Original subtitles

Let's begin with some general reflections on the back position.

A question we might begin with is why do I favor the back position

so strongly?

Why do I have favored, above all the other positions

in submission, grappling?

There is a fundamental asymmetry in the human body

between threats that come to us from the front, which our body is

well adapted to deal with and threats that come from the back.

In almost any combat sport.

You will see that a constant

theme is the idea of achieving dominant angle upon your opponent.

It's always to our advantage to attack from flanks.

And the ultimate flanking attack is one way directly

behind our opponent.

The human body, as I said earlier, is well adapted to deal with threats

coming in from the front, but poorly adapted to deal with

threats from the rear.

We want to

make use of this asymmetry as much as possible.

We engage in this quarter jujitsu.

The back maximizes our ability to attack our opponent

while at the same time minimizing their ability to

to counter attack and come back at us.

There's another reason why a favorite.

This has to do with what I call the primacy of strangles.

Whenever we go to submit

someone in the sport of jiu jitsu, we have a fundamental choice

between submission holds which arise out of strangulation

and submission holes that arise out of joint breaking

as powerful a weapon as joint breaking is.

There are always going to be opponents who are willing to take

damage and will surrender a joint in order

to continue a fight.

The case of strangulation is very different.

It doesn't matter how courageous or mentally tough your opponent is,

if they are locked in a very, very tight stranglehold, they will

simply pass out.

I've seen elite

athletes battle through severe damage to joints,

but I've never seen anyone resist a fully locked in strangle.

They simply pass out when they try.

Because of this,

the BEC is a position I favor above all others in submission,

grappling in other contexts such as in mixed martial arts.

He may well make a strong argument

for other positions being more dominant,

but in submission grappling.

I always urge my athletes to work the way to the back end

if they're in any situation where they have an attacking opportunity.

If there's a choice between back in any other position,

I'll always urge them to go in that direction.

Nonetheless,

the contemporary use of the back and jitsu suffers from some problems.

When I look at contemporary jujitsu, I see a vast number of athletes

who are extremely good at getting to the back

and maintaining the back.

However, I see a relatively small number

of athletes who specialize in finishing from the back.

With regards

finishing, one sees a few outstanding individuals

people like Roger Gracie, Marcello Garcia or Philippe Pena,

who are very strong at finishing from the back, just as strong

as they are at their positional skills from back.

But in truth, the majority of athletes

are far superior

at positional work from the back than they are from finishing work.

One of the problems

associated with the back is that there is very little incentive

for jiu jitsu athletes to finish from the back.

The back is, of course,

one of the highest point scoring positions in the sport.

In addition, by the time you get to someone's

back, typically you've scored other points for takedowns, guard passes,

pins, etc. etc..

By the time you take athletes back in most jiu jitsu competition

scenarios, you're so far ahead in points that there's

very little incentive to go on and actually finish your opponent

for reasons like this.

There's this discrepancy between the strong positional work

on the back that I see in most contemporary

athletes versus their ability to finish.

This all came to a to a head with the rise of submission grappling

as soon as submission grappling

came to to prominence in the due to community, suddenly

athletes had to convert back position into submission holds.

There were many examples in, say, for example, EBI Overtimes,

where outstanding athletes really struggled to to exhibit

sufficient finishing skills in these overtime scenarios

and even in regulation time without points being offered.

Athletes certainly hit the switch from

just assuming that it was good enough to get to their opponents back

to actually having to convert back position into back finishes.

And many of them struggled in this regard.

The intention of this

video is to address this contemporary imbalance

between the two strong back positional skills that we so often

see versus the noticeably weaker back finishing skills.

I'll be using the exact same techniques, concepts and tactics

that have proven

so successful for my athletes in championship competition.

What is needed is a systematic approach to finishing from the back.

The first thing that we need from this systems based approach

is the recognition of the reality that the rear naked strangle

is the single most high percentage finish from the bag

and which ought to be the centerpiece of any back submission system.

Nonetheless, like any move and any system, it has its limits

and is going to be times where, no matter how strong our system

for implementing the rear naked strangle is, it's going to run

into sufficient resistance that we can't get a breakthrough.

So there has to be a back up element to the system.

There has to be

a means by which we can distribute attacks over the whole body

so that rather than just having one attack to one part of my opponent's

body, I also ought to have auxiliary attacks where I can redistribute

my submission attacks over the length and breadth of my opponent's body.

The back system that I offer you does exactly that.

There is a main part to the system

which comprises a highly effective set of techniques

based around hand fighting and leg trapping,

which make the use of the rear naked strangle

much more effective than normal.

But at the same time, there is a set of auxiliary

subsystems based around the main system.

So that is the main system of hand trapping working

towards the rear naked strangle should fail.

There are auxiliary systems which enable me to use a wide variety

of other submission holds

distributed over the length and breadth of the human body

so that the back is not limited to one target.

Rather, we can use a combination of the auxiliary systems

and the main system to exhibit the most high percentage

submission in the sport and back it up with a wide

variety of attacks

to the rest of the body.

If that main system should fail,

welcome to back attacks into the system.

My intention in this video is to give you a complete rundown

to the idea of attacking your opponent from back positions.

Very often back attack

methodologies focus only on a small part of the human body.

But my intention is to give you a system which enables you

to use your whole body to attack your opponent's whole body

by distributing the attacks over your opponent's whole body.

The finishing percentages go up considerably.

In addition, we're going to be spending a lot of time

on one rather notorious element of the bank attack system

that which involves trapping our training partners arms

to greatly increase your your percentage chances of success

of working your way

through into the most important finishing hole from the back.

Three naked strangle.

It's my belief that the bag represents the single

greatest opportunity to add to attack an opponent in any combat sport.

Jiu jitsu being no exception.

If you look at the very structure of the human body,

the human body is always set up

well and adapted well to dealing with threats from the front.

However, it is very poorly adapted to dealing with threats from the back

unless, you know the

the precise technical methods of escaping from back,

you are just simply not going to be able to do so against

anyone with even mediocre skills.

Because of this, I value the bag

more than any other of its in any of the of the dominant positions

in the sport of jitsu.

More than old belly, more than mount,

more than cross-eyed, north south, etc. etc..

All of these positions are good.

They all have their virtues.

However, it's my belief and belief which I try to inculcate

in all of my students that the bag is king of them all.

It may not score more points than the mount,

but in my opinion, if I am given a choice

between mounting back in a submission grappling context,

I will almost always go with the back.

I've been describing the straitjacket system

as the centerpiece, the focal point of the overall back attack system.

But like any system, the straitjacket

has its has its limitations.

Let's have a look at those now.

I'm behind an opponent.

One of the great problems with the straightjacket system

is it uses only one part of my body, my arms, to work its way

into an attack on one part of my opponent's body, the neck.

Again, that means we've got one part of our body

attacking a relatively small part of my opponent's body.

No matter how good of a job

I do, of trapping my opponent's arms with my legs, etc., etc.

it's still a fairly small piece of real estate to be attacking.

And as a result, your opponent can focus

all of his defenses on one very small area.

Now, any time a large set of defenses are focused on

a small area, it's going to be hard to get a breakthrough outcome.

It's very, very important that when we work behind people,

we must be able to do better than only having

one part of my body attacking one part of his body.

We must be able to distribute our attacks over the whole body

so that we become unpredictable in the nature and scope of our attacks.

This is exactly

where the auxiliary systems

of my back attack system come in.

As powerful a weapon as the straight jacket is,

and despite all the success it's had in competition,

it would be a failure on my part to offer you a bank attack system

which only enabled one part of my body to attack

one small area of my opponent's body.

The auxiliary systems that we'll be looking at later in this video series

enable us to distribute attacks over the length and breadth

of your opponent's body so they become much less predictable.

And this your attack in such a wider

scope of real estate over your opponent's body,

that achieving the breakthrough becomes much, much easier.

This relationship between the main or central focus of the backstage

system, the straight jacket, and then these auxiliary systems

which have the effect of distributing the attacks over a much wider area,

is a central focus of this video series.

There's no question that

the most well-known and

well publicized part of my back attack

system is the straightjacket system.

This involves the use of our legs

to pin our training partners arms

in a position where they appear relatively helpless

and open up attacks to the neck with the rear naked strangle.

