Essential Concepts of Escaping Side Control

Have you ever been stuck under someone in side control? It sucks, a lot especially if that person is like me and is a high calorie grappler. Having the proper tools to get out from under someone is an essential part of jiu-jitsu because no one wants to spend 6 minutes pinned under someone slowly losing hope that they will get another full breath.

First things first is your body positioning, if you are flat on your back then it is going to be much harder to escape than not. I like to utilize a concept I call, Step out, Turn, Step out. When I am flat on my back, I will take my leg on the opposite side from my partner and step my foot slightly wider. From here I will lift my hips and turn up to my side. Then to prevent myself from getting immediately turned back to being flat on my back. I step my far leg out to create a post almost like a kick stand on a bike. With this post, I use it to keep my hips slightly elevated off the mat to make it easier to be more mobile.

Then you might ask, “What do I do with my hands???” those you want to keep near your body in order to create frames. It is important to not try to bench press your partner off of you. This is a common reaction for newer grapplers because they hear “create space” and think pushing their partner away is a good solution for that. However bench pressing your partner off of you will usually result in them taking and maybe keeping one of your arms.

What we want to do instead is do our best imitation of a T-rex and keep our elbows tucked right in near our sides. We then use our forearms to create a platform for us to rest our opponent’s weight upon. This is a great way to prevent yourself from being crushed and for dealing with grapplers that are great at putting pressure on their opponents. When I teach this I like to get a partner to help me and then slowly have additional people lay on their back to increase the weight. It is a fun trick to demonstrate the effectiveness of frames.

So now that we are on our side and have our frames established, we don’t just want to sit there we want to move. There are essentially two ways you can go to get out of side control from here. You can move towards your opponent, generally to establish some type of guard. Or you can move away from your opponent to create additional space and either wrestle up or move into a different position. Yes, I know there are different sweeps and other options but for this article we are focusing specifically on escaping.

When I move into my opponent’s I like to work to establish control of their hips early before working back to any form of guard, I like to control where and how they can move their hips to make my life easier. From our step out, turn, step out position with our frames, I like to slide my knee in like I am trying to put it in their jeans pocket at a downward angle towards the mat. This allows me to create a vertical frame and take pressure off of my arms allowing me to become more mobile.

When I am using an escape where I move away from my opponent, I tend to move my upper body first, shifting my shoulders back and creating more space between myself and my opponent. By doing this I force my opponent to re-establish their side control position and they have to move to do so. This creates a time of disconnection from your opponent, this is when you work to escape. I personally prefer to use this as time to turn to my knees and try to take my opponent’s back.

Overall escaping side control can be very difficult, but using this method I have had a lot of success escaping from people with very good top pressure Jiu-jitsu. Like anything in Jiu-jitsu it is not flawless but it is a solid start to working to escape from side control.