Eric Reynolds is an older fellow who’s studied a few martial arts and has recently started MMA. While rolling with a younger, more experienced grappler, he found that he was strong enough to deny the arm-bar pretty effortlessly — like the Crusher, playing solitaire, while Bugs Bunny tries desperately to twist his leg.
He’ll get his comeuppance at some point, I’m sure, but I have to agree with this observation from his Scenes from Mixed Martial Arts:
He tried it again about thirty seconds later; same result. I was fine with that; any time you can get your opponent to expend energy to no purpose it’s a win. I’ve found that, especially in fighting younger guys filled with testosterone and a need to prove something, it’s good strategy to deadweight on them — let them expend energy, let them pull moves that don’t actually get a submission, and use my torso mass as much as possible to drag on them and make them tired.You don’t necessarily get physical submission that way, but you can get psychological collapse of the will to fight surprisingly often. The younger they are, the faster that tends to happen. Post-adolescents have good wind and physical stamina but, as a rule, their will is weak. Or perhaps “brittle” would be a better adjective; they lack mental toughness, what chessplayers call sitzfleisch.