In in competition, this has been the number

one method of success on the back by far.

For my students, statistically, it's not even close between

the straightjacket system and the auxiliary parts of the system.

In terms of numbers, the overwhelming majority of our finishes

have come from the straightjacket.

Some of the most notable successes in the straightjacket system

have come in submission grabbing tournaments, utilizing an EBI format.

An overtime.

My athletes would select the back position as their start.

You have a choice between armbar positions and back positions.

My athletes would exclusively choose back position

knowing that they had a system in place

which gave them a very, very high percentage chance of success.

Their extraordinarily high success rates

in comparison with other athletes in epee

over time position

garnered a considerable interest in the straightjacket system.

Let's begin our study of it now.

Let's start off with just some very, very general basic

talk about the nature of the back position, in particular

the incredibly close relationship between the back position

and the number one method of finishing from the back, the rear

naked, strangle or monthly, all.

There's absolutely no question that in

grappling without the key and in combat sports like mixed

martial arts.

Once someone gets to the back, the absolute number one

method of finishing by a landslide is the rear naked strangle.

In fact, the rear naked strangle more or less

can't be pulled apart from the rear mount position.

The two duo.

So hand-in-hand are relatively few examples

in competition where rain extremes and not apply from rear mount.

There's some ways you can do this will be looking at them later,

but almost always is a massive correlation

between the rear mounted position and the rear naked strangle.

The straight jacket

system is designed with this in mind.

However, it was also designed

with the idea that there's ways we could make this close relationship

even more functionally effective through the use of our legs to remove

the main apparatus for our opponents defensive is his defensive

arms.

I want to go over some of the core

preliminaries of back control, which will become extremely important

as we work our way through the straightjacket system.

These will be important even if you were using straitjackets.

They're just general considerations

when you hit the rear mounted position

and your interest in working your way through towards the rear

naked, strangle,

they form the the as it were, the conceptual core of working

successfully from the back towards the brain and could strangle.

The first is the notion of a left right control.

If I'm behind someone, it is absolutely critical

that I have the ability to control their movement left and right.

Okay.

So often I see athletes control

one side of the body, the right side or the left side, but not the other.

And as a result, it's

relatively simple for your opponents to go out and start escaping.

Let's start with some preliminary ideas here.

The idea that when my work behind my training partner,

I will have one arm underneath my opponent's arm

and one arm going over the shoulder like so.

Okay.

The danger here is that, of course, my opponent can start turning inside

my arms and when I hit my hooks, then I'll be demonstrating

that shoulder because I'm turning inside my legs.

Okay, We can never have an opponent who is able to turn

because ultimately a turn will create a situation where I'm

no longer on my opponent's back and can fully turn into me.

Okay.

So preventing our opponent from turning left

and right is a critical, critical element,

because if that turn

should be sustained, ultimately they'll turn into me

and I will no longer be on their back. Okay.

So this ability to shut down

turning movements left and right is absolutely critical.

Okay.

Once we get behind someone,

okay, we have a control hand going underneath and an arm over the top.

You'll see that if I use my left hand as a control

hand, this will prevent my opponent from turning to the right.

As he goes, the turn to the right.

My elbow behind his body restrains him.

However, it does absolutely nothing to stop my opponent to

in the other direction.

So that would be the duration of his escape.

Okay.

I have two arms here in front of my training partner.

It's absolutely critical that I use the elbow on one side

in front of his shoulder as well is an impediment to movement.

I can have my hands locked in this position or

I can have them open.

But one thing doesn't change my elbow positions.

I have an elbow behind him on one side

and an elbow in front of the shoulder on the other.

If my opponent goes to turn in this direction here, my one on one grip

makes it difficult.

Okay, my left hand one on one foot

prevents my opponent from turning to the right.

If my opponent tries to turn to the left,

it's my elbow here in his shoulder that makes it difficult for him.

Okay, so if I have no hooks in just my arms controlling my opponent,

it's absolutely critical that I control him between my two elbows.

One elbow is in front of one shoulder.

One elbow is behind the other shoulder.

And as a result, when he goes to turn on one direction,

one elbow will stop him.

When he goes to turn the other, the other elbow will stop him.

And he's being controlled between my elbows.

The elbows are the focus of your upper body control.

Okay.

Unfortunately, people often misunderstand the control is

the locking of the hands.

The locking at the hands simply holds my elbows in place.

Remember,

there's going to come a time when you go to strangle someone.

You're going to have to unlock your hands

and you still have to be able to control them.

Okay, my hands are locked.

I'm no serious threat to my opponent in terms of strangulation.

I can control people here all day.

But at some point, if I'm going to strangle someone,

my hands have to unlock and we have to learn to work with open hands.

That's why it's important to understand with a focus of control

is it's in your elbows, one behind your opponent

like so,

and one in front at the shoulder.

So if I'm interested in straightening

someone now and he goes to move around,

even though my hands are open,

my elbows are still

controlling his movement, if I always work with my hands

long, it's hard for me to transition to strangles.

Okay, at some point we've got to have the confidence

to work with open hands.

And as he goes to move around, we control him between our elbows

going further into this.

Sometimes you'll only have one hand on your opponent.

In these cases, we have to learn to control

both sides left and right through our legs.

A very, very important concept here is the concept of diagonal control.

We've seen that if our opponent can, to a sufficient distance,

he can turn into us and actually get us off the back position.

Again, if I have my left hand controlling his upper body movement,

that will make it very difficult for my opponent

to tune in this direction as we saw previously.

If I hit my hook on the same side and only one hook

now, it's very, very difficult for my opponent

to turn to the right with both a hook and a hand controlling him.

But it's absurdly easy for him to turn this way and tune in to me

and eventually escape the back control.

It is absolutely critical that if we have one hand

on our opponent and one hook in, they'd be on opposite sides.

If I have my right hook in and my opponent goes to turn

left, it's my right hook that makes it difficult for him.

When he goes to turn to the right, it's my left hand holding in place.

This is the principle of diagonal control.

Again, if I have only one hook and one upper body grip,

they must be on opposite sides of the body.

So that movement, both left and right, is constrained.

This is what we call diagonal control.

As the control goes through my right leg

of my opponent's right hip in a diagonal line

up to his left shoulder, which is now controlled by the hand.

Now, even though I have only one hook in and one hand on my opponent,

when he goes to move around, he's constrained on both sides,

one side by a leg, the other side by hand.

Whenever we have a situation where we have

only one hook on our opponent, it is absolutely critical

that we work with this principle of diagonal control.

If I have

no upper body grips on my opponent,

then the onus is on me to have two hooks in at all times.

Okay.

If I have only one who can, with no avoiding control,

there's simply no reason why

my body can easily turn inside my hooks and turn and face me.

So if I work in a situation where I have no effective upper body

control, I'm not underneath his arms with either arm and I'm just like,

so for example, over both arms, it is critical that I have

two hooks in some capacity, whether it be conventional hooks

or even better, a body triangle or what have you.

Okay.

Again, if I have no control hand underneath the arms, then

I need hooks controlling both sides of my opponent's lower body.

Only then will I be able to stop the turning motions

like in

an opponent, to take me off his back.

Let's have a look at the critical distinction

between use of a strangle hand and a control hand.

Whenever we get behind our opponent, we need to,

as it were, cement our chest to our training partners back.

That is done through the use of control hand, which goes underneath

one of my opponent's arms and locks in like so calm.

Now, a natural thing you might want to think is

why don't we try to control hands?

Wouldn't that be better?

Couldn't we go underneath both of our training

partners, his arms, and hold it?

Wouldn't it make the connection of chest the back even stronger?

Yes, it would.

It comes, unfortunately, to severe price.

You've got excellent control of your opponent now,

but you are no threat to your opponent.

He doesn't need to worry about a transition

into a stranglehold because both of your arms are underneath his.

I always need an arm over my opponent's shoulder

to create a viable threat of strangulation.

Could we not say,

Well, if one arm is a threat of strangulation, it's a good thing?

What about two?

Okay, one and I have two arms working over my opponent's shoulders.

Well, that would be a disaster, because

now there's no real sense of control.

My phone can easily turn inside my arms

and get into position where I no longer have my opponent's back.

So the right way to work here is always a compromise

between control and threat of strangulation.

And that almost always means under one arm and over the other.

