ALTA Week 6 Wrestling

Wrestling – Double Leg Defence – Week 6

It’s time to put the sprawl into action. From week 1, you’ve used the sprawl as a solo movement drill to develop conditioning and coordination in preparation for applying it in wrestling. The time has come.

Sprawl and banana hips

When we use the sprawl as a solo drill, our hands go to the mat and we push our hips directly to the floor. The reason we do it this way is to allow us to practice the movement on our own. In reality, you’ll be doing this same movement against a partner and instead of facing the floor, you’ll be more upright. It’s impossible to achieve that angle on your own, hence why we sprawl to the floor in solo drills. 

To get used to the correct angle and posture, we use the banana hips drill. Your partner will be on their back on the floor and they will offer you their feet to lean on. Put their feet on your hips and keep hold of their ankles for balance. Now, start walking your feet backwards until you’re relying on your partner’s legs to hold you up. Aim for the same sprawl posture you would if facing the floor (i.e. hips pressing forwards, chest back.). There’s a large element of trust required in this drill. 

Once you’re confident you can get into this position consistently, now practice jumping your feet back suddenly to hit that posture.

Banana hip against a double leg

When you’re confident with the previous drill, try to do the same thing when your partner aggressively shoots a double leg takedown on you. For now, don’t use your hands. Isolate the hip action and focus on blocking their momentum dead using your hips and posture.

Note: Jumping your feet back may or may not be required. When you master the timing of this defence, you’ll be able to bump your hips forward without jumping your feet back. Our own Fionn O’Rourke (IMMAF European Light Heavyweight Champion) looks at me with contempt when I suggest jumping the feet back. It’s a timing thing. The main thing is to use your hips and posture to stop the shoot in its tracks.

Frame and Whizzer or Underhooks

Let’s add the hands now. You’ve got 2 options. Either you get underhooks or you get a Frame/Whizzer combination. Underhooks are the go too in wrestling and BJJ. However, once again, MMA has the added complications of punches to the face, so if you drop your hands for double unders and your opponent pre-empts it, they can switch to KO punch and end your night. So use with caution. For that reason, we’ll focus on the Frame/Whizzer combo. 

1. Frame Hand: When your opponent shoots a double, their head will go to one side, leaving one side of the neck facing you. This is where you place the forearm of your lead hand. The palm of your hand should grab the back of their neck and your forearm should frame across their neck with your elbow just beyond their throat.
2. Whizzer hand: Your other arm will overhook their arm with your forearm jamming into their armpit and your chest/shoulder bearing weight down on top of the back of their shoulder.

This combination of grips allows you to maintain distance control and also to manipulate their height. You can pull them up or push them down. 

Note: Never be the “drunk friend”: This is how I describe a common mistake people make when their opponent shoots a double leg. This is literally opposite to everything we’ve practised up to now. Instead of popping your hips forward, you allow your hips to be pushed back and cause your upper body to flop forward. Then, while flopped forwards your grab around the chest of your opponent. This is reminiscent of how you’d have to carry a drunk friend home once they’ve passed out. If anything, this posture helps the attacker to finish their double leg. Don’t be the Drunk Friend!

Bring them back up

With your Frame and Whizzer, you can flare your framing elbow upwards. This forces the chin of your opponent up and brings them back to a standing upright posture. You can then choose to push off and disengage, going back to striking range, or you can maintain the frame and whizzer grips to stay in clinch range (landing knees or re-shooting your own takedowns). 

Sprawl to Turtle Top

You can also shoot your legs back and away (like the solo sprawl drill) to force your opponent to “face-plant” and end in the turtle position. The turtle top game is a whole other day’s work and there are lots of attacks from various angles. However, we’ll look at circling to the back to finish this position.

Circling to the Back from Turtle Top

When you sprawl to turtle top, you may not be out of danger yet. A good wrestler will be able to reshoot, sit-out or circle around your legs to complete the double leg – despite your early defensive success. To find safety, we circle to the back. In freestyle wrestling, you don’t score takedown points unless you get behind the arms and this is relevant here. 

1. Kill it with fire: You may have got your frame whizzer and got to turtle but often, the attacker still has part of a grip around your leg still. Even one finger tip around the side of your thigh is enough. A good wrestler will chase that, and run up your leg to get a second shot at finishing. This is why we say “Kill it with fire”. When you get to the turtle you have to use your frame and whizzer or even a cross-face grip to keep them put while you continue to back your hips away and down until every last bit of a grip is gone from your legs. Do not attempt to circle to the back without doing this.
2. Block the hand out of the grave: Even after you kill the grips on your legs, the attacker can re-establish that grip while you’re circling to the back. I call this “Hand out of the grave”, like that scene from the Michael Jackson Thriller music video. Before circling, make sure you have a plan to stop it. This can be done a number of ways. You could use an arm drag grip under their head to grab the tricep of that arm. You could bury your head in the armpit on that side to block their arm. Or you could down block with one of your arms before you circle. 
3. Once you’re behind the arms, you’ve won! Now you can start boxing them in the ears to celebrate.