Escaping Knee On Belly

By Ismail Safi, February 25, 2019

I come from a gym where knee on belly is a very popular position, and rightly so. Knee on belly combines elements of side control and mount while providing a little more power using the position of the knee of the stomach. For the unskilled, knee on belly can be frustrating and difficult, especially against big, heavy grapplers.

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Since I started training Jiu Jitsu, I have learned tons of different ways to escape knee on belly. When I roll though, most don’t work, so I had to figure something else out. Over time, I filtered these techniques to essentially two escapes, one more difficult than the other. The difficult escape is one I do if the top player is sitting very high in knee on belly. From here, I invert and bring my far leg in and enter leg lock positions. This also works well if the top player is trying to force knee on belly after passing the guard.

More often than not, though, I must use the other escape to get out because either the top player stops me from inverting or they are sitting appropriately low enough. The simple escape involves manipulating the leg that is on me. Essentially, what I try to do is push their shin and trap them in a pseudo-half guard quickly. In the following video, Bernardo Faria illustrates how to execute this escape and where to go after doing it.

You will be surprised by how well this escape works; it works against big guys and high level guys well. What you need to watch out for when bridging is a knee on belly side switch, so be prepared to catch the legs if the top player attempts this. This escape is also useful because it can take you directly to deep half guard, a position that is easy to sweep from.

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