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Chance Marsteller built a career on refusing to let opponents decide where a match takes place, and the underhook is the grip he used to do it. The Underhook Advantage Chance Marsteller DVD: Controlling the Tie, Controlling the Match is his first BJJ Fanatics release \u2014 a three-part, $79 digital instructional built around a single idea: win the underhook, and you control where the exchange goes.<\/p>\n
It is also, on its face, not a Jiu-Jitsu course. Marsteller is a freestyle and folkstyle wrestler, and this is a wrestling tie system sold on a Jiu-Jitsu storefront. That framing is why the review matters. The real question is not whether the underhook is a dominant position \u2014 it plainly is \u2014 but how much of this material survives the trip from a wrestling mat to a No-Gi ruleset, where the guillotine and the kimura exist, guard-pulling changes the entry, and nobody awards takedown points in half the rooms you will train in.<\/p>\n
The underhook is the default attacking tie in standing grappling because it does three jobs at once: it clears your opponent\u2019s arm off their own defense, drops your weight onto their posture, and opens a straight line to the legs, the back, or a snap down.<\/p>\n
Wrestlers have treated it as a system for generations. Jiu-Jitsu players usually meet it in fragments \u2014 a half-guard underhook here, a dog-fight pummel there, a whizzer on the other side \u2014 because BJJ academies rarely teach the tie as a standing plan the way a wrestling room does.<\/p>\n
That is the gap this DVD tries to fill for a grappling audience, and it is worth being precise about what it does and does not do. Garry Tonon\u2019s Quick Concepts: Underhook vs Overhook treats the underhook as one half of a No-Gi decision map, cross-cutting it against the overhook across standing, dog fight, half guard, and chest-to-chest positions.<\/p>\n
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Marsteller\u2019s course is a different animal: a standing, wrestling-native deep dive into one tie, built for folkstyle and freestyle scoring and taught by a man who actually won a US Open with it. One surveys the tie game; the other drills a single tie until it becomes a plan.<\/p>\n
The distinction matters because the two instructuionals are not interchangeable, and neither is a substitute for BJJ-native standup. A wrestling tie system teaches entries, angles, and finishes at a level most Jiu-Jitsu takedown instruction never touches \u2014 but it will not tell you what to do when the opponent sits to guard, frames your neck into a guillotine, or kimura-grips your far arm mid-duck.<\/p>\n
The underhook control wrestling philosophy that works when both men are fighting for the same two points needs re-reading the moment the other man can simply sit down.<\/p>\n
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Chandler Shane \u201cChance\u201d Marsteller is an American freestyle and folkstyle wrestler \u2014 not a Jiu-Jitsu black belt \u2014 and the credential stack behind this course is the reason it deserves a serious look. He went 166\u20130 at Kennard-Dale High School in Pennsylvania with four PIAA class AAA state titles, was the nation\u2019s No. 1 recruit in the Class of 2014, and became a two-time NCAA Division I All-American at Lock Haven after starting his college career at Oklahoma State.<\/p>\n
On the senior circuit he has represented the United States at the 2023 World Championships at 79 kg, won the 2023 US Open at the same weight, and added a 2024 Pan American Championship gold at 86 kg. The underhook is not a chapter he pulled from someone else\u2019s syllabus \u2014 it is the tie his senior-level game is organized around, and the Chance Marsteller wrestling pedigree is the single strongest argument for trusting what he teaches here.<\/p>\n
Marsteller\u2019s path also included a well-documented fall and recovery: an alcohol and drug addiction that cost him his spot at Lock Haven in 2016, a legal case, and a return through rehab that put him back on the mat and back on the podium. It is a real part of his story and worth knowing, but it sits outside this assessment \u2014 the course earns or loses its value on the mat, not on biography.<\/p>\n
The course is split into three parts and 16 modules, and the sequencing is the strongest structural choice Marsteller makes: it moves from winning the tie, to attacking the legs, to attacking the far side, so every technique answers a reaction to the one before it.<\/p>\n
Part 1 covers the entry and the closest-range attacks: the keys to the underhook, the bump dig he uses to clear the arm and win the tie, the throw by, and the same side duck. This is the section that separates a wrestler\u2019s underhook from a Jiu-Jitsu player\u2019s. The bump dig and the throw by are wrestling-specific tools that most BJJ academies never teach, and they are precisely the movements that let you convert a neutral tie into a scoring exchange instead of a stalemate.<\/p>\n
The middle part chains the tie into leg attacks: a high single to run the pipe, a high single to run backside, and throw by singles. The underhook to single leg transition is the most directly transferable material in the set, because it is the one attack that works almost unchanged under No-Gi rules \u2014 a head-inside single or a throw-by single does not care whether you are scoring two points or hunting a sweep.<\/p>\n
The final part is the deepest, running nine modules from an underhook snap down go behind through far-side ducks, a far-side duck to knee pick, wrist ducks, and two \u201ctrickery\u201d far-ankle-pick sequences.<\/p>\n
This is where the course shows its wrestling pedigree most clearly. The far-side attacks are built around the reaction to a committed underhook, and the ankle-pick trickery is the kind of material you only get from someone who has spent years hand-fighting at the senior level.<\/p>\n
The honest answer is: the mechanics transfer, the risk calculus does not. Throw bys, ducks, high singles, snap downs, and ankle picks are all live under No-Gi rules, and the entry work \u2014 the bump dig, the pummel, the hand-fight \u2014 is exactly what a BJJ player with weak takedowns is missing. If your takedown game dies the moment someone ties up hard, this course fixes the underlying problem rather than adding another move to a broken chain.<\/p>\n
The adjustments are yours to make, and the course does not make them for you. Under No-Gi rules, a committed underhook invites a guillotine or a kimura grip on the far arm in a way a wrestling tie-out never does, and a duck or a throw by commits your hips in directions that a guard-pulling opponent can simply refuse to follow.<\/p>\n
None of that is a flaw in the wrestling \u2014 it is a difference in the sport. As a wrestling for BJJ takedown instructional, the Underhook Advantage Chance Marsteller DVD supplies the raw material superbly and leaves the translation to the grappler.<\/p>\n
Wrestlers cross-training into Jiu-Jitsu are the first buyer. They already have the underhook instincts; this course gives them a systematic, competition-proven version of their best tie and lets them carry it straight into No-Gi takedowns for Jiu-Jitsu. Coaches are the second: the three-part progression from entry to leg attack to far-side reaction is a ready-made curriculum for a standing-tie unit, and it is cheap enough to be a resource rather than an investment.<\/p>\n
BJJ players are the conditional case. If you are a blue or purple belt whose takedowns collapse under a hard collar tie, the underhook takedowns for BJJ in this set will change how you approach the standup \u2014 but you have to supply the guillotine, kimura, and guard-pull awareness yourself. White belts and anyone who wants a complete, BJJ-native standup game should look elsewhere first; this is a specialist\u2019s course, not a foundation.<\/p>\n
The Underhook Advantage Chance Marsteller DVD earns its place as a specialist\u2019s course. For a wrestler cross-training, or a BJJ player whose takedowns fall apart the moment a real hand-fighter ties up, this is some of the most coherent underhook offense you can buy, taught by someone who has actually run it at the World Championships. The sequencing is the selling point: bump dig to throw by, throw by to single, single to snap down, snap down to the far side \u2014 it reads like a decision tree rather than a list of moves.<\/p>\n