Key Takeaways
- No-Gi Mount Domination Henry Akins DVD Review — a three-part digital instructional from Rickson Gracie black belt Henry Akins that puts No-Gi mount retention and escape shutdown ahead of the attacks.
- The core idea is controlling with the legs so the arms stay free to attack, reading an opponent’s tells to shut down the bridge and trap-and-roll, elbow, hip, quarter guard, and kipping escapes.
- Three parts run from mount concepts and escape counters, through side mount transitions and the armlock, into chained No-Gi chokes: the paper cutter, hammer fist and head-and-arm.
- Best fit is the pressure-oriented Gi and No-Gi grappler who already reaches mount and wants to stay there — not a player chasing a broad modern tournament meta.
- At a $279 list price, this is a focused single-position course, so the value hinges on how much mount time you actually get.
- BJJ World Expert Rating: 9 out of 10.
DOWNLOAD HERE: No-Gi Mount Domination Henry Akins DVD
Henry Akins’ answer to the No-Gi mount problem is almost counterintuitive: he wants you to stop trying to pin with your arms. No-Gi Mount Domination, his latest BJJ Fanatics release, builds an entire top-position game around one idea — control the mount with the legs so the arms are free to attack. For the grappler who keeps getting bridged and kipped off the top, that reframing is the difference between surviving in mount and finishing from it.
The pitch is confident: read the opponent’s hands, anticipate the bridge, and kill the escape before it starts. The harder question a sales page will not answer is whether the three-part progression actually holds together as a system, or is just a stack of clever counters. This review tests exactly that.
Why Holding No-Gi Mount Is Harder Than It Looks
No-Gi mount is a strange spot in the modern game. In the Gi, a strong mount is a place to camp: collar grips, heavy hips, and a patient cross-collar finish make it one of the most finishing positions in the sport. Strip the jacket away, and the same position turns slippery and reactive.
There is no collar to anchor on, sweat acts like a lubricant, and the modern escape catalogue — the bridge and trap-and-roll escape, the elbow escape, the hip escape and the explosively popular kipping escape — keeps a bottom player dangerous for the entire exchange. That is why so many elite competitors abandon mount for side control or the back in No-Gi, taking the safer pin over the higher-value one.
Akins’ thesis is that this abandonment is a choice, not a necessity. His leg-led No-Gi mount control is meant to make the position feel as stable without grips as it does with them. It is a different bet from the material in his older Mount Attacks course, which is a broad Gi and No-Gi submission series built around the armbar, cross-collar choke, and Americana.
Where that series teaches finishes, this newest Henry Akins No-Gi instructional teaches staying and treats the finish as the reward for control. Readers weighing the two will want the difference kept in view.
The Instructor: A Rickson Gracie Black Belt
Henry Akins is a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt under Rickson Gracie — the third American promoted by Rickson, receiving the belt in 2004 — and a former instructor, then head instructor, at Rickson’s academy in Los Angeles. His lineage runs from Mitsuyo Maeda to Carlos Gracie to Helio Gracie to Rickson Gracie to Akins, and he now serves as head coach of Dynamix Martial Arts in Los Angeles.
That is the right pedigree for this subject: Akins built his reputation on the “invisible” details of weight and connection that Rickson’s style is known for, and No-Gi mount is a position where exactly those details — where the weight sits, whether the feet are tucked, whether the knees pinch — decide whether you stay or get reversed.
His mount pressure work dovetails with the relaxation concepts he taught in Learning How to Relax in Jiu-Jitsu, while the defensive half of the coin shows up in his older Ultimate Armlock Escapes instructional.
No-Gi Mount Domination Henry Akins DVD Review: What You Actually Get
No-Gi Mount Domination is organised as three volumes that follow a clean logic: establish control, survive and convert the transitions, then finish from the reactions that control creates. It is a retention-first course, which is the correct ordering for the problem it claims to solve.
Volume 1: Mount Control And Shutting Down Escapes
The first volume installs the controlling idea and the escape defence. Akins distinguishes three mounts — the high mount, low mount and side mount — and treats them not as static pins but as fluid positions the top player cycles through as the bottom player moves. The centrepiece is the control-with-the-legs concept: feet tucked, knees pinching, weight placed so the arms never have to commit to holding.
