I finally made it back to jiu-jitsu after missing two weeks due to this horrible cold that seems to last forever. I’m still not 100 per cent over it, but I got fed up with being stuck at home on the couch, waiting to get better – so I forced myself out to Coast Martial Arts on Thursday, and I’m so glad I did.
Before we get into the lesson I just want to say one thing – it may not have helped me get over my cold, but by the end of each lesson, I always walk away feeling incredible, both physically and mentally. Exercise makes you feel good – that’s no secret – but there’s something deeply satisfying about Gracie Jiu-Jitsu.
On to the lesson: twisting arm control. This was a particularly fun one. It starts with you rushing your opponent and getting him in a clinch. Then – when he tries to go for a headlock – you manoeuvre around to his back and hold the clinch from behind.
In a clinch you need to be as close into your opponent as you can – the more space between you, the more opportunity for him to break free or land some hits – so not only are your arms locked around him, you should also have your head into his chest.
If the bad guy wants to go for a headlock from this position, the most accessible way for him to do that is to try to wrap one arm into a guillotine choke. If done correctly, you will end up facing him in a headlock – as opposed to facing in the same direction as him.
I mention this because in order to avoid letting him get the headlock you have to stand up straight, and use your head to block his attempt to wrap. With your head behind his shoulder, you’re now almost on his back already.
Once you get his back, you need to make sure you’ve got your hands in an S grip – fingers of both hands bent like hooks and locked together. There are different ways of holding clinch, but if you’re holding someone from the back, your hands are right in front of him and – as was explained to me – if your fingers aren’t protected, they’re very easy to break.
From the back clinch, you just need to block the heel of one of your opponent’s feet and pull him backwards onto the ground, then get to mount. What you want is to get control of one of his arms so you can twist it – hence, twisting arm control – and one way to get the bad guy’s arm is to hit him in the face so he has to put his arms up to protect himself.
Once you get an arm, you just need to move it across his chest and wrap it around his neck so that he’s pretty much choking himself. There’s a hand-off move where you will need to reach under your opponent’s head with your free hand to get control of his arm and pull it tight. To maintain control while you do this hand-off, you need to use your chest to drop some weight onto your opponent’s arm and keep him from struggling free.
From here you can use the arm you’ve got a hold of to control your opponent and move him onto his side. This will happen fairly naturally if you just keep pushing him in the same direction that his arm is being twisted in. As you move the bad guy onto his side, you will need to switch your mount position so that one of your knees is behind his back while the other one is over his torso.
With a straight spine, pull his arm towards you while at the same time crushing into your opponent with your hips. For the bad guy, it feels like being wrung out like a wet towel.
The bad guy will most likely try to roll away from this and throw you off, so when he does that, you can let go of his arm – you won’t need it anymore. You’re already positioned behind him so you can go for back mount from here. Get your legs around his mid-section and go for a chokehold with your arms – just don’t lock your ankles if you’re in back mount; they can be trapped and broken if the bad guy knows what he’s doing.
A variation on this is to go for the straight-arm lock instead of the back mount, but that’s another lesson.
