The Arm Bar Escape

Here's another important video from the Personal Defense Network. Whenever we wanna talk about applying a technique and looking at a technique, and we've looked at that arm bar, that idea of using the arm, turning into one solid unit by locking the elbow out by applying pressure above the elbow and below the elbow in opposite directions to fully extend the elbow, get into a position where we can now control, immobilize, disable, or hurt our opponent using that pressure on the elbow and using the leverage we gain from having the arm locked out as a bar. Whenever we do that, we also understand the context of where we're gonna be able to use that technique. So in other words, just taking someone by the wrist and pushing on their tricep is an arm bar, but the chances of you being able to do this when someone's really attacking you and trying to hurt you, someone standing in your face, gesturing towards you, they're ready to attack you, they're ready to hurt you, you're probably not just simply gonna reach out, grab their wrist, extend their arm, and push on their tricep. That's wishful thinking.

That's not likely to happen. So let's look at the context of how we get into using that technique and using that leverage in an actual situation. Let's start out in a very simple way, very common for a fight to degrade into something where people are in very close contact, and whether a punch has been thrown or maybe lunge, someone's come in, I've gotten into a situation where I cowered in fear, flinched, I didn't do anything to protect myself in any kind of martial arts choreographed way because we know those things aren't very likely to happen. I was talking to him, I was trying to calm him down, he lunges at me. As he lunges at me, I cover up and we end up in a bear hug situation So we're here at a position where someone who's bigger than me, stronger than me, has me in a very dangerous situation.

In this position, they can control me. He could pick me up. He could put me against the wall. He could throw me down. He can push me back against something.

I could headbutt. I could grab, I could scratch, I could claw. I might be in a position to throw an elbow strike of some kind. But the reality is, I don't have a lot of leverage or control here over his body, and these things aren't gonna happen statically. I'm not gonna be in this situation for very long before I get thrown into that wall or press down onto the ground.

And of course, in this demonstration, Mike's not applying much pressure. If he were, if he were trying to crush me, taking the air out of my lungs or keeping me from being able to expand my chest after I exhale, that's a very dangerous situation. I wouldn't be able to speak or teach if that were the situation. So, as a training partner, he's simply demonstrating the position of a bear hug, not the strength of a bear hug. If I wanted to get out of this, one of the most efficient ways to do this is to get my hand inside, in between our chests, to where I can sweep in and down and actually create some space here.

Now, that's very easy at this level of demonstration. So for a minute, I'm not gonna talk. I'm going to have Mike apply a little more pressure. At this point, you saw where I was able to break through on this sweep. Now, I've stopped here for a minute.

I'm gonna have Mike just back out so that we can take a look at what's on here. And you can see that what I've got is a greater than 90 situation which we've talked about a lot in this series, and the idea that I'm using this forearm, the bone right here, this bone ridge to push in and leverage my way down between us, pushing his arm out and a way. Now, this technique is a pretty common wrestling technique where we see someone come in and sweep and then hook under to where now I have control and leverage of the body. And of course, a great drill to get into this and to warmup and to see how this feels in a very dynamic way is for us to simply exchange sweeps, where I came in on that side, now I'm gonna come in on this side, and as I do, sweep the other arm off and get my hook in under here. And now Michael do the reverse.

He'll come in and get his hook in, sweep out, push away. As he does so, now he is underneath me and he's in control. Now, at some point, he's gonna come in into the other side and do the same thing. And now, again, he's underneath on both sides. At some point, as I get into this situation and I sweep and open this up, this arm may come back up towards my head high enough that I can actually lower my center of gravity, keeping my back straight, staying very close again.

Remember, grappling fundamentals contact combatives requires staying in contact quite often to where I dropped down beneath this arm so that I can actually get under it and end up on his side. From his side I can come in, sweep across, and grab that arm and get into a position of an arm bar to where I've gotten out of the bear hug, and at the same time, come to the side of the person and gotten into a situation where I'm applying upward pressure with this arm against the forearm and the wrist area also and downward pressure with this hand or preferably with my forearm down on his tricep so that I've got this bar formed and I can now use it to control, to move. If the wall were here or we were down on the ground, I could immobilize by pinning Mike down into a situation like that. Or again, if I apply harder pressure or a violent strike here, I may disable or hurt him enough so that he realizes either he can't hurt me anymore or hurting me is going to cost him more than he thought, that I'm not a helpless victim. I understand the principles of leverage, the principles of grappling to execute the arm bar in this situation from a bear hug.