This gives the ideal compromise where at any given moment

I can work through into a strangle position with one arm

and yet with the other arm keep my chest pinned to my opponent.

So if he goes to move away rapidly to the right,

I can follow the position. Okay.

If he moves away rapidly to the left within the control of the position.

So this is the ideal compromise between the threat of strangulation,

which may, as it were, the submission threat and the

the ability to control our opponents movement as much as possible.

We always want to work in this fashion

with one arm under and one arm over at any given moment.

There should be the threat of strangulation at all times.

My opponent has to respect that, but at the same time,

I'm locked securely enough to the back

through the use of my two elbows, in particular, the control hand

running underneath

my opponent's arm, that I'm not going to lose the position

to any kind of strong defensive activity on the part of my opponent.

We're looking at

the preliminaries to back control.

You have to excuse me if some of these seem so obvious or basic, but

we can't make any kind of

theoretical understanding

of the back position overall without first clearly stating these.

The third one that I want to look at now is the idea of a head trap.

This general

principle is so

massively important to understanding

the back position overall.

I want to spend quite a bit of time on it

and you will see it,

the implications of it throughout this entire video.

Instructional series.

On the face of it, it's very, very simple and probably

at least on a subconscious level, obeyed by almost all of you.

But until you explicitly understand it,

you'll never understand what it is you're fighting against

when you're trying to control people from the back

and they're trying to escape from you.

Okay. What is a head trick?

A head trap is just the basic idea

that whenever I get behind my opponent,

I always want to create a situation where if I'm interested in attacking

with a rear naked strangle, there are other forms of attack

from impact that don't rely on a hit trap.

But if I'm working with a rear naked strangle,

I always want to create a situation where my head

and my strangle arm are on opposite sides

and they work in unison to trap my opponent's head.

Okay, so typically we'll have

a control hand this like so, and I'll have a strangle hand.

My strangle hand.

In this case, it's my right arm and my head must be on opposite sides.

The moment my head and my strangle hand end up on the same side.

You've got no viable threat of a strangle on your opponent.

Oh, God.

Now it's so easy for him to start turning inside me

and facing me and destroying effect of the strangle.

It doesn't matter whether it's my failure in my head

went to the incorrect side or his move where he, for example,

grabbed two on one and then transferred my arm across.

Now the same thing has happened.

Okay?

He's put my arm

in my head, on my strangle arm in my head on this on the same side.

That's something I as the attacking player can never tolerate.

I have to stop

whatever I'm doing at this point and redress this fundamental problem.

Remember, the only way I can control my opponent

from the back into a renegade strangle is when my head

and my strangle arm on opposite sides is the offensive man.

Everything that I do from this position is designed to preserve

this relationship between my head.

His head and my strangle arm.

They must always, as we saw, be lined up in such a way

that his head is trapped between mine and my strangle arm.

Every escape that he goes to work with is designed to do one thing

to break that relationship.

If I'm working behind someone

and I have an effect of hatred, if my opponent begins to move

over to the side and go into some kind of basically escape sequence,

his whole idea, the whole purpose of what he's trying to do

is to create a situation where his head moves

in such a way

that my strangle hand

and my head end up on the same side without a hit drag,

I cannot perform a satisfactory stranglehold from the back.

It doesn't matter.

He does it by shifting his body or

by gripping my wrist and moving my arm across.

In both cases, he's done the same thing.

He's transferred my head and my strangle hand

onto one side of his head.

The one thing I could never accept, and the one thing I can never work

against when it's time to attack the back.

So our whole thing, when we work behind our opponent,

leading towards a really good strangle, is to keep situations

where my strangle hand and my head are on opposite sides of his head.

His head trapped between my head and my strangle hand

is the offensive man.

My whole goal is to preserve this relationship as the defense of man.

His whole goal is to break that relationship

either by changing the alignment of his body

or by moving

my strangle arm.

This fundamental insight.

The idea of a head trip will run throughout this straitjacket system.

My ability to create a head trip and to keep

it is the absolute key to my ability to succeed from the back.

His ability to break that hit trip and create a situation

where my strangle arm and my head on the same side of his head

is the key to his ability to escape.

Once you understand that absolutely critical insight,

you have a very clear idea of what

the defense of man's responsibility is and what the offensive means.

Responsibility is a lot of what we do will become a lot clearer

and a lot easier to understand.

I'm sure you're all aware by this point

that whenever it comes time to build a system, a key

element is the idea of identifying the central problems

of any given position or scenario in the sport

and building a set of solutions which

when they get to a certain level of complexity, will create a system.

There are two central problems associ

Overcoming those

two central problems is basically the story

of the straightjacket system that I teach.

The first problem is well known to almost everyone

in the sport of dualism.

This is the problem of alignment.

Once I get behind someone in the rear mounted position, usually

what happens is our two spines line up in a straight line,

which shrinks.

Once I get hooks in on an opponent,

there's a degree to which the hooks in my upper body

groups are designed to keep me roughly lined up with my opponent.

Almost all of my opponents escapes involve the idea

of breaking this alignment.

We know that the head trip is the basis of my alignment

when I can keep a strangle hand on one side

and a head on the other, whichever way we fall.

Now we're lined up with our training partner.

His whole thing is going to be to get a hold of me, my dangerous

strangle hand, and then from here, break this alignment

as we fall to one side and he starts to move his body

over like so you can see what's happening.

The alignment between us is starting to break critically.

It started with the idea of the head trip

as my opponent starts working his way over my feet.

From here, the alignment gets further and further.

Now my chest is moving away from his back.

That's always the fundamental measure of alignment.

Is my chest connected to my opponent's back?

As he continues to move further and further away from me,

the alignment, the angle between us is increasing.

The chances of me getting successful

student stranglehold diminish further and further.

So our whole goal when we're behind

someone is to stay aligned.

This is the first problem that we face

and a big part of our early

discussion will be finding solutions to this general problem.

The second problem that we face is

one which probably

forms the single most important part of my back attack system.

This is the deficit problem.

What is the deficit problem?

Where do you get behind someone?

We're always told and indeed I told you the same thing,

that the amount is one of the absolute best positions in the sport.

That's my IT and submission grappling.

It is the best position, the sport in mixed

martial arts, it's almost debatable, but in submission grappling.

I believe this is the ultimate position.

This is the one you should be spending

most of your time trying to work towards.

And yet once we get there, we find something rather puzzling.

Once I get behind my opponent, let's have a look at how many

defensive and offensive instruments the two athletes have.

If I'm looking for a really good strangle, which is our primary focus

when we get behind our training partners back, a simple question

is how many offensive instruments do I have?

Well,

given that

most of the time

I have one arm underneath my opponent's arm as a control hand

that leaves me only one arm to try and strangle my opponent with.

So most of the time I have one

offensive instrument, a strangle arm.

If I had a body triangle locked around my opponent,

then I could be a little more liberal

with the control arm and I could take it out.

And from here I could work with two arms in unison,

threatening strangles from both left and right side again.

So most of the time I have one offensive instrument,

one strangle arm.

And if I had, say, for example, a body triangle

which connected me very securely through the lower body,

I would at most have to strangle arms to offensive instruments.

Let's contrast that with your opponent and his defenses.

Well,

if we

locked in like so, my opponent will have up to three

defensive instruments a left and a right hand

and a jaw

in a situation where I'm controlling one of my opponent's

hands, he will still have a defensive hand and a jaw.

This is my one offensive instrument.

So no matter whether no matter how we hold our opponent,

you're always running at a deficit

in terms of offensive versus defensive instruments.

If I have two free hands, he's got two free hands and a jaw.

So I've got two.

He's got three defensive instruments, I've got two offensive,

three defensive.

If I'm controlling one of his arms, I've got one offensive instrument

and he's got two hand and a jaw defensive instruments to stop me.

Now that's crazy.

On the face of it, we get told this is the ultimate

attacking position and that when you get there, you find

no matter how you can figure your arms, you're always outnumbered.

Your opponent will always have more defensive instruments

than you have offensive instruments.

That's that's horrible news.

Yeah.

This it's supposed to be the ultimate attacking position in the sport.

And yet, in the context of a submission grappling match,

your outnumbered no matter how you configured your arms.

That's the fundamental problem of the deficit.

And a big part of what we do when we work

the back system is learning to overcome that problem.

Now, interestingly, the alignment problem

and the deficit problem run right next to each other.

You're going to have to solve both at the same time.

This is not sequential.

You don't do one and then the other one can in live combat.

Most of the time he's trying to escape,

as you are trying to both hold him and strangle him at the same time.

You can learn them sequentially, but in live training

in combat, you're going to have to perform them side by side.

We're going to start first

looking at the alignment problem and then we'll come back to

the deficit problem.

We're looking

first at the alignment problem, the first of two central problems.

Whenever we're working on someone's back towards the rear,

naked, strangle, it's very, very important

if we're going to offer

any kind of solutions that we have a crystal clear

understanding of what the problem is that we're trying to solve.

The good news is it's very, very easy to render it crystal clear.

Let's look at a situation we're behind someone

and we have hooks in on our training partner

and we have a control hand underneath our training partners on a strangle

hand over time, it doesn't matter with our own hands a lot more often,

whenever we get to this kind of position,

we know what our opponents gambit is, is to break the alignment

and ultimately get my chest off their back.

And critically, and the most important thing is

they must break what we are calling the head trip.

The situation where my head and strangle arm

are on opposite sides, trapping their head in the middle

so that they can be subject to a ring they could strangle.

Okay, remember, there's no way for me to effectively attack

the reneged strangle without a head trip.

So their whole game is to break alignment, get my chest

off their back, and critically create a situation where I no longer have

their head trapped between my head and my strangle arm.

Okay,

The process

of accomplishing that is incredibly predictable.

When my opponent falls, he wants to fall to a given side.

As a general rule, he wants to fall to what we call the open side,

where there is a hole between my

and the rest of my body.

Through this gap, my opponent's head can start to move.

If he falls in the opposite direction,

he just falls right into my arm and the head trap has never broken.

Okay, so it's very much in his interest

to start going in this direction when he goes to pitch over

to the side, we get an incredibly predictable sequence of events.

You'll notice I hit my two hooks in

for him Is the defensive man.

Everything begins with one critical step.

He must beat what we call the bottom hook.

If you look at my two feet, you will currently see that

my left foot is lower than my right foot.

That's because we've fallen to one side.

Initially

we started with my two feet symmetrically positioned

at the same height.

But when we fall to one side, one of my feet, in this case, my left

foot is converted into a bottom hook and my right foot, a top hook.

My opponent's opening gambit is always to beat the bottom hook

when they start to move out.

Watch how many he beats the bottom hook.

The moment that occurs, he's going

into the first step of his escape sequence.

Go back.

So once again, we have a top hook and a bottom hook,

even a relatively small movement on the part of our policy.

How small we can make the movement a relatively small movement

will enable him to beat that bottom hook.

It doesn't take a lot.

Now, what does that leave us? We need

the real focus of my control.

When I'm behind someone is my knees.

As long as my opponent is between my knees,

I can always recover the back with minimal effort.

It doesn't take much for me from this position just to push my knee

and recover that hook.

Please remember this.

When you're the offensive man controlling the bag,

the measure of whether you're controlling the lower body is always

is your opponent inside your knees or not.

The knees are your focus of control.

He has to beat the hook first,

but ultimately he has to beat the knee.

That means his next movement will always be to slide

over and across my knee.

Now, what's my point gets to this position.

Things are looking good for him and very bad for me.

I've lost more than the bottom hope now.

I've lost the bottom rope and the bottom of the.

I still have some things in my favor.

I've still got a hit trip here, my strangle arm

and my head is still on opposite sides of his head.

My opponent needs to address this.

So the next move for him, having just beaten my foot

and then my knee is to beat my head.

So what he wants to do is bring his head forward.

Once the head goes forward, he can move it

across to the other side.

He's now accomplished the third critical step.

He beat my foot, then he beat my knee.

Now he's beaten my head.

Now, the last thing for him to do

is to beat me with the inside shoulder.

My opponent brings his elbow up, brings it between us,

and drops his inside shoulder to the floor.

The moment the inside shoulder touches the man,

there's simply nothing left on my part.

Offensively, from the rear position.

There's a sense now in which

I have only the appearance of my opponent's back at this point.

Okay, there's no stranglehold I can apply from here.

The angle's all wrong.

It's very, very difficult for me to recover

position here because the shoulders touch the mat.

And at this point, for all intents

and purposes, your opponent is effectively escaped.

From this point on.

It's very much in my interest to switch to another position.

So what we have here is a crystal clear

description of the process of escape from the back.

The interesting thing to note is it's entirely predictable

and entirely sequential.

It has to go in a certain pace,

in a certain direction and a certain step by step procedure.

The more you know and understand about the procedure,

the easier it's going to be for you.

Is the offensive player to shut it down and stay aligned.

Let's go through that procedure one more time

so you clearly understand what you're trying to fight against.

That's going to make the idea of staying aligned on resisting opponent

so much easier for you to understand in the next few sections.

So we know that from a starting position

with an underhand, an overhand and two hooks in

we're in a pretty solid attacking here.

Okay.

My opponent's defensive movement almost always involves a pitch

to one side that creates a top hook and a bottom hook.

The moment we get here, we are now in a situation where his first gambit

is always pass over the bottom hook.

That's always step number one, so that if my opponent

never goes over the bottom hook, you'll never get over my knee.

If he can't get over my knee, he'll never beat my hip.

Okay?

It's always in these situations critical that he starts

with the bottom hook.

Then the next movement, this raise your arm

is to beat this knee

as he scoots over the knee.

I've just lost even more control of my shoulder now.

I still have an effective Hedrick.

I still have a strangle hand on one side and the head on the other.

So there is, believe it or not, still some threat of strangle from here.

Okay, I could transition from two to other attacking positions here.

Still have a stranglehold.

So that's why for him, the next third step is to beat the head.

So he goes forward with the head.

Okay.

If he doesn't go forward with the head,

then I can glue my ear to his.

And when he tries to get his hip to the floor,

my head will be in the way.

So he has to go forward and around.

And now he's beaten my head at this point critically.

He's beaten what we call the head trip.

He's got my head and my strand alarm on the same side as his head.

That's good for him. It's terrible for me.

It means that from now on, there's

no more viable threat of a stranglehold.

Okay, The last remaining piece of the puzzle

is to beat me with the inside shoulder and get back to the floor.

And now he's truly won the position.

I pretty much have to pay the champ.

Now we go to something else entirely.

Yeah, So that's the entirely predictable

sequential pattern of your opponent's escape.

That's how we're going to break alignment in the overwhelming

majority of cases when you work against them.

Once you have a clear picture of what they're trying to accomplish,

your ability to shut that down will go up dramatically.

We're looking at this idea of overcoming the alignment problem.

The alignment problem is absolutely fundamental

to your ability to succeed from back position.

If you can't stay aligned with your opponent,

you're not going to be stranding anybody.

Okay, So our first concern, stay aligned.

Keep your chest on your retreating partners back.

And more than anything else, preserve this

this critical element that we call the head trap,

where our opponents head is trapped between our head and strangle hand.

As long as his head is positioned between my head and my strangle hand,

I can win a guy.

I can go through and finish with a really good strangle.

As long as my chest is glued to my opponent's back,

I'm going to be able to maintain that hatred.

But the moment they begin that process of misalignment,

I have to stop whatever I'm doing and address that fundamental problem.

We just saw in the previous section that the process

of breaking alignment on the part of the defensive athlete

is entirely predictable.

You know exactly what he has to do.

He has to beat that bottom hook.

Knowing this,

we can start to bring about

or show some simple tactics to protect that bottom hook and start

and stop the process of misalignment from even beginning.

Remember, this is a sequential move that my opponent goes through.

If I stop the first step in the sequence,

none of the other elements are going to work.

So protecting that bottom hook is a critical, critical thing.

We've seen that when we fall with conventional

symmetrical hooks, it's very, very easy for my opponent

to beat the bottom hook, even a minimal movement

that enables him to beat the bottom hook.

It doesn't require much on his part.

So we've got to be better than this.

We can't just have all hooks in this conventional phase

locked in like so.

One of my favorite things to do in this position is to switch

to a position which I call the post rear mount,

where I take my foot and I post it for my training partners, hit it.

