How does an armbar work?
Have you ever tried to watch a UFC event at someones house, and wondered why the fight was suddenly stopped? All you saw was two guys on the ground, one hanging onto the others arm, and suddenly the referee breaks them up and the fights over. Well try to clear a little bit of that up for you here.
A good possibility is that you just saw what is called an armbar. An armbar is performed by one of the fighters placing his legs across his opponents chest, with his opponents arm between his legs, and the elbow joint against his hips. To submit the opponent, all he must do is secure the arm by holding the wrist, and arching his hips against his opponents elbow. What this does is create a tremendous amount of pressure on the elbow joint and forces the opponent to tap.
Keep in mind that this is not a pain submission. What I mean by that is that it doesnt matter if you think youre tough or that you can hold out because you are immune to pain. If you do not tap from an armbar, you risk torn ligaments and tendons in the elbow joint. If your opponent applies enough pressure, and you dont tap, the arm will actually break.
I understand that the description above can still leave you a little fuzzy on how it all works. Ill go ahead and paint out another picture on how it works the way it does. Lets say you have a triangle shaped rock (work with me here) and a long board. The rock will represent your hips. The board will represent your opponents arm. If you place the board across the rock, with the rock in the middle, and apply pressure to both ends of the board, chances are that youll snap the board. The same can be applied to your opponents arm.
I hope this clears up a lot of the confusion you may be feeling about how an armbar works. If you would like to see a video of an armbar applied, as well as many other training videos, check out
www.getsnooky.com to get a better understanding.
Thank you, and good luck in your quest for knowledge!
