Building a devastating arm bar: I always encourage my students to focus hard on the mechanics of their submission holds. Most of you know that I put the overwhelming majority of my teaching time on six submission systems – Back attack system, Ashi garami based leg lock system, Kimura system, front head lock system, triangle system and arm bar system. While it is only natural that among these six systems everyone will have a few that they favor over the others, they have to be strong in all six so that they can attack the whole body from any scenario. The arm bar (juji gatame) is a submission i strongly emphasize in their training. It is a potentially devastating weapon that can be used with equal effect standing or on the ground, gi or no gi, too or bottom, grappling or fighting. One very memorable application of juji gatame was a particularly powerful variation used by Georges St-Pierre in his third fight with the great Matt Hughes. Due to the fact that juji gatame usually requires some degree of prior positional work to get to the upper body it tends to come at the end of a sequence of takedown, guard pass, pin transitions and then the arm bar finish. That is exactly how Mr St Pierre used it in this fight. Done it this fashion it finishes a fight the way a full stop finishes a well constructed sentence. You can see here the arm breaking power of the move that has finished so many matches. Make a deep study of this submission – is your toughest matches it will always be one of your best weapons – a genuine fight ender as it was here.
