Side Control and the Story of a Knife (diary entry)

One type of Side control (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

31.03.14

General Lesson – Mixed Martial Arts/Ground

Tonight's lesson was centred on ground grappling in MMA and the side control position. I recall when I had my first private lesson with world champion Brazilian jiu jitsuka, Braulio Estima, that side control (also known as side mount) was one of the most common positions beginners got stuck defending. We dissected the defence from two different variations on the side control position – with the arm behind the back of the head and in front of the head. In both instances we looked at developing muscle memory to react to the weight distribution of the attacker. Bridging is, of course, the fundamental starting movement. From here the defender, who has his arms in the correct bent bracing position blocking the attacker’s hip and under his chin, either seeks to regain the guard position or reverses the top position.

Taking the attacker’s perspective we trained the arm-triangle/pillow hold from the under head position and the Americana arm-lock from the in front of head position. We also covered movement in reaction to the defender’s movements.

Moving onto striking from these positions, we trained some progressive resistance up to full-on specific sparring.

Private Lesson – Self-Protection

We focused on edged weapon self-protection today. The lesson concentrated a lot on movement. We followed how the movement of edged weapons in attack can productively influence hand strike and other armed strikes. Throughout the lesson we routinely returned to defending against a knifeman. My clients explored instinctive evasive manoeuvring followed by hitting balance points. Universal body mechanics came into play again. This then moved onto control positioning, which can easily branch off into control and restraint. However, we did not pursue this line for the purposes of tonight’s lesson. Instead we went back to the attacker and looked counter-offensive armed responses.

We briefly went over the KEWAP (Knife and Edged Weapon Awareness Programme) soft skills areas on the different types of blade that are most likely to be used in an assault, the pen knife being the most common. Blades can be improved, adapted, made or cloaked for the purpose of an assault. We also covered the dangers of carrying a blade i.e. most people are stabbed by their own knife. Finally we discussed slashes versus stabs and which is most likely to result in a fatality.  

My process responding to blunt or edged weapon assault begins with drawing attention to the assaulter as soon as he is recognized, accessing an exit point as quickly as possible and, if the exit is not immediately available, to use an incidental weapon. After going through a simple sequence of slashing and stabbing movements, we trained the same motions using incidental weapons. We pressure-tested both unarmed responses and armed responses to edged weapon attacks.