davey123's blog

I guess how much an opponent can take depends on several factors where the Boston Crab submission hold is concerned. It is I think potentially the most punishing hold an opponent can be placed in and so I think it is always up to me to find the right way of using it with each man. I have sometimes used it for an instant submission winner where I just bull the guy into it and sit down hard and lean back, pulling on his legs even as I get sat on him. That has produced always a very quick submission from the man under me, usually with something like a strange compressed voice at high pitch yelling ‘fuck, yes, yes, yes, I give!’ even before I have asked him. But that has been in situations where the other wrestler has pissed me off with something, or punched me hard (especially if we have agreed to only wrestle) or where the match has been solely seriously competitive.
Getting a man who is strong and really struggling into a crab is not easy – there are quite a few ways of avoiding it. I can sometimes get a guy into it via an ankle lock applied whilst I am standing and he is on his back on the mat…but you have to be quick and mean! Usually that would mean applying a single leg Boston initially and scooping up his other leg when the opportunity presents itself without losing control of him in the process.
Another way of getting a man into the hold in a competitive bout is to slam him hard (or if you have agreed on body punching to drive a solid fist into him) so that for a moment or two he is winded and take advantage of that to position him. Even in a competitive bout I would not sit back on the hold until he has recovered his breathing a little – but that might only be seconds.
The third way of securing a victim in the hold is to exhaust him by locking on another hold (even something like a headlock with shoulder lock with my weight on him simultaneously, or a properly applied Fig 4 head scissor or rib crushing body scissor) and then keeping him locked in it so that his energy level is slowly dissipated. Then when the moment arrives, just moving very quickly and cranking him into a crab. The only problem is that I am responsible for his security and in competitive stuff you have to be certain when laying on a crab that your balance is good and that you can lower yourself into the final position with mostly good control as the last thing you want to happen is that you lose balance and fall back onto him – which may bend him beyond what he can take.
As with all submission holds there is the potential for injury if you are careless or over-estimate what an opponent can endure/take. Having said that, though I have accidentally unfortunately caused (not too serious…!) injuries to opponents over the years (went through a patch where I seemed to crack ribs with my scissors hold but then discovered what the particular issue was and stopped using a particular position) and had a few minor ones myself, I have never had an opponent had any injury from a Boston Crab. I have been in the hold myself too many times – and had an opponent lose control as he sat back (!) but the worst seems to be a sore back for a few hours. My medic pals tell me that actually bending the spine the other way (eg bending forwards to touch your toes) is potentially more likely to cause injury to the spine than the flexion involved in camels/crabs.
But most matches I have had are not all-out competitive ones but are some version of give n take, where the holds and pressure in the holds is real but no-one is all that bothered as to who is winning. And of course I like really sustained holds that play with a man’s pain threshold and determination not to quit. So that is one of the factors – the other guy’s mind. Even if you took two guys who had the same physical characteristics you might find that one guys submits quickly and finds the pain intolerable and another goes way beyond that and surprises you.
Most guys give small signals (sometimes not so subtle hah hah!) about their pain level and whether they are close to subbing or not, some vocal and some physical, by the way they move slightly under you in the hold. It’s good to keep an eye on where their head is (and neck) if you can see that either in a mirror or by looking round. If you are sitting quite far back on an opponent and he does not bend well in the lumbar lower back zone (for whatever reason) it is possible that the torque of the hold gets transferred more to his neck – so time then for me to be careful! If a guy seems to be lying in the hold fairly placidly and not moving his head around much it is probable that he is not near submission and I can crank it harder on him. So the first and biggest variant in how a man can take the crab is his own mind and pain level.
I have wrestled lightweights who seem unbelievably able to absorb punishment which with less pressure in general in the hold would have a bigger man tapping out frantically. Some jobbers (BostonKid in London for example) are so stubborn you think they will pass out before they submit. And though it is generally true that the bigger more muscled guys don’t bend so well, some of them can be very surprising (Wrestlecub – incredible guy with enormous strength who seemed able to take very punishing Boston and certainly was not tapping out quickly….and by the way was well able to repay the hold!). I guess the jobber who I have met who takes the most pain from a full Boston Crab and refuses to submit until I nearly break him is Slpt.
Anyway back to the subject. Other important variables are obvious too. How limber is the man getting crabbed? I wrestled a well built Indian wrestler (he was a doctor!) a few years back and he was strong with very well developed balanced physique. Put up a good fight too – was not a jobber. But when I finally manoeuvred him into a full crab I was really astonished (maybe he was a Yoga man?) because as I sat into the hold his legs easily just came further and further back as his flexed back bent very much easily at the waist just above his speedos. I kept leaning back and he kept bending (without much grunting either) and it was only when his feet were really nearly touching the back of his own head that I felt the resistant spring of his spine and muscles. Kept him in it for a while, but it did not seem all that painful to him to be bent like that (which would have had other men screaming) and I think it was more than fact that in that position he had all my weight (I was around 212lbs/96kg then ) sat heavily on the middle of his back and he just could not breathe once the hold was on tight and his abs were stretched to the max. (Of course he did sub.)
Some guys hardly bend at all, and those who work out in the gym alot and have very developed muscle mass are sometimes virtually rigid and cannot really be crabbed at all – even as you approach the position of the hold they submit. This is a hold where the flexibility of the man in it plays a very big role…unlike holds like a straight arm-bar where once you reach the natural extent of the elbow joint, flexibility is irrelevant. I guess flexibility in the crab is governed by many musculo-skeletal factors. Is the bone structure of the spine itself healthily flexible with all inter-vertebral discs plumply healthy? Does he have big spinal erector muscle on him and does he automatically tense that when he is bent, or can he relax those big muscles even when he is being attacked )? That may not be a conscious choice for him. How tight are his abs and quads? For some guys the hip flexors and abs are the limiting factor as to how much they can take in a crab. A fully applied crab can feel like you are being ripped apart in those – and other – regions of the body. It is a hold which when properly applied seems to crank everything.
Then of course there is the issue of weight and where it is distributed. This makes a huge difference to the hold. If you sit on your opponents glutes rather than on his back, the hold is not really effective and even an opponent who does not bend much can probably survive a crab for a long time in that position.
But the moment you slide back so that some at least of your weight is on his lower back he will feel the hold much more and it will begin to seriously compromise his ability to breath. I like to test an opponent in this position where I keep my feet tight in to the side of his hips so that at the start at least, until I know his ability better, most of my weight is still taken on my own feet as I squat down onto him. I will then gently bounce my weight on him to loosen him up and punish him some for a bit before settling more deeply into his back.
Even there I can usually make a guy submit just by tilting my pelvis a little so that we fit together more tightly and he is cranked that little bit more. From this point on, every inch that I move my feet further out with a widening stance transfers more weight onto him and I can usually hear the result in the moans and groans and gasps that come from the man trapped under me. If he is strong, game and feisty he may try pushing up to see if he can escape (it’s the only way possible in this hold) but that generally means I get to crank him harder and more quickly. Though if he is trying that manoeuvre at all it usually means he is going to be quite stubborn and resistant and therefore I can be a bit tougher on him and start to grind him into the mat.
Then of course…the further back I sit the worse it can be for the victim….though if you sit in the middle of the man’s back rather than more towards his waist this can enable him to bend in more of a gentle curve in his back and abs rather than creating a sharp steep angle at his waist. Many guys flex their glutes once they are crabbed –seems to be a reflex thing, but it is not something I am complaining about! Once I sit right back towards his shoulders I can really lever him into a full arch, getting his abs totally off the mat. This is very tough to endure (have you seen the pics of Slpt in that position – it is amazing he can take that for even a few seconds…must be agony!) and most guys will have submitted before you get to that. Then if I am in real heel mood and just wanna keep the hurt on my opponent and show him who is boss with no doubt at all, I might just get that little bit further back so I am effectively sat on his trapezius muscle (which with the extreme bend in the entire spine that this causes always looks like I am sitting on his neck!).
In that position he has no weight really on his back, - it’s all on his shoulder girdle, but the bend is such that his diaphragm cannot descend inside his extremely stretched rib cage which makes breathing very difficult indeed. You have to take great care of your man in this submission position because it is quite extreme and you don’t want to risk any neck injury by a loss of control. No-one that I put in this position has ever managed to struggle at all in it…..they just have to submit or suffer. It is as though their whole body has realised that there is nothing that can be done. I guess that is one of the aims of a good submission is that the opponent gives up totally all effort at resistance…then you know you have submitted him properly. That is why sometimes I demand repeated submissions…..because I sense in the muscle tone of the man taking the hold that he has not yet really given up.
Finally there is the issue of how you have hold of the man’s legs. In order to turn him easily in the first place you need often to lift him high (shows him how strong you are!) and so I tend to take hold of a man with my forearms tucked right into the back of his knees and his mid calves clamped under my armpits and squeezed there with the bulk of my triceps pressing hard into his leg and my ribs. Then I either slowly turn him (so I can exhaust him more as has he has to struggle and keep his core tight) or whip him over quickly and aggressively – to persuade him that further fighting is futile. But as I start to sit I generally allow his legs to slide through my grip so that it ends with his ankles locked under my armpits rather than his calves. That way he can bend much more and there is less cranked torque in the hold. I can also then place my hands on his inner thighs to contribute to controlling his legs and also because I love the feel of a man’s legs like that! After that I can either stay leaning forwards a little which means he is less bent or gradually pull his legs further and further back as I both lean and pull backwards (maybe arching my own back a little in extreme cases). This of course increases the spinal crank very effectively.
So the proper answer to your question as to how long you can survive in my (or anyone’s !) full Boston Crab is this,

