Ive only been doing BJJ for about a month now. When we roll, we start from our knees (not sure if there is a name for this). Sometimes the blue belts start from combat base. My question is, what is the best way to start rolling when your on your knees? Clinch and lock up? Grab a lapel? Sleeve? Arm?
for me it depends on the guy I am rolling with. If he's aggressive I'm gonna be soft and let him gas if I can. If he's an ex wrestler he will most likely be sticking his big ol' head out there so I'm after his neck...I'll try to coax him into a shot and try to snap into a guillotine. If it's an experinced BJJ guy I just go ahead and start loosening up my tapping hand. IMHO - as soon as you settle into a predictable strategy you become more easily defeatable. I am always searching for patterns in my opponents. Don't rely on any one strategy from any position.
There's not one answer to this. One suggestion that my teacher gave was to try to control two lapels, or a lapel and a sleeve, and take guard. You could either pull the other guy into you, or, alternatively, throw your legs out and push your hips forward into him. In the former he moves toward you. In the latter, you move toward him. The end result is the same: guard position. Unless of course he counters! Ya, that!
If i know they are bigger/stronger and of equal or better technique than me i'll usually drag them into my guard. Or, if their centre of balance is quite high ill shoot for the hips and sometimes get side mount from it. If they are someone who relies on strength and size and not much technique, sometimes i try and nip round under their arm and take their back. I've been quite successful with this and have worked a submission attempt into it.
Stay loose, don't let them control your arms if they grab one break the grip. Try to impose your weight on them, grab the lapel and become dead weight for them, let them hold you up and gas themselves doing it. One tactic for working from the knees is to push and pull different areas to take them down (e.g. pull the left arm and push the right hip).
I'm not the biggest fan of too much jockying for position or submission when both are on the knees; when you do actually start your match from the feet and incorporate takedowns, I suspect you'll find you don't usually enter a situation with both fighters on their knees at once during the match. It annoys me quite a lot when we're doing two or three minute rounds rotating partners and someone wants to play grabby hands instead of engaging with me and progressing into an actual position, it makes me feel like I'm wasting my time. When that happens I tend to turn my back on the person, turtle, and let them climb on so we can at least get some training started. There are valid reasons to start some or a lot of your rounds on the ground, but since kneeling "takedowns" don't seem to transfer to actual takedown skill, why not just pick positions and start there?
A furthermore... Or you can go for a mount by propping a leg and rolling the other guy to the side. The problem is that you have to be fast, strong and flexible.
I agree completely with all of that. A lot of BJJ schools don't bother working takedowns much and just start from the knees the majority of the time. I can understand why maybe they dont want to start standing up (injuries, space etc.) but that doesn't explain why you cant start in guard, side mount etc, which is why i dont go for the games of old 'grabby hands' too. Thankfully my bjj teacher at the moment usually starts in set positions. In any case, one piece of advice i can give is if the guy is a lot bigger than you dont take him head on and try and 'rassle'. TWICE when i first started i seperated my shoulder (on seperate occasions) by being slammed into the ground trying to take on people a lot bigger than me, and one was some sort of wrestling competitor too. Never again.
We often start rolling from our knee's as well. It sure saves lots of problems with disloacted shoulders and bumped heads. Starting from the knee's allows you to focus on ground work and not on having to worry about taking the guy down from standing. At any rate.. like many of the others have pointed out.. the key is remaining relaxed and flexible. Don't try to get in there and muscle your way through it. If you watch you will find many higher level belts are very much like noodles when they approach you or when you shoot in... they are not wasting energy on being tense or trying to overpower you. Obviously they have good technique - but just the sheer fact that being tense and trying to out muscle your opponent is a good way to gas and create an opening for your opponent. There are any number of strategies you can use depending on your opponent. Get a sleeve, shoot in for an ankle, bring their head down repeatedly enough to annoy them into making a mistake... it's pretty much anything goes. Granted at this point I still spend copious amounts of time tapping... And believe it or not this is a good thing... it means you're still coming to understand the dynamics of body position and technique. If no one ever slapped an RNC or an arm-bar on you... you're subsequent technique of throwing them on people yourself would suck. Takes getting a good technqiue slapped on you to know how to slap a good technique on someone else.
Like I said, there are good reasons to not always start from your feet. It could be a lack of space, it could be very inexperienced people who could hurt themselves, it could simply be the desire to focus at the moment mainly on groundwork. But starting in the guard, mount, sidemount, back, or any other position you actually see in real grappling matches instead of on the knees solves all those problems equally well.
Not really, if you are drilling escapes or have fighters with very disproportionate size or skill levels it's fine, but for somewhat evenly matched fighters you are now giving someone the advantage. Starting from the knees gives them a neutral start. Plus it gives you a chance to work on some elements of the stand up game and teaches you how to deal with people that are trying to get up like you would see in MMA competitions.
I really only have a few techniques from here, but I try to be deceptive in doing it. A simple one is to grab their sleeve, say you grab their right sleeve with your left arm... next, you need to grab the same side of their gi pants with your other hand at their knee, pull forward & drive.... the way I set this up is grab the sleeve, then in making out as if I am looking for something else while I leave my hand near my knee.. then when I can grab their gi pants at the knee, I grab it quickly and go from there. Grabbing their lapel with your right hand on their right hand side (cross-lapel grip), point your knees to your left... as they come forward thinking they can pass your guard, pull down on their lapel and you should be able to start attacking them from turtle.. if they don't go that way, I like to go to guard/half-guard. There's the good old double and single leg as well which you can shoot in from on your knees. Underhooking one of their arms and grabbing their belt, getting your weight out to the side and then grabbing their fair knee/shin and driving them back - might have to take their posting arm out here.
