How many times have you set up an armbar from closed guard, only to have your opponent lock their arms and stack you, eventually freeing their arm?
If this scenario seems familiar then you should listen up to what Joh Danaher advises as being the perfect armbar set up.
Danaher start by getting a deep grip in the opponent’s collar and a very important detail is how he blocks the opponent’s head so that they can’t turn.
The next point is to grab the sleeve and pull their wrist past your belly button.
Your legs now come into play and you will to shivel them all the way up so as to clamp your opponent’s shoulders.
Now comes the game changing part… You have to cover their wrist so that it makes it very difficult for them to defend by figure four-ing their arms…
This very small detail will shoot up your armbar success rate.
John Danaher explains this here:
