Hello again Gorilla Gear fans and other people who randomly stumbled onto my site. Last night I was watching some combat sambo videos online just to see how they approached some grappling questions I have been toying with myself. I was very impressed by a number of specific techniques, the mentality and the intelligence of that martial art. As mainly a BJJ player, I know a lot of submissions on the upper body, arm and shoulder locks and cranks, neck cranks, wrist locks, chokes and so forth. I even know a decent variety of ankle locks, heel hooks, knee bars, but if I had to sum up in a percentage how often I look for upper body submissions verses lower body submissions it would be around 85%/15%. That's a pretty sad spread when you really take the time to think about it.
I spent almost two hours just watching and re-watching some leg and ankle lock techniques from sambo instructional videos, mainly focusing on positions I find myself in often when I am grappling. Of course I have not had a chance to play with these in my game yet, but the approach is not overly complex, or fancy, quite the opposite. Most of the techniques are very simple and straight forward, and if you know anything about grappling you will know what I mean when I say it's really the simple techniques that work under pressure.
Amway, I felt like I have expanded my ground game, and still have a lot more studying to do and am very eager to learn more of what sambo has to teach me. I just want to encourage you, if you are a grappler, and specifically an experienced grappler, don't get locked into just the grappling you know and are comfortable with. As grappler's we need to learn from everyone, we need to take BJJ, sambo, Judo, Greco Roman, and freestyle wrestling and all the other arts focus on ground work and be sure to give them consideration and have a good working knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses.
Thanks for reading my Gorilla Gear post, and go look up a technique you are not comfortable with, that is not from your primary style and give it serious consideration, don't dismiss any style without first honestly evaluating it and trying to learn something from it.

-Sean
Gorilla Gear