Priit Mihkelson is a black belt from Estonia who is widely regarded as one of Europe’s biggest innovators when it comes to BJJ. Known for his defensive prowess, he has been a black belt since 2012. When asked about his upbringing, he says “I am from Estonia and most of my life I have lived in Tallinn but I was actually born in Saaremaa (Estonias biggest island). It’s a pretty long winded story to tell why I would mention that fact but I still consider myself an islander so to speak”.
Interestingly Mihkelson got into BJJ quite late in life, you may think that like many of BJJ household names he started at a young age, but instead he claims “Well the beginning is actually pretty fuzzy but I would say that I was 23-24 years old when we first started with grappling-like activities so to speak”.
However, he also has a background in other traditional martial arts as he puts it “Well …originally I started with the Karate (did some 4 years of Aikido also on the side), and at some point Michuan Taiji Chuan classes, then my karate coach died and they gave to club to me to lead and because our late coach was influenced by a lot of soft / feeling based styles then I took on to continue with the Leung Ting Wing Tsun style. Anyway, I ended up switching coaches in Wing Tsun (I was part of two different organizations in my WT career) like 4 times and then finally I left that pyramid scheme for good. Also, a big part of leaving was a fact that we had started practicing some groundwork already during our last WT years and when we did Bloody Thursdays (helmets, MMA-gloves, groin protection, shin guards, and so on) in our school like once a month or once every 2 months. People with grappling skills just had such a big advantage and won most times”.
This eventually lead to him opening up his own BJJ gym which meant “In February 2005 we left that world and May 2005 we officially opened our own MMA/BJJ club 3D Treening. 3D meaning 3 distances: stand-up, clinch and ground”. Mihkelson still teaches at 3D and is also a teacher under the BJJ Globetrotters banner. He also advocates self-teaching and not being pinned down to one style or teacher, adding “I am mostly self taught and that is why I also appreciate multiple sources model that actually should be more promoted and less hated by authorities because it seems that time to have only “one” ultimate source so to speak is over and if you are still doing that then you will be left behind”. He has also studied Eduardo Telles and his use of turtle guard in BJJ – which is possibly where his affinity with playing the Turtle guard comes from.
As mentioned previously, his experimental style is what makes him unique. When asked about his favorite guard Mihkelson did not disappoint with his quirky style stating “Haha, at the moment it is hard to tell because the way my research “forces” me to play jiu-jitsu back forwards. I guess Turtle guard would be one answer but I do not like to call it like that because that would imply that there would also be side control guard, mount guard and so on. In a way there is but I am not getting into that rabbit hole right now. But to answer I would say grilled chicken open guard position because being good there allows me to adapt to any guard passing style and I like that openness”.
When sweeping he also adds “I would have to say the Butterfly sweep to my right with Marcelo-style grips (shallow elbow grip and necktie)”
On top, he also favors pressure and actually encourages getting swept to learn more about BJJ – as he says “These days it is very hard to answer because I want to get swept because of the research of unsweepable system and its different timing options. If I have to say something then probably some kind of folding pass / smash pass / smear pass”. After the pass, he uses armbars from the top and back attacks to submit his opponents.
These days he finds most of his time teaching which is in tune with his BJJ philosophies, for instance – he lists himself as his toughest opponent which gives an insight into his thought process. However, back when competing his weight was 88KG and he lists the 2008 Scandanavian Open as his biggest achievement where he achieved Gold at purple belt. He also jokes that his biggest life achievement “Is being tolerated by my lovely wife”.
Like many veteran grapplers, he has had his share of injuries but thankfully nothing too major. Here he quips “I think I have not had the worst one yet so to speak. I have had a meniscus operation that was actually caused by basketball training when I was young but I had to get an operation during my BJJ career because it locked my leg at one point in time. My rib popped once and a year ago and I had a hamstring injury caused by the kneebar from the back mount position”.
As mentioned, Mihkelson is known for his defensive abilities when practicing BJJ and has a reputation of someone who is difficult to tap. We asked him about his iron defense to which he replied “Iron defense? haha, I appreciate that I guess. Well, I am known for it because I play it a lot and I play it a lot because it interests me and it interests me because I want to answer a question differently than previous generations before me. Why? Because their answer does not make sense mostly. I actually tap pretty often because of different studies with submission defenses and their possible timing options. But I guess I understand where you are coming from that ‘Iron Defence’ reference because I can be pretty annoying if I decide too”.
