Gift Wrapping: Not just for the Holidays Anymore
Guest article/homework assignment from Revolution BJJ purple belt student Aron Carkuff!
A Brief article on the Gift Wrap Position
This is a short article designed to explain the gift wrap position and some of its many advantages. The gift wrap position can be a powerful tool in your jujitsu arsenal. This is written specifically for budding white belts, or the blue belt that might find themselves in the position but may not understand the level of control they have, or the submissions that might be able to obtain for it.
I know when I first started my jujitsu, I would often find myself in this position, but I never knew exactly how effective it can be, or where to go from here, and mostly just used it as a pinning or staling position. The picture below is a visual representation of the movie itself.
As you can see, the basics of the move is when you have your opponent’s arm wrapped around their own neck while your hand is gripped tightly around their wrist on the other side of their head. Now as the picture below shows you the person on top is in a high S mount. This is normally not how the move starts off. You can typically get the gift-wrapped position from three major positions. Full mount, S guard or side control. I listed them in order from most likely to less likely. This is my option of course but also depends entirely on how your opponent is reacting. The opportunity for this position will normally come from an opponent who is framing incorrectly, arms to extended, or holding their frames far to long without them trying the appropriate escape from the position. I recommend starting the move from the mounted position. This gives you the most control over your opponent. But truthfully, after the gift-wrapped position has been achieved your mount will most likely end up turning into the classic S mount. This is due to the tightening of the move, you forcedly turning them to their side, or their own reaction.
This is where most new practitioners get stuck. Where do I go from here. Well good news folks there are some great set ups to some great submissions even positional changes from the gift-wrapped position. But they start with (drum roll please) the Kimura grip. Unless you have been living under a rock your entire time while coming to our gym or have never taken one of Andrew Smith’s classes you probably already knew that answer to this. This is what the kimura grip looks like from the S mount gift wrapped position. You can achieve it from mount. But it’s a little more difficult. It does require space though, and with space comes risk so ensuring that the space you give is minimal, and paying attention to positional balance, especially if you are in a high S mount (as shown below) is extremely important. The less space you give the better. The Kimura grip is an extremely power tool. The Kimura grip from the gift-wrapped position is more of focus of this article rather than the kimura finish itself. This gives you a massive number of options that just moments ago you didn’t have. What makes this grip such a powerful tool is that it gives a two on one grip. Pluss with the correct placement of your opponent’s elbow as seen in the picture below this gives you maximum control over an isolated limb, and their elbow joint.
Now I’m not going into any details on submission finishers. That would turn this article into a ninety-page thesis paper. What I will say though this small detail using a grip change can change how you think of the gift-wrapped position. You can use this grip to finish the Kimura, set up a straight arm bars, use it to take your opponents back, I even watched a video the other day on a mounted triangle from the gift-wrapped position as well. Of course, all of these moves can be used in succession to one another, turning them into a series of moves instead of just relying on just one alone. I hope this article has helped you not only understand the gift-wrapped position a little better, but how just a single grip change can enhance not only your options but your game entirely.
