Whether one practices the Brazilian grappling system (Machado/Gracie), Greco Roman, Freestyle (Olympic), Sambo (Russian), Ju-Jutsu, Judo or some little known folkloric style; there is one fundamental, all-important concept to be grasped before any headway can ever be made …. and that is the idea of CONTROL!
QUALITY NOT QUANTITY
In grappling, control is everything! Whether that be upright wrestling or groundwork, no real progress can be made until the basic tenets of control are understood. No amount of holds, locks or chokes are going to beat an opponent if you don’t have him controlled first. If you find yourself underneath with your opponent mounted (straddled) on top of you … if you cannot control him and change your positional advantage, a hundred locks and finishing holds won’t save you!
When I first began training with the Rigan Machado in 1989, I experienced what ‘total control’ really meant. Prior to that, I had wrestled about a bit, over in Australia, in my teens, and later, in my twenties and early thirties in Asia and India. Although I considered myself predominantly a ’stand-up’ fighter, I still felt I had enough grappling experience to ‘hold my own’; that is, enough, so as not to disgrace myself. I was wrong! What I knew was a bunch of holds, a collection of moves, but I understood nothing about control. The Brazilians taught me the real meaning of the idea of control!
The Machado’s and their cousins, the Gracie’s, have developed the best ground control system there is. After only having trained with them for six months I found myself going up against many other ground-fighters and wrestlers with decades more experience than I, yet I was able to control them and win with only a few basic finishes. Then of course, I was hooked!
I have seen on countless occasions, students having only two or three months experience in the Brazilian system, easily, almost effortlessly, control and ‘finish’ much larger, stronger and vastly more ‘experienced’ opponents; and do so with no more than a single ‘finishing hold’. The secret … the system of controls!
PICK A HOLD
One cannot, unless already quite proficient in the Brazilian system, or perhaps any wrestling system, fully appreciate what it feels like to be totally controlled by one’s opponent. To look is one thing, ‘to feel’ quite another. I’ve heard many martial artists sit down at the side of the mat, watching others grappling and make comments amounting to ‘how hard can it be?. I’ve then see those same people, get on the floor and be turned into a pretzel before being choked out by relative novices, in some cases, by women smaller and significantly lighter than themselves. The moral of the story; don’t judge grappling by what it looks like. You’ve got to ‘feel’ it!
Rigan Machado, whom I consider to be one of the most grapplers out there, and myself attended the Pan American Sambo Championships a few years ago. Just before the fight, Rigan and I were trying to get a handle on the rules which we were still quite vague on. Rigan though, pointed out to me that it didn’t matter how complicated the rules were, if you could get a win by forcing the opponent to tap out to an arm-bar, then that’s all he had to know. With all of Rigans matches, it was the same; takedown, control position … and then the inevitable armbar. In the finals Rigan came up against Ron Tripp, five years Pan American Champion, Silver medallist in the World Championships and a USA Judo champion. Ron was an experienced grappler with considerable experience.
It was only thirty nine seconds into the match when Rigan won in his usual nonchalant fashion. It was all part of an important lesson … when you have your controls ‘down’, you can ‘finish’ with any lock, hold or choke you like. What defeated Ron was not the fact that Rigan knew more finishes, it was the fact that his control was so exemplary that he could choose to finish with whatever he liked!
GENERAL CONTROL
There are of course, many levels and degrees of control. Control, like grappling in general, cannot be appreciated until ‘felt’ or ‘experienced’. It’s one thing looking at a pretzel it’s another thing being one!
The most basic type of control is ‘general control’. This is to do with the overall position of advantage and is not very specific. General control is about knowing where you want to be, and knowing how to get there. This is the first thing one learns when training in the Brazilian system of grappling.
Even this basic idea of ‘knowing where you want to be’, gives one an advantage when fighting a non-grappler. Most people, cannot fight on the ground, simply because they have ‘no plan whatsoever’. At least, while on their feet, even an untrained person knows to hit or kick as hard and as many times as they can, but on the ground, what then?
Once you learn where you want to be, the next set of skills to learn is how to accomplish those goals. Learning how to move from one position to another on the ground, without losing control of the opponent, is where the ‘big advantage’ really kicks in! The good news for beginners is that there are not all that many positions to become familiar with, the most common of which I have illustrated in this article.
SPECIFIC CONTROL
This type of control relates to very specific positions and situations, and hence, takes a lot longer to learn. How to control an arm in a certain position, how to move it to where you want it, and how to apply the ‘finish’ even when your opponent knows your intention, are examples of the application of specific controls.
Learning this type of control takes not only a knowledgeable coach but lots and lots of ‘mat time’. There is no substitute for ‘hours on the mat’ … and ‘hours on the mat wrestling … not just practising techniques in co-operative mode’!
GAME CONTROL
Controlling the match, adjusting the type of ‘game’ you are playing according to the type of opponent you are fighting is yet another, more advanced type of control. In some instances a ‘flat game’ is needed, in other circumstances, a ‘high game’. One can move quickly, and go for a fast ‘finish’ or slowly and ‘cook the fight’. In some instances it’s important to think more about ‘defence’, in others more about ‘attack’.
Controlling the fight requires that you ‘go with the flow’ on some occasions while on others you must be the one ‘pushing the buttons’. This type of control requires that you have enough mechanical moves, and good enough specific control that you can achieve your aims without a lot of effort. Game control alone, will determine the winner when two people are evenly matched in ‘technique’ and ‘general/specific’ control. Game control is about strategy … it about knowing when to be the matador and when to be the bull!
- John B Will
