Self Defense Escape from Holds - Headlock

I am Sundar J.

M. Brown with Joe Diamond's Mixed Martial Arts Academy in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Today, we are discussing practical self defense. This statement teaches you how to defend yourself against the basic headlock. The goal of my attacker here is to wrap his arm around my head and neck and punch me in the face with his free hand. When that happens, my move is this. Now, let us break it down for ease of understanding. Again, the primary consideration here is going to be dropping into a base position to maintain my balance. As soon as I feel my attacker's arm coming around my neck and head, I immediately widen my stance and soften my knees and drop my hips. Now, because I am worried about the punch, the first thing I do is shoot both arms straight across. So, one arm is going to go behind his back and one arm is going to be on front. Essentially, without a partner, I am going to look like this.

You can see that all this does is remove the punch entirely, it takes away some of the force of the punch. I am going to use my right hand and follow my opponent's arm until I can secure his wrist and holding the wrist, I am going to feel his bicep to my left hand and pin him here. It is important to not move your elbow up, but to lock your elbow down, so I can get a good grip on his wrist. From this position, I want to block in until my hip touches my opponent's hip. Now, just like in the previous movement with the grab, I take my right hand and I pin my opponent's wrist to my chest. Now, I want you to imagine your body like a door and your left leg is like the hinge. Your left leg and hips stay glued to your opponent and you are going to step back in a semicircle, wide on your right leg while you look up and away like this. Also, very important to remember that the hand stays pinned to the chest the entire time.

Now, you will check my head from the headlock, I perform the same motion. I bow the waist and I check my head is rocking backwards. If I let my opponent go here, all he has to do is turn towards me and the movement is over and the fight starts over again. I have not adequately defended myself. So, from this position, once I extract my head by bowing at the waist and walking backwards, I maintain this grip. Now, I simply lift my opponent's wrist to his shoulder. One more time, my opponent tends to wrap his arm around my neck, pull me down to punch me with the free hand. So first, I drop into base and I shoot both arms across to prevent the punch from having full effect. I now use my right hand to track down his arm until I can finally secure his wrist. I feed myself his bicep and I walk into him, so our hips touch. My right hand holds his wrist and pins it to my chest. Keeping my left foot and hip firmly planted against my opponent, I step back and wide on my right foot looking up and away as if I am opening a door. Now, I bend at the waist and walk backwards securing my opponent's wrist and pushing up while maintaining my grip on his left bicep.

In the next segment, we are going to discuss how to defend yourself against the bear hug.