Lesson 32 of the Crossroads Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Curriculum starts from a very common position in a self defense situation on the ground, you have taken the attacker to the ground and are on top of them in a strong position, the attacker then panics and grabs on your head in an attempt to roll you over and get on top. The most important thing in this position is to stay on top and secure your position. Brazilian jiu-jitsu’s ( BJJ) main strategy is Position before Submission which means that we always prioritize staying on top before attempting a submission or even worse panicking and making a mistake that cost you a powerful position. This is one of the main goals a new student in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu should have, staying calm when rolling. Staying calm will help you follow the rules of bjj and develop strategies for advancing your position and setting up submission chains. When escaping the headlock from the top position the strategy is to stay on top and then using leverage and body position we can break the grip of the headlock.
We continue on the ground working from escapes from the bottom of side control. Knowing how to escape this is essential to building confidence in your jiu-jitsu. If you can not escape from the bottom it will be very difficult to develop confidence in your attacks in the top position. When you begin attacking submissions during live sparring you make mistakes and end up losing position. If overtime this happens you get stuck on the bottom of side control for the rest of the match you will hesitate when attacking. In lesson 32 of the Crossroads Curriculum we cover the escape to turtle, which can lead to some very powerful turn overs to put you in the top position, or can be used as a set up to the standard elbow escape to move you to the guard position.
The risk of using the turtle escape is that the top player has a number of submissions and positional attacks. Lesson 32 covers the clock choke from the top position to demonstrate that. The clock choke uses the bottom players gi to force them to tap, however the player onto has to maintain a certain angle in order to achieve enough pressure to effectively apply the submission. If the bottom player can avoid that position he can successfully avoid the choke and begin working to improve his position. We see that shown in this lesson through the single leg take down from the turtle, a technique that the bottom player can use to reverse the position andmove to the top of side control. By controlling the top players leg you can force him to have to sit on his butt. This is done through technique based on understanding how the knee and hip joint work together.