Mini Ep. 99: Elbow-Knee Connection

Hey everybody, before we get started this week, I just want to let you know, we released a new mindset course featuring Rob Bernaki from Island Top Team and BJJ Concepts. It's called Mindset for Betas. It's an amazing resource that breaks down a new way to build a resilient jiu-jitsu mindset. It's part of BJJ Mental Models Premium. I will spare you the full sales pitch because you can try it for free. Just go to BJJmentalmodels.com/beta. I will give you a free month, you can check out the course and if you decide that it's not worth your money, you can cancel, you won't have to pay a cent. I've already been told by subscribers that this is the most valuable piece of jiu-jitsu content they've ever received, so I hope you like it too. Hey there everybody, welcome to BJJ Mental Models. I am Steve Kwan and BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent jiu-jitsu approach. And do you know what we're going to do in this mini episode? We're going to talk about jiu-jitsu mechanics. Not the people who fix your cars, we're going to talk about one of the foundational ideas for how the body moves in the gentle art. Now you've probably heard this term before. We're going to be talking about the elbow knee connection today. This is a name that is a little bit confusing because it doesn't entirely accurately describe what your body is doing. You've probably heard coaches or internet people talk about the elbow knee connection and just based on that name, you might think that what this means is that you should make your elbows touch your knees. And that's kind of just evidence that this is a bad name because that's not really what you're actually doing. When people talk about the elbow knee connection, what they're basically telling you to do is coil in your elbows and your knees so that you can deny access to those joints and close up the space beside your hip. Think about a dead spider. You know how when a spider dies, all of their limbs retract? That's kind of what the elbow knee connection is about. It's not that you're trying to make your elbow touch your knee, it's that you're trying to close off the space by your hip and you're trying to make it harder for your opponent to get access to your elbow joint or your knee joint. Why does this matter? Well, let's explain why. The the elbow knee connection is an example of what in jiu-jitsu we might call a universal defense, which means it's not always the best option, but if you don't know what else to do, doing this is probably a pretty good idea. And so in this case we're talking about retracting our elbows, retracting our knees, closing the space to our hips. Why do we do that? Here's a relevant example. Imagine you're about to pass my guard. You're able to clear past my legs. You're about to drop your weight down and settle on top of me in side control. What do I do? Well, first let's think about what a guard pass really is. A guard pass is about more than just clearing the legs. The goal of a guard pass is to cut your opponent's body in half. You're clearing their legs and then trying to settle your weight down on top of them so that you can cut their body in half. You want to have the top side of their body on one end and the other side of their body on the other end. Kind of like a pizza, you're just cutting it right in half down the middle. The reason you do this is because if you can prevent your opponent from bringing their arms and their legs together, then they can't as easily use those weapons in tandem. It makes it harder for them to launch a coordinated attack. Think about how different it feels when you're playing guard versus when your top side opponent passes your guard and gets to side control or mount. They're able to slice your body in half and keep your legs on one side and your arms and your head on the other side and that just makes it way harder to do things in tandem. It also allows them to anchor onto your hip region, which means that they can kind of pin you in position and track your movement better. So if someone is passing your guard and they clear your legs, closing that elbow knee space, creating an elbow knee connection is a good defense because if the top side opponent cannot claim that space between your elbows and your knees, which basically means the space by your hip, if they can't do that, then they can't complete the guard pass. As long as I can maintain that elbow knee connection and deny my opponent access to that space in between, they can't really hold me in a guard pass. I can turtle, I can roll away, I can reguard. I'm still in the fight even if technically they've cleared past my legs. So the elbow knee connection is a really good late stage defense against guard passes. But it's also quite effective when you are on the offense, when you are attacking from the top. Maybe you're trying to pass the other person's guard. And the reason why is because if I close the space between my elbows and knees, that's going to make it harder for my opponent to get access to my elbows or my knees. You may have heard me in the past talk about the three joint rule, a really foundational concept for jiu-jitsu mechanics. If you aren't familiar with it, please do Google BJJ Mental Models three joint rule and look up the mini episode or even the full length episode we did on this because it's such a key concept. Basically it talks about how if your opponent wants to control your arms or legs, they want to control not just one joint, but ideally two to get control and if they want to submit you, they need