BJJ Turtle Escape Move Of The Month For September

Why Turtle?

September 1st arrives and I find myself rolling with two very different individuals. The first is light, very agile, technical and good at surfing me. The second is heavy, strong and less technical but quite a handful to deal with. This caused me to pause for thought as during both rolls I found myself in turtle and working hard to get out. Time to look a bit deeper at my options. I wondered what options I have, why would I use them and when?

Current Approach To Turtle

I tend to work on the basis that if I can defend the position long enough, I can escape it and get to a better position. There is an obvious flaw here for competition if I am down on points. My approach to staying safe is simple, tuck my chin in and keep my arms and legs tight. Giving any space allows my opponent an opportunity. I simply don’t give space. With that basic aspect covered we now get to how to escape.

Turtle Escape To Full Guard

This is the escape that I use most from the turtle. It suits my basic game style with nothing fancy or clever. It is just me getting back to a secure position, just getting myself back to the basic closed guard. I pondered how to explain this, then decided a video is far easier.

Turtle Escape By Standing Up

This for me was one of those “What happened?” moments when I was on top in turtle and my partner appeared to just stand up. I had to investigate further. Guess what? It’s not rocket science, he really did just stand up, the clever bit was using me as the support to do so. Check out how in this video, you never know you might like it as well.

But How Do I End Up In Turtle?

As always the last thing I did was consider how I come to be in turtle. Well the answer was that it really tends to start way back with me escaping an attempt by my opponent to get mount, which puts me on my side and them looking to take my back. Fear not there isn’t a long description coming up as this video really goes back to the point in question. Better still the video follows on from there with various points about turtle and the escape.

There we are that is enough for me to be working on through September. I hope you enjoyed it and it works for you.

Janners (The Old Choke Dealer).