Grappling Concepts, Lesson 2 Making Yourself Heavier Today's lesson will work together with with last week's topic very well. As you may recall, in Lesson 1 we covered how to choke the chest. The takehome message for Lesson 1 was putting your weight on their diaphragm and chest, compressing the lungs and the diaphragm from the front and the back. The thing is, you DO need weight. If you took a 6 year old boy and taught him exactly how to pin you, you probably wouldn t feel that bad because there s just not enough weight there in the first place. But most of us are a little heavier than a 6 year old boy, and today we re going to look at how to use whatever weight you do have and make it feel like two fully grown men standing on your opponent s chest. SIDE MOUNT: I'll start with Justin in a typical Side Control or Side Mount position. There are different grips but often the guy on top will be on his knees with an arm under the head and clasping his hands together. Maybe there'll be some pressure on his head with his shoulder. So if you're on top, you need to ask where is my weight right now? In this example, there s a bit of weight on his chest, but I'm also supporting my weight on: my left elbow my left hand/wrist my right elbow my right hand/wrist my left knee my left foot my right knee my right foot - PAGE 1 -
This means that my weight is spread out over 8 or 9 places. Sure there is some weight on him, but it s spread out. How do you fix this? If I frame the question properly, then the answer should be pretty obvious. I need to take my weight off the floor and put it on to him! The first thing that's making me lighter is the weight I'm supporting on my hands, wrists and elbows. So to fix that I lift my hands and elbows ever so slightly off the floor. If Justin starts talking (e.g. reciting the alphabet), you can hear his voice change slightly the second that I lift my hands and elbows off the floor. I m NOT really squeezing him. You could squeeze him, of course, but what I m trying to illustrate is that by taking weight off the floor your weight has to go somewhere, and that somewhere is onto him. In the above picture you can see how my elbows are a little bit off of the ground. My hands and wrists are also barely touching the mat, further increasing the weight borne by my partner, but that's pretty subtle. It's much more obvious in the online video. - PAGE 2 -
Of course, most of my weight is actually resting on my legs, in this case the knees and the balls of my feet. In other positions the actual points of contact with the ground will be the instep and shin, or some people will lie flat. Obviously I can t lift my legs completely off the floor to put more weight on him. But what I can do to put maximum weight onto him is to get on the balls of my feet and get my knees off of the ground. Note that in this example I don t have my knees or hips on the ground. We started in a 'normal' Side Mount position with the knees, elbows, feet and hands on the floor. I then lifted my hands, elbows, and knees off of the floor, so it's just my feet resting on the ground, and he's feeling the weight. If he's speaking then you can hear some strain in his voice. The only parts of my body that are being supported are my chest and the balls of my feet. Of course in this position (with my feet stuck way out here) any good grappler will just turn into me and put me into the guard or half guard. That means that I do need to block his hips! So now we'll cover two of the most popular ways to do just that. - PAGE 3 -
1: Check the Hips with Your Hand. One way to block his hips when you're putting your legs out and back is to put your hand on the floor just next to his hip. It should just be there to check his hip, and not really to bear much of your weight, because that takes weight off him. 2: Block the Hips with Your Knee: Alternatively you can bring your knee in. This is based on the honor system: only you know how much weight is on that knee. I can be in position and have a lot of weight on that knee, or I can be lifting it up off the ground. Nobody else looking would be able to tell, but he ll be able to feel it, and you ll know what s going on. Lift the knee just enough so that you feel you could slide a piece of paper underneath it Knee down Knee up (over exaggerated) - PAGE 4 -
There are many variations of side mount, but the same principles apply to all of them. If you start with a knee on the ground bearing 50 lbs of weight, and you lift it up so it's only bearing 5 lbs, then the weight has to go somewhere. Most of the time that 'somewhere' will be ONTO your opponent. Here is a very simple SIDE MOUNT DRILL that will help make the point that you don t want any weight on the floor. To do this drill, my partner lies down flat. He's going to move, but he's not going to be technical about this. He s not going to try to bridge you off very hard, and he s not going to try to put you back into the guard. His job is to move left, right, roll into you a bit, roll away from you a bit and he might do a little bit of bridging. I m going to put my hands behind my back and go chest to chest. I'll be on the balls of my feet and have both feet back. He just moves, and I follow him. If he turns one way, I can switch over to the other side. The ONLY places my weight rests is on him and on the balls of my feet. - PAGE 5 -
