Foil the crucifix with João Gabriel Rocha
João controls on top after executing his acrobatic transition.
An elite athlete in international BJJ, João Gabriel Rocha of Soul Fighters has up his sleeve an ocean of transitions that can help you enrich your arsenal for your training and competitive efforts.
In today’s lesson, recorded exclusively by Graciemag.com during a photo shoot, he shows his transition in the crucifix escape in order to end up in an advantageous situation in side control. The crucifix — a position that isolates one’s opponent’s arms — offers few escape options, but to João the act of getting out unharmed isn’t enough.
To successfully escape, he starts by hip-escaping in a zigzag motion in the opposite direction as his opponent to lay his back on the floor and, consequently, get his own head on the floor as well. Then, acrobatically, João rolls backward, without freeing the arms, and ends the transition on top of his opponent, in side control.
To better understand this effective escape, give the following video a close studying.