I don't just put my foot here basically without any effect.

I use weight.

I push like a bridging motion off my opponent's hip

that puts large amounts of weight through my opponent's

hip and makes movement quite difficult.

Then I take my other foot and I bring it up to the posted foot

so that president will tell you he feels weight through his hips

when he goes to move the hips as well.

It's very, very difficult.

The function of this is twofold.

First, it puts weight in my opponent's hips, and secondly,

it greatly increases the elevation of the bottom hook here.

The bottom hook is so low that even a small movement beats

the moment I switch to a post rear mount.

Now my opponent has to move so much more

in order to beat the bottom hook.

But there's a problem.

I'm bridging off the hip.

So when he goes to move

the extra distance to beat the bottom hook, it's incredibly difficult.

He's locked in place.

Moreover, this position facilitates very well

a transition to the ultimate method of predicting the bottom hook,

which is the figure for body law,

where I physically grab a hold of my own leg.

And from here I want body lock.

Now we have a closed set of wedges

around their training partners abdomen.

When he goes to beat the bottom hook,

the bottom hook is reinforced by the other leg.

It's extremely difficult now for him to untie my legs

in this position and get over that bottom hook.

I have a choice between locking my body triangle outside my training

partners legs, which for me personally is the preferred choice.

Or I can walk inside my training partners legs

kind of a compromise where

I have a hook in with my right leg plus a body triangle.

Also very, very effective.

Again, it strongly reinforces that the bottom hook

when my opponent goes to turn and pivot out,

it's extremely difficult for him now to beat that bottom hook.

Another option that I have to protect, the bottom

hook is to go underneath my training partners leg.

And from here, across my feet, underneath my training partners

hamstring muscle like.

So when my opponent goes to turn out of the bottom hook

my two feet are locked together again.

It may not be quite as strong as a body triangle,

but it's plenty strong enough in most cases.

We hit a close set of wedges.

My feet are locked.

Make sure in these situations

that you go over your training, partnership and walk.

Don't just go behind your opponent's back and lock.

You won't have an adequate control of the hips.

From here we lock feet point in opposite directions.

Now, when my opponent goes to scoot his body out

and this along, for instance, hips are completely controlled by

my crossed feet.

So once again,

we've seen that if we have conventional hooks

on our training partner, it's extremely easy

in my point to blow up the bottom hook because

first there's no weight on my opponent's hips and second,

the distance that he has to travel is so small

because the elevation of the bottom hook is so low.

So we need to do something to reinforce that bottom hook.

What I generally use as a rule of thumb is this

When my training partner is big through the waist and my own legs

are relatively short, I typically go with the posterior amount

that puts weight on the hips

and greatly increases the elevation of the bottom hook.

So when he goes to slide over the bottom hook, it's very,

very difficult.

If my opponent is slim through the waist

or if you have the gift of long legs, then from here

I will go with a body triangle.

My preference is on the outside.

But you also have the choice of a body triangle

with the leg on the inside.

If my opponent

is weak through the waist and that doesn't feel like it's possible,

then from here I will lock

with my feet underneath my training partner's leg

and across the ankle remount like So this is perfectly safe.

There's no kind of

foot locked danger from here because I have only one who can

in a position like this.

This does an excellent

job of preventing my opponent from turning the hips

and going into an escape because my legs are locked together.

It's a closed wedge, difficult for my opponent to dislodge

in an emergency where I have an opponent

who has a big waist and I feel I cannot lock a body trying

when I feel excited to move out.

I personally am not averse to the idea of locking my feet.

I know what you're thinking.

We always get told from the first days and you think this is

some kind of abominable sin

and we should never cross our feet in the rear.

Mount,

please bear in mind that it's only dangerous for me to cross my feet

when my feet are positioned poorly inside my opponent's hips

with my feet across, outside my opponent's hips.

The danger here is minimal.

However, I will say, even in cases

where I've poorly positioned my feet between my opponent's legs,

you should never really attempt to a situation

where your opponent puts on a simple foot lock over your legs

from the rear mount is a very, very simple solution to that problem.

I'll go over it now just since many people will tell you

if you lock a body triangle or cross your feet from rear mount,

you're going to be finished by a simple foot lock

in top level competition.

I've literally never seen anyone apply a body triangle

and then get submitted by any kind of foot lock counter.

Let's have a look at this very simple thing now.

Okay.

One of the great cliches of jujitsu is if I put my feet inside

my training partner's legs

and then I cross my feet, my opponent can like a triangle over my legs.

And then when we fall to the side,

he can arches 40 back

and from here, put pressure on my feet and submit me.

Okay, If I'm naive, that's entirely true.

If I were teaching a beginners course,

I would do what everyone else does.

I would teach people not to cross their feet in this position.

Okay.

But bear in mind, at top level competition may have motivations

going far beyond the beginners class to cross your feet

or like a body triangle, and your opponent may well try

some kind of foot lock counter and these situations

bear in mind one simple fact all of these football

counters involve an arch on the part of your opponent.

His head must move backwards, his pelvis forwards,

and when he arches, the pressure rises.

Okay.

Knowing this, whenever I'm behind someone and they go for any kind of

foot lock counter, all I do is take my two hands out like so.

And I post my hands on my training partner's head.

When he goes to arch back into the move, I simply stiff arm and post

go and there's this no pressure whatsoever.

It doesn't matter whether I have a body triangle or cross feet.

Okay.

When he goes to move his head set or sit around my, my,

around my hands

and go down to the floor, etc., I just follow the head with my hands.

Okay.

When he goes to arch and break my feet,

he simply can't exert any pressure.

And while he arches, there's no reason

now why I can't just turn my feet and extract them and move out.

It's the simplest thing to counter. Okay.

Don't be intimidated

by the idea of someone attacking your feet in this position.

Same thing.

If I have a body triangle, you'll see people try to walk over the legs

like so

drive me to one side or the other and go to finish in these positions.

Whenever you see this going

on, they have to arch into you when you see them tried to.

I just posting it

and they simply can't build any pressure whatsoever.

And we just point switch here or cross my feet.

My opponent goes into a braking position,

goes to exert full pressure.

We put a hand in behind go

and it's so easy to stiff arm them off,

extract the foot and go back into your finishing position.

So don't be intimidated by the threat of foot lock counters to the back.

Yes, I agree.

And a beginner's class.

Beginners shouldn't be crossing their feet,

but at advanced levels there's times that warranted.

And in a few cases where someone even attempts

for low count as they're so easy to counter

and stop, don't be intimidated by them.

Continue doing what you're doing.

We're looking at the first of the central problems of the back system.

This is the so-called alignment problem.

We've seen that whenever

we're behind our opponent, we have to stay roughly aligned with them.

We have to keep our chest locked to our training partners back.

And critically, we have to create a situation

where we maintain a head track, where my opponent's head

is positioned between mine and my strangle arm.

As long as I have a head trip, I have a viable method

of going through to get a really good strangle.

If I cannot maintain that I have no method of

attacking successfully with a strangle.

Your opponent knows that.

And so everything they will be doing will be to create misalignment

and ultimately to break the head trap and free their head.

If they can do that, they're almost certain to escape.

We've seen that the process

of braking alignment is exactly that, a process that has a first step.

And that first step is for your opponent to beat your bottom hook.

Once they beat the bottom hook, they have to beat the bottom knee,

then they have to beat your head.

And ultimately beat you with their inside

shoulder to get both shoulders down to the floor.

If they can successfully do

those things in a sequence, they can escape from your back.

We've seen that as the offensive man.

Our whole goal is to prevent them beating that first hook,

the first method of defending

the bottom hook that we looked at was basically through

reconfiguring our legs, using body triangles, crow's feet, etc., etc.

to reinforce the position of the bottom hook.

That's not the only base, that's not the only method of doing it.

So there's going to be times that despite your best effort,

your opponent does beat the bottom hook

and then it's going to come down to mobility on your part.

You must be able to move around your opponent's body and recover

a lost hook or a lost.

This is the next skill that we're going to look at right now.

Let's look at a situation where I'm behind my training partner.

We know that once we get behind our training partner

and we have hooks in step just like so

it's very much in his interest to pitch over to his side

and create what we call a bottom hook.

