Being 'one dimensional' in sparring

[scottross]

Is this him? From the looks of it, he WAS trying something different, but the other guy just gift wrapped his ankle with a nice little bow and handed it to him.

I agree that the other guy gave him that ankle lock. That happens frequently and it always makes my day. Keeping your feet away from his hands is a good starting point.

Now for something a little more constructive.

Step 1: As soon as he grabs your foot, kick forward, then kick back. Get your foot back. If that doesn't work, step two.

Step 2: In the video, the opponent tries to prevent the guy from falling back to finish the ankle lock. Not a bad idea but that's often a battle you will lose if the specialist has been doing this a while. You know exactly what is going to happen as soon as he touches your foot. So don't wait for the ankle lock to be on, start executing the escape immediately.

Grab his right knee and prevent him from using it to put pressure on your knee, which increases the pressure on your ankle.

Boot. If he is already on his side, then once you have booted turn your foot in towards his back(this is the opposite of conventional wisdom - but if he is on his side, he can't pull off the heel hook without making a major movement to reposition his arm). This buys you one or two seconds. Spend these seconds wisely.

With your left hand, push his left foot the floor. Pin that foot to the floor and push your butt over the foot. Once you clear his knee you are safe. Until you clear the knee, he can still replace his foot.

As soon as I clear the foot, I like to roll forward onto my right shoulder, then push backwards into a mount. Then I grin.

[scottross]

I hate the idea of saying, "hey dont attack my <insert injured limb>". I'm just quicker to tap if it ends up being attacked and do a better job of avoiding that limb being attacked. Its just training and I'm just there to learn.

It is a good idea to let your training partner know about the injury so they can try to be careful not to make it worse, although I tell people that if I give them the submission, they should take it - I'll tap swiftly.

What killed me about the guy I was talking about was that he had a great open guard game that I nullified because of the danger of the ankle locks and he was weaseling out what I still consider my best defense against that game. I have other options nowadays but at the time it was really my only option.

[Jeremy Gates]

If he can tap people out all the time with those two techniques then more power to him. However if I start Doing the same move over and over and over I feel like I become predictable and I like to switch it up a bit. I'm pretty good with triangles and I guess that's my number one move I'm always looking for from any where but I like to work on alot of other stuff to broaden my game as well. IMO specializing in one or two key submissions is fine but if those fail u should have back ups.

[kevinculp]

The one good thing about the specialist is they are predictable. I have two training partners who are all about the guillotine. So I stick my neck out while controlling their legs and smile. They lock up on my neck and I pass to side with little effort. But I had to learn the hard way to not play Z guard with them on top or I end up in neck Crank city!

[Chris Herzog]

Its all about what you are trying to achieve from your rolls. I have a small group of guys that are determined to shut down by deep halfguard. This is exactly why I continue to attack them with it. What they haven't figured out yet is as they get better at trying smash it, I get better at excuting it, keeping the margine the same. It pays of for all of us, they are developing sound defense to it, I'm getting better at shutting down their defense and working around new ones.

Thanks for the reps fellas

[Brent Smith]

Its all about what you are trying to achieve from your rolls. I have a small group of guys that are determined to shut down by deep halfguard. This is exactly why I continue to attack them with it. What they haven't figured out yet is as they get better at trying smash it, I get better at excuting it, keeping the margine the same. It pays of for all of us, they are developing sound defense to it, I'm getting better at shutting down their defense and working around new ones.

Thanks for the reps fellas

Thats exactly my mind set when someone tells me they're going to figure out a way to stop my game. Please do!