Learn Escapes for Confidence and Comfort

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. Learning escapes can offer you Confidence and comfort in every position.  Escapes are commonly perceived as solely submissions escapes but learning positional escapes is just as, if not more important.

Confidence and comfort are some of the most important elements of bjj and having confidence and comfort in every position is part of the characteristics that many champions share.  Many of us can maintain confidence in a match or a roll while we are doing well, but when things start going south it can be difficult and we may lose our confidence, get uncomfortable and make silly mistakes.  Staying comfortable and confident when a match does not go your way is so important to progression, and if you compete, it is imperative.  Things will not always be perfect, we must embrace the discomfort.

So how can we gain this high level of confidence and comfort?  We have to incorporate escapes into out bjj.  We have to be able to perform well in every situation under any amount of pressure.  If someone takes our back, remain calm and initiate an escape, if we get caught in a knee bar, find a way out.  Let’s take a look at some free escape videos, one of them positional and one of them from a submission, let’s discuss the details and the mechanics. 

Body Triangle Escape by Tom DeBlass

The body triangle can easily be one of the most frustrating positions to be caught in.  This position can put a lot of constriction are your airway, make it difficult to breath, hard to move and ultimately make you vulnerable to a number of submissions.  Eddie Bravo Invitational has exploded with popularity and in the unique overtime rules we see body triangles so often.  Knowing how to escape this position is so important.  Let’s take a look at an escape with Tom DeBlass, one of the greatest American Grappler’s below and then discuss the mechanics, the philosophy, the comfort and the confidence.

So as we can see above, Tom is doing a few things simultaneously.  He is defending the choke, getting his hip to the mat towards the lock of the triangle and then putting himself in an offensive position to initiate his own attack.  Tom is comfortable in this position and he does not panic.  This sense of comfort allows him to have the confidence to escape and make the most of this bad position.

One of the most important concepts to escaping is to use the bad position to ultimately end up in a better attacking position.  This can kill your opponent’s mindset.  They will think “how could I have lost the body triangle and ended up in a foot lock.” So much about rolling and competing is mental.  When you have the ability to remain comfortable, you have the ability to remain confident.

Whenever you are escaping a submission or even a position it is wise to try and attack something immediately after because your opponent may not be able to defend.  There are seconds in these transitions where your opponent may be vulnerable. Like Tom does in the video above, he manages to get out of the worst position in bjj and gets into one of the best, that being Ashi Garami.  This is the philosophy that you want to implement in the majority of your escapes.  You also want to note that it is not always possible to get to an attacking position but when escaping, out of a position, or out of a submission, any escape is good.   Let’s have a look at another escape with Tom DeBlass, this time it is out of a knee bar.

Knee Bar Escape by Tom DeBlass

Now we are going to have a look at how to escape the kneebar with Tom.  Tom has not been submitted in over a decade so he is an excellent person to learn from because he is also an active competitor and a UFC veteran.  Knee bars can be extremely scary and annoying to deal with and having a technical escape is imperative when discussing leg entanglements.  To be able to remain calm in this situation is paramount because an improper movement could seriously injure you.  Let’s take a look below.

So as you can see above Tom uses a simple and effective escape where he shares key details and gives us options to attack right after the escape again.  The main goal you should bear in mind is that you need to clear your knee line.  What this does is mitigate the possibility of taking damage.  How do you do this?  As you see above instead of kicking the butt like we are traditionally taught, Tom actually places his free leg behind the crook of his opponent’s knee in between the calf and hamstring.

This allows him to have more leverage and alleviate the pressure of his opponents squeeze on his leg.  Once he does this he gets his knee line cleared and proceeds to escape.  After he is free from danger he puts himself again into an attacking position.  This time he uses outside Ashi where Tom can now begin to initiate his own submissions.

Having a goal in mind is so important to escapes because this is where the comfort stems from, and from the comfort, the confidence is developed.  Tom know’s as soon as he is in a kneebar that he has to get his foot behind the crook of his opponents knee and clear his knee line.  The knowledge is what provides him with the comfort and the comfort provides him with the confidence.  He is always trying to make the most out of a bad situation and this is a philosophy that can not only be implemented in Grappling but in life as well.  We learn so many lessons from the mat.

Anyways guys, learn your escapes so that you can develop the confidence and comfort to be able to escape any position.  If you want to accelerate your growths on this subject check out Tom’s DVD on Submission Escapes.  It is one of our best selling products and for good reason.  This DVD is also available OnDemand so that you can have instant access from your computer, phone or tablet.  Check it out below.