Once we get to a position like this,

the whole first gambit is going to be to beat the bottom hook

and then ultimately beat the bottom knee, then beat the hip

and ultimately get their inside shoulder down to the mat.

That's the sequence of the escape

it's our desire to stop the sequence as early as possible,

and that means stopping it at the bottom hook.

We looked at them.

We looked at the idea of preventing them ever beating our bottom, two

reinforcement, body triangles, crossed feet, etc., etc.

Now we're going to have a situation where they did

beat the bottom hook and we had to learn to recover.

So for a situation where I'm behind, plus he does and he falls

and successfully beats my bottom hook, let's bear something in mind.

Yes, he beat your bottom hook, but he didn't beat the bottom knee.

Remember, he doesn't create misalignment at the lower body

until he beats your knees when he gets outside of my knee.

That's the problem.

He's he's winning the alignment battle.

Now, again here, he's just beating the hook.

And the hook can always be replaced.

How? Simply I just take my leg and extend it.

This takes my knee further out and increases

the distance that he must move in order to beat the bottom knee.

So as soon as I lose the foot, my

first thing is I move the knee.

Now it's a bigger distance for him to move.

Now my foot goes in a pattern, in a sequence

that starts on the ball of the foot

and then I go to the heel.

Now we're in a position where I can put my foot on the floor

and switch my body in the opposite direction.

Now my foot comes up and I like a body triangle,

or if my opponent's so back to the waist,

they can't accomplish this.

I put on a posterior mount and as a result

we've recovered the hook on the other side

and we've positioned it so he won't be able to continue

the process of continually beating bottom hook.

What we

want to do once we've recovered the bottom hook

is to prevent having to keep recovering recovery and recovering.

Remember, ultimately we want to finish this guy.

We want to stop him in his tracks.

I need a static opponent in order to submit him.

I can't even a situation where I'm constantly following movement,

following his movement, following his movement.

I have to follow his

movement to a degree, then stop him and then finish him.

We don't want to just create a cycle where I just go

left, right, left, right, trying to recover a bottom hook.

Once we recover a bottom hook, then it's time to fall to the other side

and position our legs in such a way that he can't beat the bottom hook

on the other side and keep a sequence of escape going.

We want to shut down his sequence and then shut down movement.

And then when I have a static opponent,

then we can start going in and finishing people.

So let's have a look at this again.

We start off behind our opponent.

We've got our arms. Well set.

The head trap is in place, and then from here we start falling

over to the side.

Okay?

Now, as my opponent beats the bottom hook, you can see right now

there's a minimal distance that he has to move in order to beat my knee.

Okay, I've done it.

I have done nothing to protect my knee here.

I haven't made it move far or anything like that.

But the moment I put my foot out, now the distance he has to travel

is greater.

It's going to make my job easier.

Now I push off the floor.

I use my right leg to pull.

Make your body go this way.

Look how his direction is going this way in the escape.

Look at the effect of my right leg.

It turns.

And in the direction that I want.

Then I push off the floor

and I bring him back in the opposite direction.

So his whole goal was to escape to my left.

Okay, Over my left bottom hook, he successfully beat the bottom hook.

He wants to continue going left.

That's his goal.

So I increase the distance he has to travel.

Then from here I bring my foot up.

My knee is now so far out behind him that when I retract my foot,

put it in my training partner's buttocks when I push off the mat now

he wants to go left and index get get in turn to the right.

Now, here's something I want to avoid.

I don't just want to put a hook in and then

plus you to do the same thing on the other side.

And this escapes and beats my hook on the right side.

And now he's going, I don't want to create situations

where I'm following a cycle of escapes.

I want to beat his cycle of escape.

So as I lose my training partner

on one side, he goes over the bottom hook.

I increase the distance that he needs to travel by putting my foot out.

I bring my foot in, but not many members.

The knee that he has, the beat of the foot, when I turn

it, bring him over the other side.

But I keep my new bottom hook down, my right hook

so high that it's an easy thing for me to either go post, rear mount

if my legs are short and his waist is white or body lock.

If my legs alone and his waist extend.

In this way, we protected the bottom hook on one side

and then reinforce it on the other to break his cycle of escape.

We're looking at the alignment problem when we get behind someone.

If I cannot stay aligned with my opponent, no amount of other

skill in my back attacks is going to count for anything.

I have to be able to stay aligned.

We've seen that the process of my opponent in mis aligning

the body is an entirely predictable sequence of steps.

And if we can learn to shut down those steps,

you can preserve the alignment

and ultimately get through to a situation

where you can control your opponent, stop them from moving,

and then start to bring in the hand

fighting system that we'll be looking at shortly

and get through to a strangulation win.

Now, in the previous sequence, we saw that

if our opponent gets over a foot, they're on the beginnings of escape.

Okay?

But ultimately they have to beat my hook and then my knee.

We saw how to recover if they beat the bottom hook.

What if the guy's a high level and he doesn't

just beat the bottom hook, He beats the bottom knee as well.

Well, then we need to go to the next level

of sophistication as that is the offensive man and go to recover.

Let's look at that process now

from a situation where I'm behind Placid Earth and from here

he pitches down to one side and beats the bottom hook.

We know that we're supposed to protect the

at this point and bring our opponent back to the other side.

Okay.

Unfortunately, he knows that, too.

He does a good job of going over the knee

now, the moment he does this, there's good news and bad news.

The good news is you've still got a hope to work with here.

So you do have some control of your opponent's body.

The other piece of good news is still got a head trap.

Okay.

My seatbelt grip around my opponent still puts me in a position

where my head is on one side and my strangle arms on the other.

Okay, so the strong seatbelt purpose is preserving me and

is preserving my head trap to some degree here.

Now, the bad news is he's actually beaten the knee,

so it's not like the previous situation come back a step

where I could use

my leg underneath him to shovel him back where he came from.

Well, again, I don't want to have that option.

So what I'm going to do instead is I'm going to direct my opponent's

head in the same direction that he wants to go.

Remember, his whole thing now is to bring his head here to the side.

Okay.

So as his head is moving in that direction,

I'm going to point my head in the same direction.

I can't head my head static while his head is moving.

If his head moves in, wise memory static, I lose the head trap.

Okay.

So as I see his head moving, I move mine.

How do I do it to my bottom leg?

I take the balls of my feet onto the mat and I push

and I bring my head to the mat before his head gets in front of mine.

I'm in the perfect position now to start a tripod in action

where I push and tripod over my training partner.

Now I lift and I take my knee and I put it right behind my training

partner's up so that my knee emerges a second time.

Remember the whole key here is your knee position.

The tripod is just the mechanism to recover the position of your knee.

That's all it is.

Once my knee comes out, I can return my opponent to the other side

and put my foot in a nice high position

where he won't be able to go easily over the top.

And again, I'll either go to a post rear mount

if he's been through the waist in my legs a short

or I'll go to a body triangle.

If his waist is thin and my legs are long, let's have a look at it again.

Remember, the basic thing that we're pushing

here is the idea that the knees are the locus of my control

when it comes to aligning my opponent between my legs,

the bottom of the bottom extremity

of my leg, the hook just holds the knee in place.

That's all it's designed to do.

But what actually is the measure of whether my opponent is aligned

with my lower body or not is whether it's between my knees.

So once he beats my knee,

I need some kind of mechanism to recover the knee.

And that mechanism is.

TRIPATHI Okay, So if we start off on the other side

this time

twist around like so

we have an opponent, we've got hooks in

on our training partner like this.

I see him pitching over to the side

and I see my opponent beat the bottom hook and the bottom knee.

You can clearly see my left knee has been beaten.

It's behind him now.

So I place

the ball of my foot on the floor and I begin a race for head position.

He wants to beat my head by getting his head to the mat.

I want my head underneath his.

So my head also goes to the mat.

Now a tripod action.

That tripod puts me up into position where I can

and expose my knee on the other side of his body

so that I reposition in between my knees a second time.

Now, my Hook here drags him back,

and you can clearly see that my knee has been reestablished.

I now have a knee on either side of his body.

We've knee position and now it's a matter

of preventing him going over the second hook.

As a result, we now have back

position recovered when he tries to slip over the bottom.

Well, it's difficult and if I like the body triangle

even more so, let's have a look at that again from

another angle.

We've been looking at this idea that when we control our opponent,

we always want situations where we have knees on either

side of him, that's what constitutes alignment or misalignment.

