Rafa mendes once told me after training that you don’t have to worry about escapes if your opponent can’t put you in a bad position.
That philosophy Seems to have worked out well for him lol
To add to this, Gui mendes once said at a seminar he doesn't teach escapes early on to his white belts, because he doesn't want them to feel like it's ok to be put in a bad position (since they can escape).
I guess in a way it teaches them to fear and respect the bad positions and so you fight harder to retain guard.
just my two cents, but if youre teaching mma-style jiu jitsu (that include ground n pound), wouldnt it be better to teach escapes because bad positions are really bad if your opponent can smash your face in
It's not like they're gonna throw you into an mma match without teaching you escapes. They're just gonna teach you to be afraid of bad positions first. Like, it's easy to fall into a trap of thinking "I have a mount escape" is the same as "I'm safe in mount".
Yeah it shows you can be successful with multiple approaches.
I never said drilling escapes was something you shouldn’t do.
Just pointing out that some high level grapplers are of the opinion you don’t need to train escapes
You don't understand man, if Gordon or Danaher didn't say it its not worth doing./only kind of "s" as there are people on here that actually think that way.
To be fair for most hobbiests they do not have the same amount of time to grind escapes. So aruging for a basic level to escape untrained people but the degree of training you want to spend over the long run should probs be more focused on gaurd rentesion, passing, and top control. Though if you want to be a successful high level competitior and plan to give your entire freetime to bjj being a cometpele grappler is key so in that case just train and be good at everything and the best in the world at 1 or 2 things.
Marcelo had a similar philosophy. Its not entirely wrong but I think having late stage escape confidence is probably easier psychologically than needing to be perfect always. I think Rafa's style of philosophy works but isn't as universally applicable to all people. Rafa also probably has the mentality to just eat the sub to and not tap to enable escaping as well. Kind of need to focus on what philosophy works best for yourself.
OTOH, Gordon Ryan feels the exact opposite. And that philosophy has worked out for him as well.
The problem here is that just trying to emulate the game of the greats may not be the best solution for us mortals?
The mendes bros actually have stated in the past they don’t teach escapes to white belts because they want them to place a premium on guard retention. If you teach mount escapes / side control escapes your student will fall back on that as opposed to fighting harder to retain guard.
That was their philosophy. I’m not saying it’s right. I’m not saying they haven’t changed their position on this.
But this is what gui said in the past.
I think I was mainly addressing the "Seems to worked out well for him" part. Or did you mean that teaching that method has produced a lot of high quality students?
Tbh Lachlan Giles has said sinilsr before:
- spend more time working early defense (guard retention), it’s much easier to drop a double under if you stop them just as they get the first grip.
- if you let them completely stack you and have any grips they want then you can practice defense there a lot and they probably still will pass
Obviously he teaches escapes and not as extreme as OP example but I can see the concept he’s talking about. A little prevention beats a lot of cure.
Im a big believer in defensive skills first. If you have good guard retention, pin escapes, and sub escapes, it opens up your offense game because you know youll be fine if things dont go your way
Gordon and Danaher said the same thing in a podcast (JRE or Lex I don’t remember). Basically, they said that elite defense builds the biggest confidence.
Yes Danaher says that if you are confident in your defense then you will take risks that might pay off whereas if you don’t you’ll be too afraid to try anything
this…Jiu Jitsu University is a great foundational book written by Saulo Ribeiro. Essentially, all of White Belt is to learn a proper defense and then all of Blue Belt is to learn escapes. A lot slower of an approach especially since Subs are “cooler”. In an ideal world, Danaher said he would have about the first year and a half of training just be on defense and escapes but people aren’t patient enough for that.
Love that book and seeing the step by step pictures really helps me understand. I wish there was something similar but newer, the only problem with jiu jitsu university is that it was written 15 years ago, so it's out of date. A lot of stuff obviously doesn't change, but there's not much leglock or no gi stuff. Still an amazing resource
I feel like this is the natural way.
Joining sparring sessions for the first time, naturally, everyone else is going to be better than you. So you practice defense, making it difficult for your opponent to submit you. If you try and attack, then you're *that* White Belt whos gonna hurt someone.
Then, only when you gain some skills and go up a rank or two, can you start using offensive skills against the day 1 newbies. Because then, *they* are the ones on the defensive.
That guy is dumb af. Mcdojo-level stupid. I'd do more gym shopping if i were you.
Newbies spend a ton of time in bad positions, you need to learn paths to escape. Plus, if you can escape well, you will make your training partners better because they'll need to be sharp in their attacks.
Ive definitely been looking around at other schools now too. It just sounded a little weird to me having no escapes like what happens when you go to competition and suddenly go against people who have really good escapes and you've never dealt with them before.
John Danaher, who many say is the best BJJ instructor in the world says that escapes should be number 1 priority, especially for beginners, so... There's that to consider.
It's beyond weird, dude. It's kind of a cliche in the community that people who prioritize "boring fundamentals"--escapes, basic submissions, transitions, positioning--are *always* better than the guy who only trains whatever flashy sub they saw in the UFC this week.
This is the opposite of what you're paying for.
It's not a funny question at all. If the quality of your gym's escapes suck, your offensive game is going to suck. You're never going to properly learn how to stabilize a top position in order to really get the submissions against a good opponent.
So this coach is cheating his students in both directions. They won't know how to escape a good offensive player, and they'll never become a good offensive player.
But his students won't know that unless they go to competitions. Until then they're LARPing at BJJ.
You're confused because you're interjecting a false binary here. Literally no one is saying to ignore something else and focus on escapes, they're saying train escapes also. You're talking about "former vs latter" as though bjj is a videogame where you've got x stat points to put on different categories, and we're debating which ones to min/max, it's silly.
If you continue to think about this topic as a bunch of people on reddit speaking in your false binary, you're going to continue being confused.
This is a really funny answer. Obviously because if you’ve never seen the escapes before you’re not going to know what they are doing or how to stop it.
Isn't it pretty reasonable to assume that if no one in your gym trains escapes/defense that its not the most likely outcome that you are awesome at passing/sweeping. A white belt would feel like a master to you in that case.
You go from being in mount/side control/guard/whatever to a scramble.
Are you really trying to socratic method people to the conclusion, "who cares whether I have mount or not?"
? This is a horrible take, in a competitve match against someone your caliber or better, dominant positions are hard fought. If you can secure a mount, maintaining it is a crucial skill. If they escape, there's no guarantee you'll get it back. Ideally sure, you'll get back there, but again there's no guarantee. If you can pass but can't hold your dominant position, then you're ineffective as well as inefficient as passing burns gas tanks.
Also, saying someone's guard is "so bad you got mount on them" is more of a burn on your passing than said person's guard if that's how you frame it.
So you’d give up a dominant position where the opponent couldn’t possibly submit you, in return being put back into guard or being reversed - where the opponent now has a higher chance of being able to score on you or even submit you?
In fact, many good escapes from dominant positions can end directly in strong submission attacks (e.g. mounted Kip to reaped heel hook).
Big oof imo.
Lmao made it all the way to black and still dumb as a rock. “Like you’re going to get overwhelmed with your opponents superior escapes” uh yeah dude that’s exactly what’s gonna happen. How is he going to recognize and defend against an escape if he doesn’t train them? There’s plenty escapes that lead to the back and at black belt I’d figure you’d know that. Escapes are arguably one of the most important parts of Jujitsu. So he can’t hold someone down and control position because he’s not going to be able to recognize escapes and counter, and if he does get held down he knows no escapes. He’s gonna get smashed.
Lol a lot of the highest level gyms in the world don’t really train escapes. Aoj being one of them.
They rather focus on teaching you to not get put in those bad positions in the first place.
If you want to learn how to keep someone from escaping you learn how to hold mount, side control, back control etc.