Next, he responded about his teaching principles and philosophies – saying “Well you do not hold back with your questions do you? haha. I guess the teaching is actually easier when I have those postures around. Things kind of branch out from there in a way. It is a hard question to answer like this. For example when doing kimura defenses then our starting position is a Hawking 2.0 and then we learn to be safe there and then we create more problems form there and then create different mistakes that could happen during transitions and drill all those problems with the progressive resistance using feedback and variety of drills. Also when teaching guard passing for example, I would start from the end first and then move backward with the drills and resistance. The bottom person would do resistance using our ideas about the bottom positions (grilled chicken open guard, baby bridge, hawking 2.0, sitting up, panda, turtle and so on). I hope that made sense”.
This shows an insight into his strategic drilling. Interestingly, he emphasizes drilling things backward which is an unorthodox was of training certain moves and is not a commonly found way of teaching.
He further expands on this ideology in-depth, giving a clear path to using his blueprint – In true Mihkelson style, he doesn’t hold back with the details either, adding “Well I clearly think differently to the way the mainstream teaches, for example – side control bottom is not the layer or way we should start first when considering beginners. Why make ourselves flat and give away underhooks and so on and then complain that escaping is hard. Of course, it is hard when we teach people to give everything away – they would not be called pinning positions if they would be easy to escape.
I do not like that coaches are demonizing turtle position for example. But also understand where they are coming from because the way the turtle position is understood mostly is not the way I would recommend people to play it. So the problem is that instead of research and fixing it people have a fixed mindset towards that problem. They just learn to follow and do not question. I understand it is hard to ask every question every step because you would not get anywhere if you would do that so you have to trust authorities a bit but there is evidence around that it works but I find that there is a weird denial towards that position. I myself to not mind that. It just means I have work to do and I love it!
Stacking inside close guard is another dogma that takes time to turn around and in a way follows the same flawed reasoning that I explained when talking about turtle bottom.
So, I clearly differ from what we consider mainstream. Probably there are more examples, ahh, there is. Very late joint lock escapes that I promote we should study more and simple reasoning would be that how else can we learn everything about the submission when people tap too early? With chokes, we have that opportunity because clearly people suffer until the end and we have the opportunity to find out almost everything there is about them so my argument is that we can do those studies also with joint locks. We can actually and I am doing my part to come up with methods and information as we speak and also doing seminars and experiments already in different gyms.
Maybe I would find more examples but I find it is easier to talk about them compared to writing. So if someone reads this text and would like to hear more then I would be more than happy to have an extensive talk about it.”
As seen, he is somewhat of a renaissance man when it comes to studying the art and you can see where the comparisons to John Danaher come from who is also one of the sports brightest thinkers. We then asked him about his fascination with the turtle position, something he feels quite passionately about which is one of BJJ’s lesser highlighted moves. This was his response, “I guess that Eduardo Telles was the original inspiration but it is actually pretty hard to figure him out because he plays a semi-open game so to speak and it easy to miss the structure he uses. But I was lucky enough to meet a Swedish guy Erik Linden (purple belt at the moment) who was good at turtle so I could study him and it took us approximately 2.5 years to figure him out because he actually could not say what made his turtle fundamentally. This is usual with specialized people – they do and often do not know exactly why it works.
So the rest is history. Now we have also panda sitting turtle guards. Telles plays that I think, but does not speak about it extensively. Also a month ago we added an upright turtle so now we have 4 positions to play with when playing back and forward (turtle, sitting turtle, upright turtle, and active turtle). I am happy because it is more similar to how wrestlers are using playing back forward.
But of course the studies continue always!
Do I and Telles differ from each other? Probably…he clearly has more attacks from turtle and I might be more passive with it all at the moment but also my study is different. So I do not mind passivity. I always tell people my job is to make them understand how to play back forward and their job is to add whatever they want as possibilities and if I do my job right by finding the most fundamental versions of those positions and trenches then they have the biggest amount of options to really understand their choices and not live inside my limited bubble”
Finally, we asked his thoughts on the growth of BJJ in Estonia. He claims, “We are growing slowly but steadily I would say. There are 4-5 big competitions a year in Estonia and some more hardcore practitioners will compete outside to meet more resistance on their journey. Most BJJ clubs are more recreational oriented and that seems to be a good direction to get more people joining our sport.”
In terms of future plans, he says to “Enjoy my life, travel the world, open up my site DefensiveBJJ.com, do my research, and see where it all goes”. With this said, it seems Priit Mihkleson is just getting started in his journey of changing the way we think and practice BJJ and hopefully his ideas will lead to a new generation of more efficient grapplers. He can also be found teaching at BJJ Fanatics where he has a number of instructionals available such as the Grilled Chicken retention system and the Sitting Turtle escapes DVD.
