Tag Archives: armbar

UFC Submissions: Armbar, Kneebar, and Facebar

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UFC 157: Burrell v VillefortUFC 157, yesterday, had a few interesting submissions and submission attempts. Spoiler alert. Ronda Rousey finished Liz Carmouche in the first round with an armbar. I might be biased but, to me, Ronda is just on another level in terms of grappling. Which is why it was surprising to see her almost submitted with a “facebar” (pictured left).

I am beginning to see more and more that you can’t defend a rear naked choke with your face. The force of the crank and the face crush can be just as effective as the clean under-the-chin choke. I couldn’t help but think that Ronda instinctually was not worried about this choke because she wasn’t used to it in judo (where any choke across the face is illegal).

I think Ronda Rousey is the Royce Gracie of women’s MMA. She is paving the way in a sport where technical brutality is the name of the game. It’s tough to do for a woman, because our culture doesn’t seem to like to watch women bloodying each other. Conveniently, Ronda can finish her opponents cleanly and lady-like by breaking their arm. I look forward to seeing her develop in MMA, but I’ll still be that bitter old man who wishes she competed in judo at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics and bring home the gold at both.

Kneebar from Back Control

The other interesting submission was by Kenny Robertson over Brock Jardine in the first round of their welterweight fight. He caught kneebar from top of back control:

kenny-robertson-kneebars-brock-jardine-ufc-157lex-josh-vogel-ufc-157-kneebar-from-turtleI was skeptical and thought that this was just a trick that couldn’t work on a resisting opponent who  knew this submission was coming. But a dear friend of mine offered to demonstrate (pictured left). That’s Josh of (Angela and Josh fame). Speaking of which thanks to them for having us over and making delicious food.

It was a bit surreal to have a black belt kneebar me from back control while wearing jeans and t-shirt. It was like a reminder that this grappling stuff is real and even a seemingly crazy submission might be an effective technique for outside the confines of the sport of jiu jitsu. There was tons of pressure on the spine and tons of tension in the hamstring.

For anyone reading this who is not aware of jiu jitsu, this is the kind of positions that are involved in the sport. Taken out of context, this will probably ruin my eventual bid for president, and increase my mom’s insistence that I find a nice Jewish girl to marry.

The Paradox of the Choke and the Armbar

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judo-arm-barIt may be just me, and the people I train with, but I noticed that the majority of people who submit me do so via choke, but people that are MUCH better than me submit via armlock (armbar, kimura, americana, etc) from side control. That’s not an absolute rule, but I have been noticing this little pattern throughout my jiu jitsu development. So here it goes, this might be complete bullshit, but bare with me.

The Theory Behind the Choke Armbar Chasm

My theory is that when a person is MUCH better than me I start to drown in the overwhelming feeling of always being a split second behind, always off balance, always outgripped. It seems that one of the effects of that feeling is I try to catch up, regain balance, and break grips. I start to panic physically, moving against the basic principles of jiu jitsu (that on the contrary I do manage to follow when I’m in control). One of the first principles that falls apart for me is elbow discipline. My arms start floating about like spaghetti in the wind, and are thus susceptible to all kinds of armlocks.

So the people I’m talking about never get to take my back because they already broke my arm (not literally) before ever having the chance to take my back.

Or It’s All Just Subjective Nonsensical Rambling

Of course, I could just be basing my theory on recent training sessions with Steve, Rick, Josh, and Drew alone, all of who break my arm 3-15 times in a single round. The names may or may not have been altered to maintain the anonymity of those individuals ;-)

In reality, the above theory is mostly specific to the way my fundamentals fall apart when in survival mode. That’s one of the many things I have to work on.

Train Your Armbars by Breaking Broomsticks

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I have not yet run up against a situation where I put on an armbar in competition and my opponent did not  tap. However, it does seem that some people don’t like to tap to armbars. An example of this happened twice in Metamoris last weekend with Xande against Dean Lister and Buchecha against Roger Gracie.

This led to the usual discussion full of absurd quirkiness between Josh and I about ineffectiveness of an armbar for breaking arms, unless… an idea was brought up on how to remedy this obvious “flaw” in our approach to jiu jitsu training…

One of the things that makes BJJ such an effective martial art is that we can train daily at close to 100% intensity. We can do everything including chokes at 100%. The only thing we can’t do is the “breaking” submissions. When I put on an armbar, the person will tap from the first feeling of pain or tension in his arm. So we never get to feel the amount of force required to actually break an arm. The solution, my friends, is obvious… It comes from two YouTube clips below of (1) Karate board breaking and (2) Jeff Glover training with a broomstick. Combining these two, the idea is to practice breaking arms by breaking broomsticks. And eventually, you might even graduate up to breaking 2-by-4′s. This could be a new exercise fad to take over Kettlebells and Bulgarians bags.

PS: Not that it needs to be said, but I’m just joking about the broomsticks. Be careful when putting on armbars in training. In competition, it’s a different story, it’s up to you how far you decide to take it when a medal is on the line.

 

 

Drilling Micro Transitions to Submissions

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I’ve written a bunch about drilling lately, especially inspired by Jordon Shultz and his recent ebook dedicated exclusively to the subject of drilling. Lloyd Irvin released a nice video on the “micro transitional drilling” yesterday and I can’t pass up the chance to comment on it, even though a few great blog posts have already been written on it:

Analogy: Calories In, Calories Out

For diet that maintains weight, the simple formula is “calories in = calories out”. There’s more to a good diet than that, but the math can’t be tricked. In the same way, for developing good competition jiu jitsu, the simple equation is: you have drill the transition to submission more than your opponent drills the defense to that transition. There’s more to it than that, but once again, you can’t trick the math.

