Take the Arm

Struggling to do anything from your guard?  Break down the other person’s posture.  Can’t break their posture because they’re stiff arming your hips?  Peel away the elbow, put your foot on their hip and put your knee in their armpit.  If you do it right, they won’t be able to easily reclaim that space, because your shin is in the way.  Sling your other leg over their back and latch on tight.  Pull down the neck and suck in the arm.  You have, as stated earlier, broken down their posture.

From there, take it to the kimura, the arm bar, the arm triangle, the scissor sweep or whatever else might emerge.  And of course, if you go for it and they back away, why not back away yourself and sit up?  If you’re not good at finding subs in the guard (or not good with the guard against your current partner) then ditch it and move on, just like you’d ditch a submission or reversal that wasn’t working.

Thanks to Andy for the class idea and thanks to Steve for the picture.