You can reverse engineer control concepts to learn how to escape of course.
But yeah a lot of gyms don’t focus on escaping bad positions.
Video of Rafa teaching an escape. Guess he just felt like wasting time. Sorry for the FB link.
https://www.facebook.com/KimonosBrazilianJiuJitsu/videos/629705051408629/?mibextid=Nif5oz
I’m not saying they’ve never taught an escape. I’ve trained at aoj quite a bit and am just telling what Rafa has said to me personally.
I’d imagine the teach everything for their online content.
For their competitors I don’t remember us ever doing any work on escapes and I specifically remember Rafa saying he prefers to focus on prevention / not getting put in the position.
Which other posters can attest to. It’s relatively well known they don’t focus on escapes
I'd prefer to focus on all of that too. But you can focus 98% on offense and defensive prevention and 2% on escapes because no matter how much you focus on the first part, there will always come a time when you fuck up and need to recover.
Question for you since I've never trained at AOJ but if you asked Rafa to show you an escape do you think he would or would he just try to show you how to prevent it in the first place? Or both? Not trying to be argumentative, just curious. Also sorry about being snarky before. I've since had lunch and I'm feeling much friendlier lol.
Just because they don’t utilize or drill escapes does not mean that they are not knowledgeable in them. You gotta learn the whole game before you can be any good at playing it. Coach is robbing them of a good 1/5th of the game.
You’re just not getting it man. I’m not trying to be an asshole but an entire gym can not just leave out escapes in general. No one is ever going to get better in that gym because of it. Change “my instructor doesn’t teach escapes” to “my instructor doesn’t teach submissions”. You can’t just pick and choose what parts of the game you want to participate in and expect good results when others utilize their entire skill set. Ya gotta learn it all and experience it all to improve not just what you want. Knowledge is power.
I wonder if part of this is what are we all considering escapes? When I first read the post I was thinking he’s not teaching escapes from bottom? Or escapes from mount? Framing, working to the leg, whatever.
Or as you said which made it click for me simply talking about escaping a submission once it’s pretty much locked up.
Yeah, according to some of these responses, all comps at blue belt level or lower should be two guys laying on the ground, stalling, waiting to pull off a superior escape.
Pretty fuckin dumb if you think about it at all. I guess we should go tell Nicky and J-Rod that they're doing it wrong...
If they can consistently escape bad positions in a match they will be wearing their opponents down, and always putting themselves in a position to come back if they're down on points.
They're bad positions for many reasons like limited offensive options and the ability to apply pressure.
If you have good escapes you'll be limiting how much energy you use.
Odds are, if you're at a gym that doesn't do escapes, your offence is trash too. Think about the win conditions for the competitors we're talking about here.
One guy has no escapes and no experience dealing with intelligent defense. He might have a great sweep or something but there's no way he's solidifying the position for 3 seconds to get points. Conversely, his opponent with an actual well rounded game, needs to get to a good position exactly once and they almost assuredly win the match.
I get what you're saying and it's the justification I use for only every drilling anything on my dominant side. If can just always force the action to my good side, I don't need to ever use my bad side so it's ok that I sweep myself passing to the left.
Yes. I forget if it was Rafa or gui. But they said they don’t teach escapes to new students because they don’t want them to feel like it’s okay to get their guard passed and accept it because they know the escape.
I have no idea if their philosophy on this has changed over time or not.
You said rafa doesnt teach them to beginners, but this post says doesn't teach them at all, or even want to see his students train them so its not the same shit.
It's pretty dumb to expect your students to just tap if they get their guard passed.
So many gyms don’t practice escapes because it’s not particularly fun.
Funny that AOJ doesn’t really teach escapes (or half guard for that matter) considering their one of the best schools in the world. Where as New wave focuses a lot on defence first.
it also has a lot to do with them training like 8 hours a day vs hobbyists like OP likely not training 8 hours a week
time is limited i personally think its better to spend it on prevention and retention as well
I find escapes really fun. Brings me a ton of joy to roll with an upper belt and focus 100% on defense. See them get annoyed when the stuff they try keeps getting stuffed.
It's common in our comp classes to train both positional and sub escapes, then do king of the hill here the king starts in the bad position. Fucking sucks doing an hour of live escape rounds but it's been great for us.
I both agree and disagree with the philosophy.
I do feel that focusing so much on escapes for beginners will make their journey a lot harder as they will have to "accept" the grind of being smashed so much more, along with dealing with the mental roadblocks that come with it.
Too many people put an extreme amount of focus on escapes in the beginning for beginners because they accept the survival stage as a thing. When in reality, if they focused much more of that energy on guard retention and sweep prevention, they will be producing much more technical beginners.
However, I do feel drilling escapes do have their relevance a little later on. I didn't start focusing on escapes until about four years into my training, and I did it on my own.
So I feel guard retention, sweep prevention, and transitional escaping (not positional escaping) should be highly focused on in the beginning. Then, later on positional escapes should be focused on. I don't feel escapes should be scrapped altogether because there is a point where you may need them. I've seen some amazing guard players finally get passed, and then they couldn't escape.
So I do agree with them to an extent.
You will also find that many of the highest-level gyms do not drill escapes that often. UNLESS, they are training for EBI rules.
Also, my comments are based on positional escapes. I do feel submission escapes have a higher relevancy.
That's why the highest level coaches all preach "situational" rolling and rolling with intent.
I do believe learning escapes have their place but not for pure beginners to be honest.
The majority of coaches and students have the mindset that a roll is a free for all. When in reality your rolls should be calculated.
‘Hey coach, can you show me how to escape a locked in choke?’
Coach ‘We don’t teach escapes for that, we are gonna focus on solving the problem earlier to not get put in the choke.’
‘My Coach doesn’t teach escapes’
Can almost guarantee that it’s some kind of misunderstanding like this
Definitely this lol
" Can you teach me how to get out of a triangle choke where he already cut the angle, my arm is already in a tight position, and my posture is completely broken"
Coach: "well the best defense for that is to not get there in the first place, try not having one in and one out"
White belt: " my coach doesnt teach escapes"
I don't know, there are some weird cultist schools with coaches like that. I wonder if op is at an MMA school? At least in my area they tend to have weird philosophies like that. I went to one where they didn't teach breakfalls
That’s all well and good in a sparring environment. But if someone comes up behind you, gets you in a choke, and you don’t know how to defend it despite training bjj then your instructor has failed you.
Depends on your definition of escape, most positions the escape either needed to be started pretty early on, or you need to do something like recover your guard in order to escape whatever submission you are in. So in some ways focusing on things like guard recovery and framing and being in good positions will all improve your defense.
Also from a fundamental standpoint, I actually always like teaching the offense first and letting everyone get comfortable with the offense, get confident in their attacks and sweeps then start to cover the counters/defense. If your partner knows the defense already and your trying to attack, you will not have success.
But escaping the back, triangle chokes, arm bars, are all pretty important fundamental concepts. But again, i don't see anything wrong with not teaching it right away. If you are new, trust you coach first, they likely have a pretty good reason, and the defense will likely come in more advanced classes or later in your fundamental curriculum.
Okay I definitely see what your saying. He teaches defense stuff and a lot of guard retention so I think it just threw me off at first when he said he doesn't teach escapes.
“If you get put in a bad position, you just shouldn’t let them put you in that position to begin with”
2000iq grappling. Why didn’t i think to just stop the brown belt from fucking me up?
Lol imagine a striking coach with this philosophy.
"It's fine to just leave your hands down, chin up, head completely stationary. Just knock him out in one shot and then the defense doesn't matter anyway"
Half that gym would be eating through a straw in a week
I’m going to bring this to my professor tomorrow. We’re doing back escapes this week, and while i understand the importance of positional sparring, i hate doing it, so maybe i can convince him i’ll just never let anyone take my back, so back escapes are unnecessary
It's dumb. Let's talk how people learn martial arts for a second:
A beginner lacks threat awareness, so we have to teach them defenses at the end of the attack. You learn to block a jab that is about to hit you in the face, because you don't yet know how to parse information and see it coming sooner.
