The kimura can be a painfully difficult submission to defend and escape from, especially if your opponent knows what he is doing and even more so if it is being applied in the north-south position. Therefore, in the quest of escaping this common kimura-finishing position, the renowned instructor Igor Gracie has a couple of tricks up his sleeve to share with us.

Buy Yourself Some Time and Protect Your Arms
Instructor Igor Gracie first emphasizes that you must buy yourself some time and protect your arm to stave off the submission; you can do this either by grabbing your own collar and keeping the elbow tight as much as possible, or by grabbing your own thigh.
He also points out that you need to be careful with your other, „outside“ arm, so that it doesn’t get trapped with your opponent’s leg. You can easily avoid this by keeping your elbow close to your body.

Then, in order to start setting up your escape, you need to use this outside arm to grip your opponent’s pants on the outside of his knee.

The Escape Motion
After you’ve executed the precautionary steps, you need to initiate the movement necessary for your escape. To do this, instructor Igor shows that you need to bend and swing your legs into the direction you are facing towards. He mentions that it is very important that you don’t let your feet hit the floor and rest there. Your thigh and knee can touch the floor, but not your feet.
As your thigh and knee touch the floor, you need to promptly switch direction with your legs – while simultaneously extending the arm you hold your grip with, doing that by essentially pushing into the opponent’s leg.

This movement, done in unison, will get you to shift towards your opponent. Now, your elbow is pointing towards the ground and is off of it – which means that your opponent no longer has a kimura in place.
After that, you can push their shoulder in order to simply recover your guard or to go for an armbar.

Watch Igor Gracie explain this technique in great detail on the video below:

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