Ep. 350: Front Headlocks, feat. Brianna Ste-Marie

Speaker 1: Hey everybody, before we get started this week, I have huge news. She actually did it. We're pleased to announce that Beatrice Jin, top-ranked women's competitor in North America and long-time BJJ Mental Models premium community member has published her first ever course with us, exclusive to BJJ Mental Models. It's called Stop Being Nice. It's a three-part audio series designed to solve real mindset problems that regular folks experience in Jijitsu. If you struggle to be aggressive and competitive in Jijitsu, you'll find the solutions here. If you're already a BJJ Mental Models premium subscriber, you've already got access, and if you are not, good news, you can get it now and get your first week free. Go to BJJ Mental Models dot com and check it out today. Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to BJJ Mental Models episode 350. Big milestone. And for this occasion, I'm Steve Kwan. BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent Jijitsu approach. Let's celebrate that big round number with a an awesome guest here. I've got Brianna St. Marie on the line. Brianna, how's it going? Speaker 2: I'm doing great, Steve. I'm happy to be back on the podcast and I'm happy to be hitting a nice round number on my visit. Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's more special if it's a round number, right? If it's a round number like 50 or 100, that means that it's a special time to celebrate. So, there's no better time than to have the queen of IBJJF on the line. A lot of things have happened since the last time we talked. I mean, you were you are now officially royalty. I believe that is new. Um, you had an amazing performance at UFC versus uh fellow friend of the show Elizabeth Clay. And recently, you just turned Jijitsu into a team sport. A lot has been going on. Why don't you give everyone just a quick update in case they missed out what you've been working on? Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. Um, it's definitely been a busy past few, I guess like eight months. I kind of, I think I did the Crown event back in November and then kind of just been competing more or less non-stop since then. I have been in a good place kind of physically and mentally, so I kind of wanted to take advantage of that and kind of get back into the group of competing, you know, I think I am at my best when I compete regularly, so that's kind of what I've been trying to do. So yeah, I competed in the Gi and the Crown, then at Nogi Worlds, then I had the super fight against Liz at the UFC FPI, and then after that went right back into the Gi season for Brasileiros and for the Gi Worlds, and then thought let's do one last hurrah before we take a break. So I went into a Nogi Teams event pretty quickly after that over at Polaris Squads where it was uh, I was part of Team North America and we faced off against Team Europe in a very exciting event. Yeah, so it's it's been a busy past few months, but filled with uh, definitely some really great experiences. Speaker 1: Yeah, that's awesome. One of your teammates, Liz Mitrovic, also a friend of the show and uh, also one of our sponsored athletes as well. So it was super cool to get a lot of representation there. I love the idea of Jijitsu under new and interesting rule sets like turning it into a team sport. I think it just adds so much flavor to this thing. It's always cool to see a a sport that has that much flexibility and variability. It reminds me of kind of the early days of Pride, but just a little bit more sane, I guess, where they're always trying new crazy things. I think it's just fantastic to see that kind of innovation. Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess there's always two ways to look at it, right? Because on one side, I do actually love kind of the variability in the rule sets that you see and I was super excited to finally get a chance to compete in one of these teams events because previously on the professional level, it had all been male events. So it was really cool to finally experience that. And I do, you know, everyone's always the age-old question, oh, what's your favorite rule set to compete in? And I actually do really like different rule sets for different reasons. So that's like a really great thing. But then on the flip side, it is really funny like as we try to like kind of make Jijitsu professional, I do also agree with the critics where it's like, okay, but, you know, you guys, there's like 50 different rule sets, 50 different promotions and it's kind of hard to get like, let's say a non-Jijitsu crowd to understand the sport if like every event they watch has a different rule set and you know, obviously like anyone in my family or close friends can kind of understand this because it feels like the second they understand one of the rule sets I'm competing under, you know, a month later, I'm doing a a teams event, you know? And I'm like, okay, now forget everything I've told you about how this works because it's completely different, you know? So yeah, so I think it's definitely maybe something that Jijitsu needs to kind of hammer down eventually the way MMA did, I guess, but for now it is also fun to live within the chaotic era. Speaker 1: That's a great way to describe it actually. If you want to talk about what to call this period in time in Jijitsu, the chaotic era is an amazing name to use. Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's it's fitting for sure. Speaker 1: Well, there's a topic that you had suggested, which I think is amazing. You talked about how you've been working on front headlocks and how that has been such a staple of your game. And we've actually never talked about that here on the show and I am a gigantic fan of front headlocks. I think that they're one of the most essential tools regardless of what you're doing in Jijitsu. There's a lot of other things that you can kind of chalk up to style, you know, you don't have to be a pressure passer or an outside passer. You can kind of gravitate towards whatever feels best for you, but almost everyone is going to benefit from having a strong front headlock game. I'll turn it over to you though to maybe introduce the topic and just I mean, I think probably the nice thing about front headlocks is it's extremely intuitive, but if you want to take a shot at maybe explaining what you mean by that just in case for the new people, it might be a good idea. Speaker 2: Yeah, sure. So I I think the benefit of front headlocks in some ways can maybe be compared to the benefit of leg locks, right? Where a lot of times in Jijitsu if we do want to progress to a submission, we have to get to dominant position on our opponents, right? So most of the time the subs that we see come from things like the back control, mount, etc. Sorry, I just realized I said etc in the way that you say etc when actually it was only the two things, but you want to pretend that there was more. But yeah, typically we see submissions from like back and mount in Jijitsu where we have to essentially like progress to the point where we're in a completely dominant position in order to get the tap, right? I think leg locks, obviously as we've seen, you know, obviously you are progressing your position in the way that you're mobilizing your opponent's hips in a certain way, you're controlling the leg, etc. If we compare kind of the classic positions of like back and mount as high percentage positions to get submissions, you have like on the reverse side of things, you have things like leg locks and front headlocks where I don't necessarily need to progress so far positionally on my opponent in order to get a tap, right? And then obviously the threat of using these submissions, right? Uh can also be used to progress positionally, right? So it's kind of a two-way street. So I can use leg locks and front headlocks to get a submission from not necessarily a completely dominant position, right? And I can also use the threat of front headlocks and leg locks to be able to progress to dominant positions, right? I can threaten a leg lock in order to open up a pass. I can threaten a front headlock in order to expose my opponent's back, right? So basically it's it's a really great system to kind of have in your game to give your opponent one more thing to think about. All right? The same way if I'm, you know, against someone's let's say passing my guard and I have to think about their ability to pass guard or potentially them dropping back on a leg lock, if I want to, you know, either take my opponent down or sweep them, but I think every time I'm going to try to wrestle up with something, they might be getting to my head. Obviously that's going to make them think twice about it, right? So I think it's really important to kind of have these like side systems that you can use in offense for like kind of for what they are, right? Um, or you use them the threat of them and your opponent's kind of fear of them, I guess, to open up other positions. Woo, sorry. I don't know if that was at all a coherent thought, but there that's that's what I'm going to stick with. Speaker 1: It made amazing sense to me. I think you're, I mean, obviously, I'm not going to fact check you, but I believe that you're absolutely right here. You know, if you told me that I had only one month to train someone in Jijitsu, who had never done grappling before, and I had one month to give them as many tools as I possibly could to give them something effective they could do and, you know, if they ever had to use it. One of the things that I would teach them is probably how to do, you know, a single leg, maybe a double leg, and the other thing I would teach them is how to