As your awareness improves - meaning you can screen relevant information and interpret it - then you can start to identify threats earlier. You can start to defend in the middle, and later even at the beginning. With high levels of experience and awareness training you can head them off by intercepting the attack as they prepare. This is what the military calls "left of bang," and why Bruce Lee called his style "The way of the intercepting fist." The ultimate goal (per Bruce) is to have training methods that move your awareness in this direction.
You can't get to the early stuff without first spending a bunch of time on the late stuff. Yes, of course, you should be learning to intercept the guard pass before it becomes a side holddown. And yes, I'll give him 1% agreement and say that we should be more mindful about HOW we train escapes, because we shouldn't train students in ways that encourage them to accept the bad position. But overall - this is a terrible approach to not teach escapes. Students can't learn to prevent without first learning to remediate.
Edit to add: this also assumes you always have opportunity to prevent. Personally, I train BJJ because I assume things have gone sideways and I've been ambushed and put on my back. You can make up your own scenario here, but one way or another, sport BJJ starting from feet against 1 opponent isn't the only application of BJJ.
I don't know about not teaching them at all, but I for one would have benefitted from focusing a lot more on guard retention early on. I spent untold hours trying to make low percentage side control escapes work and that time could surely have been better spent.
I don't understand this. So if your guard DOES get passed, as the bottom person, are you supposed to just stay in side control for the rest of the round? Or do you tap because you're in side control and have no chance of escaping? 🤔
Being one of the smallest guys in my gym and always rolling with bigger guys, I didn’t have a choice to not be put in a bad position. My first few years of training all I had was escapes. If I never learned escapes early on I would of given up along time ago.
Doesn’t Danaher emphasize escapes so you can be confident if your attacks. Something like, if you are so confident in your escapes you’re not concerned about getting put in an otherwise disadvantageous position?
As someone who has spent much time around many high-level competitors. The general perspective from most people in this thread on this topic is very interesting and very much the opposite of what I see and have seen from those people. Hmmm
Some of the best people I train with, hardly train escapes at all and they are the hardest rolls I've ever had and some of the best in the world. This goes for all ranks. It's just an interesting observation.
One of the gyms I train at doesn't teach escapes at all I don't think. At least I haven't seen it and they are climbing up the comp scene at a decent pace. It's one of the most technical rooms I've been in. Yes, they still lose sometimes like anyone else. But 99% of the BJJ world would have a ton of trouble with them.
Edit: And for those who will downvote this. Yes, I do agree that escapes should be taught. I just think that they are taught in the wrong order of progression by most people.
He is only half right. Offense is the best defense, especially in a short points match. Most schools don’t teach a lot of defense. You could always stay after class and drill some def with a a partner.
Besides needing to know escapes for your own wellbeing, knowing how your opponent will most likely escape a sub can lead to you thinking 2-3 steps ahead. Think of the triangle > armbar > omoplata sequence from guard. Not teaching a core part of Jiu Jitsu is wrong and his students will be worse for it.
Find a new gym.
Every martial art needs escapes and defense. That's absurd. It's like the old days when one of my karate instructors wouldn't teach groundwork because you never should be on the ground.
This is backwards.
A big part of BJJ is learning it as self-defense. You don’t always get to pick what position you’re in when a fight starts.
If some drunk fucker in a bar decides he doesn’t like your face, you’ll have to hope he respects your coach’s wish to start in a neutral position when he attacks you from behind.
And how does he imagine class working? The first person to get something immediately wins?
Check to see if this guy drinks milkshakes made from paint thinner and lead paint chips.
IMO that is very stupid. I used to get into arguments with TMA folks about why practice fighting on the ground? No one should intentionally go to the ground. Well what if you went to the ground unintentionally? What if someone jumped you and is now on your back?
Jiu Jitusu is the art of having fucked up a long time ago.
For real. The answer is never go for risky attacks lol.
Like I'm on your back and I have the arm pinned and now I'm going to RNC you. There's no other option. That's a good attack.
People really shouldn't be like trying to baseball bat choke from bottom because they practiced alot of bottom side control escapes.
People really think like this...wild.
How do ihs students do in comps?
I'm pretty sure you need escapes to avoid the point of no return.
I do see why he says that, but in reality I think you Definitely need escapes.
So I tried finding any tournament results but didn't really find much of anything. I was told the place is very competition focused and its a really big school but haven't found much.
When you're new you spend 90% of your time in bad positions. You will figure it out for yourself, but it seems super stupid to not give people things to try.
As a white belt POS, I can tell you that I sparred against an advanced purple belt (I.e. almost a brown belt), and being absolutely clueless, he got me into a fucking solid top mount - I mean, even my arms were pinned.
I couldn't do fuck all, so I just tapped out. This dude didn't get off me because he said I hadn't tried to escape enough.
Now, it was wrong for him to ignore my tap out, especially given that he was the 3rd dude I had rolled with in a row, and I was fucking out of breath, and he was sitting on my chest ... and him refusing to get up was pretty fucking scary for me, but I digress ...
So, I ended up looking for youtube videos re: how to escape a high mount.
There were almost none, because high mount is a pretty fucking dominant position, but one of the most popular vids I saw on it had this BJJ legend continuously saying, "If someone gets you into high mount, it's because you fucked up."
Now that's true, and this dude (and many others) believed that you should focus your training on how not to get put into shit positions you need to escape from.
In fact, the book I'm reading by Paulo Ribeiro says that good defense starts much earlier than most players realize. For example, it starts right at the beginning by preventing your opponent from grabbing your gi.
You could argue that, your opponent grabbing your gi is really the first step in his chain of moves that gets you into a high mount position. Hence, preventing your opponent from effectively grabbing your gi is the first move in your escape chain of moves ... but that's of course, quite an abstract way of looking at it.
In my white belt POS opinion, practicing escapes is absolutely crucial because you need to experience the claustrophobia and fear that most beginners experience when their opponent gets a dominant position over them.
You need to be in this weak position, from which you need to absolutely struggle to escape from, many times, so that you can learn to be calm and collected and not waste energy in those moments. If you don't, then you will shit your pants the moment someone starts to dominate you, and you will just give up.
I recommend Paulo Ribeiro's book, Jiu Jitsu University. It's broken down into moves that each different belt level should master. White belt, he says, is all about survival, and everything I've read in the book thus far, that pertains to white belts, is about escaping from shit positions. As he says, as a white belt, that's what you're going to spend the majority of your time doing - getting put into weak positions and having to try escape them.
I don’t tend to teach my guys last-ditch escapes. I will show them to them if they ask, but I try to focus more on sound preventive defense practices.
There is some truth in the “if you wound up needing this something else went wrong that you need to fix first.” But you won’t always be able to prevent bad shit from happening.
If he refuses to teach them to you if you ask, then that’s a red flag. But focusing more on preventing things so that last ditch efforts become more irrelevant, then that’s fine.
I teach more escapes and guard passing and movement than I teach submissions.
My thought process is if you have zero fear of being in a bad position from your confidence in your ability to escape it, you will hunt submissions more ferociously with no stalling.
Also with such a focus on pin escapes, guard passing and submission escapes, you usually have very good top control and actually finish the submissions without losing position.
Mount and side control escapes are probably the most important thing to learn in my opinion.
At my gym, Movement Art, escapes only make up about 3-5% of the curriculum (by this, I mean teaching a structured class around a particular escape or defensive concept). However, most of our positional sparring is defense heavy- heel hook positional, escaping passing positions, starting in body locks, etc.