Micro-Transition

In the video, Lloyd Irvin emphasizes the importance of working on the small but critical transition that leads directly or indirectly into a submission. This is different than the way I’ve been drilling. When I work on transitions, I’ll often chain several together. That’s very important to do but it definitely doesn’t sharpen my instinct as much as the micro-transition drilling. I tried it today for several microtransitions into submissions: ezekiel choke, americana, and the teacup armbar.

More Reps, Less Brain

I really liked the result. I didn’t count exactly, but I was able to get over 100 reps in each 5 minute round of drilling without pushing the pace at all. What I also like was that I started to really focus and internalize the flow of the technique. Obviously 100 reps is nothing, but I could sense that 10,000 reps of each technique would make the transitions into these submissions very difficult to stop.

Hard Work is Hard

The above video from Lloyd Irvin doesn’t particularly tell you anything you didn’t already know. He simply reiterates the truth of what breeds success: deliberate practice. Just as he says in the video, whatever good prescriptive advice he provides, most people will take it in, agree with it, enjoy it, plan on doing it, and never actually do it (more than a few times). The challenge is to do it regularly for months and years. It has to be part of your jiu jitsu training.

Four Hundred Pages on One Technique

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There is something very appealing about a big book that focuses on a single technique. That’s the reason I’ve really enjoyed Marcelo Gartcia’s X Guard book (that’s been out since 2008, before I started jiu jitsu). And that’s also the reason I’m really curious about an upcoming book from Steve Scott exclusive focused on the armbar: Juji Gatame Encyclopedia.

I always felt that the judo community has a very interesting approach to the armbar. The rules of sports judo require that you progress toward a successful submission much faster than in jiu jitsu. Therefore, judo folks can find the armbar from a lot of positions and finish it very effectively. The problem of course, from the perspective of a jiu jitsu player, is that sports judo players are not concerned about “losing position”. By that I mean, they are not worried of giving up their back if the arm bar fails.

Either way, I’m sure there is a lot I can learn from this, and I’ll be sure to buy it when it comes out in a few weeks.

I hope that more people will release authoritarianism books like this that focus on one technique. That allows the student to immerse himself in the system that integrates everything necessary to make the technique part of an effective game. Besides I’ve always believed in exploring different variations of a technique until I find one that I fall in love with. Sometimes a certain way of performing a technique just clicks. I’m always in search of that…

Judo Turtle Turnover to Armbar from Travis Steven

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Here’s a judo match from the 2011 Pan American games. Travis has exactly the game (even the same gripping strategies) as I’m trying to develop. There’s a beautiful sumi gaeshi, an omoplata, and finally an armbar turtle turnover:

I look forward to seeing how he does in the 2012 Olympics. I believe that he is one of the real hopes for judo gold from us next year.

Hunting for the Submission

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I’ve been doing a lot of live training lately. Sometimes I just allow myself to be lost in the flow of it, but this week I started a new thing (that I’ll describe in detail later) where I set a few goals for each training session. Goals have to do with submissions, sweeps, and taking the back, etc.

It’s kind of depressing looking at the number of submissions I’ve gotten versus the number of times I swept, passed, took someone’s back, etc. Many of the guys I train with will hunt the submission from every position and I mean every position. As a result, the two things I’m getting better and better at are: (1) scoring sport jiu jitsu points and (2) not getting submitted.

Going for submissions often requires that I risk losing position, and because I’ve been so focused on the latter, the former almost never comes to mind.

I guess I need a major shift in strategy during training. I’ve taken the back from closed guard 17 times this week so far (yes part of the new approach is me noting down such things). How many times did I get a submission from closed guard (e.g. triangle, armbar, omoplata)? Zero. How many times did I go for it? Zero.

I guess this post is an acknowledgement that I have a problem. That’s always step 1 of any solution.

Armbar on the Edge

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The IJF does a pretty good job at being specific down to the minute detail of every possible case in defining the rules of olympic judo. There has been a bunch of changes in the rules in the last several years, specifically the addition of a “dynamic edge”. The rules relevant to this are defined on page 12 of this 2009 Judo Refereeing Rules. Basically any attack that starts inbounds but continues out is still valid. What’s important is that this only applies to tachi-waza (the standing part of judo) and not to newaza (the on the ground part).

In newaza, you’re inbounds as long as some part of your body or your opponent’s body is in contact with the contest area. In the video below, the commentator says otherwise. What happens is this:

  1. White applies an armbar
  2. Blue rolls to his back
  3. The ref believes both to be out of bounds and calls “matte” (stop)
  4. Important: Blue did not tap
  5. The refs change their mind and give White the win.

The rules are pretty clear about there having to be contact with the mat in order for you to be counted as inbounds, so I believe White was out of bounds, but it’s a close call and certainly arguable either way.

X-Guard Submissions and Taking the Back

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I’ve been playing a lot of x-guard lately. Most of what I’ve been doing is a set of 5 sweep from the x-guard position that I think are commonly known. In either case, I’d like to also take the back, because I find it’s often there. Several people show it on YouTube, but here’s Marcelo Garcia showing it:

I’ve practiced that move before, but just haven’t done it extensively. What I haven’t practiced before is submissions from x-guard. Below are some of the better videos I found showing good ideas.

A good tight armbar after the sweep:

An natural-looking switch to a kneebar from the x-guard position:

An  interesting sweep to leg lock:

I’ll have to work on all of these this week when I get some open mat time in.