attack from a headlock. And part of the reason why I think the headlock is so powerful is if you compare it to some of the other things that you can do to a person in Jijitsu, if I want to use your arm or your leg for leverage or submission, I mean, the human arm and the human leg are actually pretty miraculous in terms of what they can do. They have these three major points of articulation, three major joints where they can bend. And it's it's really complicated if you actually want to finish someone with a leg lock or even an arm lock. You have to immobilize that thing completely because if it's just a little bit loose, then the pressure can bleed out and they can rotate or get out somehow. And so it actually proves to be pretty complicated if you want to teach someone how to finish with an arm or leg submission. But if you want to finish someone with a head submission, I mean, the thing about grabbing someone by the head in a headlock, it is always a threat, always a threat, right? You can be a black belt, but if you're sparring with a white belt, if they manage to get you in a headlock or something, you have to take it seriously. You can't just ignore it. And in many ways, it's simpler too because you don't have those three major points of articulation like you do in an arm or a leg where, you know, maybe the person can rotate or spin or clear their knee line or something like that. If someone grabs you by the head, it's almost always a bad day at the office. So this becomes important too because there are so many positions in Jijitsu where you can snatch the head, especially off, you know, people think of, you know, a failed single or double, that happens a lot. But I love to do this from passing, you know, trying to get from half guard to side control or even just from full guard into into half guard. If you can grab the person by the head, you can really take them out of their game. And like you said, it forces a response. You really can't ignore someone trying to headlock you. And even if you do try to ignore it, you can't see what's going on when someone's headlocking you. It's very hard to fight effectively when you can't turn the direction that you're facing and you can't see what's coming. Speaker 2: Yeah, 100%. And I actually think that because everything that you outlined as kind of a strength of the front headlock is is 100% true, it actually does remind me of something that I do want to kind of discuss, you know, however briefly on this episode and we can come to it later because obviously I don't want to start I don't necessarily want to start with the pitfalls of the front headlock, but I will say that because the front headlock can be so strong for like you said, because I'm I'm controlling your head and there's something that you absolutely must respect about that. Um, I do think that actually what a lot of front headlocks fall to and where they fail is something that I called it this jokingly at first, but now I actually think it's the perfect thing to describe what's happening, but I think a lot of front headlocks actually fall to bloodlust. Um, and by that I just mean that because the control is so strong and because you're kind of like, oh my God, I am wrapped around this person's like neck right now. Sometimes it creates this weird thing. And it's happened to me and I've seen it happen to a lot of my students that I watch roll is that you kind of stop minding your like technical like points, like you're kind of you stop respecting, I guess the rules of the position and you just start to like sometimes compensate. You think, oh my God, I have control of this person's neck. My arm is literally wrapped around their head. Like if surely if I just actually drop back on this and squeeze really hard, like surely I'm going to get the tap. I don't have to like listen to what coach said about like where to place my legs, you know, where to place my arms, what side to fall on, etc. I am literally wrapped around this person's neck. So I'm sure if I squeeze hard enough, like I'm going to get a tap here. Um, and it's so funny because I'll still catch myself doing this, right? Like I tell people not to do this. I tell people not to like that you have to respect certain rules of the position and and how it moves through it and whatnot and how to control your opponent. And there's still moments where I get a hold of someone's neck and I just get real sloppy because I'm like, fuck it. I got the finish here. Like I have this person's neck around my arm, you know, arm around their neck, sorry. Um, so I do think that's actually because the position can be so strong, I do actually think one of the pitfalls is that people kind of get lost in the sauce a little bit and don't actually stay super technical throughout the execution of the technique just because they feel that it's like overpowered, which it it actually isn't. There's a lot of ways you can lose a front headlock. And as for as I've finished a lot of front headlocks at black belt level competition and I've also lost quite a few. And I look back at the video and I'm like, man, I knew what to do there and I didn't make the right decision because I just got kind of greedy and I committed to something before it was time because I just thought surely I could finish this anyways, you know? So yeah, so I do think that's actually in a way can also serve to one of the pitfalls of front headlocks that we have to watch out for. But I do agree completely with everything that you said that the position in itself is is very strong and if we do respect kind of the rules of engagement, I think it's just like a phenomenal position to use both for submissions and transitioning, you know, both to top pins and back control. Yeah. Speaker 1: You bring up an amazing point there, which is just I love how you said bloodlust, the bloodlust of a front headlock because you're absolutely right. And like you said, this is not just a white belt problem. I also still have to check myself sometimes because if I get my arm around the head, it just feels like I should go for the finish now. But you're right, just because you have your arm around the head doesn't mean that a finish is there necessarily and knowing when to lay off of that and focus on something else is so key. It took me a while to get my head around the notion that a front headlock can really be used for three things. It can be either a finish, it can be a control point, or it can be a distraction. And depending on exactly how you've got it tightened up or not tightened up, you need to decide in the moment what you're going to do with it. Of course, sometimes if you get, you know, clean under the chin and the person cannot move, sometimes you just feel it. The finish is just there. But sometimes you can also feel that, ah, it's not there. If I try to, you know, fall back into a guillotine from here, I'm going to lose the whole thing. It just isn't tight enough. And it takes experience to understand where that point is. Sometimes the front headlock is best suited just as control and to be used like you said as a a pass sometimes or um a positional advancement in other ways. Maybe you use that to break the person down to side control or take their back. And sometimes, I find especially if I'm doing a front headlock on someone who's turtled, sometimes you just don't have it clean enough. They're doing a good job of hand fighting and defending and you can tell, okay, I I don't yet have anything resembling a submission. There's no way that's going to happen. And I'm not even at the point yet where I can really confidently say I've got control over this person because, you know, maybe they're doing a good job of hand fighting or I'm not getting connected tight enough with them. But even in those cases, it's a powerful distraction because just the threat of a front headlock, the other person has to respond to it. They have to do something. Most likely, probably they're going to engage their hands to try to block your hand and defend it. Well, that's a good trade, right? If I can use one of my hands to threaten a front headlock and the other person has to respond by using both of their hands to try to defend, that's a good trade. Why, right? One of my arms for two of theirs. And while they're distracted, now that can create openings to go on to other stuff. But that is definitely a black belt level of refinement is knowing where that that point is where, okay, there's a submission here versus there's a control option here versus I got neither of those, but maybe I can at least distract them and do some voodoo here and make them think about this while I'm doing something else. Speaker 2: Yeah, no, 100%. And I do think, so there's there's a couple things that I kind of want to touch on for what you said. Just to directly address your point first, I do agree, right? There's a time and a place to actually commit to let's say the the submission side of having a front headlock control and when it's best to recognize that we can actually use this as like more of a transitionary position. I think if we just look, let's say, just to simplify, um, and use continue with the very direct example of that front headlock position from turtle because I think that's kind of your quintessential front headlock kind of platform. If we look at it from there, right? And you just think about the nature of how people defend a turtle, right? You you have people who are either super closed off, right? They're they're really low to the ground, their knees are connected to their elbows and they're really tight in every kind of way, right? And someone who's taking that kind of stance, usually is going to have their hands kind of at the ready, right? To defend any kind