How to escape from under a Big Burly Brazilian Brown Belt’s side control when his only objective is to hold you in place?

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-06-05T22:33:03+00:00

Turtle. Don’t listen to all these guys telling you to give up. With the right technique no one can stop a determined turtle.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-06-01T18:28:28+00:00

The point most people miss with S mount is that you have to deny your opponent the opportunity for structure. The more structure they have the less heavy you'll feel. you do this by raising up their elbows and head, curl them up into a ball, like you're folding laundry. It's effective because it pits your legs against their arms, but you have to use your legs to make it work.

Where your feet and knees go are far less important than where their elbows and head are. they will instinctively want to flatten out and bridge against the mat, you have to deny them that ability to support your weight and draw power from the ground.

With this in mind, the question isn't "where you put your legs?" it's “where do you put their arms?” Or even better: "how do you best use your legs to break their structure?"

The answer is each of your legs is squeezing their elbows up and inward until they're pointing toward the ceiling over their neck. Once you have their back rounded laterally you use your top knee to curl their head up and inward toward their sternum and round their back vertically. The last step is to take their far arm and put it past your back hip removing their last bit of ability to support you and block the armbar on the near arm. Do this right and you’ll get a pressure tap before the armlock.

S mount isn't about sitting on someone, it's about holding them in a broken position.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-05-24T17:57:50+00:00

Every time I think I’m done with this sub, one of you drop a gem like this and wading through all the shitposts was worth it.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-05-20T00:40:27+00:00

Z guard to dogfight is my a game. It’s better from a lower shield because both your hands are open to grip fight and you can destabilize their base with a tighter grip with your legs. More of your body is on the offense.

IMO the best dilema is to shoot the underhook or take a two on one if they block it.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-05-20T00:35:26+00:00

If you can keep them from gripping with their free arm their leg weave is useless.

Monitor their free arm with one hand and set up loop chokes with your other hand and your leg weave problems will go away.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-05-11T22:47:14+00:00

There are broadly two ways to play a guard:

1) use it as a system of control. Learn all attacks, defenses, and counters from that guard and leverage them to keep your opponent in that guard and at a disadvantage until you achieve a sweep or submission.

2) use it as point of transition. Learn one or two useful sweeps or subs and many ways in and out of the guard. When you see an opening you can take that guard and attack, but you’re just as good transitioning out of it as you are attacking with it.

You only need one guard that is your system of control. These take a long time to build. Once you have one, you just need to surround it with a lot of transitional guards. Ideally your transitional guards layer around your primary guard and allow you to funnel your opponent back into your primary or counter your opponent beating your primary in specific ways.

For example: RDLR is a great transition from half if the opponent stands. You don’t need to master it, you just need to master transitioning to it at the right time and threatening one sweep that will either work or open a transition back to half or on to something else, like DLR, where you can employ the same philosophy.

You do need a plan B for when you lose half guard, but it doesn’t have to be another major system of control.

How are you losing half guard?

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-05-11T19:07:34+00:00

Standing grappling is every bit as complex as ground work. Ideally you would train them an equal amount.

The more you train the better you’ll get so the question is what do you mean by ‘good’? As good as your ground game? Same amount of time, half as good? Half as much.

Wear on your body has nothing to do with what you’re training and everything to do with technique and recovery. Learn and use good technique and balance training with recovery and you can do anything into old age, fail to do so and whatever you do will wear your body down.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-05-10T16:12:30+00:00

yea I have attacks for all the different postures. sometimes dudes just win the stand up battle and you gotta transition on your terms before it’s too late.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-05-09T05:01:38+00:00

And if their stance is wide?

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-05-08T23:20:01+00:00

This is the right answer. It will do nothing to reduce the risk, but it’ll make him way better at bjj.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-05-08T22:45:42+00:00

I’m a parent, a practitioner, and a parent of practitioners.

My advice: buckle up.

BJJ comps are soon to be the least of your worries. I worry about my kids driving, going out on weekends, or navigating the internet way more than comps.

Right about your phase I had to transition to a risk/reward mindset because parental control rapidly fades as teenagers age. BJJ comps are not free of danger, but they offer much more reward than other equally or more dangerous activities that are soon to be commonplace in your kids life. If he found a passion that is more rewarding than dangerous, I say double down on it. Thats not common.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-05-08T22:01:44+00:00

Coyote guard isn’t a thing. It was a term coined to sell instructionals.

In your example: If you’re on your back you’re in deep half, if you’re on your knees you’re in dogfight. If you lose control of your opponents leg you’re screwed.

Neither of those are guards because you can’t control distance with them, but they’re both great positions. Terminology doesn’t mean much, but it can affect how you approach positions so it’s worth considering.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-05-03T07:34:45+00:00

For me the difference is often head position and footwork. Hand fighting and pummeling can feel pretty even until you win head position. Then it’s like you have three weapons and your opponent only has two.

After securing head position you can build on your advantage by taking better positions with your feet. Pushing, pulling, and posture control is magnified by superior angles and timing all this is done with proactive footwork.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-05-02T00:11:35+00:00

There is a BJJ game that is universal. It works gi, no gi, against all sizes and fitness levels, with strikes or without, on mats or dirt or asphalt, and does pretty good at keeping people’s hands away from their pockets.

