Aggregate thoughts stemming from watching Finishers -145, Sub Spectrum -135 (those 2 events I was slated to compete in but withdrew due to ACL/Meniscus surgery, kill me), coaching at the Finishers Open Tournament, and the Midwest Finishers -155:
Guys still:
a) step directly into leg entanglements/don't see the initial entry coming, and barely defend the first leg lock attempt/force a transition. Most escapes are due to poor application by their attacker, not a concerted and legitimate response to the actual leg lock attempt
b) don't even peel the foot off of the hip to thwart any attempts to dig in on rotating to an outside heel hook attempt, currently most guys are bypassing outside heel hook entries in favor of fighting through to inside heel hook land
c) rely on fighting the hands instead of addressing the leg triangle/lock/sankaku/whatever/honey hole/411/who cares you know what I'm referring to
d) curve their toes/arch the foot aware from the opponent now thinking that defense that Keenan showed (keep in mind Keenan is considerably longer than a good portion of his opponents, so the height/distance of his foot/heel to many of his opponents is not representative for many of the matches you are watching) is actually gonna protect their foot/be stronger than a properly set heel dig/the entire side of their opponents body arching and bridging into their knee (does that sound like mechanically/ergonomically making for a fair fight?)
Pre-Emptive response to haters saying Keenan must be right, he's competed at ADCC, who are you to say blah blah blah:
I've trained at Renzo's NYC for the past 2.5 years since moving to NYC, both morning and noon class in the blue basement for most of that time, and since late spring of 2018 am now under Jon Calestine/Matt Kaplan, I've lost via leglock 3x in the past 2.5 years competing adult advanced division and one of those was actually my knee coming out of place (see ACL injury mentioned above). I can speak with veracity, experience, and knowledge on this topic. I've been leg locked and leg locked more guys than I can count in that blue basement. I've rolled with a good portion of the best leg lockers currently out there. I roll with Jon Calestine on weekly basis. Prior to his moving to Unity I trained with Eddie Cummings. I don't speak about things I don't know about. I do speak about things I do know about.
Back attacks are still deficient in terms of handfights, and clears/escaping back control, and most guys still don't know how to get their shoulders clear and thus get their back to the mat, nor do they commit/continue to have tension in their hips rotating to assist in peeling opponents off their back and basically only look to fight the body triangle by swimming their thigh underneath the lock and if that fails, they accept/quit/don't have any further tools to address a tight body lock (and paired with a diligent attacker maintains back control, they eventually get strangled or give up considerable ride time. Guys have their legs almost extended, feet not on the floor, and no tension in driving with their legs to assist rotating their hips. I bet it's impossible to get out from there at that point. No wonder. The extended rolling escapes timed with opponents adjusting grips are still the midpoint of effective escapes against many opponents but the lack of ability to address the body triangle is a huge area of neglect.
What I'd been working on since the previous August leading up to my injury was guard passing and back attack finishing because this is the most wildly deficient part of NoGi grappling with leg locks and in submission grappling. Two guys flailing back and/or hoping the other guy steps in blindly enough to lead to a leg entanglement which as outlined above, still works because literally don't even peel the foot off the hip, one of the first go-to things to address to implement some sort of battle for feet/knee position. Most of the NoGi passing you see is semi unrelated flailing flying through the air attempts periodically while shucking and jiving and dancing around handfighting with no purpose or meaning. It's a bunch of feints and fakes that don't affect the seated opponent unless he's an idiot, and just drains clock time and avoids the reality from being completely obvious that many guys simply do not know how to pass NoGi in any semblance of a passably organized system. The change is coming ;) Wait and see. There was a bit of it in my match with Rey at the Rise Invitational back in January when I came up on top off of a sweep, but due to an injury I wasn't able to confidently press forward with weight bearing on my knee.
In the Johnson/Leighton match at Sub Spectrum, with a larger opponent known to fall back on a forearm in calf grip figure four on the legs the way Johnson does, Leighton briefly peeled the foot off the hip but neither persisted in hipping through the space provided as a result, nor stayed on keeping the heel and knee pinch of Johnson's legs separated. Without the threat of heel hooks, he also had more options to press forward without fear of the heel hook biting across the hip. Getting broken down to his right side hip, the writing was on the wall for Leighton as he then had to rely on fighting the hands which the foot/ankle as isolated as it was, was looking more prophetic by the moment.
