Category: BJJ Drills

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How To Do The Anchor and Base Mount Control Technique

Maintaining the mount in BJJ is an important skill to have. There isn’t much in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu that’s more frustrating than fighting with your opponent, knocking them back, passing their guard, passing their half guard, maintaining side control, and finally passing to mount only to have them use one of the many mount escapes to roll you onto your back or reclaim their guard. 

The mount escape game in BJJ has so many options that it’s almost as important to know how to maintain your mount when your opponent is desperately trying to escape. Having good mount retention allows you to stay mounted long enough to attempt one of the many submissions from mount.

The mount anchor and base drill will teach you essential mount retention techniques.

Start: Mount with arms posted over opponent’s shoulders to both sides of their head

Step 1: Bring your feet together underneath opponent’s knees

Step 2: Drive your hips into opponent’s hips and stomach

Step 3: When opponent pushes you to one side, that side’s knee and hand both splay out as the other side foot wraps around their leg and your arm scoops their head as the anchor

End: Mount

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How To Do A Berimbolo Sweep in BJJ

The berimbolo sweep is a complicated sweep that provides a way to take an opponent’s back from a relatively neutral position of an open guard, a position many BJJ practitioners find themselves in without many options beyond playing a guard game that they are skilled at. This video breaks down the berimbolo sweep, which is a powerful option to take the back from an open guard in BJJ.

Plus you get to go inverted and look like a ninja, which is awesome.

Stephan Kesting from GrappleArts also shows two great drills to train your body to do the berimbolo sweep. Even if you aren’t dead set on learning the berimbolo, these drills are a worthwhile addition to your drilling for BJJ (and as we all know, you have to drill to win!)

Start: Seated, facing a seated opponent (after guard pull or during scramble)

Step 1: Get De La Riva hook (wind foot around outside of opponent’s shin and inside their thigh) with one leg

Step 2: Grip opponent’s trapped ankle or pant leg with the same-side hand as your hook

Step 3: Grip their belt with your other-side hand at the hip with the De La Riva hook

Step 4: Pull your head towards opponent’s hip on side of hook, inverting and rolling onto your shoulders

Step 5: Step your free foot onto opponent’s belly

Step 6: Switch ankle grip to opponent’s free leg

Step 7: Use ankle grip and De La Riva to spin opponent over, completing your roll and sweeping them onto their side with their back to you

Step 8: Drive knee into opponent’s trapped knee to prevent them from turning into you

Step 9: Climb or scramble onto opponent’s back

Finish: Back control

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BJJ Drill: Armbar, Triangle, Omoplata Drill from Closed Guard

Drilling BJJ is one of the most essential ingredients to getting fast and good at Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. While it’s obvious that drilling is essential to improving your BJJ game, how you should drill is not as obvious. Shrimping across the mat at the start of class will help train that movement, and repeating techniques until you have the movements memorized is an excellent way to make muscle memory, but there are other drills that may prove to be equally useful to your BJJ game.

This BJJ flow drill from MMA Leach is a great example of a drill that will help your BJJ game rise to the next level. This drill for the closed guard uses three essential BJJ closed guard techniques: the armbar from closed guard, the triangle from closed guard, and the omoplata from closed guard. This drill will help you to quickly react when your opponent defends your closed guard attack and chain together submissions to develop a comfortable, dangerous closed guard game.