Guillotine defense

Tonight was a tough night, got submitted so many times, didn't get any submissions and ran out of gas quickly. Anyways, learnt a few things tonight about Guillotine defense.

Basic guillotine defense from standing

When your opponent attempts to get a guillotine on you when standing and they have their hands around your neck, with your arm closest to their body, throw it over their opposite shoulder as far as you can with the inside of your arm against their body. When they try to raise their hips and lock the choke in, your arm over their shoulder should raise you up and foil the choke. However, you obviously want to get out of this position as soon as possible.

As a follow on from this, if step around their body towards your arm around their shoulder, buckle their knee and with your other arm, pull their far leg up to take them down. This is likely to end up with you in side control and if they're trying to keep the guillotine, a good position to transition into one of a few moves.

From Guillotine side control
There are several transitions you can seek from being in a guillotine from side control. Generally someone trying to keep you in guillotine does not have much leverage and ability to close off the choke.

Arm bar
First way to deal with it is to walk your legs around to front control. They are likely to be on their side at this point and if you bring your leg around behind their shoulder, snag their arm and leave your other leg on the original side of their head, you can lean back and get the arm bar. Make sure to pinch your knees.

Kimura Lock v1
Second option is to walk around like before to front control. As you reach front control, pass their arm over your head with the arm that was lower on their body, grabbing the wrist. Put your knee on their arm closest to the floor to pin their shoulder to the floor. With your free hand, snake it under their arm that you are grabbing and grab your wrist in the Kimura lock. Rotate their arm towards their back, maintaining the 90 degree angle for the lock.

Kimura Lock v2 - Loosening guillotine
A third option is that if they are realising they can't get the Kimura lock and are starting to loosen it, you can slip their arm over your head with the arm that is lower on their body, snake your upper arm under their arm pit and throw your upper leg over their head to get a Kimura.

Shoulder crush - Loosening guillotine
Another option if they are starting to loosen their guillotine grip is to reach around their head with your upper arm like in side control. Withyour lower arm, reach it back and then bring it back around their back, trapping their attacking guillotine arm. From here, clasp both of your hands together in a gable grip. Shuffle your shoulder under their neck and tripod on your legs with your weight going into your shoulder and into their neck. Raise your other shoulder so your weight is going through your shoulder. Even if they have their hands in place and chin down, it can still be a pretty nasty submission and can crush their jaw. Our instructor called it the shoulder crush choke and it was a pretty nasty one.

Anyways, will try to keep updating regularly!

On Saturday we worked a couple of combinations and things in MMA. I haven't updated in a while...not sure why. I guess I've been pretty busy, things have been hectic and though there have been things learnt, I didn't really feel like writing about them. Anyways, will be trying to get back into it!

Guard combination – Arm bar to triangle choke to arm bar

From guard position, set up for an arm bar, if they pull their arm out, switch your leg onto the other side of their head and set up the triangle. If they post off your chest and look up at the ceiling, swing your leg around for an arm bar on the other arm. Both of your legs will be on the same side of their head to get the final arm bar.

A really good video breakdown of it.

Guard combination – Triangle to Kimura

If they try to defend the triangle by pushing their arm around the other side, switch the triangle with your legs to the opposite side in order to reach that arm and put on the Kimura lock.

Guard Guillotine

From Guard, reach up and over your opponent’s opposite shoulder like when reaching for an Omo Plata. Instead of grabbing over their arm, bring your tricep down back against your opponent’s neck. If the opponent sits back, use the arm on their neck to lift you up (so they are doing all the work). Create space between your chests, then bring the same arm’s forearm around their neck, keeping it tight. Creating the space is integral to ensuring that your forearm gets under their chin. Bring your other hand underneath the fist in a cup and saucer sort of gesture and tighten. Pull your legs and straighten them out with their head on the floor to tighten the guillotine. Another way to think about tightening this choke is to uppercut with the choking arm.

If they try to fight the choking arm, loop your other arm in under their neck and close like in a rear naked choke.

Mount combination – Side Mount, Kimura, cutting arm bar, Figure 4 and Head arm choke

From mount, swim your hand inside your opponents arm and put your hand on your opponents shoulder, leverage with your elbow so their arm moves away from their body. Squirrel their forearm so it’s behind you and around your body. Bring your knee up under their arm pit and hop up to side mount, catching their wrist and reaching underneath with the other arm to get the Kimura lock. Your thigh can be used to bend their arm or even get the Kimura. The following video is a pretty good breakdown and though isn’t exactly the same, is pretty close.

If the Kimura lock doesn’t work and they straighten their arm, slide it up to your neck and close the cutting arm bar. If that doesn’t work, pass it past your neck to your opposite hand and reach your other arm around to your wrist to get the Figure 4 lock. If the Figure 4 lock doesn’t work and they bring their arm across, lean down (your chest on their tricep) and close off a head arm choke.

Headlock Control combination – Kimura, cutting arm bar and Figure 4

Similar combos to the above except from headlock control. A huge factor to getting the lock is to bring your top thigh up as the bracing. If their arm is around your body, you can reach around and push it down and bring your knee up to get a Kimura lock. If it’s straight, you can push the arm down to get the cutting arm bar on your knee. If that doesn’t work and they raise their arm up, you can get the Figure 4 lock from behind their head.

Passing an Open Guard

One way to pass the guard is to under hook one of their legs and with the other arm, keep their other leg pinned down so they can’t complete a triangle choke. Stand up, then cross step over their pinned leg and you can go straight into knee ride or side control.

Key thing is to ensure that their leg is pinned down, or they will be able to lock down the triangle.

Some of this is off the top of my head from the other day...so yeah, they may not be 100% correct, but they should be pretty close.