Now let s take a look at some of the other positions that we covered last week that are good pressure positions. KUZURE KESA GATAME In Kuzure Kesa Gatame my legs are out and my hips are a little bit away from his body (I don t want to be too far over him, or he s going to roll me over his body). Now the subtleties: for my right arm that is going under his far armpit, most people keep their forearm and elbows on the ground. But if I lift my right forearm and elbow off the ground ever so slightly, then I ve just increased the weight that's pinning him down. But the most important place where your weight gets transferred into the ground instead of him is via your butt or your legs. So to put maximum weight onto your opponent from Kuzure Kesa Gatame you want to have the feeling that you're lifting your butt off the floor. - PAGE 6 -
KESA GATAME (SCARF HOLD) The same principle of lifting your hips slightly up to increase your weight applies to Kesa Gatame (whichever variation of Kesa Gatame you are using). You don t want your butt on the floor. You want it ever so slightly lifted up. Somebody else watching won t be able to notice it, but both my opponent and I know what's going on, because he can feel the weight increase. KNEE MOUNT Now we'll look at how to make the Knee Mount heavier this is a classic pressure position that we touched on last week. - PAGE 7 -
Let's go through some of the common errors that greatly reduce the effectiveness of the Knee Mount. If you watch beginners use this position, they ll have half of their weight on the knee, the other half on the outrigger leg. This is not good. What I want is about 95% of my weight on my knee, and about 5 % on outrigger foot. In the photo below I want my right knee to be heavy, and my left foot to 'float.' Heavy on my right knee! Very light on my left foot! The reason that I want only 5 % of the weight on my foot is 1. If I decrease the amount of weight on my left outrigger foot then I increase the weight that's going onto him, through my right knee. 2. If my left outrigger foot is 'floating' then it s very easy to move that foot around and adjust to his movements and escape attempts. So that addresses the distribution of weight between your left and right legs. But there's another, somewhat less obvious, factor that could be reducing the weight you put onto your opponent. - PAGE 8 -
Let's consider the foot that's close to his body (the foot of the leg that's also putting the knee onto the belly). In the first picture, the ball of my left foot is planted on the ground and has a lot of weight going through it. Also if the foot is that far away from him then he can use all sorts of counters like hooking underneath it, pulling it up, and beginning to escape. But why have any weight on that foot? That s why I like curling the toes around his butt. This way there's hardly any weight going from my foot to the ground, and it's all on his belly via the knee. If I wrap my toes and instep around his butt like in the picture above then it kills the space. If he tries to hook under the foot in this position it's not going to be easy for him, and meanwhile, it ll give me the time I need to set up my attacks on his upper body. - PAGE 9 -
SO that s the basic weight distribution with the knee mount. Here's a good KNEE MOUNT DRILL - it s a bit harder then the side mount drill. I m going to be in knee mount. Justin moves around, trying at 50% to escape. Neither of us can use our hands: I can t use my hands to stabilize or to grab him, and he can t use his hands to push my knee off. So in the drill I have to follow him and track him and do my best to stay in knee mount. In mid-drill I can spin over him, switch knees, and work my kneemount on other side too. If I fall off, then my partner gets one point and we go back to the Knee Mount again. At the end of the round, we switch and then he makes me suffer under his Knee Mount for the round. SO that s 2/3rds of making yourself heavier- not squandering your weight by putting it on the ground. But there is another way that you can increase the amount of pounds and pressure that is driving down onto your opponent you can pull your weight down into him. - PAGE 10 -
In the classic Knee Mount position with the gi we often grab deep into the collar and hold onto the sleeve. I have the knee on his belly or diaphragm which hurts, but as if I pull him up towards me then it really increases the pressure! If putting pressure onto him then I pull as hard as I can without burning out my arms or my back. Most jiu-jitsu guys can do pull-ups or even hold the pull-up position for quite a while. And pulling yourself up is a lot like folding your opponent up into a pretzel by pulling him towards you. - PAGE 11 -