Okay?

His whole thing ultimately is to beat my knees in these situations. So

my a situation where we

link up with our training fund and we have two hooks in

when we fall over to the side, you can clearly see

if he goes over, he beats the foot first and the knee second.

I now have two knees on one side of his body.

That's good for him bad for me.

I need a knee on each side of his body.

So from here we're going to Tripod and get our head to the floor.

We're going to continue that tripod and get our knees off the mat

so that I can lift and expose and get my knee back in place.

Now, once again, I have a knee on each side of his body.

I have a hook here in his leg which enables me to pull

and end up in position where both knees

are on one side of his body, each as a result.

From here, it's an easy thing for us to lock up either the figure of four

or a post mount.

So when he goes to escape a second time, it's a very difficult thing.

You know, we can play our attacking game.

We're looking at the alignment problem.

The basic idea here is that if we can't stay successfully

with our opponent, no amount of hand

fighting and trapping of arms is going to have

any effect whatsoever upon us that he cannot escape the overall position

and none of our strangles.

None of our sophisticated means

of locking our opponents arms down are going to be of any value.

Our first thing you've got to stay aligned with your opponent.

We've seen that

the process of misalignment that my opponent's trying to create

is entirely predictable.

It begins with beating the bottom hook

and then ultimately beating the bottom knee

and then going to a situation where his head beats my head

and then finally his shoulders, both of them on the mat,

particularly the inside shoulder. And he's out.

We've seen

to try and shut down and combat this.

Let's look at another method, the switching our method

to a situation where behind a training partner like

and he's done a good job

of pitching over to the side

and is threatening to go over the bottom hook

and even the bottom knee in these situations.

What I often do, particularly when I'm worried my opponent

will eventually beat the head, that's the most worrisome of them all.

Back on a piece of my head is pretty much gone at this point.

What I often do in situations like this is switch my arms.

I currently have a left hand control arm

and a right hand strangle on.

My opponent knows that.

And so he's trying to go in the same direction.

My strangle arm is pointing beat the head and move on out.

Okay.

Whenever I see this is a real danger and I feel I'm about to lose

the head, I will take my strangle arm and convert it into a control.

So as my opponent goes to make his escape, I punch out

and I go underneath my training partners arm.

So I now have two control arms.

I go underneath

my own hand and grip his wrist.

Now, as I lose the battle for hit position, I relinquish my hand.

My opponent goes into what he thinks is his escape.

I lift my arm through and pull

in, switch sides on my phone, my gun.

And now we're right back and we're ready to attack once again.

We started off with a fairly conventional situation,

two hooks in I have a control hand and a strangle hand.

My opponent beats the bottom hook and is starting to threaten

to beat the head and come all the way out.

I will initially switch my hands and go through

so I now have to control. It's true.

I no longer have the capacity to strangle my opponent,

but I'd rather stay on his back and work back to a stranglehold later

than just lose everything right here.

One good way for me to work from here is to go across

and cross grip my training partner at the waist.

I put my hand through and as I lose the head, he starts moving away.

I pull and I put this arm back in.

So what have we done with preserve the head, Try to.

I have a stranglehold on one side, my head on the other.

Then I just reposition my legs

and I find myself back in a position where I can dominate the back.

Let's look at it from another angle,

from a situation where I'm behind my opponent

and I feel my opponent is getting away from me.

Not only is he beating the bottom hook,

but he's starting to beat the head as well.

From here I go through

and punch in a new control hand.

I go across and cross group my training partner's far wrist.

I slip my wrist underneath and his place

just comes out my lock here and here.

As a result, I can easily turn my opponent over and recover

the position and go right back into a fine

attacking situation.

We're starting to get into the the nuts and bolts of the main

core element of my back attack system

is jacket system.

Most of you are aware that this is based around the idea of

a specific set of hand fight

techniques which ultimately create a situation where I can use

one of my legs to trap an opponent's arm

and then from there take away their ability

to defend themselves and go through

and to successfully applied Stranglehold.

So far we've been looking at the central problem

that runs alongside what we're calling a deficit problem.

Okay, We had the alignment problem.

We saw some

some ways of getting around that that will enable us to stay aligned

with our opponent long enough that we can create a static opponent

and then we come to our next problem, the so-called deficit problem.

This is the idea that when I get behind my opponent,

I find rather, to my surprise, perhaps, that at most

I have two offensive instruments and usually I have only one

offensive instrument.

A single strangle on your opponent, on the other hand,

has at least two and often three defensive instruments.

He has two

defensive arms and a defensive jaw

at the very if I'm trapping one,

he'll have one defensive arm and a defensive jaw.

This is my one offensive arm.

So no matter how you configure your arms,

you're always going to be the outnumbered guy.

When you're attacking from the back,

you'll always have more

defensive instruments than you have offensive instruments.

So we need some kind of system that gets us around

this fundamental problem that redresses this fundamental imbalance.

It's no good calling this the ultimate attacking position.

If you're outnumbered every time you use it, that's exactly

what the straightjacket system is designed to do.

Now, before we get into

the nuts and bolts of hand fighting our way through to success

and strength of people, it's very important that we address

a very widely held notion in the sport of jujitsu,

which I'm hoping to dispel in this video series.

This is the idea that there is a strong side and a weak side

When I work to strangle someone from the back,

probably One of the most commonly held cliches

in the sport of jujitsu is that once I get my hooks in my opponent,

there's a side which is easy for them to escape the weak side

and a side which is hazardous for them to escape the strong side.

Let's first understand why people thought this way for so long

and then make some notes from there.

Okay?

Once I get behind my opponent,

we know already that we have a control arm

that goes underneath my opponent's arm

and a strangle hand that goes over the top of the shoulder.

This creates a sense in which there's an opening.

As I hit my hand, you know, my chief on the shoulder

between my hand, my upper body,

the opening is only on one side.

It's on my opponent's left hand side.

There's no opening here.

My arm leaves, no opening whatsoever.

But the space between my hand

and my shoulder on the left hand side does create an opening.

And through that opening, my opponent can start to move his head.

And once his head moves through that opening, he's

broken the single most important element

in all of that control, which is the idea of a head trap,

where my opponent's head

ought to be caught between my head and my strangle hand.

That's the only position from where I have a viable threat

to strangle my opponent.

The moment my strangle head and head go to the same side.

The cat's out of the bag and it's lost.

There's no more viable threat of a strangle.

Okay. And in this sense, I agree.

It does look like this is the weak side.

Okay?

If my opponent forced to the side in this direction here, it's

very, very difficult for my opponent to break the head tread again,

even as he goes to move out at all times.

He's still caught in that fundamental head track that positions his head

between my head and the strangle hand.

Okay.

Once again, a different angle.

When I work behind my training partner,

we know that in situations where I fall

to a given side,

most of the jiu jitsu world will tell you he's fallen to what

would be considered my weak side.

Okay, but this is an opening between my hand and my upper body

and through opening, my opponent can move his head

in such a way that he breaks the single most important element

in the entire back control, leading to a strangle

series the idea of the head trap.

Now he's positioned my strangle hand and my head on one side of his head.

That's great news for him, and it's terrible news for me.

In order to strangle someone, I always need my head and my strangle

and on opposite sides of his head, because there's an opening here

between my hand and we have a body he can exploit that

go through the opening and now break the head tread.

And now there's simply no chance of a strangle.

I have to scramble to something else.

Okay.

So that's why most of the Jitsu world considers this

the weak side.

When my athletes first started

entering high level competition and finishing people regularly

with strangle holes from the back, people were shocked by the fact

that not only was a falling to the weak side,

they were pushing the action in that direction

as though it was something desirable.

This was very, very surprising.

Why do I not consider myself with strong and weak side?

Don't even use the terms.

I guess if we talk about undecided oversight,

my back system is neutral with regards for in left or right.

I just don't care.

In some cases I actually favor falling

to what most people would call the weak side

because it actually makes it easier for me

to use my legs to trap my opponent's arms.

I'll come back to that shortly.

Well, the truth is that once you understand

what your opponent needs to do to get out of these positions

and you have a good set of responses

to those to those elements, it doesn't really get any easier

or more difficult for him to escape on either side.

