BaffledExperts by Adam Norman

20: Being mounted

Yes, there are a lot of sexy names in martial arts. The full mount is about the sexiest. So what? We're grown men. We put our sweaty crotches in one another's faces. I'm OK with that.

Despite the name, there is nothing nice about the full mount. Tate shiho gatame is a very dangerous position for the fighter on the bottom and a very strong position for the person on top. In a fight, the top fighter can punch and throw elbows down. The person on the bottom can do very little. Worse, the top fighter is in a wonderful position to choke or submit the person below.

If you get caught in a full mount, there are two things you must not do. Do not:

1. Straighten your arms in an effort to push your opponent off
2. Roll over to your stomach to defend yourself

Either of these makes a bad position much, much worse. If you straighten your arm, tori will break it. If you roll over, he will choke you.

There is only one way out of this very bad position: get tori close. Buck him, hug him, and squeeze your face into him. Pull him down on top of you. From there, you can try to escape.

The buck
To escape, you need to understand how your opponent is going to defend himself. Every time you try to roll him off you, he is going to brace by putting an arm or a leg out. Ideally, then, you should trap both his arm and his leg on the same side. This is quite simple to do: wrap his arm in yours, and put your foot outside his.

If you can trap his arm and leg, buck your hips in the air and try to push your opponent over your shoulder. As he goes over, roll with him and end up in his guard.

The shrimp
I find it quite easy to trap an opponent’s arm, but, because I am not very flexible, I find it hard to trap a leg. There is still an easy way to string together a combination that is very successful.

Ensure you trap his left arm with your left arm, but worry less about his leg. Then buck, as above. Maybe even angle a bit more to the side to encourage your opponent to stick his leg out. When he does so, he creates a bit of space for you to shrimp into.

If you attempt to roll him to his left side, he will put his left leg out to prevent being toppled.

With your flat left foot, push your butt out toward your left shoulder, shrimping. Put your hand or elbow on his leg for extra leverage. Then slip your right knee up and into the space you’ve created, pulling your foot behind. You can then either block your opponent with your knee in an open half guard, or shrimp again, on your left shoulder, and swing your knee and foot in, to bring him back into full guard.

I know this seems impossibly hard and extremely unlikely—it sounds like one of those ’just stand there while I pierce your ear and pull off your testicles’ kind of moves from Steven Seagal. It’s not, it’s not, and it’s not, respectively. I have found this move to be very effective—and, as good moves do, it snowballs, so a small error on your opponent’s side makes him less and less likely to recover as the fight moves forward in your favour.

Principle 13: Make some space

It is a funny fact of musculature that it is quite difficult to lift things that lie very close to us. Try it: do a push up. If you have any sense, you won’t go all the way to the ground—it's too hard to get back up again. Whether you are being held in kesa gatame, tate shiho gatame, or yoko gatame, the principle is the same: you need to put some space between you and your opponent in order to get some space to apply your strength. Making some space also gives you somewhere to put your shoulder, knee or hand—and, of course, pushes your opponent into his danger zone.