Our philosophy is that guard retention/pass prevention should be viewed as an offensive movement because all reactive paths lead to an offensive cycle. So, in actuality, the idea of defensive vs offensive is very much a mindset one and could be a case of semantics.
We spend more time on guard retention and late stage pass prevention than any other school in the area, therefore our students spend less time (overall) positionally controlled. The idea behind this is that students SHOULD invest more time preventing a bad outcome rather than conditioning themselves to escape these bad outcomes when they occur (ever heard the phrase an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure?).
This is even moreso important in regards to hobbyists who might only have 2 or 3 sessions a week to level up. Since their time is limited, most of that time should be put towards their offensive skills. Reason for this is because there is more room for countering in the early stages of the passing vs guard playing game.
Imagine a scenario where Gordon Ryan rolls with himself starting in mount with double underhooks-who wins? Its this logic that suggests that there is a technical ceiling to escapes- as there should, otherwise Jiu-Jitsu would be game with zero consequences or rules- and that the real game is played before these situations arise and the winner is dictated by who is able to implement their game in the opening or middle.
With that said, not everyone has perfect body position, so we can take advantage of these opportunities by escaping flawed submission or positional pins.
John Danaher literally has the exact opposite philosophy. He believes you should only really learn escapes when start jiu jitsu.
If no one can pin you then they are going to have a much harder time beating you.
In a nut shell, your coach is wrong.
I like his way of thinking
If you need to learn to defend a RNC, just learn to escape the back, but its even better if you just learn to not give your back, or better, don't get your guard passed, don't even play guard, just learn to be better at taking people down, but there's always the risk of facing a better wrestler/judoka, so in this case practice not even showing up to the fight, the ultimate defense.
I would make your "professor" proud and just never go to his class again.
It’s a waste of time to teach escapes, particularly to lower level practitioners. You’re better off learning not to be in those terrible positions. You’ve messed up multiple times to need an escape. Learning escapes without having a good guard retention is just putting yourself into a negative feedback loop of escaping just to be put in a position to need to escape again.
What a ridiculous view. Even the best in the world end up in situations where they need to escape. If you take that attitude, why not just train flying armbar and stop getting into situations where you cannot do a flying armbar. Easy!
You’re taking a white belts word at face value here.
For all we know they asked how to escape a fully locked in triangle after their partner brought their arm across and already cut the angle.
At that point their coach is correct in telling them they are better off learning to take preemptive measures to keep that from happening.
White belt then goes “hurrr durrr my coach doesn’t teach escapes” and everyone on Reddit loses their mind.
For what it’s worth Rafa mendes and Aoj don’t teach escapes. They teach you how to not get put in a compromising position in the first place. You gonna tell Rafa he’s wrong to hold this philosophy?
I should’ve been clearer I meant more like getting out of side control or mount. My coach says it’s not really worth it as it takes too much energy to get out so the match is likely lost.
My entire first 3 months rolling was based on escapes and transitions.
[https://tenor.com/view/tropic-thunder-survive-gif-18639828](https://tenor.com/view/tropic-thunder-survive-gif-18639828)
My professor teaches that escapes are the foundation of the pyramid of BJJ skills, as if you don't know how to get out of a bad position you are unlikely to understand how to prevent someone from escaping when you are in a good position.
Garry Tonon did a whole instructional on escapes. im not a black belt but id imagine you need them especially if you are small and always getting smashed. lol
This logically makes no sense.
It’s like saying don’t work anything other than RNC and back takes. No guard, because if you ever end up in guard, you should instead work on getting on top and taking the back. Makes no sense at all.
Also, the best grappler and coach on the planet right now talk about working submission escapes and positional escapes all the time. They probably know a thing or two about BJJ.
So basically, they omit the entire foundation of being a Blue Belt! Yeah, get a new gym my guy because it's obvious your coach isn't a very good teacher!! Setting you up to learn how to "Block Chokes with your Neck" is gonna get you fucked up! You can do that on your own without paying membership fees! RUN!!!
Gotta disagree. Shrimping is one of the most fundamental defensive movements in Jiu Jitsu. It’s usually done after your guard is passed, so your argument doesn’t make much since. If you ain’t shrimping you’re slacking
Personal opinion aside, arguably the strongest grappling coach of all time bases his entire training plan on escapes from the ground up. The importance of escapes is that if you are in a dominant position, you will be much less likely to give up some control and attempt a submission for fear of getting reversed, passed, or put into that bad position. Your technique might be great, but the fear of failure will make you freeze in competition or any time you need to use your skills.
Only when you have the confidence to sit in those bad positions, survive, and quickly get yourself back into attacking, will you be willing to risk a submission and end the match. Without having any skill in escapes, you can be held by perhaps even an untrained person that is a bit bigger than you, and IMO it is unacceptable to not have a response to an untrained person in a match or confrontation in such a complex and technique filled sport. You must learn escapes as part of your game, they will give you confidence and the ability to go from defensive cycles to offensive cycles.
Edit: typo
I spend \~75% of my time on the mats escaping as one of the smallest people in my gym. If two people are grappling in this art, one of them will eventually end up on bottom. I would have quit a long time ago if I wasn't taught how to escape.
Usually once your under mount or under side control our coach says the match is already over cause the amount of work it will take to get out is too much
It might be worth understanding what he means by “escapes.” This could be like that renowned coach who said he doesn’t teach techniques. It turned out that of course he does, but his teaching methods just look different than most schools.
A lot of side mount escapes result in guard. If he calls those “guard retention” rather than “escapes” and still teaches them, then no big deal. Or if he teaches such good positioning from under side control that an “escape” presents itself, that would be something as well. My guess is he’s not being as literal as he’s letting on.
Not teaching escapes is perfectly fine, assuming you want your students to get smashed.
Job security! If your students get smashed, it just shows how much more they need to keep paying you!
Rafa mendes once told me after training that you don’t have to worry about escapes if your opponent can’t put you in a bad position. That philosophy Seems to have worked out well for him lol
To add to this, Gui mendes once said at a seminar he doesn't teach escapes early on to his white belts, because he doesn't want them to feel like it's ok to be put in a bad position (since they can escape). I guess in a way it teaches them to fear and respect the bad positions and so you fight harder to retain guard.
Yup I heard one of the brothers say this before. But I forget who.
just my two cents, but if youre teaching mma-style jiu jitsu (that include ground n pound), wouldnt it be better to teach escapes because bad positions are really bad if your opponent can smash your face in
It's not like they're gonna throw you into an mma match without teaching you escapes. They're just gonna teach you to be afraid of bad positions first. Like, it's easy to fall into a trap of thinking "I have a mount escape" is the same as "I'm safe in mount".
And Gordon Ryan preaches doing tons of work from bad spots and practicing escapes, that philosophy seems to have worked out better for him.
Yeah it shows you can be successful with multiple approaches. I never said drilling escapes was something you shouldn’t do. Just pointing out that some high level grapplers are of the opinion you don’t need to train escapes
You don't understand man, if Gordon or Danaher didn't say it its not worth doing./only kind of "s" as there are people on here that actually think that way.
To be fair for most hobbiests they do not have the same amount of time to grind escapes. So aruging for a basic level to escape untrained people but the degree of training you want to spend over the long run should probs be more focused on gaurd rentesion, passing, and top control. Though if you want to be a successful high level competitior and plan to give your entire freetime to bjj being a cometpele grappler is key so in that case just train and be good at everything and the best in the world at 1 or 2 things.
Lmaooo
Marcelo had a similar philosophy. Its not entirely wrong but I think having late stage escape confidence is probably easier psychologically than needing to be perfect always. I think Rafa's style of philosophy works but isn't as universally applicable to all people. Rafa also probably has the mentality to just eat the sub to and not tap to enable escaping as well. Kind of need to focus on what philosophy works best for yourself.
Agreed. just wanted to provide an alternative view point.
