Just a heads up. Part 4 of “Who says size matters?” will be posted tomorrow. After watching the Mike Swick vs Matt Brown fight on the UFC on Fox 5 I got motivated to write this blog post. Hope you enjoy it!

Ok let me set the stage. You are rolling in a pretty intense match. Your coach put five minutes on the timer. Three minutes in you somehow are able to lock in a rear naked choke. You can’t believe it. You never get rear naked chokes! Once you realize that you have your choked locked in you start your squeeze. You squeeze and you squeeze until you can’t squeeze no more. You give everything you trying to get the tap. Eventually your arms tire out and you are forced to let go of the choke. Your opponent escapes. You look over at the clock and see that you still have forty-three seconds left. Next thing you know your opponent quickly recovers from your RNC attempt, sloppily passes your guard, and locks in his own submission attempt. You tap. The worst part? You know that if your arms weren’t tired that you could have easily stopped his guard pass.

On the UFC on Fox 5 card both Matt Brown and Mike Swick showed that they have patience. During the first round both fighters had submissions locked in that it would have been very easy to gas out with. If Matt Brown had squeezed with everything he had when he locked up the Darce Choke, he may not have had the arm strength necessary for the awesome KO that he got.

Since I find myself gassing out the most with chokes, I tend to use the 10 second rule when I lock them in. The 10 second rule states that if I can’t finish a choke in 10 seconds or less something is wrong. For example if I lock in a Darce choke and can’t get the tap, then I’ll look to change something. Maybe I need to shoot my arm through deeper. Maybe I need to put more weight on my opponent. Something isn’t write and I need to fix it. Now there are some times that your opponent is just stubborn and won’t tap but you should still look to fix your move.

Interested in learning some more about the psychology behind rolling? Come down and check out the one and only 10th Planet Van Nuys!