Musings from the BJJ Gi #19, lesson 20; standing headlock defence & headlock escape (side mount), plus, Combatives Stripe 1!

This standing headlock defence is a kind of dynamic movement, where you essentially go from standing crouched over in the traditional headlock position, and you end up sitting and pulling them over you in a kind of twisting and falling motion, with the end position being modified mount. So from the standing headlock position, you reach around behind their back to grab a hold of their far side hip, and with your outer arm, you reach across the front to grab a hold of their far side knee. You take a set up step around so that your feet are completely side-on to theirs (like forming a T shape), you take another set up step so that your feet are now standing front-on to theirs, toes pointing towards toes. Now on the same side as your arm which is holding their hip, you straighten that leg so that your heel is on the ground and your toes are pointing up, it's worth re-stating the importance of this; that leg must remain straight, and not bend during this process. You then squat down on your other leg, and while doing so, pull on their hip, retracting your elbow on that pulling arm to your side as you both go down, then roll up onto your shoulder, and step over to modified mount. This movement can be kind of scary to apply at first, as you feel like you're going to pull them down on top of you, or have them awkardly land on your knee or something. But if you keep that leg straight, and pull on their hip, they miss your leg completely, and land on the ground right next to you, and the momentum of their fall kind of helps to pull you over onto modified mount. I've attached a photo of Ryron in the standing headlock defence set up position, where he's just starting to set up his stance/feet positioning.

I've covered the headlock escapes from side mount in good detail in previous posts, as this was the third time we'd done these techniques, but I feel like we really nailed all 3 variations this time; standard variation, super base variation, and punch block variation. The first couple of lessons doing a technique, you're kind of doing a crash course in the big movements and details, and then the subsequent repetitions are more about fine tuning little details to increase precision, and that's a nice feeling.

Last night, myself and my partner both recieved our first Combatives/white belt stripes, and it actually felt really good, better than either of us expected it to! Prior to the end of the lesson, when new stripes or belts are given out, my instructor approached me and asked me whether I wanted to recieve the white belt stripe or not, because I'm recorded on the database as a blue belt. He just wanted to check beforehand in case I felt embarrassed or something, but I reassured him that I was keen to go through the whole curriculum and process from the start again, and he understood and was totally cool with it.
Again, just to quickly re-cap my BJJ history, I recieved my first ever blue belt in 2004, didn't train for 10 years because my academy closed down, did Gracie garage training from late 2014-early 2018, attained my technical blue belt in late 2015, but hadn't trained Combatives since the end of 2015. So apart from the fact that in the meantime almost all of the Combatives techniques have evolved with new details for me to learn, it's also a perishable skill set, which had indeed perished, and I no longer felt that I could competently hold that rank. So I consciously de-moted myself in order to learn it all again properly, and so that with every grading I recieve, I won't second guess or doubt myself, I will know that I took the hardest and most thorough path possible to get to where I want to be.

But yeah, it felt awesome to be called out of the line against the wall, up to the instructor to have a stripe put on my belt, it felt very rewarding and made me feel happy and content, and I was also super happy and proud watching my partner go up and receive her first stripe before me, as she works incredibly hard on the mats and is improving in huge leaps and bounds. I could see how happy she was receiving her stripe, she well deserves it, and it's exciting seeing her become a BJJ weapon before my eyes! Wicked milestone,...and now,...on to Stripe 2!
Cheers,

• David.