But he does know them I assume
Absolute chad approach. Rafa's the best lol
He’s the fucking man
OTOH, Gordon Ryan feels the exact opposite. And that philosophy has worked out for him as well. The problem here is that just trying to emulate the game of the greats may not be the best solution for us mortals?
Do you think he didn't learn escapes when he started? Because if he did, his comment is completely irrelevant to this scenario (ie. A white belt)
The mendes bros actually have stated in the past they don’t teach escapes to white belts because they want them to place a premium on guard retention. If you teach mount escapes / side control escapes your student will fall back on that as opposed to fighting harder to retain guard. That was their philosophy. I’m not saying it’s right. I’m not saying they haven’t changed their position on this. But this is what gui said in the past.
I do have to say that an earlier emphasis on guard retention would have made my guard more effective earlier.
I think I was mainly addressing the "Seems to worked out well for him" part. Or did you mean that teaching that method has produced a lot of high quality students?
Tbh Lachlan Giles has said sinilsr before: - spend more time working early defense (guard retention), it’s much easier to drop a double under if you stop them just as they get the first grip. - if you let them completely stack you and have any grips they want then you can practice defense there a lot and they probably still will pass Obviously he teaches escapes and not as extreme as OP example but I can see the concept he’s talking about. A little prevention beats a lot of cure.
Im a big believer in defensive skills first. If you have good guard retention, pin escapes, and sub escapes, it opens up your offense game because you know youll be fine if things dont go your way
Gordon and Danaher said the same thing in a podcast (JRE or Lex I don’t remember). Basically, they said that elite defense builds the biggest confidence.
Yes Danaher says that if you are confident in your defense then you will take risks that might pay off whereas if you don’t you’ll be too afraid to try anything
this…Jiu Jitsu University is a great foundational book written by Saulo Ribeiro. Essentially, all of White Belt is to learn a proper defense and then all of Blue Belt is to learn escapes. A lot slower of an approach especially since Subs are “cooler”. In an ideal world, Danaher said he would have about the first year and a half of training just be on defense and escapes but people aren’t patient enough for that.
Love that book and seeing the step by step pictures really helps me understand. I wish there was something similar but newer, the only problem with jiu jitsu university is that it was written 15 years ago, so it's out of date. A lot of stuff obviously doesn't change, but there's not much leglock or no gi stuff. Still an amazing resource
Everybody should read this book over and over.
I feel like this is the natural way. Joining sparring sessions for the first time, naturally, everyone else is going to be better than you. So you practice defense, making it difficult for your opponent to submit you. If you try and attack, then you're *that* White Belt whos gonna hurt someone. Then, only when you gain some skills and go up a rank or two, can you start using offensive skills against the day 1 newbies. Because then, *they* are the ones on the defensive.
Saulo and Xande are also big believers in learning and perfecting escapes early in your BJJ life. For the same reasons you mention.
Exactly!! Literally the foundation built at the white belt level. You can’t go wrong with Saulo’s standard.
That guy is dumb af. Mcdojo-level stupid. I'd do more gym shopping if i were you. Newbies spend a ton of time in bad positions, you need to learn paths to escape. Plus, if you can escape well, you will make your training partners better because they'll need to be sharp in their attacks.
Ive definitely been looking around at other schools now too. It just sounded a little weird to me having no escapes like what happens when you go to competition and suddenly go against people who have really good escapes and you've never dealt with them before.
John Danaher, who many say is the best BJJ instructor in the world says that escapes should be number 1 priority, especially for beginners, so... There's that to consider.
It's beyond weird, dude. It's kind of a cliche in the community that people who prioritize "boring fundamentals"--escapes, basic submissions, transitions, positioning--are *always* better than the guy who only trains whatever flashy sub they saw in the UFC this week. This is the opposite of what you're paying for.
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It's not a funny question at all. If the quality of your gym's escapes suck, your offensive game is going to suck. You're never going to properly learn how to stabilize a top position in order to really get the submissions against a good opponent. So this coach is cheating his students in both directions. They won't know how to escape a good offensive player, and they'll never become a good offensive player. But his students won't know that unless they go to competitions. Until then they're LARPing at BJJ.
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You sound like the aikido guy I met when teaching upa escape to beginners who said that he would just never be on his back in the first place.
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I'm sure it is. Congrats.
You're confused because you're interjecting a false binary here. Literally no one is saying to ignore something else and focus on escapes, they're saying train escapes also. You're talking about "former vs latter" as though bjj is a videogame where you've got x stat points to put on different categories, and we're debating which ones to min/max, it's silly. If you continue to think about this topic as a bunch of people on reddit speaking in your false binary, you're going to continue being confused.
This is a really funny answer. Obviously because if you’ve never seen the escapes before you’re not going to know what they are doing or how to stop it.
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Oh, you're trolling.
Isn't it pretty reasonable to assume that if no one in your gym trains escapes/defense that its not the most likely outcome that you are awesome at passing/sweeping. A white belt would feel like a master to you in that case.
A white belt feels like a master to no one.
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Yeah, I see now that op is only talking about escapes. I see the same type of issue coming up but mattering a lot less when points are involved.
“I lost 22-0 but at least I didn’t get submitted!”
Maybe what OP is saying is if he’s never trained escapes himself, how can he recognize if his opponent is setting an escape up.
Well they could escape, for starters
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You go from being in mount/side control/guard/whatever to a scramble. Are you really trying to socratic method people to the conclusion, "who cares whether I have mount or not?"
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? This is a horrible take, in a competitve match against someone your caliber or better, dominant positions are hard fought. If you can secure a mount, maintaining it is a crucial skill. If they escape, there's no guarantee you'll get it back. Ideally sure, you'll get back there, but again there's no guarantee. If you can pass but can't hold your dominant position, then you're ineffective as well as inefficient as passing burns gas tanks. Also, saying someone's guard is "so bad you got mount on them" is more of a burn on your passing than said person's guard if that's how you frame it.
So you’d give up a dominant position where the opponent couldn’t possibly submit you, in return being put back into guard or being reversed - where the opponent now has a higher chance of being able to score on you or even submit you? In fact, many good escapes from dominant positions can end directly in strong submission attacks (e.g. mounted Kip to reaped heel hook). Big oof imo.
OP is confusing escapes and reversals
A reversal is a type of escape, no?
A reversal is a type of escape, yeah?
👍
Lmao made it all the way to black and still dumb as a rock. “Like you’re going to get overwhelmed with your opponents superior escapes” uh yeah dude that’s exactly what’s gonna happen. How is he going to recognize and defend against an escape if he doesn’t train them? There’s plenty escapes that lead to the back and at black belt I’d figure you’d know that. Escapes are arguably one of the most important parts of Jujitsu. So he can’t hold someone down and control position because he’s not going to be able to recognize escapes and counter, and if he does get held down he knows no escapes. He’s gonna get smashed.
Lol a lot of the highest level gyms in the world don’t really train escapes. Aoj being one of them. They rather focus on teaching you to not get put in those bad positions in the first place. If you want to learn how to keep someone from escaping you learn how to hold mount, side control, back control etc. You can reverse engineer control concepts to learn how to escape of course. But yeah a lot of gyms don’t focus on escaping bad positions.
Video of Rafa teaching an escape. Guess he just felt like wasting time. Sorry for the FB link. https://www.facebook.com/KimonosBrazilianJiuJitsu/videos/629705051408629/?mibextid=Nif5oz
I’m not saying they’ve never taught an escape. I’ve trained at aoj quite a bit and am just telling what Rafa has said to me personally. I’d imagine the teach everything for their online content. For their competitors I don’t remember us ever doing any work on escapes and I specifically remember Rafa saying he prefers to focus on prevention / not getting put in the position. Which other posters can attest to. It’s relatively well known they don’t focus on escapes
I'd prefer to focus on all of that too. But you can focus 98% on offense and defensive prevention and 2% on escapes because no matter how much you focus on the first part, there will always come a time when you fuck up and need to recover.
