Gordon Ryan recently sat down with Bernardo Faria to detail what he believes to be the best way to control your opponent from the mount position, and subsequently attack with greater success. It’s something that no doubt crosses the mind of every athlete when they start transitioning from gi to no gi grappling, but mount is a significantly less dangerous position than it is when your opponent has lapels available to attack.
It’s for this reason that we tend to see competitors all the way through to the highest level actually have more success attacking from side control as opposed to mount, or even just using the position to attack the back instead. Gordon Ryan is one of the few athletes who’s actually been able to have a great deal of success from mount and he often uses it as one of his main areas to attack from in recent years. He attributes a lot of this success to a unique grip that he was show as a brown belt, that he believes allows for greater control and opens up more opportunities for submissions.
He’s recently given the public a greater insight into his approach to guard retention so it makes sense that he’s now started to explain the opposite side of the coin, attacking from top position. He explains that the grip in question is actually performed using the same-side hand which the takes an underhand grip on the arm you want to attack.
He goes in to greater depth for how the grip works in the below video that comes courtesy of Bernardo Faria’s official YouTube channel:
