Developing the skills of kick-ass control from the mount position takes time and a lot of practice but it’s well worth it the effort.

A great mount position will enable you to wear out, frustrate and finish your opponents with strikes and submission holds.

In order to develop a great mount, you’ll need to develop skill with the many different techniques designed to shut down all of your opponent escape attempts.

It’s best to practice those fundamental techniques first against a non-resisting opponent and then once you feel ready, against someone who is REALLY trying to escape.

Here’s a breakdown of one drill that I have my students do often to improve their ability to attack from and escape the mount position:

1) First, start off in the mount position atop of your training partner.

2) Set a timer (something with an alarm to sound the end of the round will work best)  for 1 minute and start the round.

3) For the entire duration of the round, try to maintain the mount position while your opponent gives their best effort to escape. An escape is completed anytime your partner establishes their closed guard on you or rolls you over and gets on top.

4) When time expires, switch positions with your partner and reset the timer. It then becomes your turn to escape as many times as you can during the timed round.

When the second round is over, take a short break (1 minute should suffice) and then repeat the drill several times, switching partners every round  if you have the option to.

Once you’ve got a handle on the above sequence you can make things more challenging by making any of the following adjustments to the drill:

Adjustment 1: Top person can apply submission holds.

Adjustment 2: Bottom person only needs to get back to 1/2 guard to score an escape. It becomes so that any guard position (full, spider, butterfly etc.) equals an escape.

Adjustment 3: Increase the length of time that each of you spends on the bottom position.

Adjustment 4: Keep Track of Points (1 point per per escape/submission) and have the athlete with the lower point total at the end of the round do a set amount of pushups (or some other exercise) depending on the score differential (ie. with a score of 5 to 2, the losing athlete would do 5 push-ups per point differential = 3 x 5 pushups = 15 pushups)

With an equally skilled training partner, this drill becomes very challenging and fun!

You’ll find that if you lack solid mount control skills you’ll find that it’s actually easier to escape then it is to hold down or submit your training partner from the top.

Make your mount a NIGHTMARE for the bottom person when doing this drill by learning the 24 techniques in my new –> “Dominate from the Mount : Killer Control” video set