The battle for elbows: one of the strongest positions that the human body can hold is your elbow held right to your hip. This creates a very strong structure that an opponent will find extremely difficult to dislodge. The further your elbow drifts away from your hip – the weaker your arm becomes overall. A big part of grappling then, is the battle to create conditions where your arms are in a strong position close to your hips whilst your opponents elbows are in a weak position extended away from his hips. If you can reliably create this circumstance, you'll have a very considerable physical advantage over your opponent. Under hooks are one great way to make this happen, as you can see here as Nicholas meregali works hard to pull an opponents elbow out and away from his hips to create openings for his famous attacking open guard game. Always look for opportunities to get an opponents arm extended while keeping your own retracted – you'll feel strong to your opponent and be in a great position to attack!
