I’m traveling in Italy right now with no access to make videos. Hopefully I’ll be able to drop in to train in Rome this week. But in the meantime, I figured I’d get this concept down in written form. I’ve come to believe that front headlock position is the second most dominant position in BJJ. Just look at what Makhachev did to Moicano - completely passed up taking side control to go for a D’Arce choke from front headlock.

When I was 14 or 15 I went to a wrestling camp hosted by 1960 Olympic Wrestling Gold Medalist Doug Blubaugh. Doug was quite a character and I’ll mention a little bit about him in order to honor his memory now that he’s gone. When I went there he was an old man with diabetes. But the gristle that won him a gold medal was still visible. He would joke about how he had both narcolepsy and cataplexy and so if he sat down while teaching he would fall asleep and if he laughed while teaching he would fall asleep.

This is my standard mount escape: comb my hair to protect my neck get my hip free and turn to my side control a hand and scoop out the back or entangle the legs This day I was fortunate to have Nathan, our 6'6" 270 lbs giant as a demonstration partner. I don’t know if you can tell from the video, but it’s clear to me he is getting bored of the demonstration and just wants to submit me, so some of this really is me trying to escape his mount before he chokes me.

I got caught with this submission about 15 years ago and it’s stuck with me. To my mind it’s the most annoying way to get subbed in BJJ just because of the emotional roller coaster from “I took their back I rule” to “wtf was that cheap $*#!” Some folks like to build games around doing weird submissions from inferior positions. I know a couple of black belts who love to give up their back so they can try to catch arm-bars.

When I was a white belt I thought the key to having a good guard game was to lock on and hold guard no matter what. Now that I’m a black belt I’ve come to believe that making your guard impassible is less about locking down and more about knowing when and how to bail out when you feel your guard is getting passed. If you can prevent your opponent from securing a scoring position (side control, knee on belly, north/south, mount, back take), then you can make your guard impassible.

This is my take on quarter guard. Quarter guard has become one of my go-to guards lately. I feel like it’s on a continuum of my bottom game: Stay on your side, control a hand So, of course if you play quarter guard flat on your back, it’s really more like a 3/4 mount position. Which is bad. However, from my side, it gives me easy access to deep half and/or transitioning to half guard, both of which are fine positions to be in:

This is my go-to mount escape. I feel comfortable enough with this that I tend not to take mount on my opponents because I feel like mount is fairly easy to escape, say, 80% of the time. The basic idea is that you need to turn to your side. I like this version because it doesn’t require strength. A lot of mount escapes are about bumping your opponent or framing your opponent.

This is my current system for passing guard. If I can access their neck then I use that to submit or pass. If I can’t, then I use Bernardo Faria’s over/under pass.

Any time I find someone takes my back, the number on thing I’m looking for (assuming they have already scored on me by getting their hooks in), is to break the connection between their chest and my back. Once I break this connection, I have broken their angle to choke me and I am safe from their chokes. Given that the rear naked choke is consistently the number one submission across IBJJF, ADCC, and UFC competitions, this is priority number one.

This is my answer to an opponent pulling closed guard on me. I find this so effective and high percentage, I rarely use closed guard myself. Sometimes it takes a little patience to make this happen, for example if they don’t want to let you grab the arm, but it works very well for me.