of grips coming through. You might try to connect into directly to like a strangle from a front headlock, right? And then kind of the opposite end of the spectrum is someone who defends the turtle more in an athletic way, right? Where they're going to be actually like posted up a little bit higher, um, and they're looking to use more movement-based escapes, right? And they're going to be a little bit more dynamic in this way, right? And obviously the tradeoff, the more closed down my opponent is, the less space there is, but they're also less athletic, right? And they're less able to move quickly. So when this is the case and my opponent is playing from this more closed off position and their hands are really at the ready to defend mine as I'm attacking the neck, typically that's when I like to use the front headlock kind of as a distraction where I'm going to attack their neck, really make them want to commit to this kind of closed off, like small turtle, you know, I guess you could kind of see it as. And that's going to open up things like go behinds really well, right? That's going to really like open up my ability to get behind them because when they really focus on getting super small and keeping everything really tight, they're not really athletic to like try to catch me as I try to get behind them, right? So that's a great time to use the front headlock more as a distraction. It's going to be difficult to connect anyways, you're going to feel that as you try to get your hands into those spaces. But if you make them really focus on being small, that's when it's easier to get behind them. If I threaten, you know, conversely, if I try to threaten to get behind them and my opponent opens up to try to prevent me from getting behind them, amazing. Now the neck is now accessible again, right? So just like with any kind of, let's say if I look at like a a butterfly guard, right? There's got to be a push and pull, right? If I'm only trying to load my opponent onto my butterfly hook, probably my opponent's going to have a strong pull back reaction and it's going to be difficult to hit those butterfly sweeps. But if I now threaten to push into my opponent and to maybe wrestle up, my opponent's going to be forced to put weight on me and I can go into those butterfly sweeps, right? So front headlock, I think it's a really similar thing. If the more I threaten to go behind my opponent, the more they're forced to open up, the front headlocks open up, the more I attack the front headlocks, the more they have to close off and the easier it is to get behind them. So I think in in Jijitsu, always benefits to be working like I call all these relationships push pull. Even this front headlock thing, I just think it kind of highlights the nature. Even if you're not directly pulling and pushing, you should always be kind of, you know, pulling and pushing conceptually, I guess, in between different options. Speaker 1: Yeah. I am a a giant turtle nerd and so I will quote and cite a fellow turtle nerd, Priit Mikhelson on this. He's talked about uh what you just described, which is the different ways to play turtle. You can either play it closed like you described where the person is very tight and small and compact and basically they're trying to almost make themselves into a little ball where you as the attacker now don't really have any good handles on the person. But you can also play an open turtle where maybe you're like you said, you're more athletic, you're posting on your hands. There's more space, but there's also more possibility to to wrestle up, to explode, to get out of there. And something that Priit has talked about is how at least on his journey, and I think this is kind of mirrored with a lot of Jijitsu people, there's often an evolution to how they learn to play turtle. At the beginning, people tend to play turtle more open just because they don't know better. They don't know how to defend themselves properly. And so they tend to leave a lot of space in their armpits, which makes it easy to hop onto their back or get a seatbelt. And then people often learn pretty quickly, well, better close off that space. And then they learn to get more small and compact and create that more defensive turtle structure, the closed structure, which is good for maybe stalling out a bit, but the main problem with that kind of defensive closed turtle, like you said, is you can't really attack from there. You're not in an a position to explode. I mean, you can kind of just sit there in a ball, but to get anything going from there, that requires the other person to come at you and make a mistake. And so when people are playing that kind of that small closed turtle, often what they're doing is they're hoping that the person on top will come up and make a mistake and then the person on bottom is going to try to Jedi mind trick them and do something like a Peterson roll, right? But then there's another evolution where once the person learns how to defend properly, they get confidence and they start opening up again. And then they start playing more of that open turtle and then they can switch between the two as needed. You know, they'll post on their hands if they know how to do that safely and they know they can do it without their head getting grabbed. If they feel there's a threat, they'll curl up into a ball again. And as the person on top attacking from that turtle, like you said, you've got to know what option is is best at any given time. And it is a bit of a a tricky skill issue because although turtle is generally a defensive position, there are a lot of ways that that little turtle on the bottom can Jedi mind trick you, right? And so especially in the Gi, you have to be very careful trying to fish for that grip around the neck because if the person latches onto your arm, they can do some nasty stuff to you from there. So going for that front headlock, it like you said, there's a timing thing and there's a place for it, but it is a great option as you said. If the person is just curled up into a little ball and you can't get anything going, if you go and threaten a front headlock on them, even if you don't get it, they have to hand fight you to keep you away. And by doing that, once they start moving their hands around, that could create a little bit of elbow knee space and then that opens up things like you said for a seatbelt or a back take. And so if this is just a general thing that I do from a lot of positions, whether it be attacking someone in turtle or even attacking from mount, if they're curled up and I can't do anything, threatening some sort of head control will probably loosen them up because they have to respond no matter what you do. Speaker 2: Yeah, 100%. Actually and for that reason, just from mount, I've actually been trying to work on my no arm like uh, Nogi Ezekiel just because, you know, obviously if I have an arm isolated, I can work through some like more typical mount sequences, but for yeah, for that exact reason, I I've been really wanting to just have a good Nogi Ezekiel because even if I'm not ever finishing that submission, again, it's just going to force my opponent to bring their hands up. And then once they bring their hands up, then I can start isolating arms and and all that good stuff, you know, or at the very least just prevent them from using their hands in a defensive manner to escape, right? Whether it be posting at my hip, my knee, etc. So yeah, I totally agree. And I think in terms of a queue of like, you know, if you're it's too difficult for you to kind of try to think of like, oh, is this the okay, based on their posture in the turtle, should I be attacking the front headlock or should I be looking to get behind them, you know? And and by the way, as I speak, I am speaking directly like you're not behind them in the turtle yet, right? You're we're in this front headlock position in the turtle. But yeah, you know, if you're trying to do the math, I I do also try to remind people to look at it from a very simple perspective that if it feels excessively difficult to connect your hands around their neck, then maybe it's not the moment to go for a strangle, right? You know, it's like sometimes it's as simple as that. It's like, okay, like things in Jijitsu, like the choices you make, they should lead you to a relatively easy path, right? And obviously that's much easier said than done. But that's the reality. I'm like, if you're trying to do something and it feels excessively hard, uh then maybe it's not the right decision at that moment. It could be that you're doing the technique, it is the right decision, you're doing the technique so poorly that it's just not working. But if you're of a certain level and you feel like you're you have the ability to execute a certain technique, if it feels excessively difficult in the moment, it's probably because the reaction your opponent is giving you is is not appropriate for what you're choosing to do, you know? So I tell people like, okay, if it helps have these cues, you know, like in front headlock, I look, they're super tight. I look to try to, you know, block the arm and get behind them. If they're more open, I'm looking to connect to actually the neck, to looking for chokes and stuff. You can look for those cues or you can and you can also, you know, ask yourself at one point, right? Is this is this more difficult than I should be, you know? Sometimes it's that simple. