Key Takeaways
- A complete escape blueprint: Pins And Dominant Position Escape Adam Wardzinski DVD gives you a structured, principle-based roadmap for escaping mount, side control, turtle, and back in the Gi.
- Battle-tested systems: The material comes straight from one of the most decorated modern Gi competitors, built around what actually worked for him at the highest IBJJF levels.
- Principles first, moves second: Each volume starts with big-picture concepts before drilling down into specific escapes and chains, making it easier to adapt to your own style.
- Logical progression: The series moves from mount to side control, then to turtle and back control, tying the whole bottom-survival picture together instead of treating each position in isolation.
- Best for serious Gi students: Hobbyists, competitors, and coaches who want a reliable, modern escape framework from bad positions in Gi Jiu-Jitsu will get the most value here.
- Not a No-Gi or submission-focused set: The emphasis is on survival and reversals from pins in the Gi, not leg locks or trendy No-Gi meta.
- Rating: 8/10
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This Adam Wardzinski DVD looks at whether this new escape instructional actually helps you survive the worst spots in Jiu-Jitsu, or if it’s just another addition to the already crowded BJJ library.
Modern Jiu-Jitsu tends to glamorize submissions and fancy guards, but most students’ real problem is much simpler: they get stuck and smothered under strong opponents. Pins And Dominant Position Escape Adam Wardzinski DVD is marketed as an answer to that reality – a complete escape “engineering” project built from the matches that earned Adam his IBJJF Super Grand Slam.
In this review, we’ll unpack how the four volumes are structured, where the series shines, and where it might feel limited. We’ll also look at who will benefit the most from spending time (and money) on this material, and why I think an 8/10 rating is appropriate for most Gi-focused grapplers.
Survive, Frame, Escape
Escaping pins is one of the least glamorous but most decisive skill sets in Jiu-Jitsu. Everyone loves to drill new guards and sweeps, but the reality of hard training – and competition – is that you will end up under mount, side control, or back control sooner or later.
What separates seasoned grapplers from frustrated ones is not avoiding those positions forever, but how reliably they can survive and turn the tide once they’re stuck. A resource like Pins and Dominant Position Escape Adam Wardzinski DVD tries to close exactly that gap.
Instead of sprinkling a handful of “get out of jail” moves through various instructionals, this series dedicates all four volumes to the worst spots in the Gi: mount, side control, turtle-style positions, and full back control. Each one is treated as its own mini-system, starting from principles (how to frame, where to hide your arms, how to manage weight and direction) and then working through escape options that can be chained together.
When your opponent switches from grapevine mount to high mount, or from cross-face side control to kesa gatame, you need a mental model that tells you “first survive, then create space, then build a frame, then move your hips.” This is exactly the lens Adam applies throughout the series.
Adam Wardzinski – Engineering Polish Grappling
Adam Wardzinski is one of the defining heavyweight Gi competitors of his generation – and notably, one of the first true European superstars of high-level Jiu-Jitsu. A Polish black belt under Alan “Finfou” do Nascimento, he built his name under the Checkmat banner, becoming known first for a relentless butterfly guard and then for a well-rounded, pressure-heavy top game.
Over the past decade, Wardzinski has put together a résumé that includes IBJJF World titles, major wins at Euros, Pans, and Brasileiro, ultimately completing the IBJJF “Super Grand Slam” – winning all four of those majors in the Gi.
He’s also the first Polish – and first male European – black belt to capture an IBJJF World Championship, a milestone that cemented his place in BJJ history and inspired a whole generation of European grapplers.
Stylistically, he’s often associated with a punishing butterfly guard, tight half guard, and heavy-pressure passing, which made his earlier instructionals on open guard and passing very popular.
But anyone who competes as much as he has also develops serious “survival skills” – the ability to stay calm, defend, and eventually escape from pins against other world-class opponents. BJJ Fanatics’ own description of him emphasizes that these escapes were forged in exactly those environments.
When you see Pins And Dominant Position Escape Adam Wardzinski DVD sold as “battle-tested,” it’s not empty marketing. It reflects a career of solving the same problems most students face – just under brighter lights and against much nastier pressure.
Engineering Pins And Dominant Position Escape Adam Wardziński DVD Review
As an Adam Wardzinski Escape DVD, this one is refreshingly focused. There’s no attempt to cram in guard attacks, leg locks, or trendy lapel systems. Instead, Adam zooms all the way in on escape engineering: how to survive mount, side control, turtle, and back control in the Gi, then how to connect those escapes so you’re never truly “stuck” in any of them.
The four volumes are laid out logically, and the chapter list reads like a checklist of common problems you run into in tough training rounds.
Volume 1 – Mount Escapes
Volume 1 is where Pins and Dominant Position Escape Adam Wardzinski DVD really starts to pay off for everyday grapplers. It’s entirely focused on mount – the position that causes more panicked tapping and bad scrambles than almost anything else.
Adam opens with principles behind his bottom mount game, laying out how he thinks about frames, hip placement, and the opponent’s weight. From there, he immediately addresses a classic problem: being stuck with grapevines. He delivers a step-by-step approach to freeing the hips before you even think about full escapes.
Once your hips are alive, he moves into the classic escape families: shirmping, bridging, and kipping. Rather than presenting them as isolated moves, he caps the volume with chaining mount escapes, tying them together into sequences you can adapt based on how your opponent reacts.
By the end of the first volume, Pins and Dominant Position Escape Adam Wardzinski DVD has already given most students enough structure to feel less helpless in mount and more confident experimenting with combinations instead of praying for a reset.
