Open mouth, insert foot

I seek simple solutions.  The more complicated we make processes the more they tend to develop errors and essentially not work.  This aspiration to simplicity typically makes me favor high percentage technique, I like attacking and defending in ways that work most of the time, no matter who I'm working with or how fatigued I am.  It has to work despite me, not because of me.  This makes me disregard or shelve technique that for me, nobody would ever let me set-up as the easiest and simplest ways of avoiding, in my mind, exist.  It makes my approach, my game, old school basic.  The only way I'm making a highlight real is if they catch me, people have seen my arsenal ad nauseum.  But it works, its teachable to anybody, and it reduces the chances of self inflicted injury, all of which I think are positives.  However, life is about challenging perspective, if you're not asking questions about why you might be wrong, you're assuming you're right, and there is a famous saying about assumptions and rear ends.

So today the class was taught oma plata off the defense of the cross body straight arm bar.  From your guard you attack with the straight arm bar, if they defend you can use the arm closest to their legs to pass their arm bent and inferiorly to set-up the oma plata.  Makes sense, high yield, and a valuable addition to any guard player's game.

The next technique was taking the back from the oma plata.  Here, in order to defend the oma plata your partner straightens their arm, bring it straight across your pelvis.  Most likely you've lost the position and they are going to limp arm out of the position.  If your lucky you can do the mao de vaca (cow hoof submission) or even an arm bar.   Instead, we gripped their far lapel with our near hand pulling it into their axilla.  Now you tilt their far side toward you and as you do swing your near leg over their head and back while bringing your near foot in as a hook, in other words taking the back.

I admit I shelved this technique almost immediately as being low percentage, with my luck they would be out of the poor position before I could even find their lapel.  Then after class, lo and behold I was rolling, had set-up an oma plata when my partner's arm plopped, magically, suddenly, across my pelvis.  Without skipping much of a beat I grabbed his far lapel, rolled him over and took his back.

Any technique, when it works, is a 100%, even if the sample size is only one.  A low percentage technique is only that because the situation where it works all the time is rare, not because the maneuver is intrinsically "bad".  A high percentage technique applied at the wrong time never works, it is still not relegated to the realm of "bad" technique.  If our goal is to elevate our skill, to craft the best game for us, the techniques whether high or low yield, must be arrayed in our arsenal to be used when the situation, the time, and the opponent is optimal for the application not by preconceived notions of what will and will not work.  Perhaps I, in my experienced wisdom, I should not be so quick to judge.