Kimura from side control With Eliot Marshal

The general consensus in Jiu Jitsu is that full mount or back mount are the most dominate positions in Jiu Jitsu.  It makes sense, if you think about it. From full mount you have the advantage of being able to control your opponent with your legs while delivering brutal blows with your hands and or elbows, in a mixed martial arts or street fight situation of course.  There is little the opponent can do from this position and even in the instance they do try to strike from here not only does there strike carry very little power, it also extends an arm for you giving you the opportunity to take the arm and sit for an arm lock.  

The back mount has similar benefits in that it is difficult for the opponent to escape the position, however, the key difference here is it generally does take both your arms and legs to control the opponent.  Additionally, in the back mount position you have the advantage of the opponent not knowing where you are moving your hands until you are touching them since they can not see you or read your body language. This is certainly an advantage and gives you a massive upper hand on your opponent.  

While these positions earn you more points in a points based tournament than side mount or side control, depending on the term you prefer, it could be argued that side control is just as, if not more dangerous if you are doing it right.  Creating pressure from side control can feel like witchcraft until you learn the concepts, but once you do, you can generate a ton of pressure and honestly just really make your opponent hate their life. You can sometimes pressure them to the point they practically beg you to mount them, but that may not be the route you want to go because there are plenty of incredible attacks from side control.  

Beyond creating a ton of pressure, you also have a choice between several different attacks, some sneakier than others, and some more devastating than others.  You may prefer to attack an Americana or perhaps a Kimura, or even start looking for chokes. For now, let’s start by breaking down the Kimura from side control with triangle by Eliot Marshall. 

 

As you can imagine, we are going to start out in side control.  Eliot mentions that as we complete a knee slice pass, or really any pass for that matter it is ideal for us to get control of the under hook on the far side of the opponent’s body.  Beyond this we are also looking to get the cross face with our other arm under the opponent’s head.  

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This probably all sounds rather typical, and you are 100 percent right.  It’s in the details. Like I mentioned earlier, it is all in the details and in the execution of the technique.  For example, let’s start with the cross face. In order to secure a “good” cross face you need to reach under the opponent’s head and grab in their far arm pit or lat muscle with 4 fingers in.  At this point most people them drive into the opponent, but rather than do that, use your grip to pull the opponent into your cross face. Next you want to limit the mobility of their other arm.  To do this we want to use our chin to lock their arm in place between our arm and our chin as shown in the picture below. 

 

The next thing we need to do is deal with the opponent’s frame in our hip.  When facing really strong opponent’s it is not uncommon for this frame to be used to lift and roll you over completely reversing the position.  In order to deal with the frame we are simply going to slide our far knee under the frame. In the example above this would be our right knee.  

From here it’s rather simple.  We simply want to roll our hips back down to the mat but in an motion that moves towards the head, without allowing the frame to slip.  This should position us to literally lay on the opponent’s face (this will require removing the cross face) and stretching out our legs in order to create the most pressure possible. The position now should look something like the picture below.  There is a final thing to note from this position, make sure you do not let the arm slip under and out the bottom. If this happens, the opponent has the escape. 

We are now ready to start looking to attack. In order to start attacking we need to make our body longer.  This is only safe to do once we are certain the frame has been eliminated. Once we are sure that is done we can then begin to stretch our body out by reaching with our head and planting it on the mat.

Next we want to use our left arm to lift the opponent’s head off the mat.  This then enables us to use our left leg to get it over the arm and under the head locking the first part of the triangle and trapping the opponent’s arm in between our legs making it easy to scoop under that arm and lock our figure four triangle lock around the opponent’s head and arm. It is absolutely imperative that you do not lift your head off of the mat.  If you do, you will create space and allow the opponent to get their arm out and begin working on escaping and if nothing else, forcing you to lose the Kimura attack that was previously an option. 

From this position, the next thing we want to do is use our head and look the other way pushing the arm a little bit further away from the triangle.  As soon as we get our head to the other side we need to switch control of the opponent’s arm to our other arm that we were using as a base. We then can pull the right arm out and grab the opponent’s wrist.   The next step is to drop our elbow of the hand that we are gripping the opponent’s wrist with to their rib cage. 

From here we can use this elbow connection and our head to push up allowing space for the opponent to naturally turn into us which is exactly what we want and will be encouraging as we pull up on the Kimura grip.  Once we are full upright we can then finish the Kimura. Notice in the video that the triangle is still locked as Eliot is still finishing the Kimura. 

As you can see, there is a lot more to side control than the eye initially sees.  You saw just a few quick tips on how to create pressure. Who knew that was a thing?  A method for how to smash people? There is more to pressure than just weight, which may be something you felt mislead on prior.  There are a ton of options when it comes to setting up and executing on various submissions. If you are interested in checking out more setups and submissions consider checking out “Side Control Setups &Submissions by Bernardo Faria”.

Bernardo is a 5 time world champion who has become world renowned for teaching older guys his Jiu Jitsu secrets because his techniques require minimal athleticism, almost zero strength, speed of flexibility.  There is no question that there are a ton of detailed techniques that you could add to your game as you learn from such a high level grappler. Just remember, video instructionals only make you better if you put in the work, so get out there and start putting in the work!

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! Side Control Setups &Submissions By Bernardo Faria will give you the tools to DOMINATE from Side Control.

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