In today’s lesson I’m going to go over How To Do A Kimura From Closed Guard. This is a great offensive move to do off your back, and if you land it you’ll have your opponent tapping out in no time.
One thing to remember is that fighting off your back is a difficult thing to do, but not impossible. In fact, my advice is always try to get up off your back and stand up, than try to fight off your back.
The reason why you practice jiu jitsu is to prepare for a situation when your opponent takes you down. You don’t want to lay there and get beat up.
You want to apply techniques that will lesson the ground and pound being used against you. You also want to maneuver back up to your feet, or set up a transition into a submission move.
Once again, fighting off your back is difficult, but with practice and the right training it’s not impossible.
If you want to check out our other articles read How To Do A Standing Kimura Armlock and also be sure to check out How To Do A Kimura From Mount.
These techniques are part of our Kimura series and will get you off to a good start in knowing how to set up and apply this submission.
Kimura From Closed Guard – Jiu Jitsu
How To Do A Kimura From Closed Guard
To start this move of you of course have to be on your back, with your opponent in your guard, and your legs locked together.
This is called a closed guard because your legs are locked together with your opponent between them. We’re going to do this example with your opponents right wrist and your left arm.
From here, the first thing you want to do is get you opponent’s hand on the mat. This is called clearing the arms.
While in your guard your opponent’s hand will be on your mid section or chest trying to pin you down and control your movement, in order to transition to their next move.
What you want to do is arch your back a bit, thrusting your hip upward, and use both your hands to push away the hands of your opponent, while simultaneously pulling him closer to you with your legs.
This will automatically make your opponent place both hands on the mat in order to balance himself and pull away from you in order to gain control of the position.
* You can also read one of our most popular articles on How To Do A Kimura From Side Control. We break it down step-by-step and also include graphics and videos so you can see how it’s done.
How To Apply The Kimura Lock
Once your opponent’s hands are on the mat/ground you want to secure a hold on his wrist. You want to grab his wrist and not his forearm, because grabbing his wrist will secure your grip firmly.
Once you secure the grip on his wrist you then want to extend your arm downward toward your legs. This will lock things into place even more securely.
The reason why you don’t want to secure the wrist and leave your arm bent, is because your opponent can easily break your wrist lock by rolling his wrist towards your thumb and outward.
Your thumb is the weakest part of your hand when you have a wrist lock on someone, especially with your arm bent. Make it more challenging for your opponent to break free from your wrist lock by extending your arm.
How To Do An Armbar From Mount
After securing the wrist you want to shift to your left side. When doing this movement you want to make sure that you don’t try to sit up.
Sitting up will give your opponent leverage by using his shoulder to drive you back down, and secure a move on you.
You want to shift slightly to your left side doing a hip escape, and sit up to your elbow. Once up the next step is to create a figure four arm lock.
You do this by taking your right arm and wrapping it under your opponents arm and grabbing onto your left wrist. When initiating the figure four armlock you want to switch your left had to a thumbless grip.
The reason for this is that you’re able to lock the figure four arm lock much tighter, making it hard for your opponent to escape.
Important Advice For Fighters
- One important thing to remember is when you execute the figure four armlock you want to keep your elbows closed in. This is another way to lock your grip in tight.
After the figure four arm lock is secured you want to scoot out, turn towards your opponent with your whole body, and complete the Kimura submission. Remember to keep your elbows in tight to add more force to the submission.
How To Do A Traditional Kimura From Guard
How To Do The Arm Triangle Choke