How To Defend Yourself: Bugging The Neck

BUGGING THE NECK

The next topic that we want to cover from the Mount position is going to be bugging your opponent's neck, wrestlers call it cross facing, we call it bugging the neck, however you want to phrase it.

What we are going to do is we are going to take our forearm, and I like to use just below the knuckle of my pinky, all the way up to almost my elbow, and I am going to snubber the pinky and turn his head, and I drive my arm all the way across his jawline, on either direction. This is so, if my opponent is trying to sit off or is trying to push me off of him, I just turn his head, and I like to grab that shoulder on either side.

Let's grab. If he is wearing a gi, Brazilian Jitsu, when you turn his head, there is a really nice grip right there on the gi. If he is not wearing a gi, that's fine, just turn the head, grab his entire shoulder, and keeps his head pinned down.

When you are bugging the neck; and you are going to hear us say that a whole lot in this series, bugging the neck is very important to maintain your position because it controls and more or less limits the options that your opponent has on how to roll.

So in other words, if I am pushing his head this way, he can no longer sit up and face this direction, his body won't let him, because it would break his neck. So if I go here, I know that his only option is to face this way, is to roll this way. I am going to use that to set up my submissions, or to control him when he is trying to posture out, when he is trying bench press me, whenever he is trying to work some of the different escapes.

An example of that. I have the Table Theory in motion here. I have got my good base going, I flew it right, so every time my opponent tries to bench press me, tries to raise up, all I do is cross face him, and now I can control him pretty effectively.

You need to get used to bugging your opponent's neck; we are going to do that in virtually every position, and we are going to use that to set up a lot of our submissions and positions.