ChrisWrestling's blog

Ok, so if you feel like this comes across as pedantic... well suck it up buttercup. Here is my long winded explanation into getting the most powerful scissors you can. Someday I may do a video version but til I get a volunteer this will have to do. As many of you know I am a switch when it comes to really any kind of sadomasochism, which, frankly, is exactly what everyone in this group is here for. You either like hurting someone with scissors or you like being hurt. Well, here's how to get the most out of it. I will give the caveat that some of what I say may not be applicable to live rolling. I will do another post soon on training your muscles for scissors, I am a personal trainer and I have given this lots of thought.

So many guys go out of their way to get wrestling boots, wrestling shoes etc and they claim this is for leverage. The main weakness of all scissors is the ankles and anything you do to support them will give you a stonger scissor. With all scissors you want to keep your feet flexed, never pointed. If you feel your calves cramping it's because you're pointing your toes. I suspect the habit to do so is to give the ankle more structural strength and you feel like your anterior tibialis (on the front of your shin) isn't strong enough to provide that strength. If your calf is engaged it means your A.T. is not. When talking about muscle engagement remember that if a muscle on one side of a joint is shortening, the other is lengthening. In order for your calf to engage your A.T. has to disengage.

In a straight scissor, regardless of type not only should you keep your "boots on" (meaning keeping your feet in the boot "L" shape) but you should think about pushing your heels away. A lot of guys have this tendency to do a hamstring curl and draw their heels closer to their bodies to squeeze in. The problem with this is that the glutes and quads are the primary movers for getting a good squeeze on. The hamstrings are the antagonist muscle to the quads, so when the hams shorten to pull your heels closer to you your quads relax and allow the legs to bend. This also hinders your glutes from engaging leaving all the work to your adductors which are relatively small muscles on your inner thigh. These are your Susan Sommers thigh master muscles. You'll find that if you rely on these muscles your inner thighs will be very sore the next day. I'm not saying that they won't be sore the next day otherwise, but more so. Also, you'll find yourself getting burned out in your squeeze session sooner if you use this technique. I'm guessing in 1/10th the time vs driving your heels away. Now, some guys in a side to side (where the top leg goes over the gut) scissor will lift their hips off the ground and turn into their victim. Within reason I don't see why not, what it does is put more weight into their diaphragm.

On the side to side scissor both having your victim face up or face down has it's merits. You get to see their face and bulge if their face up, you have the potential for more squeeze face down. If a person is face up, their spine creates a solid platform for their body weight so your legs alone provide the squeeze, if they're face down their bodyweight is being pressed into the bottom leg with the top leg bearing down more. The difference is pretty minute but they should feel the difference. Also it makes it easier to keep pressure on even when you're not squeezing. I actually had a guy today pick up my legs when I was on my back and start to fold them toward my face while in this scissor (face up) and it placed more pressure on my diaphragm making it harder to breathe. It was quite lovely.

In the side to side scissor we really want to avoid placing our legs on the hips because they are hard and inflexible. You're fighting a losing battle against solid bone and it won't be comfortable for either of you. You either want to be centered on the gut or centered on the chest. I have had guys place their knee on my solar plexis (base of the sternum) because they know that's the worst place. Here's the thing, even though you're being evil and sadistic you want your training partner to come back, you probably even like the guy. Pressing into the solar plexis makes you nauseated and could lead to injury, neither one motivates me to want to play with you so please don't. I have seen some guys go diagonal across the ribs and over the shoulder, this might have some merit to it but may also have some added risks, I'll get back to you on that one.

Front to back or back to front, I don't seem much of a functional difference between them. Because of the tapered nature of the body your legs are usually going to funnel toward the waist with part of your thigh on the ribs, part right above the hip. You can hike yourself up and place your legs high on the ribs. Be careful with this scissor in general (regardless of high or low placement). The ribs can flex a lot more in this position which is fun and more painful but because of this added range of motion the risk of injury goes up quite a bit. Try to let go of this scissor slowly and gradually. If you come off it fast the ribs will explode back into position. I don't know if it will cause injury, what I do know is it's a shocking experience and not in a good way. With this scissor try to keep your legs as close to perpendicular to your partner as possible. The more you angle them the less squeeze you get and a lot of time you'll end up on the hips which limits your ability to squeeze at all. Also, when you extend your legs away from perpendicular to your opponent's torso, because of the grip you have on them, you end up causing spinal flexion or extension depending on your position. With enough force you could feasibly paralyze your opponent or cause damage to the spine and they aren't even getting a good squeeze out of it so what's the point?

Some people will also, from this position though some can get it in the side to side scissor, reach their arms around their opponent and their own legs, lock their hands (gable grip, please, no broken fingers) and straighten their arms. I've heard this called a scorpion crunch. This is a good technique especially when your legs are tired. It increased your force production by a significant margin (I'm guessing 50% though maybe I'll measure it someday). With great power comes great responsibility, don't go breaking someone's ribs. If this is placed centered on the floating ribs it could possibly cause vomiting. I haven't had issues when it's place high or low though. Because of the great pressure from this one be sure to let it off slow so as not to terrify your partner.

Ok, the body triangle. This can be hard for many people to get on. For the sake of ease, let's call the left leg the locking leg, and the right one is the one going around your parnter's waist, sitting straight across their gut. Because of the nature of this unless you have very long legs, you'll probably not get it on the ribs. When locking it on, lean to your right if you are in back mount (seated behind your partner) or you can turn to your right if you're in top 4 quarter. By turning to the right you can get your leg further across making it easier to lock your left leg on. When you square up it will cinch down a bit. Make sure your right foot is tight right behind the bend of your left leg, if it's on the calf you don't have a body triangle and it will be mostly useless. Again, like all other scissors, your right leg should be flexed, never pointed (boots on).

Make sure your right ankle is not on the left hip because you won't be able to squeeze and this actually kind of hurts in a not so much fun way. Likewise you don't want your right knee riding up on the floating ribs as this will cause cartilage damage which will get reinjured every time that person rolls. We like our jobbers better when they continue to play with us.

To tighten a body triangle move your left leg away from your opponent. This drives your left quad more into their side. Flex your leg muscles. Flex your right foot up as hard as you can. You can also reach around your opponent and grab one or both legs and start to bearhug them into you. Again, this moves the pressure up into their chest.

On the body triangle people are tempted to arch their hips. This moves tension off of the core of your victim and onto their hips. Doing so also puts a staggering amount of tension onto the low back. If you go belly down and do this the odds of breaking the spine becomes fairly high. Again, we don't break our play things.

And that's it for this post. I'll do one later on training your muscles for it. Keep in mind that scissors are more about endurance than blunt strength. You want to wear your opponent down. If you end up squeezing me know that I can take more than 2 1/2 hours to wear down in a scissor if you're just trying to make me suffer. I usually end up wearing out the heel, not the other way around. I'm one of many scissor sufferers like that so focus on the endurance game.

A quick set of tips on endurance. Focus on carbs the day before a play date. Creatine may help a little. Be well hydrated. Don't use stimulants. Focus on your breathing and don't always go 100%, especially early on. Utilize the body triangle and scorpion crunch when you're getting tired in the legs so that your victim continues to suffer while you recover. Think about your placement, a victim can take less on their chest as they can their gut so you can get the same misery level with less effort. Use knee ride (aka knee on belly) or scarf hold to take a break but not let them rest. Don't bother with mount because your weight becomes to spread out among multiple points to get the desired affect.

If you have thoughts or questions don't hesitate to message me.