The Finer Details of Chain Wrestling with Cain Velasquez
In this video, former 2x UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez talks about one of his favorite finishes after getting a single leg and also goes in depth on how important chain wrestling and having multiple moves to work with is.
To start the video off Velasquez gives a few points on the single leg. A lot of people who are newer to wrestling and grappling in general, especially people who learn wrestling as a part of MMA, when they are first taught the single leg, are generally told to maintain a grip, usually the gable grip, and that is what they will predominantly use.
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Here, Cain Velasquez shows how to really tighten the grip that you have on the single leg. Instead of just holding onto your own hands with a grip, Velasquez says that in order to get the tightest grip possible you need to climb up your forearms as much as possible. This means that you should try to hold onto your elbows or even your upper arms if possible.
Doing this will make sure that there is absolutely no space between your arms, your opponent’ leg and your body, making it much harder for them to defend your takedowns and to take their leg out.
Velasquez then goes on to talk about the dump and why it’s one of his favorite attacks off of a single leg. The dump doesn’t take a lot of energy and also if you’re fast enough, going for the attack right after getting the single leg won't give your opponent the time that they need in order to defend the attack.
After talking about the dump and how effective it is, Cain Velasquez goes on to talk about why it's important to have a large repertoire of moves for each position. This is important for so many reasons, first of which is in case your opponent defends your attacks, you have a move that you can go to. The first attack that you go for in wrestling probably isn’t going to work, at least as it was intended, so it’s important to have an attack that you can do from that position, like going from the single leg into the dump.
Secondly it allows for constant quick attacks that do not give your opponent time to process what attack you are going for, so they won't be able to defend it. This will increase the overall chance of any attack that you go for being effective.
This is why it’s very important to have multiple weapons in positions that can build off of each other, so that you can successfully finish a takedown. This is something that you see a lot of in MMA and lower belt Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, with people trying for one takedown and being unsuccessful. They usually either just give up on that attack entirely and reset or stay in a weak position and wait for their opponent to make a mistake, or end up getting taken down themselves. This is why it’s important to learn many attacks from one position, so you don’t just become a one trick pony that can only do one technique that everyone learns to defend against.
Check out The Art of Chain Wrestling by Cain Velasquez today!