This is where we started. At the bottom, getting smashed. Danaher’s video shows the most straightforward approach to making space to pry your way out of bottom side control. In addition to this movement, always look out for free legs. Top players can get greedy or impatient and make sloppy transitions to mount or toward other positions. Be prepared to catch their leg in your half guard and start initiating offense from the bottom.
I’ve always had a harder time escaping side control compared to mount. Mount might offer better submission options than side control, but side control is easier to hold. It’s not necessarily wise in a scored contest, but I often let people move to mount so that I can escape from there. From mount, half guard is only an elbow escape away.
If you’ve had enough philosophy and detail and just want to see the move, this is another simple depiction of it. Here, he demonstrates escaping all the way into full closed guard if you’re into that sort of thing:
The other standard mount escape is a roll. The Umpa escape can be alternated with elbow escapes if the top guy is being tough to shake. Don’t forget that the Umpa will land you in your opponent’s guard. Cross chokes and Ezekiel chokes initiated in mount can still be finished in guard, so you can’t relax your defenses yet because you hit the roll.