Old school UFCs and more on the sitting armbar

Fun fact of the day - an intense workout can depress your immune system for up to 72 hours. In other words if you train hard, get out of the wet shirt and put a jacket on or you're going to get sick.

I've been watching a lot of old UFCs lately. I just finished getting a huge kick out of UFC 7, where Marco Ruas and his famous foot stomp won the day. It's amazing what the martial arts community owes MMA. The first 10 or so really demonstrated how much bullshit and theory was being perpetuated as reality because respect for tradition had really morphed into a taboo against questioning, which in turn morphed into stagnation.

You can really tell how chaotic and unguided the majority of arts were by comparing the accolades of the fighters with their performances, and I'm not talking about winning or losing. You routinely watched guys with black belts in three different martial arts come running across the cage and start wildly flinging their hands, feet and knees at their opponents, who were just as often doing the exact same thing. It was kind of disconcerting to watch - if these men spent 20+ years practicing a martial art, only to turn into a bar-room brawler as soon as they got in a fight, what was the point? Thank you to Marco Ruas and other early fighters for paving the way by demonstrating actual technique (Ruas beat a 300 pound brawler at 210 pounds to win UFC 7, and was never really in any danger). I'll happily expand on this later, but now to last week's training.

It's the Monday after Xmas, and the last time I trained was last Monday night. I wanted to hit the mat Tuesday night as well since it was the last night we could train for 1.5 weeks, but not only did the injuries pile up higher and higher, I actually got a little sick Tuesday too. So I'm taking two full weeks off in a row, and hoping my finger isn't going to have that weird bump on the side of the knuckle forever.

The last technique I described was an armbar that gets applied *fast* from open guard. A quick review - your opponent straightens his arm out while pushing one of your knees to the mat to step over and pass guard. Before he can step over, grab and hyperextend his elbow.

Now the perennial hyperextension dilemma - what happens if he bends and twists his arm? Answer - the same thing as always, you move to another technique in the chain.

Previously I explained that I couldn't crush my way out of this armbar because Marcus simply kicked my knee out from under me, giving me a face full of mat while he finished making me tap at leisure. But there *is* a chance I could twist my arm around behind me. So taking the attacker's perspective again, you grab your opponent's elbow and try to straighten his arm out, but you miss the elbow by a tiny bit. He's able to bend and twist his arm downward toward his own belt (because in the other direction he has almost no range of motion left, and no strength to pull out of your grip). Well this sets him up for a classic kimura.

If you envision using your left hand to grab his right elbow (as in the previous blog post), you'll notice that as he shoves his hand to his belt to defend, you have your right hand free. Reach across yourself and over his right shoulder, grabbing his wrist while you keep whatever grip on his elbow (or close to elbow...) you have with your left hand. Once you secure his wrist he can't extend his arm anymore. Keep that tight while you slide your own left hand down and grab your own right wrist. In classic kimura form, you have to loop a leg over his back or at least one leg to stop him from rolling out.