There’s nothing worse than having an opponent counter your armbar attempt by locking his hands together and using grip and bicep strength to stop you from extending the arm. Especially if he’s big, strong, and determined to not let tap him out!
Locking the hands together and holding on for dear life is such a simple defense, but it works. From local tournaments to the Mundials, competitors everywhere grab their hands together to defend the armbar.
This is why you need some good options for finishing the armbar.
If you’re a newbie then I challenge you to pick a couple of armbar grip-breaks that look like they’d work for you. Then drill them until they work even when someone bigger than you is resisting with all his strength.
Once you’ve got a few bread and butter moves down, then go and test them against all sorts of different defensive grips. It turns out that there are a lot of subtleties and variations for something as simple as clamping your hands together… You might run into palm to palm grips, finger to finger grips (aka chain grip), RNC grips, sleeve grips, etc. And you need at least one good way to deal with each of them!
I’ve done two Youtube videos I did my favorite ways to break my opponent’s grip in those oh-so-close arm bar situations.
In the first video I show 10 techniques to finish the armbar. I use the first 9 all the time, and the tenth technique at the end of the video is one that I don’t actually use yet, but it looks so cool I can’t wait to try it out.
The first video is here:
To see the same 10 Ways to Finish the Armbar video on YouTube, click here!
The reason I filmed the second video on ways to finish the armbar was because I realized that I’d left out some of my favorite armbar followup techniques.
Like transitioning to a side triangle choke from a Japanese style armbar…
And the bicep lock series…
And the double forearm pry…
And a bunch of other highly effective techniques you can use when some jerk just doesn’t want you to lock his arm using the straight armbar! So there was nothing to do but get back in front of a camera and film a SECOND video on the topic with even more techniques.
To see 10 MORE Ways to Finish the Armbar on YouTube, click here.
Between these two videos you now have TWENTY ways to finish the armbar. Try them out in sparring 0 surely a couple of them will work for you!