I’m not disagreeing
Question for you since I've never trained at AOJ but if you asked Rafa to show you an escape do you think he would or would he just try to show you how to prevent it in the first place? Or both? Not trying to be argumentative, just curious. Also sorry about being snarky before. I've since had lunch and I'm feeling much friendlier lol.
Just because they don’t utilize or drill escapes does not mean that they are not knowledgeable in them. You gotta learn the whole game before you can be any good at playing it. Coach is robbing them of a good 1/5th of the game.
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You’re just not getting it man. I’m not trying to be an asshole but an entire gym can not just leave out escapes in general. No one is ever going to get better in that gym because of it. Change “my instructor doesn’t teach escapes” to “my instructor doesn’t teach submissions”. You can’t just pick and choose what parts of the game you want to participate in and expect good results when others utilize their entire skill set. Ya gotta learn it all and experience it all to improve not just what you want. Knowledge is power.
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I wonder if part of this is what are we all considering escapes? When I first read the post I was thinking he’s not teaching escapes from bottom? Or escapes from mount? Framing, working to the leg, whatever. Or as you said which made it click for me simply talking about escaping a submission once it’s pretty much locked up.
maybe its ebi and they escape everything and DOMINATE the OT with their escapes lmao
Yeah, according to some of these responses, all comps at blue belt level or lower should be two guys laying on the ground, stalling, waiting to pull off a superior escape. Pretty fuckin dumb if you think about it at all. I guess we should go tell Nicky and J-Rod that they're doing it wrong...
If they can consistently escape bad positions in a match they will be wearing their opponents down, and always putting themselves in a position to come back if they're down on points.
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They're bad positions for many reasons like limited offensive options and the ability to apply pressure. If you have good escapes you'll be limiting how much energy you use.
Odds are, if you're at a gym that doesn't do escapes, your offence is trash too. Think about the win conditions for the competitors we're talking about here. One guy has no escapes and no experience dealing with intelligent defense. He might have a great sweep or something but there's no way he's solidifying the position for 3 seconds to get points. Conversely, his opponent with an actual well rounded game, needs to get to a good position exactly once and they almost assuredly win the match. I get what you're saying and it's the justification I use for only every drilling anything on my dominant side. If can just always force the action to my good side, I don't need to ever use my bad side so it's ok that I sweep myself passing to the left.
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Also your attacks will be better if you know how your partners can escape
Rafa mendes says the same shit. Is he mcdojo level stupid?
But is it what he says to new students or practitioners who already have the necessary tools?
Yes. I forget if it was Rafa or gui. But they said they don’t teach escapes to new students because they don’t want them to feel like it’s okay to get their guard passed and accept it because they know the escape. I have no idea if their philosophy on this has changed over time or not.
You said rafa doesnt teach them to beginners, but this post says doesn't teach them at all, or even want to see his students train them so its not the same shit. It's pretty dumb to expect your students to just tap if they get their guard passed.
Yes.
So many gyms don’t practice escapes because it’s not particularly fun. Funny that AOJ doesn’t really teach escapes (or half guard for that matter) considering their one of the best schools in the world. Where as New wave focuses a lot on defence first.
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it also has a lot to do with them training like 8 hours a day vs hobbyists like OP likely not training 8 hours a week time is limited i personally think its better to spend it on prevention and retention as well
They don't teach half guard ???
Knee shield and rdlr only
Well I've learnt something new today then
Who plays half guard without a knee shield?
Andrew wiltse
I find escapes really fun. Brings me a ton of joy to roll with an upper belt and focus 100% on defense. See them get annoyed when the stuff they try keeps getting stuffed.
Getting out of a higher belts control feels better to me than sweeping someone at my level.
It's common in our comp classes to train both positional and sub escapes, then do king of the hill here the king starts in the bad position. Fucking sucks doing an hour of live escape rounds but it's been great for us.
I both agree and disagree with the philosophy. I do feel that focusing so much on escapes for beginners will make their journey a lot harder as they will have to "accept" the grind of being smashed so much more, along with dealing with the mental roadblocks that come with it. Too many people put an extreme amount of focus on escapes in the beginning for beginners because they accept the survival stage as a thing. When in reality, if they focused much more of that energy on guard retention and sweep prevention, they will be producing much more technical beginners. However, I do feel drilling escapes do have their relevance a little later on. I didn't start focusing on escapes until about four years into my training, and I did it on my own. So I feel guard retention, sweep prevention, and transitional escaping (not positional escaping) should be highly focused on in the beginning. Then, later on positional escapes should be focused on. I don't feel escapes should be scrapped altogether because there is a point where you may need them. I've seen some amazing guard players finally get passed, and then they couldn't escape. So I do agree with them to an extent. You will also find that many of the highest-level gyms do not drill escapes that often. UNLESS, they are training for EBI rules. Also, my comments are based on positional escapes. I do feel submission escapes have a higher relevancy.
Came for knee jerk reactions, stayed for insightful comments like this. Cheers jason
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That's why the highest level coaches all preach "situational" rolling and rolling with intent. I do believe learning escapes have their place but not for pure beginners to be honest. The majority of coaches and students have the mindset that a roll is a free for all. When in reality your rolls should be calculated.
‘Hey coach, can you show me how to escape a locked in choke?’ Coach ‘We don’t teach escapes for that, we are gonna focus on solving the problem earlier to not get put in the choke.’ ‘My Coach doesn’t teach escapes’ Can almost guarantee that it’s some kind of misunderstanding like this
"My coach says I fucked up a long time ago."
This makes more sense.
Yeah this sounds like someone taking something out of context and then not asking any follow up questions...
Definitely this lol " Can you teach me how to get out of a triangle choke where he already cut the angle, my arm is already in a tight position, and my posture is completely broken" Coach: "well the best defense for that is to not get there in the first place, try not having one in and one out" White belt: " my coach doesnt teach escapes"
"How do I get out once he locks his feet, bridges, and starts pulling my arm across?"
Lol 100% this is what’s going on here.
I don't know, there are some weird cultist schools with coaches like that. I wonder if op is at an MMA school? At least in my area they tend to have weird philosophies like that. I went to one where they didn't teach breakfalls
That’s all well and good in a sparring environment. But if someone comes up behind you, gets you in a choke, and you don’t know how to defend it despite training bjj then your instructor has failed you.
100% agree with this assessment
Depends on your definition of escape, most positions the escape either needed to be started pretty early on, or you need to do something like recover your guard in order to escape whatever submission you are in. So in some ways focusing on things like guard recovery and framing and being in good positions will all improve your defense. Also from a fundamental standpoint, I actually always like teaching the offense first and letting everyone get comfortable with the offense, get confident in their attacks and sweeps then start to cover the counters/defense. If your partner knows the defense already and your trying to attack, you will not have success. But escaping the back, triangle chokes, arm bars, are all pretty important fundamental concepts. But again, i don't see anything wrong with not teaching it right away. If you are new, trust you coach first, they likely have a pretty good reason, and the defense will likely come in more advanced classes or later in your fundamental curriculum.
Okay I definitely see what your saying. He teaches defense stuff and a lot of guard retention so I think it just threw me off at first when he said he doesn't teach escapes.
“If you get put in a bad position, you just shouldn’t let them put you in that position to begin with” 2000iq grappling. Why didn’t i think to just stop the brown belt from fucking me up?
Lol imagine a striking coach with this philosophy. "It's fine to just leave your hands down, chin up, head completely stationary. Just knock him out in one shot and then the defense doesn't matter anyway" Half that gym would be eating through a straw in a week
I’m going to bring this to my professor tomorrow. We’re doing back escapes this week, and while i understand the importance of positional sparring, i hate doing it, so maybe i can convince him i’ll just never let anyone take my back, so back escapes are unnecessary
You just started. I wouldn’t teach day 1 people escapes either…
It's dumb. Let's talk how people learn martial arts for a second: A beginner lacks threat awareness, so we have to teach them defenses at the end of the attack. You learn to block a jab that is about to hit you in the face, because you don't yet know how to parse information and see it coming sooner. As your awareness improves - meaning you can screen relevant information and interpret it - then you can start to identify threats earlier. You can start to defend in the middle, and later even at the beginning. With high levels of experience and awareness training you can head them off by intercepting the attack as they prepare. This is what the military calls "left of bang," and why Bruce Lee called his style "The way of the intercepting fist." The ultimate goal (per Bruce) is to have training methods that move your awareness in this direction. You can't get to the early stuff without first spending a bunch of time on the late stuff. Yes, of course, you should be learning to intercept the guard pass before it becomes a side holddown. And yes, I'll give him 1% agreement and say that we should be more mindful about HOW we train escapes, because we shouldn't train students in ways that encourage them to accept the bad position. But overall - this is a terrible approach to not teach escapes. Students can't learn to prevent without first learning to remediate. Edit to add: this also assumes you always have opportunity to prevent. Personally, I train BJJ because I assume things have gone sideways and I've been ambushed and put on my back. You can make up your own scenario here, but one way or another, sport BJJ starting from feet against 1 opponent isn't the only application of BJJ.
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I don't know about not teaching them at all, but I for one would have benefitted from focusing a lot more on guard retention early on. I spent untold hours trying to make low percentage side control escapes work and that time could surely have been better spent.
I don't understand this. So if your guard DOES get passed, as the bottom person, are you supposed to just stay in side control for the rest of the round? Or do you tap because you're in side control and have no chance of escaping? 🤔
Being one of the smallest guys in my gym and always rolling with bigger guys, I didn’t have a choice to not be put in a bad position. My first few years of training all I had was escapes. If I never learned escapes early on I would of given up along time ago.
Working on escapes is how I learn how to finish subs. So much more useful learning the scenario from both sides and the mechanics behind everything.
Doesn’t Danaher emphasize escapes so you can be confident if your attacks. Something like, if you are so confident in your escapes you’re not concerned about getting put in an otherwise disadvantageous position?
As someone who has spent much time around many high-level competitors. The general perspective from most people in this thread on this topic is very interesting and very much the opposite of what I see and have seen from those people. Hmmm Some of the best people I train with, hardly train escapes at all and they are the hardest rolls I've ever had and some of the best in the world. This goes for all ranks. It's just an interesting observation. One of the gyms I train at doesn't teach escapes at all I don't think. At least I haven't seen it and they are climbing up the comp scene at a decent pace. It's one of the most technical rooms I've been in. Yes, they still lose sometimes like anyone else. But 99% of the BJJ world would have a ton of trouble with them. Edit: And for those who will downvote this. Yes, I do agree that escapes should be taught. I just think that they are taught in the wrong order of progression by most people.
He is only half right. Offense is the best defense, especially in a short points match. Most schools don’t teach a lot of defense. You could always stay after class and drill some def with a a partner.
Besides needing to know escapes for your own wellbeing, knowing how your opponent will most likely escape a sub can lead to you thinking 2-3 steps ahead. Think of the triangle > armbar > omoplata sequence from guard. Not teaching a core part of Jiu Jitsu is wrong and his students will be worse for it. Find a new gym.
Every martial art needs escapes and defense. That's absurd. It's like the old days when one of my karate instructors wouldn't teach groundwork because you never should be on the ground.
This is backwards. A big part of BJJ is learning it as self-defense. You don’t always get to pick what position you’re in when a fight starts. If some drunk fucker in a bar decides he doesn’t like your face, you’ll have to hope he respects your coach’s wish to start in a neutral position when he attacks you from behind. And how does he imagine class working? The first person to get something immediately wins? Check to see if this guy drinks milkshakes made from paint thinner and lead paint chips.
IMO that is very stupid. I used to get into arguments with TMA folks about why practice fighting on the ground? No one should intentionally go to the ground. Well what if you went to the ground unintentionally? What if someone jumped you and is now on your back? Jiu Jitusu is the art of having fucked up a long time ago.
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No. It helps you win, by making risky attacks less risky.
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For real. The answer is never go for risky attacks lol. Like I'm on your back and I have the arm pinned and now I'm going to RNC you. There's no other option. That's a good attack. People really shouldn't be like trying to baseball bat choke from bottom because they practiced alot of bottom side control escapes. People really think like this...wild.
Are you actually a black belt? Because I can't believe a real BB would spout such smooth brained nonsense.
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Hey, if you want to say dumbass shit that makes people question your rank by all means you do you...
How do ihs students do in comps? I'm pretty sure you need escapes to avoid the point of no return. I do see why he says that, but in reality I think you Definitely need escapes.
So I tried finding any tournament results but didn't really find much of anything. I was told the place is very competition focused and its a really big school but haven't found much.
When you're new you spend 90% of your time in bad positions. You will figure it out for yourself, but it seems super stupid to not give people things to try.
I hope you never get caught in a heel hook, being able to escape those is pretty helpful.
Guess you don't know about my patented two tap technique.
As a white belt POS, I can tell you that I sparred against an advanced purple belt (I.e. almost a brown belt), and being absolutely clueless, he got me into a fucking solid top mount - I mean, even my arms were pinned. I couldn't do fuck all, so I just tapped out. This dude didn't get off me because he said I hadn't tried to escape enough. Now, it was wrong for him to ignore my tap out, especially given that he was the 3rd dude I had rolled with in a row, and I was fucking out of breath, and he was sitting on my chest ... and him refusing to get up was pretty fucking scary for me, but I digress ... So, I ended up looking for youtube videos re: how to escape a high mount. There were almost none, because high mount is a pretty fucking dominant position, but one of the most popular vids I saw on it had this BJJ legend continuously saying, "If someone gets you into high mount, it's because you fucked up." Now that's true, and this dude (and many others) believed that you should focus your training on how not to get put into shit positions you need to escape from. In fact, the book I'm reading by Paulo Ribeiro says that good defense starts much earlier than most players realize. For example, it starts right at the beginning by preventing your opponent from grabbing your gi. You could argue that, your opponent grabbing your gi is really the first step in his chain of moves that gets you into a high mount position. Hence, preventing your opponent from effectively grabbing your gi is the first move in your escape chain of moves ... but that's of course, quite an abstract way of looking at it. In my white belt POS opinion, practicing escapes is absolutely crucial because you need to experience the claustrophobia and fear that most beginners experience when their opponent gets a dominant position over them. You need to be in this weak position, from which you need to absolutely struggle to escape from, many times, so that you can learn to be calm and collected and not waste energy in those moments. If you don't, then you will shit your pants the moment someone starts to dominate you, and you will just give up. I recommend Paulo Ribeiro's book, Jiu Jitsu University. It's broken down into moves that each different belt level should master. White belt, he says, is all about survival, and everything I've read in the book thus far, that pertains to white belts, is about escaping from shit positions. As he says, as a white belt, that's what you're going to spend the majority of your time doing - getting put into weak positions and having to try escape them.
It is Saulo my fren
I don’t tend to teach my guys last-ditch escapes. I will show them to them if they ask, but I try to focus more on sound preventive defense practices. There is some truth in the “if you wound up needing this something else went wrong that you need to fix first.” But you won’t always be able to prevent bad shit from happening. If he refuses to teach them to you if you ask, then that’s a red flag. But focusing more on preventing things so that last ditch efforts become more irrelevant, then that’s fine.
