After fifteen years in Jiu-Jitsu, I believe that the best move in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is the trap and roll. It is the first move taught in the introductory lesson at my academy. It can be used by white belts and world champions. It can be used in self-defense or at the academy. It teaches students about base and leverages the large muscles of the body against your opponent. It also has a lot of sneaky details that determine the effectiveness of the move. I think it is also so important because it can change the tide so dramatically from losing to winning.
When I was starting training, I wrote off this move because I thought it was for bigger people. I was a gangly 145 lb teenager at the time and it was much easier for me to use moves like the foot drag and the foot lift and the knee and elbow to escape. I even remember hitting this move on black belt world champions as a blue belt. I remember being stoked at the time and thinking at least I have this mount escape thing figured out. The problem was that when training with Saulo and Xande Ribeiro (and there are a lot of problems when training with them), is that their mount attacks are amazing and their guard passing is just as good as their mount attacks. So even when my bread and butter escapes would work, I would just get my guard passed again, only this time I was more tired.
When I was starting training, I wrote off this move because I thought it was for bigger people. I was a gangly 145 lb teenager at the time and it was much easier for me to use moves like the foot drag and the foot lift and the knee and elbow to escape. I even remember hitting this move on black belt world champions as a blue belt. I remember being stoked at the time and thinking at least I have this mount escape thing figured out. The problem was that when training with Saulo and Xande Ribeiro (and there are a lot of problems when training with them), is that their mount attacks are amazing and their guard passing is just as good as their mount attacks. So even when my bread and butter escapes would work, I would just get my guard passed again, only this time I was more tired.
So probably late in my brown belt I decided I would spend some time researching mount escapes. I chose to really study the bridge because I didn’t want to be a black belt with a poor bridge. At the time details of Rickson’s bridge was being talked about on the internet so there were some great details to look into there. Then I grabbed two people that I thought had the best bridge in the academy. One was a barrel chested brown belt and one was a strong, gumby flexible purple belt and picked their brains on the technique. What came out of it was the importance of foot positioning, head positioning and general body alignment. How to use your elbows to get more leverage if you are not one of those barrel chested folk.
Once I invested a large amount of time into the technique, it has paid off many times over when rolling with Saulo, Xande and Lovato. I have used it successfully in competition against world champion Romulo Barral. It is probably one of those moves that I will use all the time when I am older, less conditioned and have a young training partner pass my guard.
For those people looking out for some of the sneaky details that I learned, RIckson does a great demonstration with Budo Jake here:
Once I invested a large amount of time into the technique, it has paid off many times over when rolling with Saulo, Xande and Lovato. I have used it successfully in competition against world champion Romulo Barral. It is probably one of those moves that I will use all the time when I am older, less conditioned and have a young training partner pass my guard.
For those people looking out for some of the sneaky details that I learned, RIckson does a great demonstration with Budo Jake here: