Beginners lose pins for a consistent reason: they hold with their arms instead of their chest. A pin is maintained by driving weight through the contact point on your partner's upper body while keeping your own hips low and mobile, so their bridge finds nothing to lift. Side control asks you to take away the near arm and the near hip. Mount asks you to ride the bridge and stay heavy without posting a hand on the mat.
Key points
- In side control, put your chest on their sternum and keep your knees off the mat so weight travels downward instead of sideways.
- Control the near arm by trapping it above their head or pinning it to their body, since a free near arm rebuilds a frame instantly.
- Block the near hip with a knee or forearm so they cannot shrimp away and slide a knee back inside.
- In mount, keep your knees high under their armpits or your feet hooked, because low knees give their elbows room to work inside.
- Ride a bridge by widening your base and following the rotation with your upper body rather than posting a hand that can be trapped.
Common mistakes
- Sitting upright in mount to hunt for attacks, which raises your center of mass and makes the bridge-and-roll escape close to free.
- Kneeling beside your partner in side control with both knees on the mat, which turns a pin into a hug they can shrimp out of.
- Chasing a submission before the near arm is dealt with, letting them frame into your hip and recover guard while you adjust grips.
Put it into practice
Pin survival rounds
- Begin in side control with your partner escaping at roughly seventy percent effort while you are forbidden from attacking anything.
- Hold for ninety seconds, then transition to mount and hold ninety seconds more under the same restriction.
- Swap roles, then note which escape attempt actually moved you and adjust the matching contact point.
- Run three rounds total, reducing each time how often your hands are used to hold the position.
side controlmountpinstop position