Shrimping is one of those classical moves you often learn in the first few bjj sessions you attend. This bjj specific movement helps with a variety of techniques but there are also some conceptual ideas to think about given how you’re most likely to apply the movement in combat.
Jason Scully changed the way he shrimps because he found it less efficient than the next version.
Often times when shrimping you don’t think much past the goal of reaching the end of the training room doing this drill but this move is in fact one of the main ways to escape mount and as such it plays a huge role in any individual bjj journey.
Scully considers the main problem people have with the elbow knee escape the lack of clearing the leg. He considers that drilling this classic version of the shrimp is in many ways detrimental to applying it later on into escaping the mount. This is why he started doing it another way which he fully endorses:
In Scully’s opinion the mindset makes a huge difference and the leg will be cleared in mount escape. Now each time you shrimp you will clear a leg.
Scully also observes that people who have been shrimping a certain way for a number of years have trouble adjusting but the new people pick it up much easier.
New type of shrimp can provide ample space for a submission setup, for instance triangle chokes. This is why he equalizes the new way of shrimping with an offensive shrimp.
Top leg pushes, hips are on the side, hands are used as a framing device and a knee comes in close to the body.
Another detail Scully believes in is not pushing with both feet because that can be instrumental in creating a bad habit of leaving the leg uncleared.
Shrimping is also often misconstrued as a guard retention movement as opposed to an escape movement which Scully considers it 90% of the time.
Shrimping is also not helpful for sidecontrol escapes – sidecontrol escapes should be done by circle shrimping as opposed to the regular one depicted above.
Backwards shrimp in sidecontrol would not enable us to escape. Drills are of integral value, you need to be aware of every purpose of the movement and doing it for that particular purpose not to get to the end of the room.
Scully also notes that this type of forward shrimping is Bad:
What you should actually do is this:
Why? Because that movement with the arms over your head mimics that you should be throwing the opponent over you.
The good variation can be used for a variety of escapes. You can watch the whole video about these concepts:
