ORDER OUT OF CHAOS--Mark Hatmaker
We've got over 125 instructional products (and counting) on the market, most of which contain very little overlap. I am often asked how can I remember so many moves or, how is someone supposed to retain all of this material? The answer is primarily context. Rather than approaching each submission as a separate entity it is wise to approach each position as a contextual whole and then allow the submissions to branch from these positions. Such an approach is the basis of our Positional Encyclopedia of Submissions. But, that answer is not sufficient, in my mind. It is true there is a wealth of material to be mastered and that we need all the tools we can muster to aid us in our task of submission recognition. The complete answer then, is context and destinations.
To explain what I mean by destinations allow me to drop into analogy world for a bit. I wager that if you have lived in your current location for a while you know the area fairly well. I'll also wager that you can come up with at least a dozen destinations that you can find your way to rather easily. For example, your home, work, friend's house, schools, movie theater, grocery store, Wal-mart, Post Office, more than a few restaurants, et cetera. I'll continue to wager that, if need be, you can use more than one route to arrive at most of these destinations. You can take main roads if traffic is light or alternate back roads simply because the mood strikes you or to avoid traffic. Most of us have no problem navigating alternate routes to like destinations. So, let's keep this common skill in mind as we apply it to submissions.
Basically there are only ten classes of submissions.
- Straight Arm Locks
- Bent Arm Locks (TWL/DWL)
- Wrist Locks
- Straight Leg Locks
- Bent Leg Locks
- Toe Holds
- Chokes
- Neck Cranks/Face Locks
- Hip/Spine Locks
- Catch-All (Esoteric locks such as stretches).
Ten--that's it. Those wondering where, let's say shoulder locks are; shoulder locks are applied either with the arm straight (Class 1) or bent (Class 2) so they are included in the ten destinations. If you begin to recognize submissions as belonging to classes or destinations and stop trying to recall them as disparate entities you'll have a far easier time retaining the information. The differences will come via approach/set-ups/routes taken to each of these ten destinations.
So, in a nutshell, to wrap our minds around the wonderful wealth of material in the All-in game, use context and destination cues to create order out of the seeming chaos.
A GAME OF CHESS
We continue with my feeble analogies to help understand how we should view the overall grappling game. In previous articles I promulgated the need to use contextual cues to approach submissions as opposed to merely (and inefficiently, I might add) reaching into your memory and chasing submissions haphazardly. I have also recommended looking at submissions as classes of submissions rather than disparate entities to aid mental digestion of the vast amount of material. We have also suffered through my destinations analogy that sought to illustrate that there is more than one path to a single destination/submission class. All of these approaches are, again, the method behind the madness of the Positional Encyclopedia of Submissions. Is there yet another way I can flog this dead horse of a topic? Yep.
Chess. It's as good an analogy as any as the grappling game is often likened to physical chess (I'm a fan of this analogy). In chess there are essentially only six classes of tools: king, queen, bishop, knight, rook, and pawn. Each of these tools have their own idiosyncratic way of movement and/or capturing for a total of six different patterns to understand (more when we add castling and the like) but, in essence we are looking at only six classes of movement.
With only six classes of movement chess can be learned in minutes. Six classes of moves doesn't sound so daunting does it? And it isn't. Now suppose when you were learning the game your teacher decided that he would by-pass teaching you the six tools and the six classes of movement and decided instead to inform you that in the first four moves per side alone there are 318,979,564,000 possibilities? Without the grounding information of only needing to know the six tools and the six classes the aforementioned 12-digit number makes the game sound far more difficult than it is.
That 12-digit number is daunting and so is being confronted with a seemingly endless gamut of submissions but, guess what? A chess grandmaster doesn't move a chess piece and see the seemingly infinite possibilities available at each move. He sees only the likely possibilities of each individual move based on his and his opponent's current positions. The same thing can be said of the experienced grappler-he/she does not see each rolling session as a chaotic roil of submission possibilities. No, instead each match (to the experienced eye) is predicated upon presented or dictated positions. Whereas the chess player has to keep a dozen factors in mind for each move (six tools + six modes of movement) the submission specialist only needs to keep ten classes of submissions in mind.
Yes, the permutations of submissions may seem endless, but think more along the lines of the approach to chess. Survey your next move in relation to where you are now and make reasonable predictions about where you may go next. Think no farther than that as the changing positions will provide you with the cues you need-there is no reason to keep a 12-digit number in your head. Just relax, know the ten classes, know the positions and sub-set positions and apply the classes as they present themselves.
