UFC Hall OF Famer Frank Mir shares his take on submission hunting and what you should focus on when training. His main advice is not to train to tap people out, and it has nothing to do with being gentle or considerate.
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Submission Hunting In A Fight
Frank Mir has a simple strategy when it comes to submission – do not look for the taps. The tap is the responsibility of the person being caught in a submission. So, Frank’s take on things is to keep going, assuming that if there is no tap, there is no submission.
INa a fight or a match, this means pushing even if it leads to a break. The concept is that even if the person does not tap, and you break their limb, for example, you keep going. Now they’re in a match with one less limb to work.
As Frank mir very brutally puts it, you break them down limb by limb until you get to switch the brain off via a choke.
Training For Submissions
In the training, room, on the other hand, going all the way is not really an option. However, training to tap people out does not give you a real feel for the submission, says Frank Mir, and he is correct.
I’ve seen this in competitions over and over again, with people falling into the comfort of guaranteed taps from training and not really understanding the proper finishing mechanics of submissions against full-on resistance.
So, the tap should be the responsibility of the person being caught in submission as it represents pain compliance and as such should not be the end aim of training. Go for the breaking mechanics instead, o crouse, giving training partners time to tap, but not looking for the tap, but rather the break/choke.
Apparently, this is a code Frank Mir lives by, and teaches to his students, and even his kids.
And we all know how good he was at submitting people.
The Ricardo Pires BJJ Black belt had quite the career in the UFC, and is responsible for plenty of submissions wins, with knee-baring Brock Lesnar and breaking Minotauro’s arm with a Kimura only a couple of the most notable ones.