So that's one angle example of how we can get into an arm bar situation when someone who's actually got us in a bear hug, someone who's controlling us. Now, again, that's gonna require a significant amount of practice and understanding and feeling on your part to understand when the opportunity to use that technique is going to come up. Let's take a look at another option. Let's say that we start off further away from each other. We're in a public environment or someone that I know, maybe we're in a home wherever we are, this person's angry with me.

I'm trying to deescalate. I'm looking for those pre-contact cues. Now, if someone gets into a fighting stance that immediately is a pre-contact cue that tells me I need to get away, move in, do something. So let's start from a less aggressive posture. Someone just standing, maybe gesturing, maybe the hands are up high.

And then all of a sudden, a punch, or a grab, or a shove, something is gonna cause this person to extend their arm. So, as that arm extends, now you can see if we were to freeze frame and make this the perfect martial arts type training world. Oh, here's my arm bar. I can bring my arms in and just use pressure of my forearms to create that arm bar. I could come in and grab, but this is not a realistic fighting situation.

What's real is a dynamic situation where this came in and I docked it, and another hand's gonna come in and I'm gonna duck out of the way. But now, if I find myself in my turning away is Mike comes around to hit me with the other hand, maybe I do actually get into a situation where I can see the opportunity for an arm bar. Where I'm coming out and grabbing this arm, getting this hand on top, and now I've got that situation where I'm in an arm bar and it happened because he extended the arm and gave it to me, gave me the opportunity. Let's look at it from the other angle. If Mike turns around now, and instead of punching, let's say that he reaches out to grab me this time.

And as he grabs me and pushes me away, or pushes me against the wall, that's going to create, again, the opportunity for me to maybe duck that punch as he comes in and throws that big punch or throws that grab and gives me the opportunity to grab the arm here, and again, step out and away. And it's that rotation, it's that force of stepping out and away, both with my whole body as I turn, and then again, with this hand as I roll up against the tricep, pushing down on the arm, above the elbow, and now again, lifting up below the elbow that puts me in that arm bar situation. Now understanding that this was all very stylized and very slow is really important in understanding how to be able to defend yourself because in the real world, this is gonna be much more dynamic and these things are just going to happen. Feeling the dynamics, feeling the intuitive nature of saying, okay, I've got the arm here, I don't have to be looking, I don't have to grab it exactly here, or exactly, here, or exactly here. Just having this arm anywhere as I flinched or as he's tried to punch me, or as he's grabbing me, gives me the opportunity to then find the above the elbow portion of the arm bar and turn that into an ability to pull, or push, to immobilize, distract, disable, or hurt my attacker in the middle of the flight.

So we're in a situation now where the person's gesturing, the person's clearly agitated. I'm trying to calm them down and maybe they're just getting in that close and then boom, incomes that punch, incomes that shove, I'm just trying to survive. And as these punches come in as I'm being pushed against the wall maybe the opportunity for an arm bar comes out. Now, I know it's very easy to sit at home and say, oh gee, they planned that, that was choreographed. That was this, that was that.

But the reality is what we're doing is just a very slow motion simulation of a fight, of an attack. And I don't know if Mike's gonna strike with his left hand, push with his left hand, push with his right hand. What I'm looking for is the opportunity. The feeling that as I was trying to survive and move and this punch glanced off of me, or it was a shove, maybe he grabbed me and he pushed me back against the wall. This becomes the opportunity for an arm bar simply because I have one hand below the elbow, one hand or arm above the elbow, and I can have that reverse pressure.

I can have that opportunity to do this. Now we're moving very slow and we understand that the slightest bit of pressure should cause the appropriate reaction from my role-player. You know, in the SPEAR system and PDR we talk about being a good, bad guy and understanding that we don't wanna injure each other, we don't really even wanna hurt each other in training, so, if Mike were to grab here and pull me down and create a very strong here, piece of tension, in this area, I would then have to force very hard against that shoulder and against the upper arm to do that. I don't wanna do that in training. So what Mike's doing by being a good partner and a good bad guy is when that comes up and he feels that pressure, knowing that we're training these joint locker, grappling contact combatives techniques he allows me to experience what it's gonna feel like to actually execute this move, that's training.

If this were a real fight, if this were a real attack, we're fully aware that this person would try to resist that, we would apply more pressure, and in that pressure probably push that person forward, turn away, turn out, make that circle, complete the arm bar, thereby immobilizing or moving, controlling, distracting, disabling our attacker. Check out more videos, just like this one at the Personal Defense Network.