Professional cornering: Here is an interesting photo. It was taken less than a second before the submission victory of Garry Tonon over Ralek Gracie at Metamoris 7. Mr Tonon has secured ushiro ashi garami and is faking a figure four toe hold to create a reaction to enter a kneebar variation. The has been set and all that remains is to shift his left arm to Mr Gracie's leg – in half a second he will do so and victory will be his. Garry knows this, I know it and so does Gordon Ryan. We have all seen and done the a thousand times – the only ones who don't know what is about to happen are Mr Gracie himself and the audience members you behind us. Yet if you look at myself and Mr Ryan you will see no on our faces – though we know already that victory is at hand. There is no sense of jubilation, though we know victory is certain. So often I see cornermen, even in high level events, who essentially as cheer leaders rather than cornermen. The central idea of a corner man is to offer advice that leads to performance improvement. Yet I usually see behavior that does nothing to improve performance. All too often the advice is so general as to be useless. Get out of there!” Does not help an athlete escape a pin. Advice must be specific and purposeful rather than general or emotional. I believe there are a few exceptions where certain kinds of emotional cornering can have value

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