When to hold on and when to let go

Not to be mean to a small child, but on the rondarousey.net site today there was a video of a little girl doing an arm bar and she made the mistake I see ALL the time. She grabbed her opponent's arm with both of her arms and then as she leaned back to apply the arm bar, she let go with one hand and reached that arm back behind herself, like reaching for the mat to see if it was still there.

Now, I have been doing armbars for well over three-fourths of my life and never once when I leaned back has the mat disappeared out from under me, so I think you are pretty safe in assuming it will still be there.

Maybe some people are afraid that they will hit their head as they arch back. In that case, just do the same thing anyone does when trying to prevent hitting the back of their head on the mat - tuck your chin.

Never, ever, ever when you are applying an arm bar and leaning BACK do you let go of the arm with either hand. Lock it to your body with both hands and arch.

There is ONE arm bar Ronda does when she is going FORWARD across the opponent's body and she lets go with one hand and reaches in front of her. I don't do it that way and she says she does it to stretch her opponent out.

If you want to see the ONE circumstance in which I think it is possibly maybe okay to let go of the arm it's on page 38 in Winning on the Ground.

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Armbar counter

Even the out-takes from the book came out well! Last week at Gene Lebell's surprise 80th birthday party we had the luck of having award-winning photographer Hans Gutknecht on the premises.

We were re-taking shots for a couple of techniques in our book, Winning on the Ground, and Hans very kindly offered to take them for us. He was extremely polite not to add,

"Because it's obvious YOU people aren't professionals!"

He got some amazing photos including some we ended up not using for the book.  What happened was Ronda and Manny started out doing the techniques we needed and then one of them would say,

"How about this one? This is a good move."

When I went through everything when Hans sent me the photos, I saw that Jim already had included some of the techniques in the pictures. We're thinking of writing this up as an article though, because it came out so well.

Here is the beginning - your opponent reaches over you and grabs your lapels. There are a number of judo moves the person on top can do from here.

Assuming he is smart, like Manny, his weight is distributed more on the side of your body that is closest to him, making it difficult for you to lock above his elbow and do a wrestler's roll.

You might even want to fake as if you were going to roll him to fool him into thinking you are going to go in one direction - and then, instead ...

 You sit out towards his hips, putting all of your body weight on his elbow. In judo, this technique is called waki gatame . I think I spelled that right. I'm sure someone will tell me if I did not.

Ronda likes to grab her own gi, to keep the person's arm held tight to her. Also, it leaves her other arm free, making it easier to turn into a pin if he manages to do a forward roll to escape from the arm bar. Personally, I like to grab my opponent's wrist with that hand. One way gives you a tighter arm bar but the other makes it easier to switch into a combination. Suit yourself.

Advice from Steve

My friend, Steve Scott, founder of Welcome Mat Judo, author of many books on judo, grappling and combat sports in general, and, as he is known by those closest to him, "Becky's husband" has given me some pieces of advice on writing.  One is:

"When in doubt, put more in."

So, I did. There were two different ways of doing the arm bar defense pin to arm bar combination. Ronda does it one way and I do it a second way. Ronda does it her way because she wants to pin the other person, which seems a very reasonable desire when you are doing a pin.

A second piece of advice from Steve was,

"Don't assume everyone knows what you know."

The way I do the arm bar defense to pin to arm bar combination is that I do a pin that is not very effective at all. Almost everyone gets out of it.

This is the stuff in the book that drives my co-author, Jim Pedro, Sr. , absolutely crazy. He's a bit of perfectionist, and he really hates having anything in the book that is not "right", like a pin that almost everyone would get out of. He and Steve are in agreement on one point. Jim says I can't put anything in the book like that without explaining why it is not "right".

I said I thought it was obvious, but Jim said, "No." Actually, since he is from Boston, it sounded more like ,

"No -o."

Okay, so here is my explanation, I do it the second way because I really don't care if I get the pin or not. In fact, I am hoping they get out of the pin because the way I do it the pin escape sets the opponent up perfectly for an arm bar.

I put both ways in the book, because I am following Steve's first piece of advice. I still like my way better. However, here is some advice on coaching, not from Steve or Jim, but from me. When you go from being an athlete to being a teacher or a coach, remember this.

"Everybody is not you."

Random arm bar notes: I. How to do a perfect arm bar

Let's suppose you are in a tournament, or even practice, and you have the great good fortune to have an opponent beneath you and you get hold of your opponent's arm. I am going to assume that your opponent is not an idiot and having grasped the severity of the situation will grab on to his own arm for dear life.

How to do a perfect arm bar, according to me.

1. Have both hands at your opponent’s wrist, locking the forearm against your body, 
2. Have both of your legs across the opponent's body, one on either side of said arm (I learned to refer to things as "said" from reading too many contracts)
3. Rotate toward the opponent's head to break the arm free
4. Rotate back toward the opponent's hips so you are now at a perfect 270 degree angle from the opponent's body (for non-math majors, a 270 degree angle is shown below. This is nothing if not a full-service blog)
5. Legs are squeezed together holding the opponent tight at the shoulder, with your thighs
6. Pinch knees tight together, touching, allowing no space for the opponent to pull his arm through if he did by some miracle manage to pull his wrist free, 
7. Legs are bent, curling his body back toward you with your feet. (If you’ve ever done the leg curl at the gym, it’s that motion. If you’ve never done a leg curl, what the heck is wrong with you?)
8. Arch your hips to apply the arm bar. If you have ever had a boyfriend, yeah, it's that motion. (Unless you're a gay male in which case I am not sure.)