If I have

an opponent in a

position like this, as long as I'm cognizant of my head

position, he's not going to beat my head.

Moreover, as long as I'm focused of my hand

position, I'm not going to leave much of an opening for him to work with.

Okay. Yes, it's true.

If I fall to the side with my hand poorly placed.

Yes, it's true.

There's a giant gap and my opponent can bring his head through that gap.

That's good.

And yet it's easy for him to get out.

Okay.

However, if I'm always ear to ear with my training partner

working as I should be with my head forward or my training partner,

and I'm not simply lackadaisical with the arm around the neck,

but rather creating what we call a closed circle.

A closed circle is where my strangle hand goes over

my training shoulder and my chin touches my own hand.

Now there's

simply no hole for my opponent's head to move through.

Remember, if my hand is poorly placed and my head is poorly placed,

yes, there's an open hole for my opponent to move through.

But when my hand is properly

placed in my head, my chin covers my own hand.

When he goes to move out in that

direction, there's no hole for him to go through.

The hole on the left side is just as securely closed

as it would be on the right.

Okay, I cannot stress this enough when I add to this

the idea of a protected bottom hook,

whether it be with a body locked

or with a post re amount,

I close the circle in the upper body

and I close the circle with the lower body.

When Placido goes to move out of here,

he finds it's just as difficult as if I fell to the other side.

Remember, what determines the ease of his escape is not

whether it's left or right, it's

whether or not there's an open circle for him to move through.

That's what determines the ease of the escape. Yes.

If my feet are open and he just hops over the foot.

Yes, it's easy.

Yes. If my hand is poorly placed in my head

as polling place, yes, it's easy for him to move his head through.

But if I close the circle around his waist

and then close the circle around his head and shoulders,

now when he goes to move, it's

no more difficult for him to escape lift than it is.

Right.

Once you understand these simple ideas, you will see that

in fact a good back system will always be neutral

between escaping to the underside, which is the other side.

What creates a strong a weak side is not whether you go left or right,

but rather feelings and posture on the part of the athletes.

Once we work with this principle of the closed circle

in both upper and lower body, your back attacks will become neutral

as to whether you go left or whether you go right

with your opponent.

We've been looking at the straightjacket system and

we've seen essentially the straightjacket system was responds

to two main problems, two central problems, as we call them.

First was the alignment problem.

This is the idea that when we are behind our opponent

or wish to strangle, there always has to be some degree of alignment.

Again, that's based around the idea of my strangle

arm on one side and my head on the other.

If my head ever comes to the same side as the strangle arm.

This is no struggle for me.

It's a disaster.

You always need opposite hit, opposite strangle on.

Once we get to the situation,

we've seen that it's relatively easy for our opponent to break alignment

as long as we have our feet in fairly conventional positions.

Now, if my opponent going over the foot,

then over the knee, then he can start getting hit.

The floor showed him

that now he's broken the alignment between my body and his

and essentially he's escaped from the position.

And that's the first thing to point out how we overcome this.

The second was the so-called deficit problem.

When you actually do get behind someone, there's problem.

I have usually a control arm underneath his arm

and I have a strangle hand at the very most

if I have a body trying to strangle, I can work with.

Most of the time it's just one strangle him.

My opponent has three defensive instruments.

Okay?

He is a primary defensive arm,

a secondary defensive arm,

and he has his chin.

So he has three things to stop me from strangling him.

You, on the other hand, have usually only one offensive

instrument and most two.

So when you go to strangle someone from the back, you're always

outnumbered he's got three or two or three defensive instruments.

You got one or two attacking instruments.

And we need

some method to overcome that deficit.

Now we saw that basic

method is use our legs as hooks over our training partner's arms

and create situations where we create an uncontested strangle hand.

But it's just my strangle hand against my opponent's chin.

And then eventually we can we can get a breakthrough.

There's a third problem that often emerges here.

The problem of the pin down

orthodoxy has it that when I get behind someone

and I'm working with a right strangle hand, I should typically fall to my

right hand side in order to maximize my chance of success.

There's definitely some logic to it.

It's not it's not a foolish opinion.

It's that there's a rationale for it.

We explain what that was in terms of if I fall to the side

of the underarm,

there's more space for my opponent

to get his head and shoulders to the floor

and break the alignment that talked about earlier.

Again, however, there's a problem.

When I fall to the side of this railing where I fall

in this direction, the leg on that side gets pinned to the mat

his body weight is on the leg.

So when he starts grabbing my arms

and I want to use my leg to hook his arm, I can't because he's

literally pinning my leg to the floor and body weights pin my leg.

So, yes, it's true.

There's some degree of additional security.

It's more difficult to break alignment.

But on the other hand, it's

almost impossible for me now to overcome the deficit problem.

My opponent will always have his defensive hands and chin

outnumbering my offensive

weapons now.

So by falling to the same side, an Australian, I essentially pin

my own leg.

Now my legs can't be used to help me to trap his defensive arms

and create an uncontested strangle hand and get through to the finish.

So that's why very often from here

I like to see my athletes fall away from the strangle hand

because this creates an unweighted leg.

That unweighted leg now has mobility.

If I can simply just place my training partner's hand

below the line of his chest at any given moment, I can come over the top

and use my leg, trap his arm.

Now, for the first time we've got an uncontested strangle hand.

There's nothing. There's no hand left for him to fight my hand.

But both his hands are occupied.

One by my hand, one by my leg.

I have a free

hand to work against my opponent's jaw and go in and finish.

Okay, so there's a sense

in which by falling to the underarm side,

I create the possibility of overcoming this.

This third problem, the problem of the pinned leg.

But there's another way I can do it, too.

If my point is in total position, I can hook his arm

before I commit to the mat, and in that way

I can safely fall to the side of the

straight line because my leg is not yet pinned by his bodyweight.

When I work in positions like this, I can put my leg in prior

to me falling down to the floor.

And as a result, when we go down,

we now end up in a situation where even though, yes,

his body weight is on top of my strength line,

the arm was thin before I committed to the floor,

before my leg was pinned by body weight.

Now there's a sense this is actually a positive thing.

Now his body weight is not only

pinning my leg, it's pinning his right arm on this body.

And so it's even harder for him now to escape the stranglehold.

It's a that, again, from another angle, from a situation

where we start off in front of our training partner and I wedge

the knee and behind is step over the top from here.

When I roll my training partner over,

you can see the arms trapped underneath the body.

And as a

result, when he tries to pull his right arm free, it's

almost impossible with our combined body weight is pinning in place

now, right place and second hook over.

Yes, we've fallen to the side of Australian,

but we've done so after we trapped the arm

facing in this direction.

From here I go in and hook over my training partner, his arm.

Now when we fall over,

you can see the arm as well, trapped underneath both of our body weights.

I've fallen to the strangle hand, done so in a way

which permitted me to hook my opponents

defensive arm because I made the hook prior

to falling down to the side of the stream.

And what we can't do

is sitting

start off

on the floor, fall to the side of the screen,

and now it's going to be impossible for me to hook with my right leg.

My opponent's

right arm is he's literally sitting on top of my right leg.

Okay.

I would have to, under these circumstances, make a switch of side.

And then from here. Now I walk.

However, if I do wish to fall towards the side of a strangle hand

and take advantage of the security of falling in that direction,

then I must make my hook prior to committing to the ground.

So it's typically done in some kind of total situation.

For example, if I go in on my training partner,

catch now when we commit to the floor.

Yes, with form to the strangle side,

we do have the arm trapped arguably in the best possible way because now

both of our body weight is helping to assist in the pin of that arm.

And now we have an uncontested scramble here and we're ready

to go through and finish.

So the problem of the pinned arm states very clearly

that if we're already in a rear mount position,

we ought to fall away from

the strangle hand, the exact opposite of what we normally get told

if we're going to use our leg to hook our opponents arm and hold it down

and overcome that deficit problem, if, on the other hand,

when we're not yet down

the floor, we're in a safe example turtle position

and we hooked the arm prior to falling.

And then it's fine to fall down to the side of the string.

In some ways even better,

because now both your body weight is literally pinning

your opponent's arm behind his back in a way that makes escape

extremely difficult.

When you

when you understand the problem of the pin down in these fashion,

it becomes very obvious which way you ought to prefer falling

depending upon the situation in which you find yourself.