ADCC 2022 Meta PT.1 - Submission City

I've finished the breakdowns for each division and now we can finally talk about the big picture. Now that we have stats for almost everything lets see where the game is going. I made some predictions before the event, so in this article and the next we'll see if what I said came true. 

In this post let's look at the finishes. In the next article I'll go over sweeps, takedowns, etc.

I posted this stat before, but I thought it needed to be here too, so we can see some trends. Overall it looks like what we are used to seeing for no-gi events. Neck submissions being the most common, but usually legs are slightly more common than arms. Here things are reversed, but only by one submission. That said let's get to the juicier stats.

Submissions

Most Common

As you can see above I put the submissions in order by the most attempted. The number one submission attempt-wise was the guillotine. It only had a 9.3% finish rate however. On the other hand the RNC had nearly as many attempts, but 11 finishes, making it the number 1 submission this tournament. It had an amazing 36.6% finish rate. The overall rate of submission for all techniques was 17.6%.

Other submissions that might worth looking at are the armbar and it's sister the Choi-bar, which are both fairly high percentage submissions. On top of those there are 3 submissions that proved their worth here and are a bit uncommon. The rear triangle, the side triangle, the Aoki lock and the Z-lock had high finish rates, but since there were so few attempts it's hard to say how high percentage they would be if they were more widely used.

 

High Percentage Attacks

Before we went over the actual amount of subs, but in this chart you can clearly see the ratio of finishes and failure. It's no surprise that the neck came out on top. The RNC is one of the harder submissions to escape. However I believe the amount guillotines attempted when someone tried a takedown led to a lower submission percentage for chokes. Arms came next, but with far fewer attempts. I imagine this is due to the trouble of trying to hit arm attacks when you haven't passed the guard. Just getting to a position to hit an arm attack can be troublesome. I believe the leg lock percentage was lowered a bit because of bad set ups. Their accessibility allows them to be hit from several places, but many times people would go after them when losing positions or when they just wanted to look aggressive. 

Top vs Bottom

Here you can see a breakdown of where subs were finished from. For this I counted standing, double guard pull, leg entanglements, scrambles and the back as neutral positions. These neutral positions produced the most submissions. This was followed by the top and then the bottom position. Many of the submissions actually came from transitions and that might be an area of futher study for people in the future. 

 

Best Positions

The back seemed to be the best position by a large margin. This was followed by the mount and then side control. This should be encouraging to old school BJJ advocates since it follows the traditional positional hierarchy. There were more back takes than you'd expect if you think about the traditional way of playing, but I believe this is due to people going from standing directly to the back instead of getting there through passing. The idea of going through the other positions and upgrading your position may not the best strategy. Going directly to the back or passing to the mount might be a more sound strategy. 

As far as leg locks go the 50/50 position seemed more popular than the saddle. There were very few inside heelhooks, but 50/50 go one of them. The setup for the saddle seem to be well known and perhaps more difficult to enter. I don't know if 50/50 has taken over, but according to the stats it was more useful. #Lachlanwasright 

Questions Answered

In my "Meta Musings" article I asked a bunch of questions about the techniques and strategies of ADCC. Let's see if we can answer the ones involving submissions with this data.

Q: Are leg locks increasing or decreasing?

According to the data over at BJJHeroes they are actually decreasing. In 2017 they made up 30% of the finishes, in 2019 they were at 29% and in 2022 they were at 28%. Technically they are decreasing, but I don't know if the amount is statistically significant. Overall they seem to be right around the area you'd expect. 

Q: Will there be an increase in the variety of leg locks?

I believe there was, although I don't have data from previous ADCCs. I'd need some data to say for certain if the variety of leg locks increased, but I noticed a lot of different leg locks I haven't seen in previous ADCCs. There weren't any ankle locks finished, however we did see kneebars, toe holds and heelhooks. On top of that we got a number of rare submissions such as an estima lock, an aoki lock, a Z-lock and a Linns lock. I think these techniques caught many people off guard and allowed for some easy victories. 

Q: Is it better to play top or bottom?

I didn't keep stats for bottom time and top time, but if you look at submissions, most of them came from the top. In those stats I counted the back as a neutral position, but if you counted it as a top position it would be even more skewed. Beyond the stats it just seemed that people had problems when playing from the bottom position. Of course people who were amazing from their guards were able to do well, but generally the bottom person got shut down and lost the match. Gordon Ryan seemed to be the only person. That was able to win their division by pulling guard multiple times. 

Q: Is it better to hunt submissions or focus on position?

This is a question that ADCC 2022 didn't really answer. Deigo Reis, Kaynan Duarte, Yuri Simmoes, Ffion Davies and Amy Campo seemed to focus more on getting to positions and scoring. Of course they went for subs, but it seemed more like an after thought and the focus was on winning the match first. Kade Ruotolo, Giancarlo Bodoni and Gordon Ryan seemed to want to get the sub in every match. They pushed for the submission and went out of their way to try to catch submissions. 

It is hard to say which is better. The more conservative style seemed to shut some people down, but it didn't always work. Trying to play cagey against Ruotolo, Bodoni or Ryan didn't seem to have any effect. Overall I can't say it was better to play one way or another. 

Q: Has the mount become more effective in No-gi?

The mount was the 2nd best position for finishing behind the back. It had the 2nd most finishes and it was the 2nd highest finishing position by percentage. That said there were only 3 finishes from mount. I think there is still a lot of work to be done, but it certainly isn't useless. There was a movement away from mount a few years ago, but it seems to be coming back into popularity. However it still wasn't anywhere near as strong as the back. 

Overall

There was a lot of learn from this ADCC, but I think there are still a lot of unanswered questions. Last ADCC it seemed everyone was running to their gym to learn Lachlan Giles' K-guard entry to the inside heelhook, but this year there doesn't seem to be any stand out move like that. The closest is probably the Z-lock or perhaps the choibar, but they were somewhat rarely used. 

Overall a lot of things stayed the same, but the smaller subtle changes will effect the next few years' grappling events in my opinion. I think the "sub only" focus of many events has influenced people to be more aggressive. You could clearly see the difference in generations in terms of approach. The younger athletes seemed hungrier for the submission and weren't looking to rack up points like athletes in years past. Also the wrestling level seemed to increase, but we'll talk about that next time. I'll be back with part 2 in a few weeks.