Hey all,
I take the philosophy that no techniques, especially grappling, are invented or created by anyone. They're just waiting to be discovered (and as Dan Inosanto once said, "There's nothing new under the sun"). I think the main reason this is a good philosophy to have is it keeps your ego in check!
Anyway I often have sleepless night where I just think about grappling until the early hours of the morning and have a theory for a super sick move I think you're gonna love. It may have been pulled off by other people (probably some catch guy decades ago) but thought I'd share what my imagination gets up to.
I've decided as Thanks Giving is coming up to call it Thanks Giving Dinner as it reminds me a bit of pulling the wishbone of a Turkey! Ha!
It's primarily a double shoulder lock combined with a secondary, partial neck crank, and will work with the principles of leverage and using your whole body to power the lever. I think the move is particularly evil.
Imagine you're sprawling and defending a takedown and you've got double underhooks. The first port of call is making sure your opponents hands aren't clasped and making sure the opponents neck is buried snugly under one of your armpits. Break their grip by driving the edge of your forearms into the pit of their elbows. Use your bodyweight from the sprawl to help drive down and out.
Once broken, or if already broken, deepen your underhooks but make sure the pits of your elbows are pushing against the pits of their elbows and clasp your hands together in a palm to palm grip to help open their 'wings' up. You can use other grips, but palm to palm is the quickest way to clasp your hands before the opponent begins to resist.
All this time making yourself heavy and close on the back of the opponents neck and shoulders and not giving him room to slide out.
If you're still sprawling and the opponent is either flattened out or turtling, you need to do two things at the same time:
i) Bring your knees in and base out as if you are turtling, making sure your knees are tucked in towards the opponents shoulders and are either side of their head.
ii) [b]This bit is crucial for everything else to work[/b]. As you bring your knees in, bring your forearms up the opponents back still palm-to-palm gripped until your elbows are bent at about a right-angle (90 degrees). As you bring your forearms up to do this, feed your arms through your hands until you have cradle grip / bow tie grip. The easiest way from palm-to-palm grip is to roatate your palms so the thumbs more away from each other and you can grip the other arm's wrist with each hand and then use yours hand to crawl along the forearms to the elbows. In the cradle/bow tie grip make sure to clasp your hands just above the elbows. To tighten I find it's easiest to pull slightly into your body, and out. Just do it enough so you have a nice firm grip but you're not straining or flexing a great deal.
This may sound complicated so far but it's actually not, unfortunately I don't have photos or video as I only theorised about it last night.
The position you should be in now is a bow tie grip underhook and your chest resting heavy on the back of the opponents neck and shoulders. So far it looks almost like a full nelson but from north south and your arms are closer together keeping the opponent from clasping his.
Keeping your chest on his back and shoulders and the bow tie grip tight to your body, sit back from your knees to your butt and bring your knees up as if going for buttefly guard, but [b]sit on the back of your opponents neck[/b]. His head and neck should be trapped under your butt and his arms will have raised slightly if you kept your bow tie grip close to your body. Don't worry if his arms slid out slightly, that's what you'll be looking for in a sec.
While sitting on his head with your knees in similar to butterfly guard (but don't put your hooks inside his legs) put your feet together (soles down if you can) on the small of his back and roll to one side while still mainting that tight bowtie gripped underhook and still tucked in enough so his head and neck are still under your butt.
With your feet on the small of his back, knees still bent and your bowtie grip still to your chest, use your back and pelvis to [b]slowly[/b] straighten up until he taps (with his feet, or clicking fingers). His arms will slide slightly which you want for leverage until your bowtie grip should be just above his wrists. It should be enough to stop the hands slipping out, especially if it's MMA and they have gloves, but you can tighten the bowtie by pulling in and out a bit harder if you wish. He should be tapping real soon anyway now you have a great leverage advantage.
The bowtie must remain close to your chest, and it must be your body that does bulk of the work. Also your knees must be kept as bent as they are and not open any wider. You use your feet on the small of his back to hold yourself in and keep your butt on his head as well as to block his hips.
I got the idea from this shoulder stretch:
[img]http://www.dailystoke.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/forward_bend_shoulder_stretch1.jpg[/img]
By blocking the head and neck with your butt, and maintaing the tight bowtie grip to stop the arms widening and the shoulders being able to rotate as freely, you have a real killer double shoulder lock imo. Also rolling to your side stops them from standing up to relieve the pressure (as you would in the stretch in the photo).
I've tried to imagine all the nuances needed to make the move as effective as possible but there's bound to be adjustments and fine tuning on an individual basis that will help make the move work for you.
I can't wait to try this out on the mat and I hope you give it a try as well.
Thanks for reading,
KJ
Forum