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. That again, that comes back to the bloodlust thing. You have to have a degree of restraint to know, hey, this is not the time to finish from this now. Maybe this is going to be a bit of a distraction, but if I overcommit to this, I'm going to get, you know, I'm going to be forced to pay for it. When I'm trying to wrap my arm around my opponent's neck for something like a front headlock or even a rear naked choke, a little rule that I use to determine if it's safe for me and if it's a good idea is, are they going to be able to control me by the elbow if I do this? To me, that's the danger zone. So if someone is turtled and I'm kind of trying to stick my hand in, you know, between their neck to try to pry that open and get a front headlock. If I feel like I can do that without them grabbing me by the elbow and controlling me there, I'm maybe I can do it safely. But if I feel like, you know, if I'm going in too deep and their hands are free, if I feel like they can get me by the elbow and actually control me, that's when I start to get worried because that opens up all sorts of opportunities for them to escape or reverse or get out or do something to me. Um, so same for the rear naked choke. For a long time when I was working on this very classic submission, I would struggle because when I would go for it and try to finish it, I would always wind up losing position. And it took me a while to figure out, why is this happening? Every time I I'm on the person's back, I've got solid back control, but every time I actually go for the choke, I lose this whole thing. What's going wrong? And I realized the problem was I was committing the depth of my choking hand too early. So if you shoot your arm through too early and then they grab you by the elbow, they can do things like kind of that, you know, that backwards reverse arm drag where where you are on their back and they manage to grab your elbow and kind of pull it across and next thing you know, you lose the whole position. So when I'm going for the rear naked, I keep my arms in really shallow and I don't commit my elbows until I know that hey, I've I've got this. Like maybe I've got it deep under the chin. My wrist blade is right on their throat and then I'll shoot it through. But if you just kind of shoot your arm across too early and they can get control of your elbow, then they can unravel the whole position. And the same thing applies when you're attacking someone from turtle. So when I'm trying to set up a front headlock, I like to keep my elbows shallow and out of control range until I know, okay, this is deep. I've got this and now I can shoot my arm through and get this. That helped me a lot because by committing the entirety of my choking arm too early, what I was finding was people were grabbing my arm and they were doing crazy arm drags and all sorts of other funky stuff to get out of that position. Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. I think there's like a lot that we can address. Um, and I do, I'm trying to think of what would be best in terms of like, okay, people are listening to this podcast, right? So we can't difficult for me to demonstrate. Um, I do think it's super important to kind of discuss when it comes to front headlocks, kind of some good general practice, I guess, to not like commit yourself like you're describing in a bad way where you're overcommitted and then you find yourself out of position. And I do think something that's helped me quite a bit, especially in terms of that can maybe apply to a few different like, maybe positional errors that you find yourself in from the front headlock position. I think it's actually this idea of like what we always hear when we talk about guillotines, we always hear people say like, oh, falling back on a guillotine. And I think that right there is like, I would say like 90% of like the guillotines I see go wrong are people who are doing just that. They're falling back on a guillotine. And I think like just the action that's describing is something that at a certain level, I feel like rarely ever works. And I think that if you address that in your front headlock game, uh listening, speaking to the listeners, I feel like that actually will go the furthest way in kind of, I guess upgrading your ability to attack front headlocks. And basically what I mean by that is just I feel that a lot of times people attack front headlocks in a one, I guess there's multiple ways to look at this. One, it's people attacking front headlocks in response to your opponent's offense. So in in response, let's say to my opponent uh shooting into my legs, uh typically from like a double leg or a single leg, and they're essentially just like doing absolutely nothing to defend the front headlock and they're in essence falling back with a guillotine. I think that if you start to roll with anyone who's of a certain level and has is comfortable both in their wrestling and their ability to defend front headlocks, I think it's very rare that you should just concede top position and just grabbing on the head and like hoping for the best in essence. I think that that, if you actually like were to aggregate the data of how often that works against skilled opponents, I think it's it's actually much less than we think. I think we remember the guillotines that do work and we forget a lot of the guillotines that failed. So I do think something that I encourage in general, uh with people is to always fight to stay on top with your front headlock. I think that a lot of attacks in Jijitsu are stronger from the top position just because you have gravity on your side and and weight and whatnot and like more control, more athleticism as well, right? You're on top, you're on your feet, your knees, whatever it is. Your opponent is on their back. They're naturally going to be less athletic. So I I do think one, like fighting for top position through your transitions. And then really avoiding that cliche of falling back on a guillotine. So if I were to go back to that context of my opponent kind of shooting into the legs, whether it be for a double, single leg, and all I'm doing exclusively is grabbing onto their head and accepting the bottom position, I think that's where I'm going to go wrong against high-level people. I really strongly recommend people to get comfortable with basic wrestling defense. Um and always looking to weaken my opponent's offense before going for that counter, right? So in the context of the double leg, I always encourage people to always first put in your like wrestling cross face and an overhook, let's say, and attempt to sprawl on the single on the double leg before wrapping the head. And then if you kind of employ these methods, right? What happens is like, for example, on this double leg, you might actually end up instead of on your back with the head hoping for the best case scenario, you're actually going to end up maybe in your classic front headlock position as if you had snapped them down, right? And if you ask yourself like which one I'd rather be, well, if I just fell back on my back with this guillotine, if I didn't fall back properly with a very well locked guillotine, there's a good chance that my opponent's just going to escape and now I've been taken down and I'm on my back, right? Whereas if I actually fought to defend the takedown first and then snap the head, once I put them out of position, now I have the option. If I can get my hand nice and deep around their neck and I'm confident that when I pull guard, I am going to get a tap, amazing. I do that. If I have the front headlock for uh though and I feel like I don't have a good grip, then why on earth would I fall to my back? You know what I mean? But because I've put them out of position, I now have the choice to transition to other options as opposed to just being stuck with the decision I took when they shot that double in the first place, right? So I do think it's super important that if you are fighting to stay on top with your front headlock, I do think you have more leeway to correct poor positioning with your hands because you're naturally going to be more athletic, more mobile from a top position than if you find yourself taking a poor grip and you're throwing yourself to your back, now I just feel like there's no way you're going to kind of you're going to recover from that situation. So I I think yes, I think it's it's fine. We'll take grips sometimes that are not are less than ideal, but if we're overall fighting to stay on top and put our opponents out of position properly before committing maybe to going to our back to finish or maybe not even doing that, maybe trying to finish from a top position, right? I think there we can kind of keep our opponent in the defensive cycle as opposed to just being like, ah, fuck it. I'm just going to fall back on my back with this guillotine and hope for the best. I hope that that is I kind of feel like I dragged on a little bit, but yeah, I do think that that's something that's super important when attacking front headlocks. Speaker 1: Absolutely, makes perfect sense to me and I I think you touched on a few things that are worth maybe elaborating on. The first is like you said, a lot of people will jump right to the fall back finish, but that is probably the last thing that you really want to do. I wouldn't say never do it, but you've got to be really sure. If you're on top of someone while they're in turtle and you choose to fall back, you have to be absolutely sure that you can get the finish. And these days, I mean, especially against someone with a decent defense, I find that I rarely am that sure. If I get a front headlock on them, I would much rather use it to try to bully them, to break their posture and, you know, get them into bottom side control and then maybe progress to mount and finish the the headlock from there with a guillotine. If you just fall back, you have to be just beyond any doubt that you can get the finish, otherwise