First Principles Escapes: Back Mount
The conventional wisdom I see a lot of today maintains that when an opponent is controlling you in back mount, your hands should be busy fighting off chokes while you “unwind” the position in this order…
Hand fight as you:
1. Free your legs
2. Rotate your hips
3. Then get your head and shoulders to the mat
Obviously this can work, but it violates the first principles of escaping the back, doesn’t it? Specifically, we want to get our head and shoulders to the mat so that we are no longer in back mount, and can’t be pulled back into back mount.
So while it’s correct that the “game” of escaping back mount begins with your legs, their primary role isn’t to beat your opponent’s leg position, but to connect to the mat so that you can first get safe head position.
The assumption that you have to follow a legs-to-head sequencing to get to your goal position (usually with an over-reliance on hand fighting) simply isn’t true.