As mentioned previously, Dave held a free two hour seminar for his students last night.  It was another deep dive on what he calls the Standard Armbar Position (SAP).  Imagine you are mounted, your opponent does ol' bench press you off, you spin for the armlock - you are now in the SAP.

What I like about Dave's approach to the position is that he emphasizes control instead of the finish.  In his view, if you can control the position then the finish is easy (relatively).  I think this model of thinking applies in many, many areas.  We have all heard the maxim "position before submission" and this is no different.

The seminar started with two ways to take the armbar.  The first was if you held side control (cross sides top).   Your opponent turns into you with an underhook.  You take the top arm, secure a kimura grip and walk your hips in tight to their shoulder, finishing in the SAP.

The second entry was via mount.  More often than not, Dave holds a low mount (ie. legs crossed, hips low).  So we started there, gained head control, disrupted their posture, and trapped the opposite side elbow, driving it up slowly towards their head.  From there, we moved to an S mount, and then the SAP.

Two good things about these entries.  First is that they are very common and great to drill.  The other was that they demonstrated both a headside and legside armlock.  This forced you to think about how you were controlling the positon as what you do is different depending on the grip.

I have talked about this before, but there are three basic ways to control from the SAP: Posting, Extending Your Body Flat on the Mat, and Leg Control.  My personal favorite is leg control when I want to control while finishing, but more and more I think that against a really explosive opponent, I may use the extended body position.  Just something I need to play a bit more with.

The seminar was a good mix of new material (ie. details on gaining S mount) and things I had seen before (securing the SAP).  This gave me a chance to review what I knew, but also clean it up a bit.  A good example of this was the technique to switch between arm positions.  I "thought" I knew it and realized after watching Dave last night what component I was missing.

Thanks to Dave for putting on these free seminars.  I know everyone in the program appreciates it!

Paul