BJJ Instructional Review: Unstoppable Stand Ups - Chris Paines & Charles Harriott

BJJ Instructional Review: Unstoppable Stand Ups - Chris Paines & Charles Harriott

Here's today's review, the sales blurb is listed first, then we give you our view on it.

Chris Paines & Charles Harriott Teach A Master Class In How To Use Stand Ups In Grappling To Become Even Better At Escaping And More Dangerous With These Sneaky Attacks

• Use the heist from bottom to create strong stand ups and reactions, including instruction on how important your hips and head are to winning the scramble

• Sweep, sub, or stand using these techniques - with Charles and Chris showing you how your opponent will help open up your offense over and over

• See how to master the elbow frame, including coaching on mindset, drilling applications, and the foundational base you need

• Apply the elbow frame successfully to escape and build height from side control, guard, and more with Chris and Charles         

  
  

Review: Unstoppable Standups by Chris Paines & Charles Harriott

TheGentleArtGuide.com — Instructional Review Series

If you've spent any time in modern BJJ circles, you'll know Chris Paines and Charles Harriott have quietly become two of the most trusted voices in the "concepts-first" movement. Their instructional, Unstoppable Standups (BJJ Fanatics), is exactly what you'd expect from that pairing: smart, practical, and refreshingly free of the usual technique-collector fluff.

This isn't a catalogue of cool moves. It's a blueprint for why you stand up, how you stand up, and how to make that decision automatic under pressure — built specifically around standing up from the bottom, rather than the more commonly taught "standing up in someone's guard" scenario.

What the instructional actually teaches

The core of the video is built around one idea: standing up is a skill, not a scramble. Paines and Harriott break the process down into three parts, moving from foundational mechanics into live, pressure-tested applications:

Part 1 — Foundations Covers what they call the "Parasite" concept, the Heist (and Heist from the bottom), High Hips, and a framing principle they call "The 3 Hs" — the mechanical building blocks everything else in the instructional rests on.

Part 2 — Application This is where it gets tactical: deciding whether to sweep, submit, or stand depending on what your opponent gives you; freeing the bottom leg; an "advanced running man" sequence; turtle recoveries; and a section candidly titled "What If You Don't Want To" — for scenarios where standing isn't actually the right call.

Part 3 — The Elbow Frame A deep dive on the elbow frame as a standing tool, plus a mindset section addressing the decision-making side of getting up under pressure rather than just the mechanics.

The throughline is repeatability. Every movement is designed to work against bigger, stronger, faster opponents — not just compliant drilling partners — and the material is explicitly built to transfer across gi, no-gi, and MMA contexts.

Production & teaching style

If you've watched Paines before, you'll recognize the tone: clear explanations, no ego, no jargon, no "just do this" shortcuts. Harriott — known more broadly as a movement and pedagogy coach — complements him well, sharpening the drilling progressions and pushing the "why" behind each micro-movement rather than just the "what."

The pacing is solid: slow enough to absorb, brisk enough to avoid boredom. The build from foundational mechanics to live scenarios is logical and easy to follow along a mat.

Who this instructional is for

Beginners: Genuinely useful. Learning to stand up safely and reliably from bottom position is one of the biggest early skill unlocks in grappling, and this treats it with more rigor than most beginner curricula do.

Intermediates: Probably the sweet spot audience. This is the kind of material that explains why your standups keep failing rather than just handing you another technique to bolt on.

Advanced players: Less essential, but the conceptual framing (especially the elbow frame work and the "sweep, sub, or stand" decision tree) can sharpen an existing game without requiring you to change your style.

MMA / self-defence practitioners: Arguably the most natural audience outside sport BJJ — getting back to your feet safely is closer to a survival skill than a competition tactic in those contexts.

Where it shines

• Concepts over memorization

• Genuinely transferable across gi, no-gi, and MMA

• A decision-making framework, not just a movement library

• A refreshingly specific topic — standups from bottom, not another guard-passing or guard-retention series

  
  

Where it doesn't

If you want flashy techniques, berimbolo-style sequences, or competition-specific trickery, this isn't that, and it's not trying to be. That's a deliberate scope decision, not a shortfall.

Worth being upfront about two more practical caveats, drawn from feedback among people who've bought it:

• Value for the runtime. A recurring criticism is that the content, while good, feels a little light relative to the $97 list price — several buyers have noted it's a stronger purchase on a sale or daily-deal price than at full retail.

  
  

• The standup-in-MMA debate. Some viewers, particularly from an MMA background, push back on the broader premise that a technical stand-up is still viable against strikers, arguing it opens up kick range if mistimed and that wrestle-ups or leg-entanglement exits are safer alternatives. That's less a knock on the instructional's execution and more an existing, unresolved debate in the sport that's worth knowing about going in.

  
  

The verdict

Unstoppable Standups is one of the more useful instructionals released in this space recently. It's not flashy, but it's foundational — the kind of material that quietly improves your entire game rather than adding one more sequence to memorize.

Paines and Harriott have delivered something fairly rare: an instructional that makes you better rather than simply giving you more to remember.

Just go in knowing the price point draws more scrutiny than the content itself does, and that the underlying "should you even stand up against strikes" question is one reasonable grapplers still disagree on.

For anyone building a resilient, pressure-tested standup game — especially from the bottom — it's worth your time, and worth watching for it on sale.

• If you want to buy this instructional, just click this link here:

   https://bjjfanatics.com/products/unstoppable-standups-by-chris-paines-and-charles-harriott?srsltid=AfmBOorJ-Td9zMk14UwgOBDz9tSZbkh5MiXyxFanRoJ1sqv1DbLOUOhe

Review written by Jimmy Rose, lifelong martial artist & BJJ enthusiast on behalf of RG Marketing Ltd. Article copyright 2026 RG Marketing Limited. All rights reserved. We may get affiliate commission payments if you click links in this article and purchase this instructional.