YouTube BJJ comp arm snaps....yikes! Do you change your "tap time" for comp

Not the Olympics, not the World Championships, not ADCC. If a guy gets you in a sub, especially a joint lock, just tap. Sure you'll be pissed that you lost, and lost $80 or so with it, but it's a hell of a lot better than losing PLUS the hospital bill and 2 months of recovery. It's just a tournament.

 

Wise words, Zankou.

 

Experience shoudl tell you when your caught or not.

I can tell if i try to do hitchhiker escape and my arm doesnt turn that im caught. If i try to rock up after and cant im saying TAP and tapping at the same time..

Struggling to not tap for one tournament victory is a waste of your body.. save it for more training, vacations, and general health

 

Wow.

Nobody adds more intelligence with fewer words to this forum than Zankou. Thanks, man. Great advice as always and maybe even saved me an injury one day.

 

Yup, took me one "pop" to come to the same realizations. I will try an escape while my arm is still bent, but the second it even feels like it's being straightened out, not only do I physically tap, I am yelling it as well.

 

Unless I really feel like there are a whole of holes in their technique and I have room/time to escape, I'm a quick tapper once a sub is fully locked in. I've only had to tap for a choke in competition, and it was right after I had picked up gi training after training nogi for a year so I wasn't then comfortable with gi choke defenses but I held on right until I was passing out, I don't really remember tapping for it. If it had been an armbar, though, I'd tap quick as fuck.

I've rolled with some guys who roll to win, and there's a HUGE difference between an armbar where someone is training and an armbar someone applies with malicious intent. I've only had one time where I felt like my arm was a second away from popping, probably one of the scariest feelings I've ever felt.

 

I didn't do it on purpose. I heard it click twice and I tapped. Sometimes in theheat of competition you think, "i am almost out, if I can just hold on a little longer...." It was one of those moments.

I have done that a few times in training. If I hear a couple of clicks, I let go. i don't even care if he keeps fighting or not.

 

I should add that the one time I have been choked in a competition, I tapped so fast and so hard, I was doing the funky chicken trying to tap. Fucking gi chokes.

 

with something like an armlock you are going to tap if it is locked it. however, a choke you can hold off a little longer in a comp. if you are defending correctly. if you are truely got you have to tap.

 

i tell people who bitch about tap time the same line i give the dudes who find out i've banged their girlfriend:

"that's a 'you' problem, not a 'me" problem."

if your girlfriend's sitting on my face, that's your problem.
if you didn't tap fast enough, that's your problem.

i absolutely respect the tap, 100%, and in practice i don't even lay it on hard, but you have to explain to the kids that it's not about the pain, it's about the lock.

as far as competition goes, whatever. i had a dude kimuraed twice and he still didn't tap, and i couldn't bring myself to snap his shoulder. 30 seconds later he's back in my guard, arm straight across my body, and i kick over for juji. you'd figure he'd tap, but you figure wrong. so, eleventy billion pops later, he figures it out. has to bow out of the tournament and spends the rest of the day in a sling.

i felt bad. almost.

 

I tap when I feel pain and know that I'm not getting out.
It's better to lose and come back another day.

 

Yeah, I was mostly thinking about armbars. I know different people feel different ways about this, but I would feel pretty embarrased if I passed out because I was too stubborn / ignorant to tap.

But being embarassed and back on the mat the next day is one thing. Being out for a year with a broken elbow is a different story completely.

 

I hear ya and mostly agree, although I think there's still got to be a line there somewhere.

If you really went as fast and hard as you could with an armbar against a gassed and / or overmatched opponent, you could defintely break his arm before he could even react with a tap, and that IMO wouldn't be a reasonable thing to do.

I am pretty sure that isn't what you meant - I did see the rest of your post about holding off on the kimura - but looking at those YouTube vids, there was at least one where it seemed like the attacker just blasted straight through to snap against an overmatched opponent without even a slight pause to give the guy a chance to tap. IMO, that's kind of a dickhead thing to do and will probably come back around eventually.

 

Yeah, being new to BJJ this was one of my biggest fears about going into a tournament against guys I don't know. An advanced person probably knows when he has the move down, and has the technique to allow himself to go slow. I was afraid I'd get some novice like myself who has to rely on speed rather than technique, and would break something.

I tap pretty early. Probably due to a combination of being new, having no ego, and not wanting to find my limits. And oh yeah, no health insurance. If a guy is straightening me out for an armbar, I tap before he even gets extended, because I know my skill to escape isn't there yet. But of all the years I've played sports clean, I just always follow the Golden Rule and hope that a hand shake at the beginning of a match actually signifies a show of sportsmanship. I'd never try to hurt anybody or send them home, and I hope nobody ever does the same to me. In the end, it's all about respecting the other guy as a fellow BJJ competitor.

On that note, my instructor told me that he watched some guy at a tournament purposely hurt his opponent in the match before going against my instructor. My instructor said because 1) the guy was a dick and didn't honor sportsmanship and 2) because he feared for his own safety, when he had an ankle lock put in, he made sure the guy was done for the day.

I guess I'm a firm believe in the Golden Rule though.

 

QFT.

I make guys work for the choke. But I don't play around with my elbows and knees. I'd rather tap a little too soon and train more than have to sit out for six weeks--or six months.

Great point about "the tap is just a formality. The BJJ leading to that point is what matters." I agree with that 1,000%. It reminds me of how much I hate it when audiences cheer more for submission escapes than submission attempts.