Last night was our final day of this block. We’ve spent 6 weeks with a focus on the back so this class should be mostly review. My main talking points were: Understanding the priority order of the position, defining the possible escape routes, and managing expectations. The class started with EBI OT rounds. We worked in pairs, with each partner having 2 minutes to work starting from the back. We tightened the EBI rules a bit and said the person starting on the back must choke, all other positions would be considered a loss. The effort here is to prioritize maintaining back control and learning to see all other alternatives as an inferior position. Defensive person just needed to clear the threat of the choke and escape. 2 minutes offense, 2 minutes defense. We did this for 2 rounds.

Discussion: The first point I wanted to make was understanding the priorities when in an inferior position. What I mean by this is identifying threats, the main focus when we have our back taken should always be defending the choke. Once we have a solid defensive position we can then start to triage the position. The next step would be to get this person off our back. We have 2 options here, 1 we turn our stomach to our opponent resulting in our back facing towards the ceiling (ending with us inside of our opponents guard), the other being we turn our stomach towards our opponent resulting in our backs on the mat. Only one option soundly prevents our opponent from returning to our backs, so for me, this means I will almost always choose to have my back to the mat. This is counterintuitive, most grapplers see an opportunity to be on top as a win and in some cases I would agree. The problem we have here, as I see it, is that we often end up allowing our opponent to chase the back via arm drags, or we open up the possibility of an armbar. So, by escaping to closed guard we are really going from defensive position to defensive position. I highlight this concept in my BJJ Globetrotters video “turning offense into defense”. So our focus for this class is to escape by getting our back to the mat and looking to establish some kind of guard.

Drilling: For this drilling segment I asked pairs to work through this escape. Step one would be to defend the threat of the choke. Step two create an angle by dropping our hips to one side. Step three scrape our opponent off of our back by sliding our own backs to the mat. Step four keep our hips close to our opponents hips while moving our head away from there head. Step 5 defend the oncoming mount attack and establish some type of guard. If you’re reading this and you did not attend this class you can watch the video I’ve mentioned for the complete breakdown of this technique. (Also good for a review if you did attend the class)

Discussion: As usual, once the students have some context they are able to fine tune things in a way that makes sense for them. My goal when teaching techniques is always to give the students the broad brush strokes first, give them time to play with is and understand the overall feeling of the technique, then bring everyone back together to fine tune the key point that will increase their success rate.

We have to understand the difference between Defense and Escape. It is almost impossible to escape a position while having perfect defense. “All offense costs some defense”. So we defend the choke, but when we make the decision to start our escape there will be risk attached. We are in the worst position in grappling, so escaping without bad things happening will always be a challenge. Our goal is understand and manage our expectations. Sometimes escaping the back only to be mounted is the best we can do.

Next week we keep with a similar topic and start a month long block of escaping/defending submissions. We’ll start with armbars, which is one of my favorite positions to escape. It will be a fun, and a little bit scary, block.