THE FULL BOSTON CRAB SUBMISSION EQUATION

Your mind/mood and ability to resist pain and be stubborn/courageous + your natural flexibility + your strength and condititioning + your previous experience and confidence level
MINUS
My mind/mood and determination to inflict punishment and dominance on you + how much of my weight is transferred to your back + where on your back I am squatting/sitting + how I trap your legs + how much I pull your legs back + how quickly these events are enacted
= how long you can take this utter bastard of a hold.

In your case, from what you have said, and assuming I wanted to dominate and ride you in the hold rather than just get a really quick submission (or series of submissions) from you, I would reckon anything above 90 seconds is impressive. If you manage longer than that you are in an elite group. Of course we enter different territory if I release you from the hold and turn you onto your back for a few seconds before re-applying it. That way we might extend what you could take for quite a while. And in the course of a give n take bout where we are both in and out of a variety of holds and moves and the spine therefore does not start to stiffen up (that comes later, after the bout) maybe you could find yourself crabbed quite a few times. And there are great variants too – like Texas Cloverleaf Crab or Scorpion Leglock Crab, or….if you are athletic and flexible I have a brutal off-the-mat crab where your shoulders rest on my thighs and your head is caught tight between my thighs but you are held in a very effective full crab (no weight on your back obviously) in mid air. Nice huh?
So that should give you a bit of an idea about some of the details which go into making a man suffer properly and submit sincerely when I lever him into one of the holds which has long been amongst my favourites. There are others too…….