to control all three. So if I want to arm bar you, that means I need your wrist, your elbow and your shoulder. If your shoulder is loose, you're probably going to hitchhiker out or get out. So the more joints I can control in your limb, the stronger that control is. When I'm passing your guard, if I close the elbow knee space, I make it really hard for the guard player to get access to my elbows or knees, which means it's really hard for them to do things like arm drag me or leg drag me or go into an entanglement. If you've ever sparred with a really stubborn black belt who's just really immobile, hard to move and you've tried to pull one of their arms free or get access to something and you just can't get a grip on anything. That might be because, among other things, they might just have a really strong elbow knee connection. When you close off that elbow knee space by preventing them from getting access to your elbow and your knee, they can't easily control one of your limbs. And by closing that space, you also deny access to the hip. And as you know, when you're attacking someone from the guard, so many of the things you want to do require getting access to the hip. By closing the elbow and knee space, you deny that, which is part of the reason why so many people talk about the elbow knee connection. If you don't know what else you're doing, the elbow knee connection is a good defensive option, not just to prevent the person from passing your guard, but also to prevent them from getting access to one of your limbs so that they can launch into an attack of their own. Now, where the misnomer comes into play here is that based on the name, you might think this means that your elbow is supposed to be touching your knee. And not always, not really. When I do this, very rarely is my elbow actually touching my knee. If you try to do this, if you were to pause whatever you're doing right now and bend over and try to put your elbow onto your knee, what you'll find is that to do that, you actually have to bend far forward and even when you do it, there's this giant pocket of space beside your hip. So actually touching your elbow to your knee, unless you've got very different body dimensions from me, is probably not the best idea. The goal is not to make your elbow touch your knee. The goal is to close off the space between your elbow and knee so that your opponent can't get to your hip and also to make it harder for them to get access to your elbow joint or your knee joint. My advice to you is try deploying this when you're either defending a guard pass or passing the guard. If you're on the bottom and your legs get cleared and you want to take that last ditch attempt to prevent the guard pass, close the elbow knee space, bring your elbows and knees together. Again, the goal is not to make your elbow touch your knee. The goal is just to close that pocket of space so that your opponent cannot get the space by your hip and they cannot control you by the elbow and they cannot control you by the knee. You're trying to shell up like a dead spider. When you do that, you'll find it's much harder for them to finish the guard pass and it's much harder for them to grab you by the arm or the leg and control you that way. Do the same thing if you're attacking from the top side and you're trying to pass someone's guard. If you crouch down a bit and close off that elbow and knee space while still keeping your posture, again, the goal is not to make your elbow directly touch the knee, it's just to close off that space and to deny access to the elbow and knee joints, you'll probably find that it's much harder for the person on the bottom to get good grips on you. If you struggle a lot with getting arm dragged when you're playing top side, you may find that this helps solve that problem because if your opponent cannot control you by the elbow, they're going to really struggle to arm drag you. So even on the offense, the elbow knee connection is helpful because by closing that space, you make it harder for them to grab you by a limb. So again, just to recap, the elbow knee connection is a really good universal defense. It might not always be the best option, but if you don't know what else to do, it's a pretty good option. It's great for defense, but also for offense because it takes away your opponent's ability to control you by the arm or the leg. The goal is not necessarily to make your elbow touch your knee, it's just to close the space. Don't let them get access to your elbow joint, don't let them get access to your knee joint, don't let them get access to your hip. It's a defensive structure that's very powerful and once you start using it in jiu-jitsu, you'll realize that by applying an elbow knee connection to in a lot of places, you can really upgrade your game quickly by doing very little and it's a really great hack for almost everyone of all levels. This kind of mechanical stuff I'm really passionate about. We talk about it a lot at BJJ Mental Models. We have a full length episode on the elbow knee connection, plus a lot of mini episodes like this and our newsletter is definitely worth your time and it's all free. Go to BJJmentalmodels.com to get that. And if you want to level up with us and get access to the world's largest audio library of jiu-jitsu master classes on strategy, tactics, concepts, mindset, philosophy, think the audible or master class for Brazilian jiu-jitsu, you want BJJ Mental Models Premium. So you can also check that out at BJJmentalmodels.com. Thank you so much for listening and I'll talk to you soon.