Armbar Alley

You will not be the one to drown me.   –Maggie Stiefvater



Friday evening in Bellevue.  Started with sneaking up behind Luiz and taking his back while he was chatting with someone else. He passively let me sink an RNC and take him down, but an instant later, I found myself tapping out to a kimura.

JP tried to bait me into passing his guard and falling right into one of those traps where you basically sub yourself like an idiot. I stopped dead, and we just froze there for a long moment. Then I said, "Dude, I roll with Ron and Doug. I know EXACTLY what you are trying to do here, and you are NOT going to get me with that!!!" He laughed.

Standup: judo grips, pretend to go for an outside reap. Let opponent reap you back, and nail hir with an armbar. Discovered that this was one of the cases in which the Stupid Side turned out to be the best side, because it involved one of the key pieces in the middle of the process being deployed with my dominant arm. Said key piece: keep a really leech-like grip on the underside of the sleeve at the elbow the whole time. That is the lynchpin to adjusting everything where you want it to finish the armbar.

Armbars from mount.

I coached Chrisanne extensively on armbar technique early on in her learning, and as a result- if I may say so myself- she has one fucking tight armbar. From every angle, she is tight and perfect and deadly. My own armbar still needs a bit of refinement in remembering to pinch the knees together- that is the one detail that I tend to forget and get sloppy on. We pushed each other a bit in the later reps by having the uke try to escape by pulling the elbow down, or by pressing her back to the floor under the mount. In the later case, pinching the knees together to trap the victim with hir shoulder pointing to the ceiling becomes critical. And there's that leech-grip on the arm again- only this time it really needs to be on the tricep- and grab the muscle, not just the gi sleeve. I found that I had more success if I quit messing around and go faster. I always do well at grabbing that arm and yanking them up hard enough to make their teeth snap, but then I am too slow finishing- and I need to just finish that puppy off before they recover from that yank and start wiggling to escape.

I like drilling these armbars.... I don't really use them much live yet, but I want to. I can curl into such a compact ball that I know they will be really good for me. But I hate drilling them as the uke. I spend too much time getting clubbed painfully in the face, especially the nose. With the armbars from mount, I can place my free palm on top of my head, stick my elbow out, and shield my face from getting whacked by the foe's heel. The armbars that are coming from the bottom, you're hosed because you can't protect your face. I just know that a broken nose from this technique is in my future; I can't believe it hasn't happened yet. I have a big nose, which appearance will not be improved by a couple of badly healed breaks.  Also, the technique makes me very nervous due to how little it takes to finish it, and the high opportunity for slamming/cranking which will result in a very rapid elbow/shoulder injury. I always tap to these early, and with much haste.

I wanted to roll with Casey, but I had a little headache, so I decided to leave.