Volume 2 – Side Control
The second volume of Pins and Dominant Position Escape, Adam Wardzinski DVD shifts the focus to side control and kesa-style pins – positions that feel suffocating in a different way. Where mount often feels vertical, side control is all about cross-face, shoulder pressure, and shutting down your near-side arm.
Adam starts again with the principles of bottom side escapes. A fundamental shrimp escape features first, branching into underhook escapes and allowing you to figure out whether your far arm or near arm is under threat.
He then layers in more dynamic options, like hook escapes and his signature Octopus escape give you ways to disrupt the top player’s base. He also shows how to deal with different Kesa Gatame variations, sharing scarf-hold situations that often feel like dead ends to less experienced students.
Volume 3 – Turtle
Turtle positions are often neglected in standard curricula, and this is where Pins and Dominant Position Escape Adam Wardzinski DVD feels especially modern. Instead of treating turtle as a static, ultra-defensive shell, Adam frames it as a dynamic hub between surviving, standing, and attacking.
He starts with principles (again), then quickly introduces wrestling through the Peterson roll, covering several different scenarios. From there, he moves into the Granby Roll, before sharing a roue from turtle to guard, more precisely Single Leg X. This ties the defensive turtle into an immediate guard-entry threat rather than just a reset to closed guard.
The later chapters round out the volume by covering scenarios where your opponent is starting to secure hooks or chase the back. The consistent theme is that you shouldn’t resign yourself to being “stuck in turtle”; you’re always either getting up, rolling through, or entering a stronger guard.
Volume 4 – Back Escapes
The back-escape material is probably the most “high-pressure” section of Pins And Dominant Position Escape Adam Wardzinski DVD. Here, Adam opens with options for standing up from the back mount, which immediately reframes the back not just as a place you escape from, but as a gateway to standing clinches when you retreat correctly.
He then covers back take prevention, explaining how to manage choking arms, hooks, and hip alignment. From there, he introduces several layered escapes, which are all about turning the usual “stuck with hooks in” nightmare into a sequence of hip movements that either land you in half guard or a more neutral position.
The volume ends with some Adam classics like the corkscrew escape, Gi choke solutions, and beating the body triangle, giving you efficient solutions to the exact threats that usually make people tap from the back.
Where to Start With Escapes
If you want to squeeze real value out of Pins And Dominant Position Escape Adam Wardzinski DVD, you can’t just binge-watch it like a Netflix series. The material is structured to reward deliberate, positional training.
A simple approach is to dedicate one training block (e.g., 3–4 weeks) to each volume. During your warm-ups or specific training rounds, start in the relevant bad positions: fully mounted with grapevines, tight side control with cross-face, deep turtle with front headlock, or fully seated back control.
Your goal isn’t to “win the round”, but to work through the exact sequences Adam lays out – first the survival frames, then the hip movement, then the follow-up reversal or guard entry.
Because the chapters explicitly show how to chain escapes, it’s worth drilling transitions between them. For example, move from a basic shrimp escape to a kipping escape when the opponent switches to high mount, or from a failed Peterson roll to a Granby that lands you in single leg X.
Over time, this approach builds a bottom game that feels layered rather than fragile: instead of hoping your “one escape” works, you have a network of options connected by shared principles.
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Who Is This For?
This series is clearly aimed at Gi-focused grapplers who are tired of feeling helpless under strong top players. Early white belts might find some of the later volumes a bit advanced, but even they can benefit from the fundamental mount and side-control sections as long as they have an instructor to help them prioritize key pieces.
For blue and purple belts, the structure is ideal. You probably already know a handful of basic escapes, but maybe they only work against training partners of your own size. Here, you get a complete picture that includes how to deal with cross-face, lapel control, kesa transitions, and the infamous body triangle.
If you’re the kind of Gi player who already owns big conceptual systems like John Danaher’s pin-escape material and wants something more competition-proven, Pins Escapes Adam Wardzinski Escape DVD slots in as a very logical companion.
Pros & Potential Drawbacks
Pros:
- Highly coherent structure: Four volumes that cover mount, side control, turtle, and back in a way that feels like one unified escape system rather than four unrelated mini-courses.
- Principle-driven teaching: Each section begins with clear principles before moving into specific techniques, making it easier to adapt the material to your own body type and game.
- Battle-tested content: The escapes come directly from a competitor who’s won at the very top of IBJJF Gi Jiu-Jitsu, which gives the material real-world credibility rather than feeling theoretical.
- Gi-specific details: Smart use of lapels, sleeve grips, and positional nuances that only exist in the Gi, which many generic “escape” DVDs tend to gloss over.
- Great for coaches: The chapter list reads like a ready-made curriculum; you could almost plug volumes straight into a month of “escape focus” classes with minimal adjustment.
Potential Drawback:
- Gi-only focus: If your main environment is No-Gi, you’ll have to translate a lot of the grip work yourself, and you won’t find dedicated No-Gi variations here.
- Assumes some fundamentals: Total beginners might feel overwhelmed by the number of options; this shines most for students who already know the basic positions and want to systematize their escapes.
- Narrow topic scope: You won’t get guard attacks, passing, or submission chains – only escapes and reversals from pins. That’s the promise, but also the limitation, of such a focused project.
Elite-Level Escapes
Pinned on bottom is where you find out whether your Jiu-Jitsu actually works, and that’s exactly the problem this instructional aims to solve. Across four volumes, Adam Wardzinski lays out a clear, principle-driven map for surviving and escaping mount, side control, turtle, and back control in the Gi, with enough detail to keep even experienced grapplers engaged.
The strengths are obvious: coherent structure, battle-tested material, and a very practical balance between fundamentals and modern, movement-based escapes. The Pins and Dominant Position Escape Adam Wardzinski DVD delivers a focused, reliable escape roadmap for serious Gi practitioners.