you're likely to just wind up losing the whole position. You also bring up and I I love this, how sometimes when people are in the process of getting taken down with say a a double or a single, they'll grab that headlock as a security blanket. Kind of like a, well, screw you, you're taking me down, but at least I got this, you know, they'll try and grab your head on the way down. And that is often a very bad idea because Brianna, as I'm sure you can attest to, there are some lunatics out there who will Von Flue choke you if you do that, right? Speaker 2: Yeah, I can confirm that I I was honestly as you were saying this, before you even made the joke, all I was thinking in my head was like, the number of times I've shot doubles and I've just been so happy that this person decided to literally attach themselves to me, grab a shitty front headlock, essentially let me finish the double and then end up in a top pin position. And don't get me wrong, these people like they love dying on their shield, right? So they'll grab the head and then they'll hold it for as long as they possibly can, right? And they're like, and in their head, they're like, oh, I'm doing something here, you know, like I'm showing her. And then they'll lose the guillotine and be like, oh, well, you know, I almost had that finish. And it's not, it could be the case, right? If they actually had a good control, but so often they don't and they actually just again, so easily conceded top position and now I'm in usually in a some sort of chest-to-chest position again, because you literally pulled me on top of you, you know? As opposed to if you tried to sprawl on my double, you would have made me work 10 times harder. Potentially would have gone to a stronger front headlock. And, you know, I like so many so many things that you could have done before you just were like, let me tie myself to you and throw myself to my back. And I'll actually add going to like roll with like just pure wrestlers. In Montreal, I would go cross train at the Montreal Wrestling Club and it's so funny because they would shoot doubles and I had this like really bad reflex of just wrapping over and obviously I wasn't allowed to attack guillotines, right? But I would still just I wouldn't, for example, like bring a cross face in front. I would just wrap myself over their body and then try to hit like reversals or whatever it was. And man, these girls would literally just pick me up and if they wanted to, you know, had they if they were having a bad day, let's say, they could have easily ended my life, right? Because they're hitting a a double leg at pace and I'm literally just like loading my body on top of them, right? And that's what you're doing in essence when you're just like committing to these guillotines. So yeah, you want to be damn sure that if you do commit to it and I and I have in some instances when I know I have it locked in, but a lot of times when I do that, I'm actually just getting slammed on my back. My opponent is now chest-to-chest and I have a grip on their head, which maybe is as at best is useless and at worst is actually a liability if they want to Von Flue choke me, you know? Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I think thanks to you, we're going to see a lot more Von Flue chokes. The funny thing about Jijitsu is there are some techniques where you could argue these are just objectively provably better than other options. But then there's also a lot of other techniques, maybe most of them, where what's effective and what works in high-level matches is actually very subjective. And it really comes down to what people believe is going to work. Because if people don't believe that something is going to work, they won't train it. And if they don't train it, they won't use it or be good at it. And for a long time, the Von Flue choke was considered this extremely rare choke. But I've had a few people recently who have kind of showed it to me and brought it back and kind of made me rethink whether this thing is really that rare and unusual. And yeah, you just got a Von Flue choke finish on a UFC Fight Pass not that long ago. So that is another reason to be very careful about how you choose to wrap yourself around your opponent. I've said on the podcast before that if you choose to latch onto someone, like whether you wrap your arm around them or, you know, you jump onto them like a backpack or a fanny pack, you always have to be asking yourself, who's controlling who here? Because just because I'm wrapped around you and I'm latched onto you, that doesn't mean I have control over you. I'm connected to you, but if you as the person who is being latched onto, still have the ability to pick me up and move me around and do what you wanted to do anyway, then me latching onto you is nothing but a liability. A very common example is people who choose to, you know, latch onto closed guard super, super tightly and then they get picked up and carried around or, you know, maybe they go for a triangle that they don't really have, but they're refusing to let it go and then they get slammed or lifted or stack passed. And the front headlock is another example. If you're wrestling a wrestler and they are in the process of finishing a double or a single on you, and you go for a front headlock in a response and you don't have it, you could actually be helping them because now by putting your weight on top of them, you're making it easier for them to lift you up and high crotch and do other things like that. So that's another great example of where sometimes as grapplers, we're so trained to grab the head that it becomes a reflexive response. But you always need to ask yourself, is this serving me or is it serving them? If I wrap my arm around their head, does that allow me to control them or are they in a position where from here they can actually control me? And if it's the latter where they can control you, you probably want to bail out and do something else. Speaker 2: Yeah, 100%. And I think that like these nicely into like kind of a good like a look at I guess the dynamic between attack and defense from the front headlock position. And I think like something like a really helpful way to look at it is if I, for example, as the attacker, have an excellent control on your head, either just on your neck or your neck and arm. If I have an excellent control around your neck, my goal at this point is to now immobilize your hips, right? You, as the person defending, want to do everything you can to not let me control your hips so that you can keep attempting to defend, right? But then the opposite is true. If I have a guillotine and let's say I've done that that classic mistake of I've thrown myself to my back with a guillotine and I don't actually have a good bite on the neck, my goal is to either one, I can always bail on the guillotine potentially and look to make space. Or as long as I can keep you from immobilizing my hips. So now even as the attacker, if I find myself in a bad position, right? Where I've thrown myself to my back with a guillotine, I don't have a good grip. My goal now is it's actually keep our hips apart, right? To keep you from immobilizing my hips. And from a defensive perspective, if someone takes a bad guillotine on me and I land on top of them, all I'm doing is trying to immobilize their hips. So in the case of me being the defender, I actually, for example, when I get on top, I prefer to put myself in a half guard than I do to let's say take side control, even if side control is offered. The reason being if they still have control of my neck, if I go to side control, there's a chance that they might be able to escape their hips and their legs out and actually keep me in this kind of defensive cycle. Whereas if I know they're in a bad position, they have a bad control over my head. If I go to a half guard, I can now pin their hips and just start applying pressure until they're forced to abandon the control, right? So there's kind of this relationship when it comes to attacking front headlocks is that, you know, as the attacker, if I have great control, okay, I want to immobilize the hips. If I have poor control, I want to keep my hips free, right? And defender is the same, right? If they have a great control, I need to keep our hips apart, keep my hips free. If they have a poor control, okay, maybe I can actually immobilize their hips now and keep their control poor. If that makes sense, I think that's also a really important dynamic. I think my I was going to give my like, you know, 10 commandments of attacking front headlock. I guess my three commandments of attacking front headlock is one, don't fall to bloodlust. Two, don't fall back on guillotines as I'm don't throw yourself to the ground with their head without putting your opponent out of position. And three is basically just respect the interplay between the moments that you want your hips to be free and the moments you want to immobilize your opponent's hips. Speaker 1: Well said, well said. And I want to ask you here about when it's safe to fall back, when you really actually have this thing locked in and you think it's good to go. So, let me give an example here. As an older grappler, back when I started Jijitsu, common advice that they would give you about, let's say the rear naked choke is you have to get under their chin. If you can't get under your chin, there's no choke there. So for a long time, that was the prevailing knowledge. And we know today that that is not true, right? I mean, if I am sparring with a good grappler and they get their arm around my face, I have to treat that just as seriously as if they got under my chin. So it's no longer as simple as, oh, I just need to block