In the Knee Mount with the gi you can pull him towards you with a variety of grips: near collar and near sleeve, or the near collar and far knee, it's all the same. Please note that I m not only pulling with my arms, but I m also using my back, kind of like a dead lift motion. You can also use a pulling motion to make the Knee Mount heavier in no gi. Hook your arms under is farside arm and under his head and then link your hands together. This variation isn't usually quite as powerful because you re bent over (imagine trying to lift something when you re bent over as opposed to when you re postured upright). But even though you're hunched over you can definitely put more weight on him using this grip in no gi - PAGE 12 -
Let s go through some of the other positions and see where the pulling makes life suck for your opponent! SIDE MOUNT If I have decent muscular endurance, I can squeeze and lift my opponent from Side Mount too. My next step would be to combine lifting my elbows off the ground AND squeezing him a bit, thus really putting the hurt onto him. Here's one more trick you can use to make your Side Mount heavier IF you're allowed to grab his pants or his shorts. Remember that the best way to put weight on him is to have your feet out in a plank position, BUT if you do this you have to block his hips to prevent him from reguarding? Well if I grab the material on his pants from under his leg (right over the butt, actually) then it not only blocks his hips, but it also gives me a handle to pull with, which makes me just a little bit heavier on him! - PAGE 13 -
S-MOUNT: Let's look at S Mount again and look at my points of contact with the floor. In this case I've got my weight resting on his body, on both my feet, and also on my left knee. So let's look at three ways that I can make my S Mount much, much heavier and maybe force him to push me away and give me his arm so I can attack it with an armlock! S Mount with knee off ground (exaggerated) and pulling up on head In the picture above I've changed things. The first thing is subtle. I'm placing LESS WEIGHT ON MY FEET, which means I m getting heavier on his body. - PAGE 14 -
Secondly, my knee is also off the ground it's exaggerated in the picture above of course, but it's hard to show this feeling of unweighting your leg in a picture. Thirdly, I am pulling on his upper body, pulling him up and myself down. I'm doing this by hooking under his head and grabbing my own ankle. It s kind of a neck crank but there s definitely a pulling component. Summary The exact details of hand placement isn t the primary thing today. What is important is the concept of making yourself heavier by taking the weight off the floor, and making yourself heavier by pulling up on your opponent slightly. That s really all that you can do to make yourself heavier (other than having somebody else jump on top of you and double your weight). Combine increased weight with optimal weight placement (Lesson 1) and then you'll really feel crushingly heavy! Incidentally, this is another reason why you shouldn't hold your opponent tight if you re trapped on the bottom (I see this mistake all the time). Holding on and pulling down from the bottom, a common mistake! - PAGE 15 -
To escape you want to make space and so by pulling him, you're not making space. Also and this is central to what we're talking about today - by pulling him in I m helping make him heavier. If I'm pulling him in when he's on top AND he uses all the tricks that I've been teaching you today, then things really start going badly for me quickly! There's only a couple of reasons to lock onto someone when they're above you like this. Maybe it's because you're doing a specialized escape which relies on locking your bodies together. Or you're in a street fight or MMA situation where he s going to hit you if he gets room. If you don t want him to drop forearms into your face: OK, hold him tight for a while, get your bearings, and THEN make space to escape! In these two special cases then maybe there could be an argument for temporarily holding on to him. But don't develop this habit and do it just as a matter of course. To escape you want to MAKE SPACE and get his weight OFF of you. Don't make him heavier when he's on top. Get to the top and then crush him like a bug using the principles and concepts from today's lesson. Lesson 3 Preview: Next week we'll tackle a concept that has special relevance when you're attacking with SUBMISSIONS! This simple concept can speed up your reaction time and make you seem a lot faster than you actually are. Also keep your eyes peeled for a special unadvertised bonus video in next week's lesson! See you then! Stephan Kesting www.grapplearts.tv - PAGE 16 -