The bite on the foot is only one part of the dilemma of the ankle lock/attack and to think that your arms will be able to stop a grown man's body/trunk/core from pulling and extending away even with a lapel grip if he's persistent and uses solid mechanics a risky proposition. Nor would simply booting the leg straight been enough. Tex Johnson has a bunch (understatement) of wins there, but as you saw against Demente in their match, even with heel hooks allowed as a risk for transition, Demente never seemed in much trouble from the leg attacks and never allowed Johnson to even lock up a true ankle lock grip, and Demente doesn't have a particularly lanky/long frame, but still managed to drive forward, boot his foot/control the head for support (I don't typically hold this grip as it can be used against you to be elevated further overhead, but I digress). Johnson said in the post fight that Demente's ankle popped, but if I had a dollar for every time in training and in esp. competing I'd popped an ankle or heard some kind of popping sound I'd have enough money to order Seamless in NYC. That's like saying the guys foot was popping in a toe hold. At the advanced level that could mean a bunch of things (ie: not enough to force them to tap).
At any rate, there's a current arms race as always in submission grappling to elevate the implementation of the most efficient/effective/attainable submissions and as that stands, I wholeheartedly believe it is strangles from the back and leg locks. When I did the aggregate of my matches for 2018, of my submission total 9 were either while on the back of transitioning from a back attack, and 10 were some form of leg lock. Only 1 of the 20 was from bottom/upper body in the form of an inverted triangle.
I've trained upper body attacks from bottom coming from the Gi for years on end, and yet, with about 18 months of training NoGi daily, in a year's worth of competing there's still 2 obviously disproportionate areas of finishing/submission.
Knowing where the strongest finishing comes from, it's obvious where training time and problem solving needs to be focused.
My outlying area of focus then is also guard passing as the day will come when throwing up leg submissions from bottom or (Already) when dealing with fleeing/stalling/disengaging opponents willing to go to a draw, you have to be able to do more than play side guard/lay back and allow the standing player to dictate the when/how/if of engagement of meaningful contact.
Guys still:
a) step directly into leg entanglements/don't see the initial entry coming, and barely defend the first leg lock attempt/force a transition. Most escapes are due to poor application by their attacker, not a concerted and legitimate response to the actual leg lock attempt
b) don't even peel the foot off of the hip to thwart any attempts to dig in on rotating to an outside heel hook attempt, currently most guys are bypassing outside heel hook entries in favor of fighting through to inside heel hook land
c) rely on fighting the hands instead of addressing the leg triangle/lock/sankaku/whatever/honey hole/411/who cares you know what I'm referring to
d) curve their toes/arch the foot aware from the opponent now thinking that defense that Keenan showed (keep in mind Keenan is considerably longer than a good portion of his opponents, so the height/distance of his foot/heel to many of his opponents is not representative for many of the matches you are watching) is actually gonna protect their foot/be stronger than a properly set heel dig/the entire side of their opponents body arching and bridging into their knee (does that sound like mechanically/ergonomically making for a fair fight?)
Pre-Emptive response to haters saying Keenan must be right, he's competed at ADCC, who are you to say blah blah blah:
I've trained at Renzo's NYC for the past 2.5 years since moving to NYC, both morning and noon class in the blue basement for most of that time, and since late spring of 2018 am now under Jon Calestine/Matt Kaplan, I've lost via leglock 3x in the past 2.5 years competing adult advanced division and one of those was actually my knee coming out of place (see ACL injury mentioned above). I can speak with veracity, experience, and knowledge on this topic. I've been leg locked and leg locked more guys than I can count in that blue basement. I've rolled with a good portion of the best leg lockers currently out there. I roll with Jon Calestine on weekly basis. Prior to his moving to Unity I trained with Eddie Cummings. I don't speak about things I don't know about. I do speak about things I do know about.
