Examining Side Control Pressure from Both Players

Side Control top Pressure

• Goals:
  • Eliminate their ability to obtain/re-obtain effective frames
    • Unholy Trinity
    • Turning their knees away
    • Your low knee tight to their near hip to prevent leg frame recovery
    • Your high knee in armpit to isolate their near arm
      • This is their easiest frame to recover, so it needs attention
  • Sink your body weight into their body to drain their cardio energy while you recover your cardio energy 
  • Transition to Mount, BackControl, or Submission

• The Unholy Trinity of Top Side
  • The Gold standard of top side control. 
  • More difficult to get to, but its the best to crush them into the floor
  • Consists of:
    • Crossface into their jaw: 
      • Easiest part to achieve, bare minimum for pinning positions
      • GOAL: to break posture by forcing them to look away. 
        • Bench press PRs are not achieved in a posture of looking all the way sideways
    • Underhook: 
      • Not as easy to get, but very much worth it
      • GOAL: create a connection to enhance top pressure that keeps their far shoulder tight to the floor

• Head/Chest “lower” than the bottom player’s chest: 
  • Most difficult to obtain, but is most dominant.(They’re gonna frame on your throat A LOT)
  • Completely shutdown their defensive arm framing opportunities
  • GOAL: Strongly enhances your ability to prevent their head movement that will be required for them to execute bridging that is capable of generating displacing torque effective enough for them to recover their leg frames.

Side Control escape

• Goals:
  • Establish as many frames on inside position as possible
  • Push with those frames, generate bridging TORQUE, and move hips away to create space between your chest and their chest
  • Move into that space with even more frames (typically legs)
  • Transition to a closed guard position
    • Don’t get greedy. Don’t try to scramble to top. If you can’t get to closed guard, accept and play from the first guard that you end up in that you can be offensive from
      • This is why you need at least ONE good technique from each position. Eventually when you have more than one technique from each spot, it’s magic for you!
• Recovering your near side arm frame is the first step
• Bridging to generate torque
  • GOAL: Get their Head and hips on the SAME side of your heart/bellyButton center line 
  • Angle of your hips when you bridge into them: Walk tight to them so you immediately and totally push into them, not waste energy first closing space to impact them
  • Asymmetrical bridging supports generating torque and the follow-up hip escape

• Effective Dynamic Framing Kills the Unholy Trinity
  • Crossface into their jaw: 
    • Framing creates separation from their shoulder allowing you to rotate your head which means you can move your head, which is a prerequisite for effective torque bridging
  • Underhook:  
    • Framing keeps your shoulder off the floor, which is a pre-condition for effective torque bridging into someone’s chest
  • Head/Chest “lower” than the bottom player’s chest: 
    • The less pressure you have going into your chest, the more energy you are able to commit into displacing them since you don’t have to expend that energy to just overcome pressure to get yourself off of the floor.