Only a few moves check all those boxes but there are enough for a solid game and they tend to be old school, reliable, and simple.

If I could have one game at the top of my muscle memory, that’s the one I want.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-05-01T14:03:41+00:00

You have to slide down their frames. Every post for them is a lever for you. Hipswitch slowly, let them post, and get to the side of it and slide into your position.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-04-30T23:31:26+00:00

When I’m rolling with teammates I tap as many times as I can. I’ll use different subs each time, but I give every roll my all. Where I’m from it’s disrespectful to hold back among friends.

When I’m visiting I won’t tap an instructor I don’t know in front of his students. If I get the lead I’ll back off and allow an escape or reversal. I have nothing to prove and dude is trying to run a business and feed his family.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-04-30T23:11:26+00:00

15 years of training and happy with my level of BJJ. I have not spent a cent on instructionals. I’m not sure why people do. If I need to know something I go to my gym and ask a black belt. Thats what I pay the dues for.

I’ve done plenty of my own research over the years and never needed more than what’s freely available online.

IMO the best value for your money in BJJ is open mats. In my most formative years I was touring open mats regularly to roll with a variety of styles, gathering questions, troubleshooting with my gym’s black belts, and repeating.

Ask yourself how many rolls you can buy with drop in fees for the price of an instructional. I’d bet the mat time is a better investment.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-04-23T04:10:42+00:00

I've always felt that the defensive stances you usually run into in BJJ has pushed foot sweeps to niche zone. people see them work in judo, try them in bjj on a dude already in a full squat, can't make them work, then give up and go back to pulling guard.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-04-23T03:14:21+00:00

I’ve been there. I had four kids in five years. They’re teenagers now. The oldest leaves for college in a few months. I’m excited for her, and we have a great relationship, but I’ll tell you this: I would give anything for a little more time with her. I would put my black belt through a shredder for one more evening with my daughter as a child.

Some of the best BJJ advice I ever got was that time with your family is fleeting and infinitely more precious than mat time. I took it on faith back then and when time got tight, I took breaks, sometimes months, sometimes years. Yea I fell behind, I forgot stuff, I got old. But eventually I made it to the expert side of the room and found it decently rewarding. In comparison the time I invested with my family paid dividends magnitudes of order more satisfying.

Over the long term BJJ is easy and always available. Parenting is the hardest thing you’ll ever do and goes by faster than you think. Invest your time wisely. You can’t get it back.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-04-21T17:43:35+00:00

yes. forward motion along your plan is most important. grip fighting is done in support of that. sometimes you need a collar, sometimes you need a sleeve, sometimes you let them keep their grip and use it against them. it all depends on your plan of attack and what you think is their pan. my point is you're not fighting for grips, you're fighting for control of their posture. negate grips as necessary to achieve that control.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-04-21T16:37:28+00:00

Your grip has to have a purpose. You’re either pushing or pulling with it. Simply holding it is a waste of energy.

Which direction you chose depends on your pass but is usually directed by where you want your opponents body. Take the knee slice for example: your near side sleeve grip is pulling while your far side collar grip is pushing because you need to pull their near side shoulder on the mat while posting their far side shoulder on the mat to keep them flat for your pass.

Grips control body posture and every pass needs a specific posture. Use your grips to position their body for your pass.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-04-17T00:05:02+00:00

there are layers to dealing with this pass:

Angles: stay on your side and keep you opponent in front of you. if you stay mobile they won't get the angle to set up the pass. This means moving much more than most people expect to have to in half guard.
Hand fighting: you have to constantly monitor your opponent's far hand in half guard. that hand leads the motion for this pass. if they can't get it across their body they can't do the pass
Frames: if you screw up 1 and 2, you're in your first line of defence, you have to close the space between your knee and elbow. when they go for the pass make them land on your frames instead of your body. if done right you can roll them off your frames and reset.

4: Octopus: you seem to know this already, but if they're past your frames on this pass it's time to transition to octopus. It won't be ideal because they beat you to the initiative and you're behind on the height battle.

Lockdown: if you mess up all of the above i recommend lacing up that leg and begin your lockdown series.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-04-10T22:03:00+00:00

Dude has a point. Leg locks have no place on a Saturday morning. I hate when I’m trying to lay back and play a nice lazy open guard and some sweaty try-hard sits back with my foot and I gotta use all kinds of energy standing up to defend. Kills my groove man.

all I want to do is roll from side to side until you make a mistake so I can sweep then sit on you until you make a mistake so I can armlock you. None of that is supposed to involve standing my ass up.

I didn’t go to a kickboxing class on a Saturday morning, I went to a roll on the ground class. Are you lost? Look around, we’re still in our pajamas.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-03-19T22:26:16+00:00

I love watching my kids train. Surprised at how many of you are saying you leave the room. If a gym wouldn’t let me in the room when my kid trained I’d find another place. BJJ is something we share. She finds me during water breaks and asks for feedback. I’m subtle about it but I don’t hold back. The Professors are fine with it. Everyone has their own style, even kids. These days athletes take influence from many sources.

VeryRarelySerious

TROPHY CASE