Slick Back Control Escape
One of the toughest things to do in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is to escape back control. When you are caught in full back control with a seatbelt grip and hooks, you are essentially in the worst position in Jiu Jitsu. Because the attacker has full control of your upper and lower body, moving around to create the right escape can be very difficult. The best time to begin your back escape is always going to be the soonest you can.
Pritt Mihkelson describes his training as “functionalistic minimalism” – based on fundamental postures and movements that ever grappler needs to know.
The biggest struggle with back escapes even when they are effective is that they allow the attacker to get on top mount position. Being stuck in bottom mount is also an unfortunate situation that we would like to avoid if we are escaping from back control. Preferably when we are escaping back control, we should be aiming to trap at least one leg of the attacker so that we can end up in some sort of half guard.
Ideally, we would like to begin our back escape before the attacker gets both of their hooks in. Usually when someone is attacking the back, they set one hook in at a time. When we recognize that they set that first hook in, we should begin our escape and defense by getting very tight and preventing the second hook from coming in.
If you end up in a situation where the attacker has one hook in, you should always fall to the side that the hook is not placed on. This can be difficult however, because the attacker usually falls to the side that they have their hook on. In the following video, Jake Mackenzie illustrates how to escape back control when the attacker has one hook in and they fall to that side. See below:
One issue many grappler’s face, especially early on in their careers, is that while they are working on their back escape they often forget about protecting their neck. This is when you see chokes slapped on in a way that seems almost extremely preventable. Anytime you are working on a back escape you always want to be wary of where the attackers hands are. Although Jake doesn’t mention this specifically, he does mention that he gets a grip on the attackers choking arm.
Although you can continue this escape by going fully to half guard by shrimping more, I think stopping at deep half guard is a little bit better. Overall, deep half guard is a more superior position than regular half guard because you have better control over the top player’s balance. It is also much easier to sweep from deep half guard then it is from regular half card.
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