Bread 'n' butter: A pro helps us understand Ronda Rousey's inescapable arm bar
In just a few short years, Ronda Rousey's arm-bar submission hold has taken its place in the MMA world as a signature move much in the same way Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's sky hook shot did in basketball, Reggie White's swim move did on the line in football and Sandy Koufax's curveball did from the mound in baseball. Everyone knew those moves were coming, but they were so perfectly and uniquely executed that they still couldn't be stopped.
Since transitioning to MMA, the Olympic judo medalist Rousey has 11 arm-bar submission wins in 13 fights. As an amateur MMA fighter, Rousey won all three of her bouts by arm bar.
Then, she went on to rattle off eight straight arm-bar wins as a professional. Her last two wins have come by way of knockout, thanks to her ever-improving striking game, but the grappler is still most known for her throws and the arm-bar submission that her Judo world champion mother first began to teach her as a child.
The straight arm bars that Rousey has pulled off are "basic" MMA moves that all fighters learn. Like all great competitors, however, Rousey has managed to perfect and then tweak a basic set of movements to get dominant results.
No one stops Rousey's arm bar, and that has a lot to do with small but crucial nuances invisible to the naked eye. According to retired former three-time world title challenger and current FOX Sports UFC analyst Kenny Florian, that is in large part due to the unorthodox way Rousey sets up the hold.
SPEED KILLS
I met Florian on the mats at Dynamix MMA in Los Angeles recently to get his analysis of Rousey's signature move, and he said that Rousey's arm bar is different than everyone else's because she skips some time-consuming steps and throws out the textbook when applying the sub.
Take, for example, the way Rousey sets up her arm bar from the side mount position. Most fighters will segment a far-side arm bar into several pieces before attempting to fall back and extend their opponent's elbow joint to force a submission or painful injury.
While on top and cross-siding an opponent, most fighters reach to the far-side arm, under-hook it, then lift and pull it to their own chest as they sit up on their knees. At that point, many fighters then step over the head of their grounded opponent with the nearest knee, placing them vertically over their foe.
Then comes the final step of sliding completely to what was earlier the far side of their opponent's body while falling backwards with the arm hugged close to their chest and at least the leg nearest the opponent's head going over the head and pressing down. As Florian explained, Rousey turns those three steps into one fluid and quick motion.
Rousey reaches for the far side arm and then swings all the way across her opponent's body, bringing both legs over their body in one fell swoop. There is no step over then slide back, with Rousey's far-side arm bar.
Instead, she snatches, then, swings completely over in one motion. This gives her opponents less time to react and try to escape.
THROWING OUT THE OLD RULES
The dreaded Ronda Rousey arm bar that you want no part of.
That's the first thing that Rousey does in a different manner than is usually taught by submission instructors. The second, according to Florian, is how she positions her legs once they are over the body and head of her opponent.
The textbook way most people are taught to lock down that position and keep an opponent on their back as you attempt to hyperextend their arm in the straight lock is to straighten out and lock down the legs, especially the one over the head, while pinching your knees together.
The idea there is to keep the opponent from crunching up and in toward the lock, and perhaps then getting to their own knees or feet and stacking all their weight on top of the submission hunter, in order to prevent their arm from being stretched out painfully. More than that, however, that way of positioning your legs is meant to isolate the targeted arm.
Rousey positions her legs in a different, and perhaps better, way to accomplish the former goal, while mostly disregarding the latter.
First off, Rousey crosses her ankles while sitting back for the arm bar. Most of us are taught to never do that, for some reason.
Rousey, however, crosses the ankle of the leg over her opponent's body, on top of the ankle of the leg over her opponent's head. That adds a degree of locking, or pressure onto the head, keeping it down.
Second, Rousey bows her knees outward, creating an oval-like shape when viewed from above with her legs. The textbook way of positioning your knees for a straight arm bar is to pinch them together as close as possible, in hopes of tightening up around the arm and isolating it further.
Rousey, however, ignores that goal and focuses on keeping her opponent's head down on the mat. The bowed wide knee and leg on the head creates much more downward pressure on the head than the traditional pinched-knee way of doing it.
Florian demonstrated on me and the physical contrast was stark. When he pinched his knees, it felt somewhat possible to turn towards him and begin to attempt to stack my weight on him.
But when he bowed his legs, all of the sudden I had a knee pressing down on my mouth, head and neck, and it felt nearly impossible to sit up and stack him. I'd always incorrectly thought that Rousey's bowed-leg arm bar set-up was a liability, until Florian showed me just how much of an asset it is for the Rowdy one.
Rousey also uses that leg positioning when she goes for the arm bar off of her own back. Florian once again demonstrated on me and, even there, while standing over him with all my weight above him, it was very difficult to stack him once he bowed his legs.
The knee pressing on my face tilted and angled my head away from him, and as the head goes, the body follows. With my eyes and head pointed away from Florian because of his employing Rousey's bowed-leg positioning, it was difficult to press towards and into him.
To sum up, Rousey skipping steps and swinging right into finishing position gives her arm bar a speed that others don't have in theirs. Then, her purposeful tossing out of the textbook when it comes to leg positioning on her opponent switches the focus from the traditional isolating of the opponent arm to instead focusing on keeping the head pressed against the mat and thereby taking away one of the opponent's best options of defense.
Now that I've got a better understanding of how and why Rousey has been so predictably successful with her signature move, it will help me understand her actions as I watch UFC 184's main event between her and Zingano.
Join me in looking for those subtle arm bar details Saturday, so that if Rousey does manage to score another arm bar win, you'll look like the smartest guy or gal around the water cooler on Monday, explaining it to all the impressed stiffs around you. Don't worry, we won't tell anyone you heard it from us first.
