Why Arm Bars are Hard to Avoid: A Graphic

First of all, let me just say that Ronda does not have "just one trick". If her arm bar does not work she is going to do the kamehaha.

However, it is not as easy to avoid an arm bar as some people think. Let's just take an example using actual math and combinations and permutations, with the three different shapes being three different techniques and the yellow circle at the end being an arm bar.

Let's say you only know three moves to set up an arm bar, throwing your opponent to her back and then doing an arm bar (path 1), being on top of your opponent (mount or as we judo people call it tate shiho) to an arm bar and being on your back, throwing your leg over to an arm bar. Nine different paths are shown above, but there are actually more.

There are six permutations of any three techniques. You can do number 1 first, then 2 and 3. Or you can do 1, then 3, then 2. So, you could throw your opponent, then do the mount, then roll over to the bottom and arm bar. You could go to the bottom position first, fail at that, stand up, throw them and go into the mount then arm bar etc.  Work it out, or just go to wikipedia. There are six different permutations.

HOWEVER, you don't have to always do all three together. You could go throw and just jump into the arm bar. So, doing each one individually gives you three more options. Or you could do combinations of any two, but that got messy to draw. That is why I said there were more than nine possibilities - because there are. (Didn't think you'd start delving into set theory on a judo blog, now, did you?)

There are two points here. First, in our soon-to-be-published book, Jim and I are showing the same thing several different times, but each time is a little different. That is one of our major points, that your mat work should be connected, and if it is, you can vary those paths so that no matter which way your opponent turns it all ends up with you winning, because as you notice up there, every path has the same outcome for your opponent.

I wonder if I could slip this graphic by him into the book. Every time I write something like this he says,

"I cannot believe a woman of your age is that immature."

Except he says it with a Boston accent which makes it even funnier.

I swear I am getting that anaconda and lion story in there somewhere. I think I'll just do it last minute before I email it to the publisher, and act innocent after the fact.