Private Lesson Rapid Fire: What to do when you have no move, How to Control and Attack Mount (WRISTLOCK & EZEKIEL EDITION!) + MORE!
“Jiu-jitsu is the Art of Control that Leads to Submission” -Danaher
I love this quote and if you’ve followed along for a while, you know I have a little addendum.
“Jiu-jitsu is the art of control that leads to submission by way of reducing power and mobility of an opponent”.
This is the essence of what I call “The Jiu-jitsu Funnel”, which is basically my argument that jiu-jitsu follows a direct, straight-line logical sequence from point A to point B. The big problem is that it’s hard to go in a “straight line” when your opponent is defending. Hard… but simple.
This week in a private lesson, I had a student ask me a question about how he loses his position from the mount. [Today’s email, by the way, will be heavy with some mount attacks as well as some good, solid back control ideas]. I dove into his struggles and asked him why he was having problems from mount.
“I can’t seem to control the position”.
“Why not?”, I asked
“Because every time I go for the submission, my opponent escapes.”
This tells me he is having problems controlling the position. So I ask one more question:
“Are you having clear opportunities to attack or are you just attacking for the sake of attacking?”
It was here, we realized that the big problem he was having was, in fact, that he was attempting to attack when there was no clear attack.
In my personal life, I’m faced with having to make a big decision soon. The problem? There’s no clear answer. So I’m waiting. The big challenge to making this decision is:
A) Will I miss out on a potential opportunity?
So it goes when you’re in a great position in jiu-jitsu. Will you miss out on a great opportunity by being patient? Or, will there be more, better opportunities?
I’d like to get into this concept in another paid post, but for now, I want to talk specifically about this problem of attacking the mount position and the idea that sometimes, the best move is NO MOVE.
Recall the quote from above: “Jiu-jitsu is the art of control that leads to submission.”
I want to highlight the word “control”.
At no point in Danaher’s quote (or mine) was there an omission of “control” nor was there an addendum that implied “just keep attacking because there won’t be any more opportunities.”
There will ALWAYS be more opportunities and your job is to focus on controlling positions so you’re never caught OUT of position.
With that said, today’s email is going to be a heavily focused on the mount position and specifically how I like to control it and consequently how it opens up my opportunities to submit my opponents.
Today you’ll:
A) Learn some of the basic aspects of control that I like to use
B) How I use the wrist-lock to open up a TON of opportunities
C) Some tips I use to attack a sneaky Ezekiel choke (as well as an even sneakier set up)
After that, I had another private lesson that focused on some other concepts related to back retention tips (that will complement some of last week’s “mind-mapping the rear naked choke).
Alright, let’s dive in!
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