Mount
Being under mount, and escaping it, is one of the first survival skills in jiu-jitsu.
Survival
Protect your neck
Keep your elbows in and hands defending — stop the choke before you worry about escaping.
Frame and bump
Build frames on the hips to make space without giving up your arms.
Hips up, shoulder walk
The moment they mount: a gentle hip up and walk on your shoulders. Their knees lift off the mat, so they cannot take a hand away to strike without falling — you breathe and buy time.
Ezekiel, neck hug, paper cutter
Hips up, wait for them to get heavy, then capture the arm. Paper cutter: if the wrist is strong, push the elbow; if the elbow is strong, fight the wrist.
Escapes
Elbow-knee (hip) escape
Shrimp your hips out and slide a knee through to recover guard.
Bridge and roll (upa)
Trap an arm and a leg, bridge over your shoulder, and reverse the position.
Head on head, look at 12, flip
Shoulder walk until you are ear to ear, capture the arm on the side their head is on, look at 12 o’clock, kick the foot sideways and flip. Stay low — do not rush to your knees.
Read the head first (3-2-1)
Requirement, process, timing — learn it 1-2-3, apply it 3-2-1. Wherever their head is, that is your side. Head away? Hips up and wait; the timing is not yours.
Grapevines — flip, don’t roll
Do not fight the legs. Hip up, shoulder walk, capture the arm, then flip over instead of rolling: a big base, and the grapevines come with you.
Transitions
Recover to closed guard
Once your knee is through, close the legs and take back control.
Mount retention — become a ball
Retention isn’t stretching out, it’s becoming a ball. Compact wins; sprawled leaks.
Arriving from the sprawl chase
The mount that arrives at the end of a takedown chain — knee to the hip bone from the sprawl, no guard-pass detour.
Submissions
Armbar from mount (top)
When you hold mount, isolating an arm is the highest-percentage finish.
Chest compression choke
The squeeze that denies breath through the ribs — it arrives almost by accident when they turn in.
Know your chokes (taxonomy)
Five categories — carotids, single carotid, trachea, crank, chest compression. Named pressure is technique; unnamed is just squeezing.
Every cell here is free to read. The working notes behind them come from class, over in Mat Notes.