We’ve had some questions about the ground fighting video on Youtube. Leverage on the ground is vital to submission and escapes, but the word ‘leverage’ is composed of ‘lever’ and in this seminar we taught various classes of levers in both stand up and ground fighting. In a Pramek guard to lever submission, we rely on all three classes of levers to provide various fulcrums and force, giving the students the ability to switch between for maximum usage. We based much of this knowledge from our instructional video, The Lever (this video is all standup levers).
In the first video:
The first submission the legs are used to create a pendulum type sweep…opening the hip for a push to sweep the opponent off, landing in a class one lever (elbow as fulcrum, hands and feet are effort around the fulcrum).
The second is class two lever, where the hands are the fulcrum, the elbow is the load, and the feet interlocking creates the effort.
The third is a third class lever, also known in Pramek as ‘pincer’, where the load is the shoulders and upper arms, the effort is the legs squeezing on the arms, and the hands are the fulcrum.
In the second video, John Wolf of Wolf Fitness Systems demonstrated a close in pincer.
In the third video, two students demonstrate a standing third class lever to a take down drill, where the drill leads to a mounted position. In this position, a pincer is applied. You can see the aggressor push forward through, but this is alleviate with a push off or kick to the face to make space the leg to come across.
It is important to remember a few things here.
1) This is a combatives classes. Choke are assumed to be to the neck with full grasp. It can also be assumed the person in the guard has been knocked down and is disoriented, needing a quick means of defending. Using the legs negates the force applied by the attacker, and allows the legs to block incoming blows. If blows begin to come down, the legs act to distance the defender from the blows, and open the attacker up to arm damage.
2) This is science applied to combatives, using the principles of leverage that are usually used in sport in an advanced way, ensuring that the science is applicable to both sport and combatives. We affect the arm structure, breathing, and create a reflexive action to pull back in the attacker, which increases the effort being applied in the lever.
3) People routinely press massive amounts of weight with their legs in leg presses. These methods make use of the legs and hips to drive and overcome force and downward pressure from the attacker.
We have a full ground submission video coming explaining more.
Enjoy, and let us know your questions below.
– Matt