In Brazilian submissions come from control however if your training partner has good escapes and understands how to move on the ground we must be able to transition to different control positions, in last nights BJJ class we discussed and drilled how to control your opponents legs when they have a strong elbow escape.
Depending on the angle of your opponents leg as they elbow escape we can move into one of two control positions that prevent your training partner from setting up a strong guard. By transitioning to a position where we are controlling the legs when the legs begin to cause us a problem we make Passing back to side control much easier and prevent ourselves from getting stuck in our training partners game. In BJJ the more we let our opponent do what they want the harder it will be for us to do what we want. By accepting that our training partner has a good elbow escape and then moving from controlling the upper body to controlling the lower body we stay ahead and prevent the threat of being swept or submitted from our opponents guard.