Technique /// Escapes & Defence
Locoplata Escape
Escapes & Defence • Proficient
This technique has elevated risk. Make sure you've covered the prerequisites before attempting.
Escape route from
Escapes land in
What This Is
The locoplata is the gogoplata arriving from above. You are under mount; the top player pins your near arm flat with their shin, overhooks your far arm to lift your shoulder, comes up onto their foot, and steps a leg over your shoulder and under your chin so the shin lands across your throat. Their free arm then presses your head onto it. For the attack, see Locoplata.
It is the same choke as the gogoplata and a completely different problem. From guard the attacker has to elevate their hips, hold a leg up against your posture, and press a shin upward — a great deal of work that you can interfere with by simply standing taller. From mount none of that applies to you. Their weight is above you, the mat is behind your head, and posture is not a tool you have. Everything you know about defending the gogoplata as a passer is the wrong end of the exchange.
What you do have is a long setup to interrupt. The sequence has four steps before anything reaches your neck, and the first of them is your own near arm being put on the mat. That is where this is beaten.
Also Known As
- Mounted gogoplata defence
Safety First
Tap when the shin lands, not when the pain peaks. A defender calibrated on the gogoplata is calibrated on a version where they could always have raised their head away from it. Here they cannot, and the force available is higher.
Defence Timing — Early, Middle, Late
Early — your near arm is still yours
Keep the elbow tight to your ribs and frame with the forearm. The sequence begins by putting that arm flat on the mat and pinning it with a shin, and an arm that never leaves your body is never available. This is where the submission is genuinely beaten, and it costs nothing you were not already doing.
Middle — the arm is pinned, the leg has not stepped
Bridge while their base is committed. Coming up onto a foot and basing out with a hand takes two points of support away from holding you down. That transit is the narrowest their base gets and it is the best window mount offers.
Late — the shin is across your throat
Turn your head and tap. From underneath there is no posture available to take the throat out of the way, and their weight is doing the work. This is a decision point, not a position to solve.
The Invariant in Action
An elbow connected to your ribs is an arm still inside your own system. Once it is flat on the mat under a shin, the choke that follows has no answer left in your body, and every remaining option is about interrupting the attacker rather than freeing yourself.
This is why the middle answer is a read rather than a technique. The bridge is an ordinary mount escape and every defender already owns it — what has to be learned is the second at which it is worth running.
Against the guard-bottom gogoplata a defender has a genuine window in which the attacker is straining and the shin is not yet loaded. That window does not exist here, and expecting it is the specific error this page is about.
Named Escape Techniques
1. Elbows In Under Mount
When it works Early stage, permanently. The habit that denies the sequence at step one.
- Keep both elbows in contact with your ribs as the top player climbs. Frame with forearms; never with a straight arm at their chest.
- Do not reach for an underhook you cannot finish. A committed arm that does not arrive is an arm lying on the mat.
- Push with your hips and legs. If an arm is doing the pushing, it has left your body.
- Work your standard escapes from Mount Escape Techniques with the elbows connected.
Why it fails Pressing them off as they climb. The instinct under a rising mount is to create space with the arms, and the arm that presses is the arm the sequence needs on the mat. This is the same donation the armbar and the domplata collect from the same position.
Ability level: Developing
2. Bridge on the Base
When it works Middle stage. The near arm is pinned and the attacker is coming up onto their foot. The real escape.
- Recognise the posting hand and the raised foot. Two points of their support have moved from holding you down to reaching over you.
- Bridge hard toward the side they have posted, immediately — this is a narrower base than mount ever otherwise gives you.
- Follow the bridge with the roll rather than treating it as a bump. The narrowness lasts only as long as the transit.
- Land in Closed Guard or better.
Why it fails Waiting to see what the leg does. The leg is the alarming part and it is also the last part; by the time it is travelling over your shoulder the base has been re-established around it. Bridge on the hand and the foot, not on the leg.
Ability level: Proficient
3. Turn the Head, Then Tap
When it works Late stage. The shin is across your throat. Survival, and a short one.
- Turn your head toward the shin’s origin so the bone meets your jaw rather than your windpipe. Small movement, real difference.
- Keep bridging while you hold it. The turn buys seconds and creates nothing on its own.
- Do not reach for the leg with your free arm — it is on the wrong side of their body and the reach costs you the bridge.
- Tap. From underneath there is no posture to take the throat out of the way, and their weight does not tire.
Why it fails Treating it as an escape. It is a substitution of one structure for another and it holds only while the attacker is still settling. Use it to buy a bridge or to buy a deliberate tap.
Ability level: Proficient
What Causes Escapes to Fail
The dominant failure is importing gogoplata defence into a position where none of it applies. Posture is the answer from on top and there is no posture from underneath; the attacker straining is the cue from on top and there is no straining from underneath. A defender who knows the gogoplata well is, here, well prepared for the wrong problem.
Giving up the near arm
The single donation. It is pinned before anything threatening happens, it does not hurt, and it is the only tool that could clear a shin from your neck later.
Bridging on the leg instead of the base
The leg is what you notice and the base is what is briefly weak. By the time the leg is overhead, the hand and foot have done their work and the structure has closed around you.
Waiting for effort to warn you
From the top this finishes by settling. There is no rising strain to read, so a defender calibrated on the guard-bottom version is waiting for a signal the position does not produce.
Reaching across for the leg
Your free arm is on the far side of their body and the leg is anchored by their weight. The reach achieves nothing and spends the hand that was helping you bridge.
Counter-Offensive Options
They spend the mount to attempt it. Coming up onto a foot and posting a hand trades a settled pin for a narrow, temporary structure. A defender who bridges into that transit is not escaping a submission so much as collecting on a position the attacker gave up.
The arm pin is readable. A shin coming across to hold your arm flat is an unmistakable and early cue, and it precedes everything. Anyone who has been caught once can see the whole sequence from its first step.
Elbows-in is not a special-purpose habit. The same discipline denies the mount armbar, the domplata and this. It is the cheapest defensive investment available from underneath mount and it pays across the whole position.
Drilling Notes
Arm Retention Rounds
Partner in mount works to put your near arm flat on the mat and pin it with a shin. You keep the elbow connected to your ribs. Three-minute rounds, no submissions. This is the whole defence and it is the part that can be drilled at full resistance.
Bridge on the Post
Partner pins the arm, then comes up onto their foot and bases out. You bridge the instant the hand posts. Twenty repetitions. The response has to precede the recognition, because recognising the leg costs the window.
Wrong-Problem Drill
Alternate defending the gogoplata as the passer and the locoplata from underneath, back to back. The point is to feel that posture is available in one and absent in the other, which is the confusion this page exists to remove.
Head Turn at Zero Load
Partner rests a shin across the jaw line at no pressure. You practise the turn that puts bone on jaw rather than on windpipe. Ten repetitions. Never load the airway in drilling — the point is knowing the adjustment exists, not testing it.
Ability Level Guidance
Developing
Learn the elbows-in habit under mount and nothing else. At this level the submission is prevented entirely by an arm that stays connected to your ribs, and the later answers belong to people who have already lost that.
Proficient
Add the bridge on the post. The read that matters is the attacker’s hand touching the mat and their foot coming up, because that pair is the moment their base is worst and it happens before the leg moves.
Advanced
Hold the distinction between this and the gogoplata deliberately rather than by feel. They are the same choke with opposite mechanics, and the defensive instincts that serve you against one are actively misleading against the other.
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