Musings from the BJJ Gi #15, lesson 16; guard pull & elbow escape (mount)

The guard pull was the standing technique this time. So, from the clinch, the indicator is when your opponent tries to create space by backing/pushing their hips away from yours. You essentially switch your grip from the clinch grip, to a grip behind each of their shoulders (so palms against the back of their shoulders), you take a couple of small set up steps so that you are in front of them, and then squat, and shoot your butt back a little bit, pulling them into your closed guard. The reason you shoot your butt back a little bit is so that when you pull them into your guard, you pull them in low, rather than them landing high up on your body.

The elbow escape from the mount had 4 variations; standard variation, hook removal, fish hook, and heel drag.

The standard variation covered the essential foundational movements which are used throughout all variations, being that you are under the mount, you hug close to their chest (for punch protection) with one arm, roll onto your side and curl up a little bit, the leg on the side you rolled onto flattens out, you shrimp your hips out to the same side as the hugging arm, while at the same time blocking their knee with your other elbow, and that elbow assists your knee on that side to come up underneath theirs, then once your knee is through, you shrimp your hips out on that side to free your foot on that side, which now goes over the top of their leg. You then hug around their neck and repeat the same process on the other side; blocking their knee, and assisting your knee to come up underneath theirs, then shrimp your hips out again to that side to free your foot up to be able to achieve full guard. I know that sounds like a mess, but it's really hard to describe in writing haha. For the complete set of movements, your hips essentially shrimp left-right-left, or right-left-right, depending on which side you start on. I've included a couple of stills of Rener and Ryron doing the elbow escape to try to help illustrate what I mean. In the first image, Rener is showing the elbow assisting the bottom knee to push upwards/north

The second image shows Rener repeating the shrimp out/elbow escape procedure on the other side of the body once the first side has been freed up

The hook removal variation relates to dealing with your opponent's mount hooks. One foot essentially helps the other to remove the hook from the leg which you want to flatten in order to shrimp out/elbow escape. You do this by finding their foot with yours, and then pushing it down in order to be able to get your other leg flat on the ground. You need to make sure your hand or elbow holds their leg in place when pushing their hook down though, so that they can't bring their knee up high under your armpit and secure a higher mount.

The indicator for the fish hook variation is when your opponent's knee is heavy on the ground and you can't bring your flattened knee up underneath it. You use your other foot to reach over and hook underneath their ankle, and using that hook and your elbow at the same time, lift the leg and push it south, and commence the rest of the elbow escape routine.

The indicator for the heel drag variation is when you attempt the fish hook variation, but when you go to hook and lift the ankle of their heavy leg, they point their toes straight to the ceiling, and you lose the hook. You then extend your flattened leg so that they can no longer get the leg you were trying to hook back to the floor, you grab a hold of their ankle, and feed it to your previously fish-hooking leg, so that the back of your knee wraps around their ankle, and when you shrimp out on that side now, the way your leg is locked up around theirs forces their leg south, and you can commence the elbow escape routine. That one is also complicated to write out, and may not make much sense, but here is an image of Rener in mid-heel drag variation, where the back of his knee is wrapped around Ryron's ankle, so when he shrimps his hips out on that side and pushes down on Ryron's knee, you can see that Ryron's leg would just drop into Rener's guard.

Cheers,

• David