ALTA Week 4 Grappling

Grappling – Mount escapes

Possibly one of the scariest positions to find yourself is mount bottom. The danger from punches, elbows and headbutts here is catastrophic (even though you only need to worry about punches in amateur MMA competition, we always think about real world self defence as we learn). 

Base and Posture

Your first instinct will be to cover your head to protect against punches. This is 100% understandable. However, it’s a mistake, that will only allow the situation to get worse. Your priority is to escape the position. You may eat a couple of shots in the process. Just accept that as your punishment for allowing yourself to get mounted in the first place. The correct posture is to press your elbows against your partner’s thighs (preventing them from advancing to a high mount) and hands on hips (in preparation for the escape). You also need to pull your heels as close to your hips as possible to give you the power of a bridging and shrimping. “What about my face?”, you ask. The main danger is when your partner postures up to throw punches. As soon as they do, use your knee in their butt to knock them forwards onto their hands. When their hands are on the mat, they’re not punching you and you can focus on escaping (more about this in the first escape). 

Trap and Roll

This follows on nicely from the knee in the butt to get their hands on the mat. As they’re hands are on the mat, grab one of them with both your arms quickly and clamp their forearm to your chest with their elbow as close to your stomach as possible. Now also trap their same side leg by stepping your foot outside theirs and “heel, toe, heel, toe” inwards to clamp it to your hip. So if you trapped their right arm, you should now also have their right foot trapped. That means they no longer have “base” on that side. In other words if you push them in that direction, they can’t extend any limbs in that direction to prevent themselves from falling over. Now is the time to bridge and roll towards their trapped side. Remember to take your head off the centre line and get your hips as high as you can before you roll. You’ll finish on top inside their guard. 

Knee to Elbow

If you cannot trap an arm to do the Trap and Roll, then often, the knee to elbow is next. For this you need to spin on your side to get one leg flat to the mat (knee pointed down into the mat). Notice I said ‘spin’, not roll. You will not be able to roll due to their knees acting a book ends either side of your hips. Spinning on the spot is your only option. You can achieve this by pushing one of your feet into the mat to spin you on your side. It’s important that you press your bottom elbow against their knee as you do this. This will push their shin and foot closer to your feet. Next you’ve got to dig your bottom knee under their shin. Think of using a scraping knife to take wallpaper down. Your knee is the sharp edge of the scraper. Once you get a start, now drive with your elbow to push their knee all the way over your bottom thigh. When their knee drops behind your thigh, now you flip to your opposite side (flip, not roll). You’ll end up facing your partner with one leg between their two. Use that leg to hook behind their leg that’s closest to you (establishing half-guard). Also look to get the underhook and block their cross-face (more on that in a later week). I’d be happy to see you establish half guard with your legs at this point. 

Note: Sometimes, a top player might have flexible ankles and it will be tough to dig your knee under their shin due to the lack of a gap. In this case, you can use your top foot to “rake” their leg back over yours or use your toes of the top foot to “scoop” under their foot and lift it on top of yours. Then just continue the escape as above.

Note 2: If the top player has their feet joined together behind your butt, you’ll have to separate them using your feet first before spinning on your side. It’s a fight, but it’s doable. 

Shrimp or Kip

This is the simplest of the 3 provided you’ve got a good bridge and shrimp. In this escape you have 2 hands on their hips. You bridge aggressively as you lock out both arms to push their hips further away. As you do this, push them more to one side than the other (doesn’t matter which side). It’s vital that once you lock out your arms that they stay locked out. You should now have space to shrimp your ass backwards away from under them. You’re technically free from mount once your knees are out. Make sure you either finish with a butterfly guard (more on this later) or all the way out to having your feet on their hips.

The Kip escape is a variation of this for when the top player has their feet joined behind your thighs in a low mount. After the bridge and locked out arms, when you’re on your side you flap your legs in a sort of dolphin tail kick (known as a kip). This wiggling movement frees your knee-line for the same escape.