Whenever I focus on breaking grips, assuming I even can break the grip, I feel like I spend more time and effort breaking the grip than my opponent does re-establishing it. For example, I break my opponent's grip on my lapel. He then grabs my lapel again. I've wasted energy for something he easily got back. And if we keep going, I've burned myself out and they still end up with the grip they wanted.
@Tony Dismukes I know you made some excellent videos in the past, this may be a good topic for another video. I hope you don't consider me out-of-line for requesting it.
This is where standup knowledge comes in. A largely overlooked aspect of grappling is grip fighting. Judo places the most emphasis on it, especially the American Judo academies as their throws and throwing systems are not up to par with countries that place a lot more emphasis on the sport such as France and Georgia. However, grip fighting is a very good way to control not just your opponent, and to put you in a dominant position, but also to control the pace of the fight. The Americans have developed considerably more elaborate grip systems to cope with their disadvantages, and other countries aside from having their own grips such as the Georgian grip, practically ignore this aspect too.
An example to understand the importance of grip breaking and grip fighting is imagining a judo or BJJ match - both opponents start standing with no grips on their opponent. Grip fighting will dictate who gets the better position to throw or pull guard. For example, a grip fighting strategy I was taught in judo is to intercept the hand my opponent uses to reach for their first grip, and control his sleeve in such a way that he cannot grip me back; after this is when I can establish a lapel grip. Now I not only have a traditional judo grip, but I have also defanged him - he can only grab me with one hand, and I also have complete control over one side of his body. Furthermore, the grip he can establish is just a sleeve grip, as I have intercepted the hand he would use to grip my collar.
Grip breaking is the mechanic used to re-establish distance or a position in which grip fighting can be viable. If I cannot break a grip I cannot start looking for more dominant grips over my opponent. In terms of groundwork, this applies too. I cannot start to fight for more dominant grips if I don't break my opponent's grips first. I would say a better example of this might be defending yourself from being attacked in turtle, or closed guard. If you want to escape, transition, grip fight, or avoid being submitted, you had best break those grips first.
In terms of standup though, there is really no point in breaking grips if you don't know how to grip fight, unless the grip they have is extremely dominant such as a behind-the-neck collar grip.
