Chock-full of go-to finishing holds and tap-outs, this action-filled guide illustrates how to skillfully perform these essential fighting moves. More than 100 high-percentage submissions are detailed using sequenced action photographs to help strengthen the wrestling vocabulary of Mixed Martial Arts athletes. Whether used during competition or on the street, these submissions will allow both novice and seasoned no-holds-barred fighters to hold their own. Mark Hatmaker is the bestselling author of seven books in the No Holds Barred Fighting series, including More No Holds Barred Fighting , The Ultimate Guide to Conditioning and Boxing Mastery , and The Ultimate Guide to Submission Wrestling . He is the founder of Extreme Self Protection, a research group dedicated to Western combat methods. He lives in Knoxville, Tennessee. No Holds Barred Fighting: The Book of Essential Submissions By Mark Hatmaker, Doug Werner Tracks Publishing Copyright © 2009 Doug Werner All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-884654-33-6 Contents How to use the NHBF manuals, Intro: Primer, 1 My empirical data ate your dogma, 2 Maddening method, 3 Pareto's Principle revisited, 4 Hierarchy of Utility, 5 Hierarchy of Futility, 6 Bellagio Hypothesis, 7 Conditioning Gut Checks, 8 Strikes, 9 Ground and pound, 10 Arm bar, 11 Sleeper, 12 Guillotine, 13 Triangle choke, 14 Shoulder choke / arm triangle, 15 Heel hook, Resources, Index, CHAPTER 1 My empirical data ate your dogma If you were going to step inside a cage or a ring, would you rather have advice based on tradition and opinion or advice based on evidence? Be honest as you answer this question. You are putting yourself in harm's way. Everybody gets hit in a fight, even good fighters (they just get hit less). Do you want hearsay? Do you want strategies and tactics uttered out of habit that don't have much practical thought behind them? Do you want to train or drill ideas that are related to a different environment than the one you are entering? This is your body you are putting on the line. Wouldn't it be wise to arm yourself with the best information available? I'm going to gamble that you prefer evidence over simple dogma. If at any point in your training, you confront a bit of evidence (not advice) that butts against what you have assumed to be correct, well, that's terrific. You've learned something. Discard the underperforming tool and get to work incorporating the new tool. This acceptance of evidence has nothing to do with personal likes or dislikes, allegiances or alliances, respect or disrespect. It's simply acknowledgment of truth. Advice usually is offered with good intentions. For the most part, people are well-meaning. But if the advice fails the evidentiary test, then it's gotta go bye-bye. This quote from the late Michael Crichton fuels this perspective, "Intentions are meaningless, all that matters are results." I bring up the need for nondogmatic thinking because the sport of MMA has had a curious history. Unlike most sports, some branches of MMA have come to us from avenues that allowed the art to become cloaked in a bit of crypto-mysticism or strict codes of unwavering lineage and tradition stopping just short of fealty reminiscent of medieval vassals and lords. This stifles honest questioning and experimentation — the hallmarks of progress. Other sports operate in a train-drill-practice-scrimmage-play MO. That is, learn what you did right or wrong, incorporate those results into your training and then play again. These sports are using the objective empirical method, whether it is called that or not. We think they are wise to do so. It's not only the scientific method, it's good common sense. We've all seen films of early ball games or Olympic competitions and marvel at what was and respect the pioneers for their accomplishments. But you notice also that games and individual events have evolved. Johnny Weissmuller and Buster Crabbe swam beautifully in the Olympics of yore, but how do you think they would stack up against Michael Phelps (baked or not)? How would a 1930s era college football team fare against a team today? These are subjective questions, I know. We can quibble and offer, "Well, if they had access to the same training opportunities and the same resources as we have today" argument ... but that proves the point, doesn't it? They didn't have these resources and opportunities. They were providing the data to foster the astonishing improvements and performances we see today. To paraphrase Isaac Newton, these athletes of yore are the giants upon whose shoulders we stand today. No sport would hamstring itself with blind obeisance to an outmoded tactic, strategy or tool. When Jim Corbett began dissecting the Great John L. Sullivan with the "new technology" of the jab, traditionalists didn't suppress the jab and insist that we go back to the old way. Boxers the world over took a look at early film of Gentleman Jim