ALTA Week 5 Grappling

Grappling – Side Control Bottom

After Mount bottom, this is the next position to prioritise escaping from. We’ll look at the “Praying Mantis” posture that you should always aim to have on bottom and how to wrestle up from here. This is where a lot of our floor based movement drills will be put to good use.

Important Terminology

Cross-face: This refers to the top player grabbing behind the head of the bottom player and using their shoulder across the neck/jaw/face to apply pinning pressure. It’s extremely uncomfortable on bottom and can sometimes even be used as a submission.

Far-side underhook: Any time you get your arm under your opponent’s arm through the arm pit area, that’s an underhook. Far-side just refers to the underhook that’s furthest away from you. You can also have a near-side underhook. 

Frame: Any time we align our skeletal structure to create a mechanical barrier (which does not rely on muscle strength alone) is a frame. It’s also sometimes called “stacking bones”. Using frames is far more efficient and effective than trying to muscle out when it comes to bottom position escapes. 

Wedge: If you place an obstacle behind something that you want to block from moving in a certain direction, that’s a wedge. Think of putting a triangle of time under a door to stop it swinging closed, or the “chocks” used under the wheels of a car or plane to stop it from rolling. 

Praying Mantis Posture

Getting to here gives us the best chance of escape from side control. It’s a system of frames and wedges that gives you options and keeps you relatively safe in what could be a disastrously dangerous position otherwise. 

1. Block the cross-face: Using a curled wrist, hook around your opponent’s arm that’s trying to grab your head. You want to get as much surface area connection on their arm as possible, so while your wrist is pressed against their bicep, your palm and finger reach all the way around to their tricep. Now pull their elbow back towards their own ribs, while also wedging your forearm under their ribs/stomach. Your arm should be simultaneously pinning their arm to their side and carrying the weight of their body. Your two arms combined will act like the forks of a forklift.
2. Frame on the neck/shoulder: Your second hand will make a similar grip around their shoulder that’s closest to your face. Your forearm will be under their neck while your palm/fingers will be gripping the back of their shoulder. With both arms combined, you should feel quite comfortable carrying your opponents weight and the crushing chest to chest pressure should disappear. Your arms in these positions form a very effective frame. It’s almost like doing a plank upside down and your opponent is the floor. 
3. Knee to hip to prevent mount: Your knee that’s closer to your opponent should press against the hip of your opponent. If they attempt to transition to knee ride, you will get an opportunity to get that knee under them to act as a frame. They’ll feel that threat and it will deter them from trying to get a knee ride.
4. Hold them in suspended animation: Not only are you framing to push them up off of you, but you’re also holding them to prevent them posturing up to punch you. If your Praying Mantis is correct, they should feel somewhat stuck. This buys you time to escape.  

Coming up on a Single

By far and away, this is the most important side control escape to learn for MMA. There are others like recovering your guard, or turning to turtle where you escape to a different (safer) bottom position but given an option, your priority should always be to get back on top. Coming up on a Single gives you that.

1. Elevate and underhook: From the Praying Mantis posture, you do a combination of shrimping your hips very slightly away from theirs, while using your arm that’s under their neck to elevate their chest a few inches. The gap that appears between you is where you pummel for the “far side underhook”.
2. Launch them as you slide: Using both your underhook and your knee that’s pressed against their hip, launch your opponent up over your head. At that same time, use your other leg to pull you in the opposite direction in a forward slide. This will create a good deal of separation and get out from under them.
3. Upgrade from underhook to single leg: After the elevation and slide, you are very vulnerable to being mounted for a split second so timing here is critical. As soon as you’ve launched them, switch you underhook to grab their leg that’s closest to you. Your shoulder/bicep should be behind their hamstring and your palm/fingers should grip the front of their thigh. Keep your head under their rib cage for now. 
4. Scissors and get to your knees: Now switch your legs in a scissors motion so that you’re belly down and then get up on your knees. Your head is still under their rib cage. You’ll use this to bulldoze them over in the next step so avoid lifting your head up and over their back.
5. Grab their far leg and drive: Now that you’re almost behind them, your hand that was blocking their crossface arm is no longer needed in that role. Instead, use that hand to reach under them to their far knee. As you pull that knee, drive them over with your head to get that top position. For bonus points, pass their guard to end up in side control.  

Jaws of Life

We started in the Praying Mantis position earlier, but you’ll find yourself in deeper trouble quite often. If your partner has a full cross-face and underhook on you, with chest to chest pressure, all your escapes become infinitely more difficult. We need a method of getting back to the Praying Mantis and that’s Jaws of Life – named after the pneumatic tools that emergency workers use to cut through cars to rescue crash victims. 

1. Outside forearm frames their temple: Using your forearm that’s closest to their head, frame against their temple (just at the top of their ear). This is the optimal point to give you leverage to bend their neck. If you framed just their neck, it would be much more difficult to push their head away (Law of the Lever). If you go higher than the ear/temple, your forearm may slip off the top of the head.
2. Inside arm joins in an S-grip to support: Your arm that’s closest to their hips will reach over their crossface arm to S-grip your other hand. This is to prevent the shoulder lock submission threat and also to re-inforce your outside arm in the next step.
3. Push their head into your pants pocket: Locking out both arms, while slightly turning on your side (remembering to keep blocking the mount with your knee), push your opponent’s head down into your pants pocket. At the same time, extend your head and shoulders back and away. The combined forces of your locked out arms and upper body extension will strip the crossface grip from around your head.
4. Swim inside arm under their crossface: With the space you’ve created, you should now be able to swim your arm under their crossface and you can begin to recover the preferable Praying Mantis posture.

Rock the Boat series

Sometimes the top player will be so tight with their cross-face and underhook grips that you might not even have space to get a forearm frame on their temple to start the jaws of life. This happens particularly when they bury their head low next to yours. This is where Rock the Boat comes in – named after that popular wedding song where everybody who’s drunk enough to have lost their dignity sits in a row swaying from side to side with the motion of the ocean. 

1. Block the knee closest to your head: Your arm, which you’d like to use to block their cross-face arm, is first going to swing back (elbow the floor) and cover over the top of their knee that’s closest to your head. This is a wedge.
2. Outside arm clothes-line: Your other arm is going to “clothes-line” them in the temple region. Just like with the Jaws of life, the temple is the sweet spot for best leverage. 
3. Glute bridge towards them: Combine the knee wedge, the close-line and an aggressive bridging motion towards your opponent to attempt to knock them over. Sometimes, you’ll catch it just right and they’ll fall all the way over. You hop over them to finish in side control top. 
4. Use their reaction to get the temple frame: What’s more likely is that they’ll push back into you so that they don’t fall over. If you time their reaction correctly, this will give you the space you need to insert that first forearm frame across their temple to carry on with the Jaws of Life.

Rock to the other side: You can also rock the boat in the opposite direction. You just have to swap which arm is wedging and which arm is clothes lining. It’s a good idea to rock left, then right; or right, then left. Remember, your only goal is to create enough of a reaction so that you can get your first frame to begin your Jaws of Life.