Escape North/South With Bernardo Faria

By Fanatics Authors, July 06, 2019

There are few things worse than being stuck under someone in North South position. Being stuck here becomes increasingly less fun the bigger and or sweatier the opponent is at the time. I remember when I first started training there was a student (I use the term loosely) at our school that I am certain lived for the moments when he got to train with new students. He would always, 100 percent of the time work to get to North South and just hang out here. It seemed this was what winning looked like to him. This was particularly fun in the summer time during no Gi training sessions… I think you get the idea. Of all of the positions to be stuck in, this is the one I want a sure fire, tried and true escape plan for.

North South position can be used to control the opponent or as a position to start looking for submissions. Luckily, we have the Professor Bernardo Faria on our side ready to give us a detailed breakdown of a quick and easy escape from the North South position, landing us back in half guard. Obviously, if you prefer a different type of guard, once we get to the half guard you can start working to get back to that. If you, like most of us, have yet to master all of the transitions between each of the guards, you can check out “Transition Mastery: Seeing Jiu Jitsu from Beginning to End” by Bernardo Faria to help you master how to get anywhere, from anywhere in the vast ocean that is our mats.

Now for how to get out of this miserable position. The first step is to get a grip on the opponent’s Gi, just below their knee. If this is No Gi, cupping the opponent’s leg would work as well. We also need to turn our head so that we are looking in the direction of the grip we are working to get. Now that we have our grip and are looking in the right direction which is assisting in making it more difficult for our opponent to choke us, we can start to escape.

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To escape we simply turn to our hips, putting one hip to the mat so that our hips are now facing the same direction we are looking and now we walk along the mat in a circular motion while using the grip on the opponent’s Gi pants or leg to pull, or feed their leg between our legs as we are coming around. This should enable us to land in a deep half guard position where our head is not in the middle of the opponent’s torso, on the mat, and we are hugging the opponent’s leg in a deep half guard position.

From here you can begin working on a number of sweeps in order to off balance the opponent and gain a more dominate position, but at the very least, you are no longer stuck in what I personally feel, is one of the worst places to be stuck in Jiu Jitsu.

Professor Faria’s attention to detail and passion for teaching Jiu Jitsu are the two primary reasons I appreciate some of his video instructionals the most. Thanks to the people at BJJ Fanatics we have access to the best techniques in the world, whenever, and wherever we want!

If you are looking to take a deeper dive into escaping the north south position, or any position for that matter, I would recommend checking out “Escapes from Anywhere” – by Bernardo Faria.

Faria is quoted saying “Offense scores points, but defense wins championships”. Coming from a 5 time world champion, He probably knows a thing or two about what it takes to win. This video instruction series is 4 parts completely packed with escapes from literally everywhere from Arm Bars to various different mount escapes. Having the ability to study escapes from literally any position is extremely useful. Think about those days you come home from training and it was a tough day, maybe you got submitted a few times, or maybe you just couldn’t seem to escape anything, no matter how hard you tried. Well, with this video instructional you can come home and study the position or positions you kept getting stuck in and find at least one way that you could have, and will next time, escape the dangerous position.

Bernardo Faria is widely regarded as one of the best competitors of ALL-TIME. What's even crazier is that he is an EVEN BETTER TEACHER! Escapes From Everywhere By Bernardo Faria has all of the essential tools to get out of Jiu-Jitsu's most DOMINATING positions! Don't get stuck ANYMORE!

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