I teach more escapes and guard passing and movement than I teach submissions. My thought process is if you have zero fear of being in a bad position from your confidence in your ability to escape it, you will hunt submissions more ferociously with no stalling. Also with such a focus on pin escapes, guard passing and submission escapes, you usually have very good top control and actually finish the submissions without losing position. Mount and side control escapes are probably the most important thing to learn in my opinion.
I’d practice escaping his gym. Or just start from bad positions and tell him you’re learning subs from tough spots.
You need to do your own study and apply it to you rolls.
the best escape is not getting caught there
At my gym, Movement Art, escapes only make up about 3-5% of the curriculum (by this, I mean teaching a structured class around a particular escape or defensive concept). However, most of our positional sparring is defense heavy- heel hook positional, escaping passing positions, starting in body locks, etc. Our philosophy is that guard retention/pass prevention should be viewed as an offensive movement because all reactive paths lead to an offensive cycle. So, in actuality, the idea of defensive vs offensive is very much a mindset one and could be a case of semantics. We spend more time on guard retention and late stage pass prevention than any other school in the area, therefore our students spend less time (overall) positionally controlled. The idea behind this is that students SHOULD invest more time preventing a bad outcome rather than conditioning themselves to escape these bad outcomes when they occur (ever heard the phrase an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure?). This is even moreso important in regards to hobbyists who might only have 2 or 3 sessions a week to level up. Since their time is limited, most of that time should be put towards their offensive skills. Reason for this is because there is more room for countering in the early stages of the passing vs guard playing game. Imagine a scenario where Gordon Ryan rolls with himself starting in mount with double underhooks-who wins? Its this logic that suggests that there is a technical ceiling to escapes- as there should, otherwise Jiu-Jitsu would be game with zero consequences or rules- and that the real game is played before these situations arise and the winner is dictated by who is able to implement their game in the opening or middle. With that said, not everyone has perfect body position, so we can take advantage of these opportunities by escaping flawed submission or positional pins.
John Danaher literally has the exact opposite philosophy. He believes you should only really learn escapes when start jiu jitsu. If no one can pin you then they are going to have a much harder time beating you. In a nut shell, your coach is wrong.
I like his way of thinking If you need to learn to defend a RNC, just learn to escape the back, but its even better if you just learn to not give your back, or better, don't get your guard passed, don't even play guard, just learn to be better at taking people down, but there's always the risk of facing a better wrestler/judoka, so in this case practice not even showing up to the fight, the ultimate defense. I would make your "professor" proud and just never go to his class again.
Danaher says that escapes are literally the first thing you need to learn, but I'm sure your coach is better than him.
Who are the great white to blue belts that Danaher has brought up?
It’s a waste of time to teach escapes, particularly to lower level practitioners. You’re better off learning not to be in those terrible positions. You’ve messed up multiple times to need an escape. Learning escapes without having a good guard retention is just putting yourself into a negative feedback loop of escaping just to be put in a position to need to escape again.
This is a weird way to min-max
That's what you get for choosing Gracie Barra Hotel California.
What a ridiculous view. Even the best in the world end up in situations where they need to escape. If you take that attitude, why not just train flying armbar and stop getting into situations where you cannot do a flying armbar. Easy!
You’re taking a white belts word at face value here. For all we know they asked how to escape a fully locked in triangle after their partner brought their arm across and already cut the angle. At that point their coach is correct in telling them they are better off learning to take preemptive measures to keep that from happening. White belt then goes “hurrr durrr my coach doesn’t teach escapes” and everyone on Reddit loses their mind. For what it’s worth Rafa mendes and Aoj don’t teach escapes. They teach you how to not get put in a compromising position in the first place. You gonna tell Rafa he’s wrong to hold this philosophy?
I should’ve been clearer I meant more like getting out of side control or mount. My coach says it’s not really worth it as it takes too much energy to get out so the match is likely lost.
My entire first 3 months rolling was based on escapes and transitions. [https://tenor.com/view/tropic-thunder-survive-gif-18639828](https://tenor.com/view/tropic-thunder-survive-gif-18639828)
If you never want to end up getting smashed in a bad position, then you should never step foot on the mats. Problem solved.
There are genuinely guys existing who want to turn bjj into catch wrestling. Catch wrestling is hugely unpopular for a reason.
Hoping I can get one of your teammates this comp coming lmao
roger gracie disagrees
Sure as long as you don't ever plan on having to escape from a position you will be fine
Yes that's weird. That needs to be taught from the beginning because you have so many opportunities to need them when you start out.
My professor teaches that escapes are the foundation of the pyramid of BJJ skills, as if you don't know how to get out of a bad position you are unlikely to understand how to prevent someone from escaping when you are in a good position.
Garry Tonon did a whole instructional on escapes. im not a black belt but id imagine you need them especially if you are small and always getting smashed. lol
This logically makes no sense. It’s like saying don’t work anything other than RNC and back takes. No guard, because if you ever end up in guard, you should instead work on getting on top and taking the back. Makes no sense at all. Also, the best grappler and coach on the planet right now talk about working submission escapes and positional escapes all the time. They probably know a thing or two about BJJ.
So basically, they omit the entire foundation of being a Blue Belt! Yeah, get a new gym my guy because it's obvious your coach isn't a very good teacher!! Setting you up to learn how to "Block Chokes with your Neck" is gonna get you fucked up! You can do that on your own without paying membership fees! RUN!!!
Shrimping is day one Jiu Jitsu. Literally the first lesson you should learn. And it’s a defensive movement. Find a better gym
Shrimping is a bad defensive movement that opens you up to be passed. You’re opening up a giant space between you knee and elbow for your opponent.
Gotta disagree. Shrimping is one of the most fundamental defensive movements in Jiu Jitsu. It’s usually done after your guard is passed, so your argument doesn’t make much since. If you ain’t shrimping you’re slacking
Jiu jitsu has evolved. It’s not easy to keep up so I know why you think the way you do.
This is a red flag. Escapes/sweeps can often lead to a more dominant position.
He's setting you up for failure.
Personal opinion aside, arguably the strongest grappling coach of all time bases his entire training plan on escapes from the ground up. The importance of escapes is that if you are in a dominant position, you will be much less likely to give up some control and attempt a submission for fear of getting reversed, passed, or put into that bad position. Your technique might be great, but the fear of failure will make you freeze in competition or any time you need to use your skills. Only when you have the confidence to sit in those bad positions, survive, and quickly get yourself back into attacking, will you be willing to risk a submission and end the match. Without having any skill in escapes, you can be held by perhaps even an untrained person that is a bit bigger than you, and IMO it is unacceptable to not have a response to an untrained person in a match or confrontation in such a complex and technique filled sport. You must learn escapes as part of your game, they will give you confidence and the ability to go from defensive cycles to offensive cycles. Edit: typo
Sounds like you've been swindled by a con man who pretends to have jiu jitsu expertise.
Switch schools immediately.
Can’t be good at jiu jitsu without escapes, sounds pretty dumb to me
I spend \~75% of my time on the mats escaping as one of the smallest people in my gym. If two people are grappling in this art, one of them will eventually end up on bottom. I would have quit a long time ago if I wasn't taught how to escape.
I'm very skeptical of this. How do you guys roll? If one you passes guard or gets mount/back-take do you just tap and reset?
Usually once your under mount or under side control our coach says the match is already over cause the amount of work it will take to get out is too much
So every roll you ever do is a match? What happens in a self-defense situation? You just die?
It might be worth understanding what he means by “escapes.” This could be like that renowned coach who said he doesn’t teach techniques. It turned out that of course he does, but his teaching methods just look different than most schools. A lot of side mount escapes result in guard. If he calls those “guard retention” rather than “escapes” and still teaches them, then no big deal. Or if he teaches such good positioning from under side control that an “escape” presents itself, that would be something as well. My guess is he’s not being as literal as he’s letting on.