Wherever Their Head Is

Everybody knows the feeling. Flat on your back, someone heavy sitting on your chest, and you bridge, and bridge, and nothing happens except that you get tired. On a Saturday morning in October we spent the whole No-Gi class on that moment, and on what to do in the first second of it.

Surviving comes first

The first thing I want from everyone, the moment they are mounted, is not an escape. It is hips up and a shoulder walk. Not an explosive bridge on the balls of your feet — a gentle hip up, heels close to your backside, something you could hold for five or ten minutes.

Here is why. To strike you, the person on top has to take a hand off the mat, and that puts their weight on their knees. With your hips up, their knees barely touch the ground. Take a hand away now and they fall. The same is true of an armbar, or anything else that needs a hand to leave the mat. You might not escape yet, but you are surviving: you can breathe, you are buying time, and there are no attacks on you.

Wherever their head is

Then the escape. Shoulder walk until your head is level with theirs, ear to ear. Capture the arm on that side. Look at 12 o’clock, kick the foot sideways and flip.

To prove the rule underneath it, we did the same escape three times and only changed the person on top. Ear to ear: easy. Head up: harder. Head away, favouring the other arm: you have the grip, you know the process, and it still does not work — and now you are tired. Same technique, three different results. The only thing that changed was the timing.

So the rule is simple. Wherever their head is, that is the side you escape to. If their head goes the other way halfway through, do not force it. The timing is not yours any more. Keep your hips up, wait, and when the head comes back, it is yours again.

Learn it 1-2-3, apply it 3-2-1

I split the escape into three. The requirement: capture the base, the arm on the side you are going to. The process: hip up, shoulder walk, look at 12, kick, flip, sprawl — always the same, like something you have written on paper. The timing: their head.

You learn it in that order. You apply it backwards. First read the head, then capture the arm on that side, then run the process. You can be wrong with almost everything else. You cannot be wrong with the timing.

Fewer steps, not more

Most of us first learn the mount escape as the bridge and roll: trap the arm, trap the foot. In this class we do not trap the foot. Trapping it is meant to stop them stepping out to post, but the moment you hip up you open that space anyway. So why spend the effort on an extra step?

The same thinking runs through the rest. Against grapevines, do not fight the legs; flip over instead of rolling, because a roll balances you on a tiny base and a flip spreads you across a big one. Against the paper cutter, do not fight strength with strength: if the wrist is strong, push the elbow; if the elbow is strong, go after the wrist.

Palm up

One detail for whoever is on top in the drill: hold the shoulder palm up. If your palm is down and your partner pushes hard, it is your fingers that bend. It is not about who wins the escape. Safety first.

And for the person underneath, one habit to take home. The moment they mount: hips up, shoulder walk. Then look for their head.