Bridge, Snake & Roll (diary entry)

30.05.2022 My couple client's second course on submission grappling/ground fighting continued into its fourth hour on Monday night (the first course having been undertaken via live streaming at the beginning of the pandemic lockdown). This time we looked at escapes from underneath pins. Although there are clearly nuances and numerous ever-evolving counters to pins, bridging and snaking form principle movements to escape and reposition. The respositioning aspect, as always, is of paramount importance. We cannot simply escape. At best this creates negative play where the person on top just keeps chasing the same pin, at worst the person on the bottom can find themselves in a trap. After a warm-up of sport specific and muscle activation exercises, we revised the pin transition drills before moving onto basic escapes. We covered side control, side control with a headlock, judo scarfhold and underhook scarfhold. I used two basic options to defend from each of these pins.All these defences start with some form of bridging to break the opponent's posture. Bridging involves getting the fighter's hips under the opponent's hips and typical counters directly off this defence are reversals where you roll the opponent over. Snaking is used when an opponent has blocked well with their hips and the fighter looks to reposition by encircling their legs in some way such as full guard, half-guard or even, as with defending against a scarfhold, directly into a submission. https://clubbchimera.com/services/