THE SHOULDER ROLL

The shoulder-roll is known to be one of the most difficult positions to initially learn, but one of the easiest to get the hang of once you do, and the most usable in anyone’s game.

The best way to initially learn it is to practice deflecting the knee ride attempt by having your training partner throw leg shuck pass attempts, trying to knee-ride you off the leg shuck. Since the leg shuck motion throws your hips facing away, it can be impossible to shrimp ourselves back to a standard shrimping guard-recovery pathway by simple virtue that our hips are in the wrong direction at that moment! This makes the shoulder roll pass defense necessary in order to get back to a safe orientation that protects your back and protects you from being pinned in side control.

There’s some important vocabulary you need to know –

“Strong Side vs. Off-Side” in guard recovery and passing, and the “running escape”.

The shoulder roll is an “Off-Side” guard recovery, meaning that the opponent is passing to somewhat behind you. This refers to where you are facing away from them. The strong side of your defense is where you are facing towards them, as in standard shrimp-to-guard, the knee shield, and the technical stand. However, as you orient yourself to one side, you also create some degree of back exposure. Especially as you move to make a technical stand or build up to a posted arm, expect an opponent to use deceptive timing and fakes to move towards that back-exposure aka your “off-side” – and that’s when you need to have off-side defenses ready.

WHAT IS “RUNNING ESCAPE”?

What do grapplers mean when we say “running escape,” and how is this different from the shoulder roll? The running escape is actually a complex series of moves that includes the shoulder roll, which all happen in rapid succession to escape a hard pinning position that is already set; wherein the opponent has completely blocked your strong-side escapes, or run your hips to face away.

The difficulty of escaping the knee ride or side control with the running escape once the pin is set (meaning the weight is down on you, preventing you from moving easily) is MUCH GREATER than if you use this pass defense early enough, as shown in this drill structure where the knee ride is deflected before it can stabilize on you.

So drill this pass defense first, and then we’ll be able to easily get you doing the running escape from a full-on knee ride or side control, and you’ll be breaking out of some very tight situations successfully by the end of this JiuJitsu course level!

The shoulder roll, running escape, turtle back defense, and belly down escape are all closely related. Once you have some muscle memory with the shoulder roll, we’ll be looking at each of these situations in detail to understand the concepts and principles at play.