This may sound obvious when you hear it…
… but here’s a Mexican Ground Karate insight I’ve been thinking about:
You can measure your offensive success by how tired your opponent gets.
First, let’s look at a typical scenario from a point-scoring perspective.
Let’s say you pass your opponent’s guard cleanly, but your opponent escapes from your side control right away. You might get some score.
But in the submission-only format, your guard pass success, in this case, may not mean much.
That’s where using your opponent’s tiredness as your measure becomes useful.
If you can make your opponent tired in the process of passing their guard, you will have an actual advantage over your opponent. It becomes much harder to keep grappling when you are tired, and you are more likely to make mistakes.
By the way, the thing is, you don’t need to pass the guard right away either. If you can create constant passing pressure and your opponent has to deal with it until the moment you complete the pass, that’s even better.
This idea makes sense in every other context (e.g., takedowns, guard, submission, and so on). And it’s a useful way of thinking even if you don’t compete in the submission-only format.
Consider how you could make your opponent more tired.