September 11, 2005
The Larger, Stronger Opponent
If you try contesting a larger, stronger opponent using your strength against his strength you will probably lose. You need to fight the battle on your own terms, and two effective (and somewhat related) strategies to do this include:
- move quicker
- tire him out.
Moving quicker: if a larger, stronger grappler gets the chance he will play Godzilla and pretend that you are a small Japanese army jeep.
One way not to play his game is to move the heck out of the way! You have less body mass to accelerate than he does, so in most cases you will be faster and more nimble than him. Start moving and don’t stop until you end up in a good position, like in full rearmount.
You may get lucky and catch him in something right off the bat, but even if you don’t you will still frustrate him and tire him out, which leads us right to…
Tire him out: if you think that your endurance is better than his it is time to start a battle of attrition. Force him to move around and respond to your movements and technique.
You’re not necessarily trying to catch him with all these techniques you're trying; you just want to force the action and keep him moving and moving and moving.
Don’t let him rest – many big guys like to fight in small explosive bursts, taking rests in between these sprints (think of how a bodybuilder trains in the gym). Deprive them of this rest and they will usually slip deeper and deeper into the lactic acid zone, which is where you will finally be able to finish the fight on your terms.
This second strategy can be summed up as “survive first, win later”.
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