So many mount questions today!
Because it seems to be mount day today, here's a mount question:
My mount escapes need more work. I think that this is currently the worst part of my game. At the moment, I only really do two versions of upa (one in which I grab an arm with my arms and another in which I push on his hip and block the other arm when he wraps his arm around my head) and two versions of elbow/knee (on in which I just shrimp to get my knee in and another which is the foot drag elbow/knee escape).
Just how good is Michael Jen's Mount Escapes video and do you think I would benefit much from it? Didn't someone (besides Bill Lewis) do a review of that tape? And are perhaps other tapes good for mount escapes?
In the meantime I swear I will start every sparring session under the mount until I get better at it. That's what I did with side mount escapes not so long ago and it really payed off.
Regards,
jonpall.
Jen's mount video is pretty good. He basically shows the bridge, the shrimp, and the roll-out-the-back escapes to the standard mount, but goes through multiple versions of each one depending on resistance.
The second tape covers escape from the slant mount (one knee behind the head, the other foot tight against your stomach). Same sort of progressive, systematic escapes shown.
Interesting on the foot stomp. I am going to try this. Where did you learn that?
ttt
FYI, yesterday I "remembered" that I own a mount tape by Erik Paulson! I've never watched it thoroughly because I don't really like the way he teaches. He gives out a lot of information, but it's not well organized and a bit scattered. You really have to watch it several times to appreciate the tape.
So I decided to re-watch it and this time, I managed to really suck in a lot of information, in particular the section on escapes. Although there is nothing really fancy there, it gave me a lot to work on, so we'll see what happens for my mount escapes.
So if I have Paulson's tape, do you think I would benefit much from getting Michael Jen's Ultimate Mount Escapes tapes?
Regards,
jonpall.
I just came back from a GREAT BJJ practise. Besides sparring, all we did were mount escapes. I can do that, because I'm the teacher there. Muahahahahaha.
Anyway, we practised mostly stuff that was on my Erik Paulson tapes and I actually think that my mount escapes got a bit better. Here is some stuff that I figured out that I may have been doing wrong previously (for anyone that might theoretically be interested):
1. I think that my angle for elbow/knee escapes might have been a bit off. I always used to push my opponent's leg to one side and scoot my hips out to the other side, but that has often been a bit hard against guys that squeeze their knees together.
That's where Erik Paulson's escapes began to come to the rescue. What he did differently was to scoot his hips BACK, i.e. in the direction towards my head, and not to the side. This way, you can simply slide your hips between your opponent's legs and you don't have to spread his legs apart so much, like you would have had to, if you had scooted out to the side.
It also helps to try to touch your toes with your head - it makes your movement bigger. It also helps to do what Erik Paulson does, which is to put both hands on your opponent's, say, right hip, (your hands are on top of each other) to get better leverage to push your opponent's hips away from you while your slide your hips away from him. It kind of feels like a good and powerful bench press movement, in the sense that you have good leverage with this hand placement.
Actually, if his right leg was up a bit, it feels better to put your right hand on his right hip and your left hand/forearm on his right knee. In both hand placements, your right forearm is horizontal across his stomach and your left elbow is touching the inside of his right knee.
2. Now we get to Erik Paulson's upa technique. The way that I always did upa was to grab an arm, try to trap a foot, bridge straight over my head and then roll him over. That's good, but sometimes it can be hard to snatch an arm and sometimes your opponent can feel heavy to roll over.
Erik's upa technique solves both those problems and seems to be a good addition to my mount escapes. Instead of bridging straight up, you bridge OVER YOUR SHOULDERS and your head TOUCHES THE GROUND throughout the move. This way, your opponent is already on his/her way to fall sideways and keeping your head glued to the mat seems to add more power to your bridge.
Also, in this upa variation, you don't grab an arm. You wait for your opponent to LEAN his upper body in either direction and then you immediately bridge in that direction. He often leans in one direction when he's going for a keylock and this sudden bridge can really take him off balance because you don't telegraph it by snatching an arm first. He also often traps his OWN arm this way, because his arms are occupied with attacking your arms.
If he doesn't go over, usually his legs will move apart a bit, which makes it easier for you to do the elbow/knee escape. Obviously, the elbow/knee escape variation I mentioned earlier combines very well with this upa variation.
I'm sure many of you are doing these variations right now, but I just wanted to let you know that they seem to be really helping me. I used them both during sparring and I managed to escape from the mount MUCH faster on several occasions than I previously had done. That surely says something. There is hope for me and my mount escapes.
Cheers,
jonpall.
It's generally a lot easier and uses less energy to do the elbow escape. I probably use the elbow escape 90% of the time and only try to roll him if he's really begging for it.
A very simple but effective trick for rolling someone is to first get an overhook with your left arm, and just grab his other wrist lightly with your right hand. Bridge first to your left then immediately back to your right. Works like a charm. Of course when you bridge you always want to bridge up in the direction of your head, but for the first fake one it doesnt really matter.