Being Heavy in Side Control
I’ve only studied at Shawn’s school for a few months but I already have a much deeper appreciation for BJJ as an evolved science, and not just ass-kicking for no-neck troglodytes. Today we looked at side-control and a lot of the bio-mechanical tips Shawn taught emphasized the physics of “being heavy” on your opponent. Basically “being heavy” is about positioning your body to always exert downward pressure on your opponent. I’m a total science dork and I found this class fascinating. Here’s what I can remember from class:
- If you have your arm under your opponent’s head, your head-side palm should be facing down. If your palm is face up, you end up controlling your opponent by means of a bicep curl which is exhausting. Also a bicep curl vectors up and you really want to exert downward pressure.
- If your head is up in side control, that means your spine is angled up too. You really want your spine to be parallel to the mat. The way to ensure proper posture is to look down and tuck your chin into your opponent’s shoulder.
- If you need to transition to side-control on the other side of your opponent, do not splay your legs out and start walking around without first establishing control of his head and hip. As well as preventing an easy sweep, this ensures that you maintain heavy chest-on-chest downward pressure via the “parallel-spine” bio-mechanic discussed above.
- Keep your tail-side knee pressed against your opponent’s body. If you extend your tail-side leg your spine is angled up and you become “light”.
Side-control to North-South to Arm-Bar
This is a cool transition. Basically the scenario is that you are in side-control and your opponent bridges out of it and gets an underhook. So this transition neutralizes the danger from the underhook and sets you up for a submission.
- You start in side-control with your head-side arm under your opponent’s head and your tail-side arm controlling your opponent’s far-arm. Remember to keep your tail-side knee pressed into your opponent’s hip.
- Your opponent bridges out of side-control and gets an underhook
- When you feel the underhook switch your hands so that your head-side arm is over your opponent’s head and you’re controlling his far-arm by pinching it into his body with your bicep
- Move your tail-side arm to your opponent’s near hip and grab his hip or the butt of his gi
- Splay your legs
- Walk around to north-south while maintaining chest-on-chest pressure
- Gather his elbows beween your biceps if you can
- Slide your palm under your opponent’s underhook arm making sure your palm is facing up
- With your legs drive straight towards your opponent’s crotch. If you drive to the side, you relieve downward-pressure on him and he’ll escape (i.e. be heavy)
- While maintaining control of your opponent’s arm, kickstand up so your knee is against your opponent’s waist and and his head is under your crotch.
- Get two-on-one control of your opponent’s arm.
- Swing your trailing leg over your opponent’s head
- Rotate your body so you are looking across your opponent’s chest
- Lean back for the arm bar
Whew! That was a long seqence. The mistake I kept making when we drilled this was that as soon as I felt the underhook I started to walk out to north-south. Shawn coached me to switch my hands and establish far-arm and near-hip control before I started to walk my body around. I did this move while rolling with Somo but I’m not giving myself credit for it because I think Somo was just playing with me.