Confidence in Your Escapes

By BJJ Fanatics, May 03, 2017

In Brazilian Jiu Jitsu it is extremely important to have confidence in your escapes. An aggressive offence will stem from a confident defense. In bjj, in order to establish a good defense, you have to know your escapes.

Some people notoriously say in order to escape a submission you have to not get caught in one, but that’s easier said than done. Let’s face it, we all get submitted and it’s okay, it’s part of Jiu Jitsu. In order to avoid getting tapped out, you have to know technical escapes. This is an area of bjj that is rarely trained and emphasized.

Escapes to Setup Attacks

One of the benefits of technical escapes is the ability to bait your opponent to attack a submission so that you can use it against them. This is a difficult task and requires an extremely high level of confidence in your defensive game. If you want to see a nice set up from a triangle choke escape to a leg attack, check out our post “Triangle choke escape to leg lock finish.”

There are so many submissions so it is difficult to learn how to escape them all, but if you learn the mechanics of submissions, you can use them to bait your opponent and set up your attacks. Dean Lister was an ADCC open class champion and is notorious for his escapes. Dean was not submitted for almost 10 years because he has such strong escapes. Check out this Heel Hook escape from Dean Lister.

Positional Escapes

So many of us assume that when we are referring to escapes, we mean submission escapes, this is not always the case. There are also positional escapes. What this refers to is escapes from side control, full mount, back control, etc. You have to be able to escape bad positions to become a well-rounded Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Competitor.

We have a great post on escaping side control, so if you want to sharpen your side escapes check out this post. Learning to escape positions is just as, if not more important than being able to escape submissions. Check out this slick back mount escape from Kurt Osiander below as well.

Escapes for a More Aggressive Offense

The best benefit of having confidence in your escapes is that it allows you to move more aggressively. If you are confident in your ability to defend yourself from any position, than it will allow you to move more carelessly and ultimately more aggressively.

The best defense is a good offense, anytime you roll, for the most part, you always want to dictate the pace of the match and be the aggressor. This is so that your opponent is reacting to you and so that you are not reacting to them. Check out this arm lock escape from the master of escapes, Dean Lister, it’s a very methodical approach to escaping a submission.