Bolo

Bolo, after reading about Joe's bench press escapes, and watching your pin escapes dvd's, i noticed that the beginning of everyone of Joes escapes starts with a bridge. How does he decide which direction to bridge you? I would think it would depend on the pressure you applied to him. Also, did you feel he used this momentum either from the bridge, or when his hips went back down to add to the force of his pushing motions from his arms?
Another thing, i am finding that if i start out of posture, it can be extremely hard to get the forarm under the chin/throat, even when i use the method you explained, when Joe start that way, he seemed to be able to get posture with his arms fairly easily.....what kind of pressure did you feel as he was getting posture?
thanks for any help you can give.

TTT. Predicting the words 'guns' and 'conditioning' to come into play... ;)

Your guns must not be strong enough. Double your bench press and then get back to me.

Just kidding.:) The bridge is to gain space to clear my arm off his head and to add force to the pushing motion of his arms when he dropped down. It is just upward and not to any side.

As far as getting the forearm across the neck, there are several tricks to getting it depending on how your opponent is trying to prevent it from happening. Joe is doing something that is very simple that I did not teach on my pin escape video. Actually, I did not know how Joe was doing it at that time. I didn't figure out that he was doing something different until much later. It feels like he is powering his arm into place. The bench press style is all about the illusion of power.

Excellent observations from just watching Joe in action for those 2 minutes.

"Joe is doing something that is very simple that I did not teach on my pin escape video." what is it that he is doing?

Well, he could tell you, but then he'd have to kill you :-P