The last several lessons have discussed what to do when we are put in a headlock from the standing position, and making sure when we bring the fight to the ground we land in the top position. In lesson 7 of the Crossroads Martial Arts Curriculum we discuss how to escape the position where we have landed on top but the attacker is still hanging onto our neck from the bottom position. Using technique to escape this hold is extremely important if we want to keep our neck from becoming injured, simply lifting up our heads will only allow the person on the bottom to hang their weight off of us causing us to strain our necks and become fatigued in the process. Instead we apply pressure to their neck and move parallel to the ground working against the weaker shoulder muscles. Once we have broken their grip we step over their body and move to a position called technical mount.
The technical mount is a common position in sport BJJ as well as Street self defense and offers several ways to finish the fight via submission. In lesson 7 of the Crossroads Martial Arts Curriculum we discuss two possible finishes from the position, the choke and the arm-bar. Another common attack from this position is flattening the bottom player to their stomach and taking their back(but we save this lesson for another day). Because we set up this position off of the headlock escape the bottom players arms are already out of position, making it very easy to put our hands in the proper position to finish the choke. Once somebody had been to Jiu-Jitsu for a few months they abandon attempting headlocks because of this very reason, you can not finish your opponent from the position and it leaves you very open to attacks. for this reason we also discuss methods of setting up the choke when your training partner keeps their arms in the proper position.
The other attack from the Technical mount is the arm bar and much like the choke because we are setting this up off of a failed headlock the bottom players arms are out of position making it easy for us to isolate the arm away from their body and position ourselves for the finish and for the same reason as above we discuss how to set up the arm bar when the bottom player keeps their arms in tight. The great thing about these two moves is that they are very easily linked together and once we can link them together fluidly it becomes easier to catch one of them successfully. Always remember in BJJ if you have to force a technique you aren’t doing jiu-jitsu. it is our goal to make our techniques work while feeling effortless.