Class notes: UFC 180 finishes

Relaxed grapple warm up.
I rolled with Milzy which was a great way to get warmed up and move.

Submission grapple flow.
Again I was with Milzy, this time we were looking for submissions. Thankfully he was being very kind. He is fast, powerful and very slick on the floor so is always great to roll with as you learn so much about space, pressure, position, weight distribution, isolation of limbs and general ground craft.

The main part of class was learning and refining the 3 subnmission finishes from UFC 180

The Mexican kid with the inner forearm choke. Benitez v Brown.

This was something I remember Lee showing this concept a time ago; going palm to palm on the inner forearm choke then making a L to lever your elbow over his shoulder. this makes the choke incredibly tight very quickly. For me it was important to get the armpit over his head as this made quite a lot of difference in terms of tightness and ultimate completion of the technique. If you get a chance to watch the video of the fight, Brown is out cold before he hits the ground (Benitez pulled guard).

Ricardo Lamas inner forearm and shoulder choke

This choke we started from the partner being on all fours so we could drill the correct positioning. So, slide an arm under his armpit and across his neck. Take a palm to palm grip at the other armpit. Clear his defending arm and get your hips across so you push his arm across his neck/centre. You then need to get on the same plane as him in that your heads point along the same direction. My mistake was that at first I was going off to the side and thus losing any quality in my work. By being squareer to him you are much tighter on him. The outside leg goes over his back to stop him escaping that side, the other leg is tight to his chest. To finish the choke, I think you pull up on your forearm then pull back towards your shoulder. It looks like a guilotene but the arm is in.

Kelvin Gastleman inner forearm choke from the back

The new bit of learning for me was about using the forearm to apply the choke, the hands were the fulcrum and you pull the elbow back to your shoulder to close it off. Tight, painful and generally horrible. I liked it also as you do not need to only go for the bicep and forearm suppression with the chin at the elbow fold. This gives you other options. In playing around it helped if the head was folded forward over the arm as this gave the choke great initial tightness.

Freeform grappling with Craig, Rob and Neil. Rob landed a beautifully illegal punch to my right eye ball!!

5 tips to living a good life:
Meditation,
Movement/mobility,
Exercise,
Sleep,
Nutrition