Key Takeaways
- A four-part No-Gi instructional outlining Craig Jones’ favorite positional escapes.
- Features side control, mount, and back mount escapes and defenses.
- Covers the basic principles that make Craig Jones so difficult to hold down and submit.
- BJJ World Expert Rating: 8.5 out of 10.
EDGING YOURSELF OUT OF DANGER CRAIG JONES DVD GET HERE
How do you best escape mount? How about side control? Is there a way to get out of back control? These are some of the most common questions I hear. Even when the subject is control from these positions, escapes come up, without exceptions.
The Edging Yourself Out of Danger Craig Jones DVD covers all three positions from the perspective of the escapee, but without teaching you step-by-step escapes that are bound to fail. Instead, Craig helps you understand how to kill the good positions before you pick one of the many ways out of the bad ones.
BJJ Defense vs. Escapes
I’ve lost count of the times I’ve covered this particular debate on the site, but from what I am seeing in my academy and most matches in pro grappling circuits, this warrants a lot more repetition. So here it goes.
Do not mix up defending and escaping in BJJ. Escaping cannot happen effectively without defending. You can’t just get out of mount or back – if you can do it then you’re either very strong compared to your opponent or you’re a sandbagger.
What you need to focus on when caught in a position that costs you points is not to give away more points or submission by panicking. That means tidying up the space you have available and killing all offensive options your opponent has. That’s defense.
Once that’s in place, you can start thinking about getting out. Plenty of opportunities arise from annoying people with your defense, such as setting up your deliberate and favorite ways out or capitalizing on the top person’s mistakes born out of frustration.
The Edging Yourself Out of Danger Craig Jones DVD covers both these aspects – after all, Craig is the ultimate BJJ troll! It turns out, trolling is a great way to get out of tight spots if you can use it wisely.
The Nuttiest Person in BJJ – Craig Jones
There is not much about Craig Jones that people don’t know. In fact, his past is very much part of grappling folklore at this point – he came up grappling in Melbourne under Lachlan Giles, became an overnight sensation after almost submitting Gordon Ryan in EBI, switched camps to become a part of the DDS during COVID, and had a very public falling out with them, eventually forming his own, B-team.
Craig has since turned into a troll, making fun of BJJ dogmas whenever he can. That, however, does not undermine the quality of his Jiu-Jitsu, or that of the members of his team.
Moreover, Craig Jones managed to single-handedly stir up the professional grappling world when he decided to oppose the ADCC monarchy in No-Gi by launching his own invitational tournament on the same weekend as the ADCC. The CJI, a.k.a. Craig Jones invitational offered athletes huge payouts, with seven-figure prizes for champions.
With the second installment of the CJI tournament confirmed only days ago, the only unknown about Craig Jones is what he’ll do next to shock the BJJ World. Until then, we take a look at one of his instructionals – the Edging Yourself Out of Danger Craig Jones DVD.
Edging Yourself Out of Danger Craig Jones DVD Review
Edging Yourself Out of Danger Craig Jones DVD is a No-Gi instructional consisting of four different volumes. Craig delivers escape options for three of the main top positions in dedicated volumes, all preceded by one covering the key escape principles and concepts he uses. The instructional lasts around 3 hours.
Part 1 – Principles of Positional Escapes
One thing about Craig’s game that is hugely underestimated is his ability to defend. He has only been submitted three times since 2017, once by Kaynan Duarte and twice by Gordon Ryan.
The Edging Yourself Out of Danger Craig Jones DVD is a blueprint for the Aussie’s system for dealing with dominant positions, which ultimately renders the highest-percentage submission attacks useless. The first volume is all about the concepts Craig uses when stuck in a bad spot.
One of the biggest things you’ll learn in BJJ, which Craig opens his instructional with, is the value of small, deliberate movements as opposed to grand ones. When you’re defending, this is extremely important. Paired with the mentality of not accepting anything as finished, Jones does a great job at demonstrating that bad positions are not really that bad – all you need is patience and a few tactical options.
Part 2 – Side Control Escapes
The position everyone loves to hate in BJJ is definitely side control. You’ll end up in it one way or another in just about every roll you do, so you should be aware of what your best options are when you’re on the bottom.
The second part of the Edging Yourself Out of Danger Craig Jones DVD addresses this exact problem, offering a few directions for effective side control bottom escapes. Jones begins with hip escapes, before covering the static running man position that renders top side control useless.
He piles even more directional escapes by presenting slick escapes that lead directly to attacks, such as the Heisman and single leg. A solid escape strategy, based on the defensive power of the running man.
Part 3 – Getting Out of Mount
Mount is next on the agenda, with Craig Jones looking into the best ways to help you get out regardless of what the top person is doing. This last part is crucial, as all of Jones’ escapes work based on the fact that he kills off all the top person’s attacks.
Craig’s system involves combining a few different directions of escape, just like with the side control escapes. He shares details on knee-elbow escapes, the classic bridge escape, and kipping movements.
Nothing we haven’t seen before, really but it all makes sense in the very last chapter of this part of the Don’t Be Finished Craig Jones DVD that outlines how to beat the underhook, the most annoying aspect of defending mount.
Part 4 – Dealing with Back Mount
The back mount is the final position addressed by Craig in the Edging Yourself Out of Danger Craig Jones DVD. The back is not an easy position to get out of, even though preventing chokes and other attacks is no big deal.
Craig begins with the basics, offering a few sliding-back escapes that are classics, but offer more details to up both the flair and effectiveness of the escapes. Once again, he pinpoints key structures that you need to break, such as underhooks, the body triangle, and beating the very annoyingly boring single hook.
Stop Fearing Bad Positions
There is nothing bad about bad positions in BJJ. Understand this sentence in any way you want, but I meant it literally. Bottom mount, side control, knee on belly, or having your back taken are not going to be comfortable, but nothing bad is going to happen.
There is a dogma that follows these positions in BJJ which acts as a psychological rather than physical dominance. The old “don’t give your back or they’ll choke you” is a great example of the fallacy of bad positions in BJJ.
Someone having your back, hooks and all, does not guarantee they’ll finish you. The entire sport of BJJ is in between them having your back and choking you out. Once you remove panic as the source of your trouble from ‘bad’ spots, you can focus on getting to a dominant position yourself, slowly and patiently, just like in the Edging Yourself Out of Danger Craig Jones DVD.
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Don’t Be Finished!
The bottom line is that you don’t want anyone to submit you, right? Well, if you manage to hold people off from bad positions, and escape these bad spots, nobody is going to come even close to setting up a submission! The Edging Yourself Out of Danger Craig Jones DVD has the blueprint, all you need to do is put in the time to introduce it to your game.
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