Review - The Pressure Mount(Braulio Estima)

This is an instructional on the mount position and is mainly focused on maintaining it and working towards the finish from there. Braulio is one of the more charismatic teachers out there and he comes off as a friend or fun uncle teaching you some techniques.

Info

Braulio goes into great detail about how to maintain mount and although I've been doing BJJ for years most of this stuff I haven't seen before. He goes over collar chokes, armbars, and the rest of the stuff you'd assume would be covered. However Braulio adds extra details that make these submissions much more effective. Braulio also spends a lot of time showing how you can overcome escapes such as bridging and getting put into halfguard. Instead of "The Pressure Mount" he should have called it "Fix my Mount" or "Make The Mount Great Again". He of course does go over pressure, but I think the real value of this DVD is all the details he gives which fix common problems. This isn't an encyclopedia of moves from mount, so don't expect to learn a bunch of new moves. What you can expect is learning better ways of doing moves that are already familiar to you. 

Organization

This is an area that I can complain about. There is a ton of great info in this DVD, but it can be hard to find. The chapter listing is somewhat vague and a lot of info is contained in the tangents he goes off on. This causes 2 problems. The first is that it can be hard to find what you're looking for if you want to review the material later. I often practice something at the gym and then if there is a problem go back and re-watch part of the DVD for the solution. The second problem is I imagine many people won't pick this up because they believe the amount of technique is lower than it actually is. He shows a cool triangle setup, but it's not in the chapter list. I think this would be much more popular if it were more obvious what is included. That said I really like this format where they take something specific like mount and do a deep dive on it. The good thing about the organization is Braulio spends a good amount of time on each topic and explains the common reactions and how to defeat them. You can watch 1 chapter and get something useful that can be used in your next sparring session. 

Instruction

Braulio has a very relaxed and friendly way about him that comes through in all his instructionals. If you prefer more dry and "to the point" instruction you may not click with this, but I think the majority of people will enjoy Braulio's style. I never found myself getting bored and a few times he actually made me laugh. Of course it's not all laughs though. He goes in depth with the concepts and explains the small details that makes things work. This instructional, like most of his stuff, is based around concepts and he explains these in quite a bit of detail. This usually comes from Braulio going on a tangent while teaching something. Often times when he's doing this he is dropping gold. Something to keep in mind is that Braulio focuses on fairly basic moves, but shows new setups and controls that you most likely have not seen before. When I've seen good mount players I always wondered how they made it look so effortless and were able to dominate from the position so easily. Braulio reveals some of that invisible juijitsu here. 

Value

I think this is more than worth the money if you feel your mount isn't quite up to snuff. The concepts and techniques he covers will most likely plug in the holes you have from there. If you're looking for ways to get into the mount you may not find it here(although there are a few tips), but if you're having trouble maintaining and submitting from mount this will help. The reason I think this instructional is such a good value is because it goes over things that aren't often taught. People get taught the armbar from mount the 1st day of class. However when going against a good opponent how do you set it up when the other player really doesn't want you to have it. I'll admit I didn't have a good way to do this even at black belt. Thanks to this instructional now I do, so for that alone it is worth it for me. It is more valuable if you do gi, but there are quite a few things that can be used in No-gi also. Just keep in mind he does spend a fair amount of time on collar chokes. 

Personal experience 

I'd been having problems submitting people from mount. I could maintain mount, but I felt I couldn't break through people's defense without significant effort. This instructional helped a lot and made me more confident and dangerous from mount position. In particular it helped me raise my opponents arms so I could achieve high mount and then S-mount. There are tons of small things I got from this instructional that are also useful in other places besides mount. It didn't teach me any new moves that I didn't already know, but it helped me improve those moves and increased my finishing percentage. I wish I learned these details years ago, but better late than never. 

Conclusion

This is a great instructional, but keep in mind that it is for a certain type of person. This isn't a beginner's instructional that goes over the basics of mount and how to get there. This DVD will be most useful for those that are familiar with mount and its submissions, but perhaps have trouble with it. Are you having trouble getting the cross collar choke from mount? Are you getting thrown off and reversed every time you mount someone? Do you have trouble exposing someone's arms for an armbar after you achieve mount? If you answered yes to any of those I'd highly recommend "The high pressure mount".