Take some heat off your submissions and see what happens: In a competitive setting you want to make sure all your submissions take effect as quickly and completely as possible so as to ensure a decisive and convincing end to the match. In the gym however, I often encourage my students to leave a little slack in their submissions so that their training partner can employ an escape – you then must counter that escape and work back into either a reapplication of the original submission or a switch to a new one. As you gain in skill and confidence you can extend this process further and further until you can work with elaborate chains of submission attacks upon even multiple escape attempts. Just as a cat plays with a mouse in order to practice its hunting skills – it's a good thing periodically to play with your opponent whilst locked into a submission. Don't worry if he escapes occasionally – that's all part of the fun. Training in this way will prepare you for elite opponents who have very well developed escape skills and it is unlikely the first submission attempt will get the breakthrough. In this situations the skill of flowing from one submission attack to another on an artfully defending opponent will be of great value to you. Here, talented junior Damien Anderson releases just enough pressure on a juji gatame arm bar to be able to maintain the threat, determine the direction of his opponent's movement and set up subsequent attacks – great training.
