Consider this the first edition of Aesopian’s Tournament Tested Techniques. I’m starting off the series with the north-south escape that saved my bacon in the final match of the light weight blue belt division.
This move takes some flexibility in your back and hips, and long legs certainly help. I don’t recommend it as your main escape from north-south, but it’s well worth knowing so you can use it when the situation calls for it.
I am in the unfortunate situation of being stuck under north-south. I need to make sure he doesn’t hug my arms, or I won’t be able to push on his hips, and worse, I’m more vulnerable to kimuras.
Reach out and grab his hips with both hands. Shove him away, trying to lift his hips and scoot your chest down.
At the same time, stretch your legs and plant your feet…
...and drag yourself out some. Use the line between the mats as a reference to see how I’ve escaped my hips out.
This is where the reverse shrimping you never do and I get scoffed at for drilling comes in handy.
Shoving their hips and escaping yours down should put your head under their chest. My arms and neck are extremely exposed so I need to be quick with the escape.
When he sprawls to try to stop all of the wiggling I’ve been doing, I lock my arms out and shove his hips as high as I can.
I quickly start a backwards somersault motion, throwing my legs up on his back.
I get the first hook in and use it to pry myself out the rest of the way.
This is where a flexible back and long legs make themselves valuable. They will likely try to keep your upper body down and smash you from here.
To minimize the stress on your back and neck, roll over one shoulder.
Just keep digging your hooks in and using them to pull yourself on to their back. “Walk” on your shoulders and shake your upper body out until you’re free.
Free your self completely and enjoy your new position on their back.
You said, in part: “To minimize the stress on your back and neck, roll over one shoulder.” Does it matter which shoulder, based on which leg hook you get in first?
And in the picture just above that caption, why doesn’t blue just push you back down (push forward)? (Yeah, I’ll have to try it, once we get open mat time so I can corner a practice partner….)
They will do that, and it will stop the escape sometimes, but once I’ve got a hook in I can almost always pull myself out. The counter to this escape is to drive in, drop your hips and flatten their hips out.
nice move
A hidden special feature of this technique is that inserting the first hook often off-balances the opponent enough to roll him over onto his side a bit, making it easier to insert the other hook and climb up the back.
If you’re having trouble jumping all the way to the back with hooks in-
be it from lack of flexibility, short legs, whatever-think about hooking your first leg to go over into the back of your opponent’s belt, then sinking your hooks from there.Much like the original escape, it’s not your best option, but it’s there and can be effective.
I guess I just learned how to strike through words.
I’ve actually gotten this sortof via the method GB mentions. I have had the most success in setting this up by first doing the leg pendulum swingy thing and then going to the single hook.
Didn’t JohnnyS post this awhile back on Bullshido?
Johnny showed a similar escape a long time ago but the photos are no longer online. I was trying to find it when I was putting up his other tutorials.
That’s what I figured. As I recall it was generally scoffed at when first posted. I too thought “no way in hell is that going to work for me”. I remember appreciating the irony when I first got it.
In response to your opponent pushing you back down, depending on their hip placement and head position you can sometimes somersault them over you and take their back similar to how Viera takes people’s back while they’re turtled.
The sometimes should really be “once in a very rare while”. Quite amusing to get though.