Pins are a means not an end: A very distinctive feature of my students approach to Jiu jitsu is to never be happy with an upper body pin. We get taught to value guard passing and pinning so much – indeed, the point system rewards you and enables you to win matches with pins alone – that it's easy to skip over the extra step of finishing from a pin. Good Jiu jitsu always sees a pin as a means to the end of submission holds. That means you must go behind the act of pinning chest to chest and into the more difficult world of limb isolation AND CONTROL. Only an isolated limb can be submitted. Learning to draw a limb away from the torso and into a finishing hold can be a frustrating experience. Limbs by their very nature are more difficult and intricate to control than torsos and now you need to explore the more complex world of levers and fulcrums. You must push yourself past pins and into submissions if you are to satisfy the ideal of Jiu jitsu. Here, gordon ryan leaves the security of chest to chest immobilization and isolates an opponents arm as a precursor to submission holds – with a grip like this he has quite a selection of potential finishes to work with here – which would you choose if you were in his place?