From there, he walks through the escape catalogue and how to read it. The key insight, shown in the promotional preview, is that the opponent telegraphs their escape through hand and arm position — a trapped arm on one side tells you the bridge and trap-and-roll escape is coming, and the weight shifts before the hips even fire.
He covers the elbow escape and the closely related hip escape (often confused, he notes, because one drives the leg under yours while the other shrimps the hips away to slip the legs off), plus quarter guard, and closes the volume with how to read and counter the kipping escape.
Volume 2: Side Mount Transitions And The Armlock
The second volume moves sideways. Because mount and side mount are one system in Akins’ framing, he shows the transition to side mount without losing the leg control, how to shut down escapes from there, and how to come back to mount from the heist.
The volume then turns the corner into offence: securing and attacking the armlock, flattening the opponent out, and turning them belly down when they try to hip away. The kipping escape counter lands here too, which makes sense — kipping is the escape that most threatens a high, committed mount, and Akins treats it as a transition problem as much as a retention one.
Volume 3: Finishing From Mount With Chokes And The Gift Wrap
The final volume is the finishing layer. The No-Gi paper cutter choke is the hinge: its first job is to force the arms up, which opens the gift wrap, the armlock, and the path to the back. The hammer fist choke and head-and-arm choke are then combined so that every defensive reaction feeds the next attack. This is the chaining the marketing leans on, and it is the part where the course most resembles a traditional Akins attack series — except the attacks are downstream of the leg control rather than the reason to be there.
Figuring Out the Hidden Jiu-Jitsu Mount
The realistic path is not to binge all three volumes and add everything at once. A pressure grappler would do better to take Volume 1’s leg control and the reading of the three No-Gi mount escapes first, spend a few weeks holding mount in rolling against partners who are actually trying to bridge and kip, then layer in the side mount transitions and the chokes.
The escape counters are only a system if they are drilled as reactions, not memorised as separate answers — Akins returns to the same few mechanisms, feet tucked, knees pinching, weight on the shoulder, killing the connection, so the material does reinforce itself. The time investment is modest for the scope; the harder ask is that the buyer already gets to mount often enough for the course to matter.
No-Gi Mount Domination Henry Akins DVD DOWNLOAD
Who Is This For?
This is a course for the pressure-oriented grappler — Gi and No-Gi — who reaches mount and then loses it, or holds it and cannot finish. It suits late blue through black belt; the concepts are simple, but the feel and timing Akins is teaching are easier to absorb with some mat time behind you. It is also a strong fit for anyone who teaches, because the escape-reading framework is unusually clear to relay to students.
Who it is not for: the competitor hunting a broad modern tournament meta, since there is little here on how to get to mount and no leg-lock or guard-passing system, the player whose game lives in side control or the back, and anyone expecting a full top-game encyclopedia. It is a focused, single-position course, and it is priced like one.
Pros And Potential Drawbacks
Pros:
- Retention before attack. The ordering is right for the problem: most mount courses bury the escape defence and rush to submissions. Here the control is the curriculum.
- Addresses the modern escape. The kipping escape is the biggest reason people avoid No-Gi mount, and Akins gives it a dedicated counter rather than pretending it does not exist.
- A coherent leg-led system. The same few mechanisms recur across all three volumes, so the escape counters read as one system, not a pile of isolated answers.
- Credible, proven teacher. A Rickson Gracie black belt who built a career on the “invisible” details of pressure and connection is exactly the right person to teach No-Gi mount retention.
- Clear differentiation. Against his own Mount Attacks series, this is the No-Gi-specific retention course, which makes it easy to place in a buyer’s library.
Potential Drawbacks:
- Price to scope. At a $279 list price, a focused three-volume mount instructional is a serious spend next to broader top-game sets that bundle passing and submissions. If you want to specialize, though, it’s one mount DVD you really need, justifying the price tag.
- Narrow by design. There is no system for getting to mount, and the finishes are a short No-Gi choke set — anyone expecting a complete top-game course might be disappointed.
You Should Dominate From Mount, Right?
This No-Gi Mount Domination Henry Akins DVD lands on a provisional 9 out of 10. Akins has built a genuinely coherent leg-led mount retention system, ordered correctly and delivered by the right teacher, that gives a No-Gi top player a repeatable path from pinning to attacks. It is not a broad modern tournament meta, and it is priced accordingly — but for the grappler who actually spends time in mount and keeps losing it, the $279 buys a specific, high-value fix rather than another grab-bag of techniques.
