Escapes – testing yourself: Here is a moment when my students and I were teaching a seminar in Singapore. Much of what we went over was concerned with escapes from bad position. When it comes time to escape the mount no gi, I strongly favor the kipping escape. This is an escape that superficially looks like a push, but really it is based upon the kipping action of the legs (kipping is a movement of the legs designed to create momentum in a given direction – most commonly used when people want to cheat doing pull ups to make it easier to get up to the bar but also very useful when you want to make it easier to escape certain pins), along with misdirection of your opponents lines of resistance. All of my students excel at this move, in fact there were times early in their careers i had to tell them to stop using it so much because they were going into competitions and deliberately putting themselves in the bottom mount position so they could simply escape and heel hook unwitting opponents! Here gordon ryan demonstrates during the seminar. Note the ease of execution and the changes in direction as the move unfolds. In my upcoming NEW WAVE JIU JITSU – ESCAPES video I will cover this fascinating method and show its link to counter offense where you can escape directly into strong leg lock attacks so that you don't only get out – you finish the opponent as you do so. When you get really good you can get fancy and perform the escape with one arm as Gordon Ryan does here ?? All of my students training begins with defense. Having the confidence that comes from knowing that you can escape the worst positions and counter attack is worth its weight in gold.
