Lasso Guard Grip to Bicep Slicer. Careful when training this with your partners; apply slowly until you gain the sensitivity for it. It can cause catastrophic injuries wherein the muscle essentially tears off of the bone internally, and/or there can be bone breaks on either side of the elbow joint.

This technique features three distinct aspects of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in one sequence: old-school Vale Tudo stomps at the leg / knee to set up a take-down, a single-leg takedown flavor which is more reflective of some pure wrestling styles (cutting the angle, getting to the side rather than blasting forward), and a catch-wrestling style standing ankle-lock. These are techniques I’ve trained at different times, in different contexts, and I just chose to weave them together.

Unusual ude opportunities and grips (another heel-hook like grip on the elbow), continued. This one assumes something that may be uncommon in BJJ, but common to wrestlers.

Some grapplers may not try to do a back-spin and get rear mount from turtle. Some may have a preference to try snatching the arms out and flattening the opponent to a pin; like my friend Matt Smith.

I actually do this from time to time as well, when I don’t feel like attacking back (and this may be the case for a variety of reasons).

This was driven by a specific student question, like “what would you do if he grabbed your arms for a side-control turnover rather than trying to get the back?” etc.

Different entry for that ude with a heel-hook grip: a Russian. For those who correctly mentioned that the position in the last video was more specific to a pin attempt that wrestlers would try more often than, say, a bjj guy. Also, just imagine that I draped a leg or two over at the end, will ya?

Slide from knee on belly to a shin-in-the-armpit version of a Juji Gatame / Arm-bar.  Try not to kick your friend in the face with your calf, etc..

This is a “low percentage” mount escape that a lot of us do sort of instinctually as kids when some other kid sits on top of us and won’t get off.

We learn in BJJ, generally, that this is a “low percentage” escape that shouldn’t work on anyone who knows better.  However, I find this to be relative to the amount of effort the player invests in knowing exactly when to attempt the escape, and whether or not they have the necessary flexibility.

I do this from time to time even on other black belts in my school if they aren’t vigilant in the high mount.  But I am admittedly a flexible and long-legged ectomorphic body-type player.

Unusual Ude Garami Opportunities – Side Control to same-side arm and knee pin.  You can catch this one a lot when the bottom player gets too comfortable leaving his inside arm hanging around when you have room to slide in an overhook from top.

There is a rather famous Roman reproduction of an Ancient Greek statue depicting combat wrestling (Pankration, in the old parlance): “The Wrestlers,” modeled after a lost Greek original of the third century BCE.

This was my attempt to replicate the position depicted and explore it.  It is somewhat foreign to a BJJ-minded player, as our objective would simply be to take the back and choke or land strikes while exerting some kind of head / neck control as well.  But, perhaps due to some lost (or unknown to me) specificity or rules, or maybe just due to a different way of thinking about grappling, that was not reflected in the statue’s content.

Ankle-lock Counter To Closed Guard.  This one is pretty low-percentage, and probably requires a lot of flexibility.  But, I was just playing with it and studying the mechanics required.

Triangle avoidance to cradle side-control to xiphoid crush knee.  This requires placing the point of the knee directly on the xiphoid process on the sternum; that little bit of soft tissue in front of the meeting of your rib cage halves.

The opponent is not “tapping to knee on belly pressure”; rather, it is a chest-compression submission, or (if off-angle) a rib-lock.  It is therefore probably illegal in most formats except advanced NAGA, sub-only tournaments, etc..  It’s probably also not a universal nor fundamental technique, as it may be best suited for ectomorph (or maybe some mesomorph) body-type athletes.

Not high-percentage per se, but good for provoking panic taps or at least mindless scrambles that open up other techniques or transitions.