The Strenuous Life Podcast With Stephan Kesting / Grapplearts Radio

The other day I almost tore a partner’s ACL off the bone, which would have required him to have surgery and many months of rehabilitation. What happened exactly? I was more experienced and a bit bigger than my training partner that day and we were doing some no gi sparring. Because of the experience discrepancy I was hyper-focusing on a couple of very specific positions, namely Ashi Garami and the 411. (This is a form of Targeted Sparring which is a great tool to use when you're going against less experienced training partners - by limiting myself to only a couple positions and one submission it makes the match more even and better training for both of us.) So we’re rolling, carefully and respectfully... I’ve tapped my training partner out a few times with heel hooks, all applied in slow motion...  He’s beginning to defend the leglocks more intelligently and I'm having to work a little harder to get them...  Everything is going the way it’s supposed to. Then it almost ended very badly. I had the Ashi Garami f