One of the things I enjoy about Hollywood BJJ is Shawn Williams’ ability to make me comprehend “simple” techniques on a whole new level. We’ve been doing mount drills all week which seems about as exciting as a stick in the mud. But Shawn keeps dropping little biomechanical tips that have enabled me to keep my mount much better. This is not a glib statement. Last week I was being bucked and swept on a regular basis by guys who weigh 50 pounds less than I do. (I weigh 215 today) Today I managed to keep mounted on a guy who weighs 250. That’s progress!

Chest on Chest/Hip on Hip
I had a tendency to support my weight on my arms making me “light” on top of my opponent. It’s okay to posture up if you’re going for a submission but if you are trying to maintain mount you should place your chest squarely on your opponent’s chest and your hips squarely on his hips. Your hands should be above your opponent’s arms spread wide but with elbows slightly bent. I started doing this and immediately felt the difference. My partner’s breath started to grow labored and he was plainly in discomfort.

Knees Wide
I tend to keep my knees close to my opponent’s body in mount. I started doing this under the misguided notion that it was helping me to track my opponent’s body. The unfortunate result of this is that if your opponent tries to bridge your knee can get trapped between his hip and the mat. You are deprived of a fulcrum and you go over more easily. Shawn taught me to keep your knees wide apart like the hulls of a catamaran. Catamarans are incredibly hard to capsize.

Hook Feet…sometimes
Shawn showed three different ways to touch your feet. Ordinarily you can just touch your feet together or lay one on top of the other. If your opponent controls your hips and tries an uppa you can hook your feet which makes you “stick” to him. If you keep chest-on-chest contact, it’s very difficult for your opponent to finish the uppa.

Grapevine
If your opponent gets an overhook and tries to bridge you over, you can grapevine his power leg (the one on the opposite side of the overhook) and stretch it out. This effectively takes the power out of his bridge. If you 1) shift your head across your opponent’s head on the opposite side of the overhook and 2) stretch out your hand on that side as far as it will go you will multiply the weight your opponent is trying to lift. Combined with the grapevine this is an awesome counter to a bridge attempt.

Knees + Crossface
Sometimes your opponent will get a gable grip around your back and keep your posture down. Matt Hughes just did this to Georges St. Pierre in the last UFC. If you just push yourself up you’re basically doing a combined benchpress of your weight + your opponent’s weight. If you try to use your lower back muscles, you can’t match your opponent’s arm power. Instead, if you scooch your knees forward a little you can straighten your back by driving your hips into your opponent’s hips. Then you can cross-face and push down on your opponent’s trap and re-establish mount.

After today’s class I noticed that I basically never utilize hip-drive to exert downward pressure in mount. I am going to work on that tomorrow and see if I can do any better.  By the way, I cut the end off my mouthpiece so my bad tooth doesn’t come into contact with anything.  This has enabled me to resume classwork.  Also I’m taking a lot of ibuprofen which is probably killing my liver but what can I say, I heart BJJ.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 10th, 2008 at 4:23 am and is filed under Hollywood BJJ, classwork, gi, technique. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.