Guest pots by Matt D’Aquino, a multiple Australian and Oceania Champion and a 2008 Beijing Judo Olympian. He has been studying Judo for over 23 years. He is a 3rd Degree Black belt and a purple belt in BJJ. . Matt has also come out with great new DVD sets for BJJ players: Judo for BJJ and Standing to Ground Transitions.

Last week I was running a Judo basics class and one of my students asked me for my number 1 tip for ground work…..my answer “Work on your escapes.”

If you know how to escape most hold downs then you will have a way better chance of not losing on the ground.

If you know how to escape most submissions then you will have a better chance of not tapping out.

So often when we are doing Judo we look at ways to beat our opponent, but often one of the best ways to win in Judo, is to not allow our opponents to score any point on us. That includes both tachiwaza and newaza. 4 X Olympian and UFC Fighter Daniel Kelly once told me that his number 1 rule when doing Judo is this: Don’t let your opponent get a score. If they score they win!

Don’t let your opponent score any points on you and the best way to not allow this to happen in Newaza is not let anybody hold you down.

In the following 5 videos I show you 5 great ways you can escape common Judo positions including:

• Kesa gatame

• Mune gatame

• Tate shiho gatame

• Yoko shiho gatame

• Juji gatame

Now you may notice that many of these are BJJ videos, please don’t get all grumpy at me. If you have ever done newaza on a good BJJ guy you will quickly notice that they are very very hard to hold down and control, this is because they know how to escape various newaza positions and submissions. Us Judoka can learn a lot of BJJ guys and BJJ guys and girls can learn a lot from us Judoka.

Here is my number 1 Kesa gatame escape. Kesa gatame is a tough tough tough hold down to escape, but you need to know how to escape it. Kesa escapes are also important to teach kids because I have seen more than a handful of kids gets their heads popped off from being stuck in this position.

Mune gatame is probably the most common osaekomi waza in Judo, so I encourage you to learn how to escape this positions. In the video below Roy Dean goes over a variety of techniques you can use to escape mune gatame (or side control or side mount in BJJ)

Tate shiho gatame is another hold down that is hard to escape but if you drill a number of these Roy Dean escapes then I bet your opponents will find it a lot harder to hold you down.

Here is a really nice Kami shiho gatme escape from BJJ World Champ Bernardo Faria.

And lastly I have an incredible video on how to escape the Juji gatame. This is a must watch for any competitive Judoka: