Pinning Hip Control Battles
The Crucial Intersection
There is no win from pinning in Jiu Jitsu, but pinning is certainly winning. It’s your path to control and submission. It’s your strategic position of advantage and place to exhaust your opponent. Pins score. Understanding the dominance of pins requires a lot of study, not just of pins but of their relationship with each other. Here, I focus on a crucial battle you have to understand to play the game. At least, play it well. There are some key points we have to touch on first though, mainly inside control and the shoulder line.
Inside Control
Inside control simply means beating frames so that you can get your bodies connected. This one of grappling’s most important concepts, and applies to every position. Controlling the hip implies some level of inside control has been obtained, most likely from a guard pass. This alone is a big topic, but the conceptual connections we need to piece together are that passing the guard is just an inside control battle, retaining pins is an inside control battle, and this is generally one continuous effort. The now famous (or infamous) coach, Greg Souders of Standard Jiu Jitsu likes to say “passing is pinning”. One of his gifts is simplification.
The Shoulder Line
The shoulder line is the most important control point to secure your pin (we’ll talk more about that later). But you have to get there. This creates a dynamic at the hip where you often have to abandon hip control to pursue shoulder control. The Danaher team calls this the “cranial shift”. Controlling the head is a primary goal, and in my lingo I include this in my meaning of the shoulder line.
Without shoulder line control your opponent can more easily turn away, post up on a hand or elbow, and generally just start wrestling up. Shoulder line control also gives you submission access. This is where you expose the elbows and the neck to rattle off your favorite submissions. Of course, there is an inside control battle here as well. Passing the guard gives you inside control of the knees, but as you move toward the shoulder line you must fight for inside control of the elbows.
Hip Battles
You have done it. You passed the guard. You connected to the hips. Now what?
Connection and control here are important to your pinning strategy. You must understand the relationship between your knee and their hip, and their knee and your hips. That sounds simple enough, but when looking at guard retention and pin escapes this simple insight defines the day.
Your Knee and Hip Connections
One of the first things I learned as a white belt was to lay in side control and put my knee right next to the hip. This was horrible advice that held back my pinning game for too long. If your knee is sitting next to the bottom players hips that means you have created a gap between your hips that is roughly big enough for them to get their guard back. That’s not smart Jiu Jitsu.
This is better advice. You need one of these three connections:
Your knee behind their hips, at the hamstring. This will put you hip to hip, leaving no space for their leg to get in front of you (note, there are no passing points here).
Your hip is directly connected to their hip in a Kesa style position.
Your knee is on top of their hip in at least a shallow knee on belly.
Working through these three connection examples, something happens. You move forward. You are able to start shifting to the shoulder line while dominating inside control at the hip. From here you start fighting for inside control of the shoulder line. Do not move forward until you have inside control of at least one elbow. I prefer the near side elbow. If you dominate the near side elbow you kill the bottom players primary positional frame. Be patient here. Take that elbow and your patience will pay dividends.
Problem Solving
In these transitions things fall apart. Your opponent is fighting - bumping, shrimping, stiff arming, rotating in and away. They are not going to make this easy. When your knees and hips lose connection to your opponent’s hips you have a few options to maintain inside control.
Block their inside hip with your hand. They may be able to get their knee close to your hips, but the bottom player needs to move their hips in to get any meaningful frame in front of you.
Pin their bottom leg with yours, typically with your knee.
Move away. Run north/south. Rotate around the head to the back. Generally speaking, if you are losing inside control you need to move.
Dealing with Rotation
Bottom player’s ability to rotate can be a vexing problem, and also grant you tremendous opportunity. If the bottom player turns in they are putting their frames back in front of you, including their guard. If they turn away to turtle, they deny you the passing points, and can either keep rotating to guard or wrestle up. Dealing with these responses can be a frustrating battle.
This rotation also gives you back access though. Your ability to take the back off of a rotating opponent is an advanced skill that must be learned to play a pinning game. In my curriculum, I teach taking the back when I teach passing, side control, and mount, because I see these as all the same game. The common denominator here is understanding the hips. To successfully take the back you must insert your hook in front of their hip.
Of course, you can fight to stop rotation. This is much easier in gi than no gi, where we have fabric to help us control. A cross-lapel grip, pant grips at the knee, or even a far slide sleeve grip will shut down an opponent’s ability to rotate away. In no gi, you can get similar results by controlling the knees and elbows directly.
Get Comfortable Here
Understanding the battle at the hips will change your game. It will connect all of your pins together and secure your passes. This ability to maintain your pin buys you time to work a submission. It wears down your opponent and keeps them on the defensive. This newfound pinning skill may not get you victory, but it will put you on its doorstep.
Excellent post, thanks
Well presented.