Martial Arts Wellington 272 Taranaki St GSW BJJ NZ

Warm up

Arm-bar Drill

One person takes mount

• Leans forward and smothers their opponent
• Gives them enough space to encourage them to push them off with straight arms
• Arm-bar
  

Once you’ve secured the arm-bar, lie next to your partner, mount up again and repeat, this time attacking their other arm

Repeat on each side, focusing on fluidity rather than cranking the arm like there’s no tomorrow. The crank is the easy part, this drill is about building up a smooth transition from mount to arm-bar. Once you’re warmed up and comfortable with the movement, you can save your partner’s arm some grief by letting go of the arm once you’ve reached position

Q&A

We spent a bit of time highlighting some of the key points of a successful armbar and doing our best to answer some questions

Firstly some key points:

• Hip penetration : The closer you can get your hips under your opponents shoulder, the less further you have to lie back to apply pressure to the elbow joint. Space between your hips and your opponents shoulder means more work for you and more of a chance for them to regain control of their arm
• If you sit down with space, control the arm and take it back – scoot your hips in!
• Opponent’s little finger welded to the chest/thumb up to the sky
• Squeeze the knees

One question was “How do I escape from the armbar?”

The first answer, which at first glance doesn’t seem very helpful, is don’t let yourself be in a position to be arm-barred. Gee… thanks. But, what this means in practical terms is to start becoming aware of what the ‘markers’ are for an impending arm-bar.

To use an analogy, it’s as if you walk down a street every day and have the nasty habit of falling in a pothole. One option for a ‘pothole escape’ would be to grap a rung of the ladder as you’re falling down the hole. Probably the best one would be to notice the big orange road cone sitting next to it and walk around it.

So it is with arm-bars. You can escape as you realise “Shit, they’re lying back with my arm!” (the ladder-rung approach), or alternatively, being in side control and knowing that your opponent has done this 1000 times before to you, keep your arms to yourself (the road cone escape).

With that in mind, we discussed a couple of options along this continuum, from preemptive escape to worst-case scenario

Worst-case Scenario Escape

Your opponent has your right arm and is just about to lie right back and snap it off for you

• Turn your hand in the direction of your thumb (right in this case) trying to put your palm on their chest
• Bridge your hips
• Cross your right foot over your left, swivelling your hips so you turn onto your knees

Chances are you’ll end up in their guard, but that’s OK for a person that was about to be arm-barred

Almost Worst-Case Scenario Escape

Your opponent is going for an arm-bar with their left leg in front of your face and their right knee on the same side as your endangered right arm.

• Before they straighten the arm, grab hold of their left leg with both hands – for dear life!
• Walk your legs slightly off to the trapped-leg side, so you’re lying at about 45 rather than 90 degrees to your opponent
• Roll over your left shoulder
• Pass around to side-control

Slightly Better-Case Scenarios

1. As they’re stepping over to turn for the arm-bar, turn in toward them and suck your elbow to the floor.

OR

2. Knowing they need the top leg to control your neck/head, work to get that leg off your face before they establish full control. Without that control, you can turn into your opponent, either passing or ending up in their guard.

Another principle to bear in mind is that of reverse engineering. Ask the question, “What does my opponent need in place to arm-bar me?” and look at how you might take away one of those elements somewhere along the process. For example, by sucking back your elbow and turning in, you’re taking away the element of hip penetration.

Best Case Scenario

Keep your arms to yourself! (or maybe don’t turn up to class…)

Mount to Back Drill

Mount

Started off with one person taking mount. The person underneath bucks and bridges to destabilise the person on top.

If they throw you forward:

• Lock your feet together and base out wide on either side with your hands

If they throw you to the side:

• Post with the arm on the side they’re throwing you
• Hook their neck with your other hand to slow the momentum

Side-Mount

Next, we provide the space for our partner to turn onto their side. As they turn, we slide one knee up behind their head and bring the other heel into their stomach, foot flat on the mat.

Back Control

The next step is to exploit your opponent’s natural (untrained) inclination to get to their knees. Once again, give them the space to turn over onto all fours.

• Put your hooks (feet) in between their thighs
• Bring one hand under their armpit to grab their foreram
• Lever your elbow forward and drive your hips forward to flatten them to the ground

NB: In this drill, we want to give our opponent enough rope to hang themselves. That means, when you feel they want to roll – give them the space! They’re doing all the hard work for you that way.

Once you’ve flattened them to the ground, it’s can be hard to get the hands in for a choke. Again, give them the space to start lifting their head and voila, you have the space to get your arm in.

Knee Ride Drill

Worked a balance drill to get a feel for putting all your weight on the knee

One person then took knee ride and practiced keeping balance and control while the other provided a bit of movement.

To add more pressure and to wear your opponent out you can:

• Grab their gi at the elbow with your near-hand and pull it toward the ceiling
• Grab their far pants leg at the knee and do the same thing
• Drive all your weight down and through your knee by driving your hip forward, keeping a straight line from hip to knee

The next step was to step over the head with the leg closest to their head for the near arm-bar from knee-ride (Scroll down – it’s there somewhere)

The last point made was that knee-ride is a great position for providing pressure, draining the energy of your opponent and transitioning e.g. mount, knee-ride on the other side etc.

Ok that’s a book. I’m sure I’ve missed something out, but that’s the guts of it.

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