their access to getting under my chin and then I'm safe from the rear naked choke. I wonder if from the front headlock, do you feel that there's a similar concept there? Is there like a a safety point where you're okay here or is it really as simple as any kind of control around the head is a threat? Speaker 2: I guess with the front headlock, there are like if the rear naked choke is like one type of choke, obviously there's not just like one type of front headlock. So it's it's more difficult to just like have a very like straightforward queue as to like, okay, here this means you're locked in. I guess moments like like based on what how I like to attack from front headlock, like since, you know, typically I use a lot of like arm and guillotine control and I use a lot of like high wrist and high elbow variations. So if I use those two as as examples, just because those are the ones that I'm comfortable with. I'd say when it comes to like falling back on a guillotine, obviously if I can get my wrist comfortably loaded over the line of your shoulder, so if I can see my entire hand over the line of your shoulders, usually that a pretty good sign that I'm in a good position to now look to like fall to a control position, right? So this could be mean at this point if you want like falling to guard, right? And then connecting either to the high wrist guillotine, which is where I keep the hand there and I use an overhook to wedge it into place or going for potentially like the high elbow guillotine where I connect my hands together more in like a Marcelo style uh guillotine and I uh load my elbow over their back, right? So I think the queue for that one for me for in my locked in is is my hand comfortably loaded over the line of their shoulders, in which case, usually then I'm I'm looking to connect myself to my opponent for the finish. And then in terms of like an arm and guillotine, I think what's important there is that when I quote unquote fall back with an arm and guillotine, there it's something I really emphasize is the importance of falling onto your side. Because one, I could fall back because I feel really good about having it, right? If I feel really so I feel really good about getting the choke, like the positioning my hands, everything just feels good. Okay, maybe I fall back and I try to finish it from let's say like a modified guard, but I really need to fall onto my side, especially for this variation of guillotine. One so that I can create the compression necessary to actually finish the guillotine, but two is that that leaves me the option to use the control over my opponent's head to either sweep them using things like butterfly sweeps or even to just be able to escape my hips to heist back up potentially back to a front headlock position if I feel it's not working, right? So I do think I really suggest people that they fall flat to two shoulders with their guillotine. I do think people do that a lot, which is another big mistake that I see. Um I always emphasize the importance of when you do, if you are going to commit to going to your back with a front headlock, the importance of falling to your side so that ideally even if you're not finishing the choke, you are able to use it to transition to top position or back to a front headlock your your classic front headlock position from the turtle. So yeah, so I think those would be kind of like, I think there's a really obvious queue from like the high wrist, high elbow one, it's going to be the hand over the line of the shoulders. And then for your basic arm and at the very least, as long as I fall onto my side, even if it's not in, I think I should have the ability to still transition through the position. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. That's and that's an excellent point that you brought up about falling to your side. The way that I like to think of it, there's an analogy that uh Shanti Heberro once gave me, which was to uh turn them into a hamburger. So basically, you're the top bun, the ground is the bottom bun and they are the meat in the hamburger, right? And if you do this with their head, it sucks, right? If you are on top of them, the ground is beneath them and their head is the patty that is getting squished between those two, it just completely breaks their posture. It makes it very hard for them to be able to turn their body because their head is so stuck. And of course, that doesn't even get into the fact that they often can't see what's going on. There's claustrophobia, there's the constant threat of a choke. I do this a lot as a passing mechanism. So if I am on top in half guard and the person gets their head into close to me, maybe they're going for some sort of deep half thing. I will often threaten a headlock from there and just fall onto them and turn their head into a hamburger. And it makes it very hard for the person to block a a guard pass from there because they're stuck in that position. So I think that that is such an important point if you do choose to fall back is do it onto your side. It wedges their head in position and makes it so hard for them to get out. Speaker 2: Yeah, 100%. I love the uh hamburger analogy. I haven't heard that one yet and it does make me think something else that maybe the secret fourth commandment is just uh, you know, all front headlocks they come down to compression, right? And the ability to create compression through your opponent's like head and neck, right? So being able to for the most part, fold their chin in towards their chest. That's like a lot of the mechanism that we're going to use to finish like quite a few front headlock variations, right? So I always tell people when in doubt like move in a way, you know, whether it be like how you use your legs, how you move your body, whatever it is. Ask yourself if you're creating compression or removing compression when you're doing it, right? I think the like classic we've all seen, I always I call this the like, oh, all for their head guillotine where like people just like grab onto someone's neck and then like proceed to like create as much extension as possible by pulling up really hard on the head and extending really hard with their legs, you know? And now obviously, I think that's the other side of front headlocks is that you get a lot of false positives because, you know, people are doing there's a lot of hobbyists in Jijitsu who are there for fun and you know, have to work a job in the morning and if someone who's, you know, physical to a certain point is just whole pulling on their head as hard as they can, you know, they they might tap, right? Which I totally understand. You don't want to, you know, go into work the next day with a sore neck just because. So I think that you get a lot of false positives with bad positioning and guillotines, but the bottom line is is that most of them the finishes are going to come through compression. So I think the hamburger approach sounds perfect. Speaker 1: Now, one of the things Brianna that's that's amazing about you is that you are tremendously successful both in the Gi and out of the Gi. And that puts you in a really interesting position to talk about this. And I would love to hear your thoughts on whether there are any differences in how you play this in the kimono versus when you're in Nogi. I definitely have some thoughts, but I would love to hear first what you find and how you have to adapt when you put on the jacket. Speaker 2: Yeah, um, totally. So that's a great question. I think that for me, the biggest difference that I've noticed just comes down to sheer friction, right? So I think that all the front headlock attacks are super valid in the Gi. And I actually think that to a certain extent, you could be at an advantage if you work front headlocks into your Gi game because it's just not going to be something that a Gi player might anticipate as much, right? In the end, like in Nogi, right? We see front headlock exchanges all the time. In the Gi, you see it a little bit less, right? And you might see it less for a reason. Maybe they're overall less effective in the Gi. That's that's possible and and maybe it's true to a certain percentage, who knows? Everyone can kind of have their their opinion on it. But it also just might you might see it less just because people attack it less, right? Um and if people are attacking it less, that means that people's awareness might be less strong and you might actually have an edge if you're attacking this thing that people aren't used to defending, right? Or anticipating in the Gi, right? So I think that it can be a really great addition to a Gi game. And I, you know, there are players who have, you know, really high-profile wins with front headlocks in the Gi. But I think the one like big difference that I've experienced is honestly just like the silliness of friction, right? Like sometimes I could be like reaching my arm through to connect, let's say to a D'Arce or an Anaconda and my hand just gets caught in like the lapel of your jacket. And it gets caught for a second too long and now you've like adjusted positionally and now the window's not there for that attack anymore. And sometimes it's it's something as silly as that. It's literally just like bringing my hand into those spaces, uh can be a little bit more difficult and it's harder to have it just kind of like slide in. And obviously at a high level, you do have kind of a small window to take certain controls on your opponents, right? The opportunities you create are are tend to be smaller. So sometimes something as silly as someone's lapel getting in the way for a couple seconds can kind of negate your ability to put the front headlock in in that moment. But I do think, I mean, like, for example, I have a bunch of D'Arce finishes at black belt and the person that inspired me was Edwin Najmi, who, you know, famously used to D'Arce everyone in the Gi, right? So I think it's super valid to attack in the Gi. You just might have some obstacles of of the actual material getting in the way. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. My my thinking on this has evolved a lot. I love the Gi. I train a lot in the Gi and I have a lot of success with the front headlock in the Gi. And there's pros and cons to it. So the most obvious downside to attacking the front headlock in the Gi as compared to Nogi is obviously the friction, like you said. It is just going to be harder to shoot your arm in deep and get it all the way through in the Gi because of the friction and also because of the presence of the collar, right? I mean, sometimes you punch your arm through and then next thing you know, your hand is like inside their jacket in their armpit and now you're screwed, right? So you have to be a bit more careful. The other thing too is I mentioned earlier that you want to make sure when you stick your arm through that they are not able to control your elbow. In the Gi, this is much more of a threat because they don't have to just cup you by the tricep. They can grab the fabric by your elbow and that can be very dangerous because next thing you know, they can just drag you and get up on top. So there's that downside. However, there is one significant upside to the front headlock in the Gi and that is the presence of collar choke threats like the bow and arrow from the top. One thing that I learned a long time ago is in the Gi, if someone gets a cross collar on you, you have to always take it seriously. You can never ignore it. And one of my highest percentage finishes now is bow and arrow from turtle because if the person, you know, they shell up, if I'm able to get even a shallow collar grip on them, you can bow and arrow someone from there. You don't need to shoot your arm all the way through like if you wanted to, you know, finish that ninja choke or get a get a D'Arce or an Anaconda. Just with a shallow collar grip, it is a threat. So that is an an option that presents itself in the Gi that you don't get in Nogi. So there there's pros and cons, but I think people often erroneously think that you can't finish a choke front headlock if you're in the Gi. But I would say, don't forget the bow and arrow choke from the front headlock. That is an amazing option if you want to finish from there because you don't need a deep grip. Speaker 2: Yeah, no, 100%. I agree. I think that is one of the the main differences too, I guess, between the Gi and Nogi. Like I always say in the Gi, whenever I transition, let's say I just did a big Nogi camp, whenever I go back to the Gi, I always have to remind myself that in the Gi, there's like what I call KO grips, like like knockout grips. And it's like, I feel like in Nogi, there's not too many grips. Like there's grips that like are total shit that you should not let your opponent take on you for sure. But there's no grip where I'm like, oh, if I let someone good take this grip, there's like a really good chance it's over. I feel like in the Gi sometimes it's like something as silly as just like a collar grip in the wrong moment against the wrong person and you're like, oh, I'm I'm dead now, you know? So I definitely think that there's like a bigger presence of KO grips in the Gi. And I do, but I do 100% agree that it does add a whole other dimension to front headlocks. And something that I've been really wanting to add to my Gi game is actually a good loop choke because I do think that's also kind of in the same category as like, you know, the front headlock. And I think that the same way I discussed at the game, the episode, like, you know, just the threat of a good loop choke makes people think twice about trying to pass the guard, right? So it's like, you have this like extra thing to kind of throw at people that makes them hesitate, right? And at the same time can also just lead to a quick finish without having to, you know, follow the typical progression of like sweep, pass, mount, you know, back take, choke, you know? So I do think there's a ton of like really fun options to throw in there that yeah, are are Gi reliant, like you said. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. The the loop choke is what I would call a porcupine technique. And by that I mean, it is a threat such that it forces your opponent to change their behavior. You know, sort of like how you wouldn't try to eat a porcupine because you don't want to get spiked. The loop choke is like that. There's a lot of techniques that require you to lead head first where you drive your head into your opponent. And if you know that they're good at doing the loop choke, you're going to think twice before doing any of those techniques. So it's one of those things where just by putting the possibility of a a loop choke in your opponent's head, you can really make them think twice about, should I really do that crash pass right now because this fucker's really good at a loop choke and I don't know, right? And so it's much like how with a porcupine, you kind of keep your distance a little bit. Even if you don't get the choke, just the presence of that choke as a defense mechanism can be very scary for the person who is trying to uh drive head first into you. Speaker 2: Yeah, 100%. And I actually I think that speaks to something like else funny that like I I've noticed is that like once you become like recognized like good at anything, like there's been times where people have like shot doubles on me and then bailed because I like wrapped their neck, but in my head I was like, oh, that was so sloppy. Like I would have never finished that. But I've guillotined them enough times that now even when I have like a really shitty control, they kind of still respect it even though they they absolutely shouldn't, you know? And then in my head I'm laughing because I'm like, oh, I there's like I thought I was done, you know, I thought you were 100% going to like, you know, take me down in an epic way there. And I think even actually with loop chokes, like that one makes me laugh the hardest because I I know I'm objectively bad at those. I haven't like gone good at them yet. Still working on them. And then like even as someone who's awful at them, I'll still throw them up and make someone back off. And in my head I'm like, man, if you only knew that I would have never finished this loop choke on you. Like I I can't even finish this loop choke on you, you know? But sometimes yeah, sometimes even, you know, fake it till you make it. You can poker you can give a good poker face, go for your loop choke and they kind of have to choose like, oh, do I call your bluff on it? And and or do I take the chance or do I just back off and play it safe, right? And so often people will actually just back off because they think that you might be good at it, you know, even if you aren't. Yeah, yeah. Speaker 1: Well, as we tie this up, Brianna, there's one last thing I want to ask you here. That is, if you have any general overall guidelines for when it's safe to let them grab your head. I want to ask this because this has been on my mind quite a bit recently. When we talk about how to control someone by the arm or the leg, I mean, there's some there's some general guidelines that we can give people about, hey, this is safe or this isn't safe. But what I haven't really heard anyone else talk about is general guidelines for when it's safe to let them grab onto your head. Now, we can think of specific examples. So, and as an example, one is the Von Flue, right? That is a situation where it's okay to let the person grab onto your head. The other is if you're shooting, you know, a a double and you have a your head up high and they can't lock a guillotine. If they try to wrap onto your head, it's probably okay. But in many other situations, probably most situations, you don't want to let them grab onto your head. So this creates one of those obnoxious rules with a lot of exceptions, you know? And I I love to give people general advice, but I can't say don't let them grab your head as general advice because there's times when it's actually fine, maybe even desirable, right? Like the Von Flue as you brought up. And I wonder throughout your training, if you've ever put thought into, are there any general rules you would tell people where you would say, hey, regardless of the position, if this happens, it's okay to let them grab your head. If this happens, it's not. Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess in this instance, like it would be difficult for me to want to give like to ever say to someone that it's okay for them to grab your head because I actually think that like what makes them grab a shit grip on your head is like you trying not to let them grab your head, I guess. Like let's say like if I shoot a double leg and I have like super good posture and I'm not letting them grab my head by like again, like just having good posture, not being overextended in my double leg, it should be difficult for them to grab my head. So then when they do grab my head, that's when they're out of position and when I can transition to things like potentially like a Von Flue or something, right? So I do think that there's going to be something where like if you're if you're not dealing threat in the ways that you outlined and you're in a position where you can control your opponent's movement, then I 100% think you you're fine and probably the person is overextended themselves, you know? But if your opponent still has the ability to move and they're still like agile to a certain point, never underestimate the ability of a grip control in your head to kind of change sides in a moment, you know? And I I guess that's the other side of front headlocks is that you get a lot of false positives because, you know, people are doing there's a lot of hobbyists in Jijitsu who are there for fun and you know, have to work a job in the morning and if someone who's, you know, physical to a certain point is just whole pulling on their head as hard as they can, you know, they they might tap, right? Which I totally understand. You don't want to, you know, go into work the next day with a sore neck just because. So I think that you get a lot of false positives with bad positioning and guillotines, but the bottom line is is that most of them the finishes are going to come through compression. So I think the hamburger approach sounds perfect. Speaker 1: Yeah, well said. My advice to people would generally be that you don't want to let people try to grab your head. There are situations where it's okay and you can get away with it. But the funny thing about head control is sometimes it's okay until it's not. You know, you you might feel like, oh, this is fine. My head is safe here. They can't choke me. And then they shift their hips and then suddenly it's a choke, right? And it's too late. So I would say generally speaking, if you can avoid it, avoid letting them grab your head. But if they do grab onto your head, my feeling is there's three things particularly that you need to look out for and that you want to avoid. One of them is constriction. If they can get around your head or get one arm around your head, but they can't actually put a squeeze or any tightness on it, then it's probably not that dangerous. But as soon as they can start constricting, even if they're not under your chin, as soon as they can start constricting and getting leverage, you have to take it seriously. The other thing, especially with the head, is you need to be careful and avoid impact. I never want to put my head in a position where there could be falling body weight on it or I could be spiking myself head first, obviously just for safety concerns. And then the third thing, which you mentioned earlier, is you need to avoid broken posture. And by that I mean, taking the the head and the neck out of the body's natural alignment to a position where it's uncomfortable. The way that this often happens is your head either gets crunched down, which is where your chin gets put onto your chest, like a can opener, right? You know, if you're if your chin is being forced onto your chest, that's broken posture. Also, sometimes your head can be forced up like a Pez dispenser, that's bad. And if your neck is getting twisted side to side, that's also bad. So my thought is if you want to tell, hey, am I in danger here? Avoid constriction, avoid impact, and avoid broken posture. If none of those things are happening to you, you're probably at least temporarily safe, but those are the three things that I look for when this person is trying to get around my head. How do I know if this is an imminent threat or not? I'd love to know if you think I'm wrong there because that's something I put a bit of thought into recently in terms of how I would educate say a new white belt on when this is dangerous and when maybe you have a bit of wiggle room. Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. I I think those are those are pretty fair points. Like I definitely agree with with everything you said. And I think I would just though highlight the fact that like you said, to preface, uh you know, at the beginning of of of your points, I guess, was that, you know, things can also change, right? So sometimes things don't feel very threatening until they are. And then once they are, it's it's too late, you know? And and I do think that when it comes to the head, there's also moments where you might actually be as the person like attacking, you might be actually like pretty awfully out of position. But if you're able to even for a moment, you know, manipulate your opponent's head in such a way that they're forced to like look away from you or something. Like there's a lot of that I've been working on these days too is actually just like using like things like chin straps actually to turn my opponent to make my opponent look away from me and just be by way of manipulating the the direction they're looking at, I can also manipulate the way they're able to move. So I do think that sometimes even when I like you have a bad control of the head, you know, don't underestimate someone's ability to kind of to change that quite quickly, right? So I think if you if you're not dealing threat in the ways that you outlined and you're in a position where you can control your opponent's movement, then I 100% think you you're fine and probably the person is overextended themselves, you know? But if your opponent still has the ability to move and they're still like agile to a certain point, never underestimate the ability of a grip control in your head to kind of change sides in a moment, you know? Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I guess one closing thought that I would maybe add onto that is you never want to assume that you're safe when the other person is grabbing your head. There have been a lot of times where I've thought, hey, there's no choke here. And then I get tapped out with something absolutely preposterous. Right? I mean, you know, they'll tell you in early Jijitsu like, oh, you know, the the bully choke, the you know, the schoolyard headlock choke, that's not a real thing. Look, you can absolutely tap someone from there if you get under the chin and they can't get their head out. So you never want to assume that, hey, there's no choke here or I'm safe here. Really any grip on your head should at least be taken seriously because weird things can happen. And even if they don't get a tap on you, you know, you still have to worry about things like neck strain, right? It's it's not good to be letting someone try to, you know, twist your head like a bottle cap. So I would suggest to people at the bare minimum always take it seriously. And as we tie this up though, Brianna, any other thoughts or ideas you wanted to share which we didn't get into here yet? Speaker 2: No, I think we we touched on a few good basics. I think we covered everything. Speaker 1: Amazing. Well, I think this was fantastic. I think there was a lot of great content in here that's going to help people out with this very important Jijitsu scenario. Now, as we go forward though, of course, I always encourage people to give you a follow on social media. So I should ask, where can people follow you and also is there anything else that you want to promote or that you want to make sure people are aware of? Speaker 2: Sure. Yeah. So you guys can follow me on Instagram. Um that's pretty much the only social media platform that I have the mental capacity for. And even at that, it's limited, you know. But yeah, so you guys can follow me on Instagram. It's my handle is Brianna SM. And then yeah, I should be I'm slowly filming stuff. I'd like to in the next month be finally launching my Patreon as well as hopefully having a couple just like standalone instructionals for sale. Just trying to still decide the best platform to offer those. But the Patreon should be up and running in the next month. So keep an eye on that. I'll be announcing it on my Instagram. And yeah, thanks so much for listening. Speaker 1: No worries. As always, I love having you here. I will put a link to your social in your show notes. I will put a link to your social in the show notes so people can easily find you and follow you. All of our stuff is there too. You can either go to the show notes or you can just go to BJJ Mental Models dot com. The podcast, full length episodes like this are completely free as are our mini episodes breaking down the key concepts in Jijitsu and our newsletter, well over 13,000 subscribers there. All of that is free stuff and I really encourage you to subscribe to all of that if you haven't already. We put a lot of time and effort into making the best content we can and like I said, all of this is a free resource. No ads. So please do give it a go. And always I I always tell people, you know, don't be a stranger. Reach out to me if you have any questions or if you don't even know where to start because I know we make a lot of stuff. 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And if you go up to our coaching or pro tiers, we can even give you direct rolling review feedback or actually help support your Jijitsu business on the marketing and uh pro side, which is something that I know a lot of people, especially gym owners and even athletes struggle with. People just understandably want to do the thing they're passionate about, which is Jijitsu. Maybe an area that we can help you out with is the business periphery around that, like building your reputation, building your brand, getting the word out. So again, all of that is at BJJ Mental Models dot com. But I always tell people, if you have any questions about this stuff or what we do, it's free to ask. So just fill in the contact form on our website or hit me up on social media and I will gladly answer any questions that you've got. But Brianna, thank you again for doing this great chat as always. Love having these conversations. It is always wonderful to be graced by royalty. So So thank you for coming by as always. Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Speaker 1: You're most welcome. And again, a sincere thank you to the listeners too. I really do appreciate it and we will talk to you soon.