Yup. If my knees ever recover to where I can train again I'm going to basically give up any kind of inverted or stacked position. Chronic back pain is no fucking joke.
Do you even armbar bro?
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Yup. If my knees ever recover to where I can train again I'm going to basically give up any kind of inverted or stacked position. Chronic back pain is no fucking joke.
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Exactly this. 99 percent of my armlocks are from side control or mount. I don't even fucking know the mentality behind players like the Miao bros who get stacked inverted all the time. Don't even know how they will be able to walk by 40. Rickson armlocked a lot of wrestlers from the guard but he's definitely paying for it now I think.
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I used to rarely get it. But when I got to Colorado, it turned out to be my coach's signature move and now I hit it with regularity. The key is to do it Roger style, that's the only way I've found that actually works with consistency. The main key is to lock over the far shoulder and stabilize the position before trying to go over the head. This guy explains it pretty well:
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Regarding stacking, if you do with the Roger way it's much harder for them to stack because you're maintaining your posture during the main transition, and you can use your hips to keep him off you. I literally never get stacked going for it, and if I'm going to get stacked for the finish I have plenty of time to bail. The only time I get stacked from closed guard are triangles.
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Armbar from closed guard is my specialty. This is my most frequently landed submission in competition, from white belt through black belt. I pull it off in gi and no gi. I practiced the closed guard armor originally for fighting MMA, and as the years passed by I accumulated so many repetitions from drilling it over and over again.
To prevent stacking, you need to offset or misdirect the force they put on you when they being to drive forward. Or else, your body will be the one absorbing that force
To prevent stacking, you need to offset or misdirect the force they put on you when they being to drive forward. Or else, your body will be the one absorbing that force
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I am an armbar god. The fedor armbar is the way to do it 100%.
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No gi is so hard.... With Mma gloves though they are money.
It's not my main strategy, but I've had success with it in competition up to the black belt level.
At white and blue, it worked mostly because my opponents were not that great. I just did it the regular way you see taught.
At purple, it stopped working. I made a few changes but stopped using it in competition around then.
At brown, I saw an opening in a match and tried my new way. Instant tap. I kept using it at black and still get taps the same way.
The changes I made were:
1. Keep their arm in the middle of my chest. Don't cross it over. Just right down the middle.
2. Use my non grabbing hand to attack the posture. Think snap down on their neck. Use my legs in closed guard to assist with this.
3. Do not step on the hip. Just skip that step. When the time is right, spin straight to it as fast as possible. Do lots of side to side armbar spin drills to make this part smooth.
4. While spinning, start extending my hips before I even get my leg over the head. This makes it basically impossible to stack out of it. It also makes it come on super fast. It's halfway locked before I even get into position.
Done this way, nobody even taps to it. They just yell. But it's still pretty safe as I only extend a little bit past straight. It might tweak the elbow a bit, but it causes no serious injury.
A final rule is that I only armbar an arm that is already pretty straight. It's not worth it from the bottom to attack a bent arm. The leverage is not there, and it's too easy to counter. Plus there are many other attacks that work better to choose from.
If at any point in the process the guy bends his arm, I abort and do something else. But you'd be surprised how many guys how hang out with a straight arm to keep posture. That's the time to do it.
At white and blue, it worked mostly because my opponents were not that great. I just did it the regular way you see taught.
At purple, it stopped working. I made a few changes but stopped using it in competition around then.
At brown, I saw an opening in a match and tried my new way. Instant tap. I kept using it at black and still get taps the same way.
The changes I made were:
1. Keep their arm in the middle of my chest. Don't cross it over. Just right down the middle.
2. Use my non grabbing hand to attack the posture. Think snap down on their neck. Use my legs in closed guard to assist with this.
3. Do not step on the hip. Just skip that step. When the time is right, spin straight to it as fast as possible. Do lots of side to side armbar spin drills to make this part smooth.
4. While spinning, start extending my hips before I even get my leg over the head. This makes it basically impossible to stack out of it. It also makes it come on super fast. It's halfway locked before I even get into position.
Done this way, nobody even taps to it. They just yell. But it's still pretty safe as I only extend a little bit past straight. It might tweak the elbow a bit, but it causes no serious injury.
A final rule is that I only armbar an arm that is already pretty straight. It's not worth it from the bottom to attack a bent arm. The leverage is not there, and it's too easy to counter. Plus there are many other attacks that work better to choose from.
If at any point in the process the guy bends his arm, I abort and do something else. But you'd be surprised how many guys how hang out with a straight arm to keep posture. That's the time to do it.
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I like that armbar variation. He touched on the main problem which I think is the cross side armbar has way to many failure points (i.e. "steps") in it. The regular cross side armbar isn't one technique. It's more like 6 techniques that have to be done in order and don't have much room for error.
This video has a lot of details on how to get those each step. A big part of it is being able to post and deflect your opponents weight from different angles while taking away space. It's a lot of plates to spin but if you become good at it makes everything you do from guard even more threatining.
Personally, I think if someone wants to win, they learn armbar you posted. If they want "good jiu jitsu" its kind of important to know how to do the traditional armbar. In the early 2000's I used to see them in tournaments all the time. Now not so much. I wonder what happened.
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Why is this video a component of "good jiujitsu?" The way Balto posted is almost exactly how I do it, and it works well. I think thats a good armor from guard, or good jiujitsu
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I can't stand the way in the video you posted, it's often parroted too much by instructors without really knowing why they do the details they do.
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In 2010 I did my first professional grappling match in Japan. The guy did the exact armbar on me and I screamed. Lost in 90 seconds. I was angry about the loss for years. YEARS.
It's one of my favorite attacks and yeah, the guy has no time to tap. If you do it in training you gotta be ready to release it even before the guy knows what's happening. It's golden.
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The video I posted builds traits to clamping people in a position for offense from multiple angles. You won't always finish with the armbar and a lot of times you'll transition to the position from another attack but if you can control each angle the opponent is always in danger and they really know it.
Some gyms just don't have good closed guards and it's partly because they overlook a lot of the details demonstrated in the video.
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When I started it was my best sub. I could transition really quick and I was able to flow with it.
I somehow lost it later down the road.
But I do feel it is the holy grail of subs
I somehow lost it later down the road.
But I do feel it is the holy grail of subs
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Rafa also teaches step 4 and you drill it during the side to side armbar drill. He says the same- if your hips are up at the beginning of the armbar, your body is strong in one line and you can't stack that.
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I don't think the traditional arm bar is important to know, other than to have seen for purposes of defending. It's just not as effective a way of doing the move as the Roger way. I'm not a big fan or retaining things just for pedagogical purposes, my experience has been that generally you get just as much benefit from using other moves that actually work on good guys but that incorporate the same sorts of motions without the negative effect of ingraining a suboptimal way of doing a move. 'Good jiu jitsu' is not an aesthetic judgement (or shouldn't be), it's a measure of what works. By that metric, the Roger way is 'good jiu jitsu' and the trad way is less so.
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The only way I hit them in no-gi (without gloves) is from the Shawn Williams inside control position, and that requires an error from the top guy. I don't even go for them, it's all overhooks and kimuras no-gi closed guard for me.
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robots don't feel the need for self actualization.
