Money-Jiu Jitsu (Part 4)- Finishing The Fight

We are continuing our series on what the numbers are telling us about the 2012 Pan Ams black belt matches. We’ve already told you how matches are being won, how you can play the numbers to win, and which techniques and positions are most effective, but now we are going to tell you how to finish the fight. In fact, 88% of this years submissions had one thing in common, and that is going to be the fouc of our discussion today. If you remember back to the first part of the series you’ll remember that I asked everyone to be patient and to wait, because eventually I was going to get to submissions and how to finish the match. Well, now we are here, so let’s figure out what the numbers say about finishing the match.

Back to that 88%, this year almost 9 out of every 10 submissions were executed by a player winning on points, another 8% came from matches where points were neutral, and only 4% acted in favor of the person losing the match. What does this mean? It means that if you want to win by submission and finish the match you better score points first. It seems like common sense, right? We give points for a dominant position, submissions occur form a these dominant positions, inso-facto the person with the most points will get more submissions. But I think the observation deserves more depth than this. The theme that I notice is that the points themselves actually provide an advantage as well. The more points that were scored the more desperate the opponent acted. The average score of the match when a submission occurred was 8.4-1.2. While we can’t read these numbers like tea leaves, it certainly does support my hypothesis that points influence the opponents behavior in a  negative way leading to more submissions.

We know that being up on points is the first place to start if you want to finish the match, but what is the most successful strategy for securing a submission? Let’s start with where  these submissions were from. The chart below accounts for 19 submissions that occurred across every weight class during both black belt adults and black belt masters.

Great, now we know where these submissions came from, so what types of submissions were they? I’ve heard Lloyd Irvin say in the past that he has broken down tape in a similar fashion, and that he has used this information to train his athletes to use higher percentage submissions. I’ve also had some exposure to what these submissions were. So I kept a lot of that in mind as I was reviewing all of this. The information I collected parallel that information pretty well with a few variances. Here is the type of submissions chronicled with the above info…

So how we do apply all this information on the mat, in the gym, and in competition? Drill! If there is one re-occurring theme in all of these articles it is that I advocate drilling these prevalences during practice, so that when you get into a competition setting you score first, execute your game-plan (statistically designed to succeed), use the highest percentage techniques, and apply submissions from high percentage positions with the most effective finishes. So my advice is practice scoring when you practice then put yourself in positions to take these submissions that demonstrate a higher success rate.

In conclusion, we have almost finished a beautiful portrait that outlines exactly how the Pan Ams were won in 2012. The game is always evolving and if you know what you need to do to win, the training part is pure  perspiration- can you work harder in practice than everyone else? That is what a true competitor is looking for. You want to know your strategy, your approach, your techniques, and after that… just practice it all. The last thing you want to do is go out and lose after spending $1000′s  to compete because you failed to prepare the right gameplan. Use these last 4 articles to connect the dots and start kicking butt today!

We would love to hear the success stories of people who have taken this information and applied it in a positive way for themselves. Leave your comments in the comments section, or contact us here.

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God bless you.

Happy Training,

BishopBJJ.com