Artemis BJJ (MYGYM Bristol), Can Sönmez, Bristol, UK - 20/03/2017
My personal favourite mount escape is the heel drag, by far the highest percentage way for me to get out from under mount. It's also quite simple, another reason I like it so much. You're in mount, your elbows in a good place for defence, down by their knees. For this escape to work, you need to have one of your legs out flat, just like before. Again, you also need to get on your side: a slight bridging motion will help.
The big danger at this point is that the person on top will switch to technical mount. I recommend just lifting your shoulder slightly, rather than turning all the way on your side: that prevents exposing your back too much. Make sure that your neck is safe if you mess up and they do manage to start turning to technical mount. You also don't want to let them settle into technical mount: immediately prepare your frames to start escaping before they secure the position. You may even be able to disrupt them as they try to shift, using that window of opportunity as they're adjusting their base to enter into your escape.
If they don't get to technical mount (or you're able to work back to the previous position where you'll slightly on your side), wedge an elbow inside their knee. You can either make a frame against their hips, or if you're concerned about your neck, adjust so that you can still pry your elbow under their knee while protecting your collar with your hands (I prefer the latter). As well as chokes, you also need to be wary of their cross-face. If they can control your head, they can flatten you back out, which will make the escape less effective. Use a combination of your elbow and shrimping to shove their knee backwards, on your flat leg side.
Bring your other foot over both your flat leg and the leg they have next to it. That means you can use the heel of that foot to drag their leg over your flat leg. As soon as you get it over, lock half guard and shrimp towards their trapped leg. In half guard, you want to get onto your side as quickly as possible: if you stay flat on your back, you've already done their work for them, as they will want to flatten you out in order to pass half guard. If you're comfortable in half guard, you could stay there and work your attacks.
Alternatively, keep shrimping in the other direction, in order to free your other leg, just like you would with an elbow escape. It's also worth noting that some people, like Roy Dean, recommend just pinching your knees rather than fully triangling your legs around theirs, so that's worth trying too. To help recover full guard, you can also bring your arm across to their opposite shoulder, impeding their movement while aiding yours. Emily Kwok has a handy tip too: if their foot is too flat, making it hard to get your heel in for a drag, slide your flat leg outside to roll their heel up. That will create the space you need in order to insert your heel between their foot and the mat.
A very similar escape, which I don't use much, is the foot lift. Dean shows these two escapes in sequence on his excellent Blue Belt Requirements. The foot lift is for when they have some space underneath their in-step. People won't often do that, in my experience, but if they do, this time just step over your flat leg. Use your foot to hook underneath their instep and lift it over, then as before lock up half guard (your legs are already in position), or shrimp to recover full guard.
Make sure that you pay particular attention to shoving on their knee with this variation, as it is easier for them to slip free (though if that happens, you can always switch to the heel drag). With both escapes, it is important to get the knee of their trapped leg back behind your legs. If they still have their knee past your legs, it makes it much easier for them to move straight into a half guard pass, by driving their knee to the mat and sliding through.
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Teaching Notes: Emphasise hooking the leg around next time, after you've hooked their leg and shrimped out. I use this technique so often that I forget that it has quite a few moving parts. I wonder if it would be worth showing a cut down version at some point, where they just get to half guard? Although that would then involve knowing half guard, so I'd need to do that if we've just finished half guard month, then it would make sense.
I also added a drill that was just focused on keeping your elbows in. Top person tries to pull them away from your body, you just keep on trying to work those elbows back tight to your body. I think that's useful, so I must remember to throw that in from now on.
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