Put one hand behind an elbow. Put the other in front of it. Now, push with the “behind” hand and pull with the “in front” hand. If the recipient doesn’t offer much/any resistance, they are likely to make a somewhat pained face in response.
The notion here is that if you understand a hinge joint like the elbow, then you know that it only goes so far in one direction. Knowing this, if you attempt to drive it past that point, the rest of the body will try and move in attempt to avoid pain/damage.
What’s really cool is that many of the joints in the body can be exploited in this way – the fingers, the wrist, the knee, the spine… the list goes on. The trick is finding a way to move someone around with these joint locks in such a way so that even if they do resist, you’ve set up the angle and the leverage such that it is easy to defeat their muscular resistance.
A huge key to all this is the theme of the week – push and pull. Push on one side of the joint and pull on the other.