Back attacks are still deficient in terms of handfights, and clears/escaping back control, and most guys still don't know how to get their shoulders clear and thus get their back to the mat, nor do they commit/continue to have tension in their hips rotating to assist in peeling opponents off their back and basically only look to fight the body triangle by swimming their thigh underneath the lock and if that fails, they accept/quit/don't have any further tools to address a tight body lock (and paired with a diligent attacker maintains back control, they eventually get strangled or give up considerable ride time. Guys have their legs almost extended, feet not on the floor, and no tension in driving with their legs to assist rotating their hips. I bet it's impossible to get out from there at that point. No wonder. The extended rolling escapes timed with opponents adjusting grips are still the midpoint of effective escapes against many opponents but the lack of ability to address the body triangle is a huge area of neglect.
What I'd been working on since the previous August leading up to my injury was guard passing and back attack finishing because this is the most wildly deficient part of NoGi grappling with leg locks and in submission grappling. Two guys flailing back and/or hoping the other guy steps in blindly enough to lead to a leg entanglement which as outlined above, still works because literally don't even peel the foot off the hip, one of the first go-to things to address to implement some sort of battle for feet/knee position. Most of the NoGi passing you see is semi unrelated flailing flying through the air attempts periodically while shucking and jiving and dancing around handfighting with no purpose or meaning. It's a bunch of feints and fakes that don't affect the seated opponent unless he's an idiot, and just drains clock time and avoids the reality from being completely obvious that many guys simply do not know how to pass NoGi in any semblance of a passably organized system. The change is coming ;) Wait and see. There was a bit of it in my match with Rey at the Rise Invitational back in January when I came up on top off of a sweep, but due to an injury I wasn't able to confidently press forward with weight bearing on my knee.
In the Johnson/Leighton match at Sub Spectrum, with a larger opponent known to fall back on a forearm in calf grip figure four on the legs the way Johnson does, Leighton briefly peeled the foot off the hip but neither persisted in hipping through the space provided as a result, nor stayed on keeping the heel and knee pinch of Johnson's legs separated. Without the threat of heel hooks, he also had more options to press forward without fear of the heel hook biting across the hip. Getting broken down to his right side hip, the writing was on the wall for Leighton as he then had to rely on fighting the hands which the foot/ankle as isolated as it was, was looking more prophetic by the moment.
The bite on the foot is only one part of the dilemma of the ankle lock/attack and to think that your arms will be able to stop a grown man's body/trunk/core from pulling and extending away even with a lapel grip if he's persistent and uses solid mechanics a risky proposition. Nor would simply booting the leg straight been enough. Tex Johnson has a bunch (understatement) of wins there, but as you saw against Demente in their match, even with heel hooks allowed as a risk for transition, Demente never seemed in much trouble from the leg attacks and never allowed Johnson to even lock up a true ankle lock grip, and Demente doesn't have a particularly lanky/long frame, but still managed to drive forward, boot his foot/control the head for support (I don't typically hold this grip as it can be used against you to be elevated further overhead, but I digress). Johnson said in the post fight that Demente's ankle popped, but if I had a dollar for every time in training and in esp. competing I'd popped an ankle or heard some kind of popping sound I'd have enough money to order Seamless in NYC. That's like saying the guys foot was popping in a toe hold. At the advanced level that could mean a bunch of things (ie: not enough to force them to tap).
At any rate, there's a current arms race as always in submission grappling to elevate the implementation of the most efficient/effective/attainable submissions and as that stands, I wholeheartedly believe it is strangles from the back and leg locks. When I did the aggregate of my matches for 2018, of my submission total 9 were either while on the back of transitioning from a back attack, and 10 were some form of leg lock. Only 1 of the 20 was from bottom/upper body in the form of an inverted triangle.
I've trained upper body attacks from bottom coming from the Gi for years on end, and yet, with about 18 months of training NoGi daily, in a year's worth of competing there's still 2 obviously disproportionate areas of finishing/submission.
Knowing where the strongest finishing comes from, it's obvious where training time and problem solving needs to be focused.
My outlying area of focus then is also guard passing as the day will come when throwing up leg submissions from bottom or (Already) when dealing with fleeing/stalling/disengaging opponents willing to go to a draw, you have to be able to do more than play side guard/lay back and allow the standing player to dictate the when/how/if of engagement of meaningful contact.
