught by coach Avery. 

We learned three back escapes.

The first was where you grab the top hand with a baseball bat grip and roll to the top (danger) hand side, hip out and try to get to side control. I found this to be a pretty low percentage escape. With sweat my grips on the arm slipped and I found that with a bit of resistance my partner was pretty well able to keep me in place.

The second was from seatbelt, where you again grab the top hand, but this time roll to the safety side, scoot over the opponent's hip and try to move to half or side control. I had pretty decent success with this and found it to be the  highest percentage move of the day.

The third move was to butt-scoot forward and away from your opponent, break their first hook by straightening out your leg, breaking the other hook by dropping the elbow, then sliding your other hand under the same side leg. In practice, we could get both arms under the opponent's legs, stack, and pass. This was also pretty low percentage, as the opponent would have to have both hooks in, but no arm control. I didn't even get a chance to try this during rolling.

Today was interesting as coach Avery invited me to roll with the advanced guys. This meant that I was susceptible to submissions (the lower level guys can only practice positions, no submissions allowed).  At my previous gym, when we rolled, everyone was allowed to go for submissions. I enjoyed this even as a low level guy, because it taught a lot about what you could do and where you could move. If you got submitted, you just got back to the original position and started again. Without the threat of submissions, I feel like a low level guy could develop some bad habits. I see both sides of the argument (a low level guy could over exaggerate an arm bar or not tap, etc.) for not letting lower ranked guys submit, but it's the way it is at this gym, so I just go with it...

Anywhooo, since I'm new and not familiar with every body's ranks (as today was no-gi), I'm not sure the level of everyone I faced. I got wicked arm barred by a guy I think is either a high level blue or purple. I have rolled with him before and he's really good; very strong and quick. He went from back control to the arm bar before I knew what was happening. I got a couple of back escapes using the second technique taught today. I caught a couple of submissions against some other white belts and got rear naked choked by another. 

As Ice Cube says, "Today was a good day"