Mexican ground karate escapes review: 1 big surprise!

Mexican ground karate escapes is a bad name for this instructional. It should really be called: how to finish and escape arm in guillotines, darces and anacondas super easily. I’m positively surprised by the details Craig Jones shares for both offense and defense from the front headlock, and in this review I’ll tell you why.

Title	Mexican ground karate escapes volume 1: front headlocks
Instructor	Craig Jones
Total duration	3 hours and 29 minutes
Publication year	2021
Where to buy	Here on BJJ Fanatics

3 Things you learn in this instructional

1. You learn how to finish the arm in guillotine, anaconda and d’arce. Craig shows how to finish these submissions so that he can show how to defend them. But man, this is by far the best content I ever saw on the arm in guillotine. I always found this hard to finish, but Craig has crazy good details. And he has the simplest explanation for how to combine the arm in guillotine, darce and anaconda in a system I ever heard.
2. Front headlock submissions are easy for noobs. Do you ever get tapped by people who are much worse than you? If so, there’s a good chance it’s with a guillotine. That’s because front headlock defense is underdeveloped in jiu jitsu. In this instructional you learn how to easily prevent getting submitted from front headlocks.
3. You free yourself from fear to shoot takedowns. Are you hesitant to shoot takedowns, because you fear guillotines? Most people are. But if you learn how to defend front headlock submissions easily, you free yourself from this fear and you can shoot takedowns without angst.

What you’ll learn about finishing

You’ll learn everything about finishing the arm in guillotine. I was so impressed by Craig’s finishing details and system that I wrote a separate post about it: How to finish an arm in guillotine: 3 key Details. You’ll also learn how to properly combine the arm in guillotine, darce and anaconda.

What you’ll learn about escapes

You learn how to escape front headlock submissions by exploiting their biggest weaknesses:

• Arm in guillotines are weak to rotational escapes
• High elbow guillotines (marcelotines) are super weak to rotational escapes after a quick swimming motion
• High wrist guillotines are weak to chest opening escapes
• D’arces are weak to inversion based escapes (and even arm bar counters)
• Anacondas are weak to grip breaking escapes

And the added bonus is that because guillotines usually have to be finished from bottom, you often end up in top side control if you escape them.

Why Craig filmed this instructional?

Craig admits that he filmed this instructional as fast as he could after Volkanovski vs Ortega. Craig Jones is the grappling coach of Volkanovsk and in their UFC match, and Volkanovski escaped multiple extremely tight submissions attempts from Ortega, who’s known for his submissions. Volk escaped both a mounted arm in guillotine and an anaconda.

So the Mexican ground karate escapes instructional is Craig’s attempt to capitalize on Volkanovski’s very impressive submission escapes.

My verdict

I really like this instructional. It’s shorter than most, but I don’t mind that. It’s very focused on a relatively small but very important subject area (front headlocks). And Craig’s to the point and doesn’t repeat himself too often.

The content quality is super high, I learned many things that I never heard before. And Craig also structured a lot of knowledge I already had about the front headlock in a much simpler way than how I thought about it.

So if you want to learn about front headlocks (how to escape or how to attack), I recommend this instructional.