As MMA grows the evolution of boxing in the sport has also evolved. With the rise of wrestlers in the sport and the chances of getting taken down as a stand-up fighter is very likely. A lot of kickboxer and muay Thai fighters games has been negated because of the strong likelihood of getting taken down. Because of this we have seen boxing become one of the most effective ways to end fights. With the size of the gloves it is easier than in a boxing match to knock someone out.
Wilson Pitts, Combat Trainer boxing expert, developed a great video on how to effectively use the jab in MMA. Before he shows us this great technique for the use of the jab, he gives a brief history lesson on how George Benton trained his boxers to use the jab. Having a love for history, I loved watching this short piece and I picked up a lot of pointers on using the jab in my training.
The technique Wilson shows will help you slow down an opponent that likes to shoot and help you keep your distance to prevent it. So check out this great tutorial by Wilson Pitts, one of the best boxing trainers.
The Plum or clinch is an art within an art. Takes just a little time to learn, but a lifetime to master! The Plum isn’t just stand up grappling, it’s where the Sawk(Elbow) and Kao(Knee) are at their very finest!
There are definitely things you want to keep in mind when in the clinch:
During the drill Stay on the balls of your feet, using your training partner as your third point of balance.
feet slightly greater then shoulder width apart, pointed out like duck feet.
Hips fairly close, otherwise you’re creating space that can be used by your opponent to knee you!
As you extend your arm forward remember to keep your shoulder to your chin, or you give your opponent the opening he needs he needs to take the inside.
When training with a partner use the long round knee, it conditions the inside of your leg and the partners ribs and leg.
When training with a partner don’t use the Kao Drong(Straight knee) as you could break your partners ribs.
When performed correctly your hands shouldn’t leave your partners body, it gives you a “Body Feeling” so without even looking for reference you know what your partners doing.
Remember to make it natural and move around so you work foot work. Practice is the only way to perfect this exercise, so use it much! Rok it out! Godspeed, Kru Juice of the Muayman Alliance!
This drill is simplistic, however, I have my class do this drill virtually every class!
It develops the muscles you use for knees and kicks at the same time.
Keep your body tall
Straighten the supporting leg every time your leg thrusts up
ONLY the balls of the feet, HEELS NEVER TOUCH!
Twist your arms downward in a fast movement, side to side, works the core
unlike practicing knees on a bag, DO NOT thrust your hip forward into the air, instead pop them straight upward
Do this drill for no less then two minutes at a time.
Some techniques have transitioned well from the old world styles to the modern day, one of those is the Knee defense against the Jab and Cross! The key is in the details, so follow it exactly! (this instruction is assuming your in the standard stance)
As the Jab flys at you, scoop the Jab out away from your body far enough so the elbow cannot come at you, shoot the other hand straight back along the same side of the body along his head curl your hand around his neck so that your fingers are beneath the opposite ear push the fingers inward and use it as a grip.
Take a small step to the outside of your opponent with the foot that is on the outside of your opponent. With the foot that is on the inside of your opponent, pivot to the outside, dragging your opponent with you to disrupt his balance you should now be facing an outstretched and exposed opponent, sink your knee into his bread basket!
This same technique works on both sides, and is the same setup and delivery. Make sure you apply a decent amount of pressure when grabbing the neck, as it hits a pressure point while you grab. Normally the foot that you pivot on is the one you use to knee with, neither side is wrong and situations do change during combat however, so don’t feel that one knee is preferable over the other.
The timing can take some getting accustomed to, so practice of course is key.
Nerdy opening, I know. Doesn’t make it any less true, however. It’s a great way to summarize one’s entire philosophy. When you set your goals, you have to do everything in your power to achieve them. If you want to win, losing is just another step in that direction. Remember, you are only defeated when you give up. But enough of the philosophy. You came here for some fighting tips/advice/talk/whatever and that’s what you’ll get.
I did have a reason for starting this article with my take on the philosophy on fighting. The very first step I take before preparing for a fight is getting in the proper mindset. I train my mind first and my body second. I make it very clear to myself that for the next six, four weeks or even one week (yes, I’ve taken on fights on such short notice), I will live, breathe and sleep fighting. This is the time when I put in the most work in the gym, both in the weight room and the ring. It’s not that I like cramming in all my work in the last days before a fight. That would be stupid. In fact, I work hard all year round both for athletic and for personal reasons. It’s just that then is the time when I have the proper mindset to really push my boundaries and re-discover what I’m capable of. And even when I’m resting at home, I will usually watch fights of my favourite fighters, like Ernesto Hoost, Buakaw Por. Pramuk and others, so that I can maybe learn a thing or two. Sometimes I may not even learn anything but it helps get me pumped for the fight.
When training for fights or just martial arts, it’s important not to let your strength training lag behind in favor of conditioning. A martial artist needs to be a very complete athlete. They need to be strong, conditioned, fast and durable. So, I hit the weights three or four times a week. However often life and recovery allow. Now, I’m in no position to tell you exactly how to train. What I can tell you is that you need to train hard but safely. And injured fighter isn’t really much use to himself. I may not be the biggest guy in the gym but I do aim to improve on a week to week basis. If I find my workouts harder than normal, I take a step back and take a look at my lifestyle. Have I had adequate sleep? Am I eating enough? Am I psychologically alright? The problem is usually something as simple as getting an extra hour or two of sleep and you’ll be fine. But don’t be afraid to seek advice if you find your strength lacking.
Another area a fighter must be fully aware of is his diet. Since most martial arts work with a weight class system, it’s to your advantage to be as lean as possible, so you’ll carry the most muscle for your weight and you won’t have unnecessary fat weighing you down. To melt away the fat is as simple as reducing your caloric intake below your BMR if you’re an amateur fighter that trains 2-3 times a week. For a more active individual, they could just eat up to their BMR and let the extra exercise take care of creating an energy deficit for the day. However, keep in mind that your mind will lead you to eat to cover that deficit. So, you have to be mindful of what you eat, how much you eat and whether you’re losing fat or not. I fight in the -74kg class because that’s closer to my natural weight and since I’m around 10% body fat most of the year, you can see how that could work in my favor in the fights. In fact, I’m usually the biggest guy in terms of muscle in my class and my opponents feel it.
Of course, what makes us fighter is the fact that we train to fight. I usually train three times a week doing kick boxing for an hour and a half each time but when I’m getting ready to fight, I’ll train five times a week for a total of 8-10 hours a week and I’ll add some more conditioning in the form of jumping rope and jogging. This lasts up to a couple of days before a fight. I don’t train the day before the fight because I want to be as fresh and as rested as I can be. Besides, an extra training session won’t make much of a difference at that point. It all becomes a mind game after that. UFC Welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre said it best : “Training is 80% physical and 20% mental but fighting is 20% physical and 80% mental”.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that everything is within your grasp. If you want to get stronger, you can do it. If you want to get leaner, you can do it. If you want to get better, you can do it. Well? What are you waiting for? Go out and get it!
About the author : Bill Pairaktaridis has been training in martial arts for the past 14 years. He found a passion for Shidokan Karate as a young boy and later for Kick Boxing as a teenager. He’s currently a silver medalist in the national level in Kick Boxing. He also has a great passion for health and fitness and maintains his blog at http://herofit.tv
The Sawk or elbow, is a fascinating weapon for Muay Thai and MMA. A simple bend in your arm that becomes a crux of quick devastating power!
Although the power from it is great, it’s not meant to knock individuals out. The Sawk is often referred to as “Sword” or “Blades” because of their uncanny ability to cut! Don’t think of it as a KO weapon, but one that opens wounds over eyes and foreheads to impair your opponents sight or possibly stop it from excessive bleeding.
My Master, Ajarn Surachai Sirisute, has related the story before of how, with one upward diagonal elbow strike, a fighter had to get sixty stitches across his face!
So along with quick snappy power, various angles make this the ultimate cutting weapon! Second only maybe to actually holding a sword!
Historically it comes from warriors using the “Mai Sawk”, similar to a Tonfa in Karate, the difference being that it was traditionally strapped to the forearm.
Things to kep in mind:
Snap from the hips, don’t pivot on the front foot unless you want a leg kick!
make sure your other arm is tight against your body and chin, or you may break your arm or wake up on the canvas!
make sure your shoulder is covering your chin from your striking arm.
Make sure the hand of the striking arm is on the Inside of the body so you don’t get pulled into a clinch.
Keep your body high or your more susceptible to eating your opponents elbows.
Back in high school I competed in a couple of sports throughout the year. In the fall I played soccer, winter was wrestling season and in the spring it was track and field. The best part about both wrestling and track and field was the fact that they are pretty much individual sports. In order to win you need to depend on yourself to get yourself the victory. Sports like these can teach you a lot about yourself.
Well the one sport I want to discuss in more detail is track and field. You all thought I was going to say wrestling since yes this is a combat sports training website. But there is a lot we can take from track and field that can help us in our training as combat athletes.
As a track athlete I competed in two events, the 100m dash and the 400m. These all out sprints are some of the most grueling events I competed in high school. Yeah it’s one thing to get crossed faced on the mat and get a bloody nose while your mother looks on in horror and it’s another thing to sprint as fast as you can for 400m. The 400m has been said by many one of the hardest races and of course I picked it.
While training for these events I ended up sprinting a lot in practice. Back in those days I was not what you call a very athletic looking lad. That started to change a bit when I began to sprint nearly everyday. As a puny little high school kid I began to see some changes in power I had as well as the musculature in my legs. I was explosive and in great shape.
When I first started to train combat athletes I would use in my conditioning a lot of the circuit type training that “mimics” a fight. These circuits work very well and I continue to use them in coaching of fighters. Looking back though on how I felt after sprinting 400m and how I feel after some sparring I noticed the two feelings were very similar. Sprinting like many combat sports including MMA are anaerobic sports. So that being said I began incorporating sprinting into my fighters programs as well as in my own training and the results have been great.
With my fighters I also make sure that I coach them in proper sprinting mechanics. Now I know they are not going to be world-class sprinters but rather world-class fighters but teaching proper mechanics makes the athlete sprint not only faster but more efficiently. A more efficient sprinter will be able to last longer during conditioning and maximize there time in training.
For those of you that like to sprint or even want to give sprinting a shot to increase your conditioning I am going to give a four-week program below to help you achieve that goal. Each week there will be two sprint sessions. You will be surprised that these sessions are short and sweet but are very effective.
Week 1
Day One
6 sets 50m sprints
Day Two
4 sets 50m sprints
2 sets 100m sprints
Week 2
Day One
5 sets 100m sprints
Day Two
3 sets 100m sprints
2 sets 200m sprints
Week 3
Day One
5 sets 200 m sprints
Day Two
1 set 100m sprints
2 sets 200m sprints
2 sets 400m sprints
Week 4
Day One
1 set 200m sprints
4 sets 400m sprints
Recovery
As for recovery if you were training to be a track star then full recovery would be necessary. As forgetting ready for a fight I tell my combat athletes to sprint when they are ready. This affords them the opportunity to sprint when ready and recover but push themselves on there own pace. As they become used to the sprinting they adapt to the stimulus and take shorter and shorter recovery times.
Train Hard! Train Smart
By now we all know that MMA is mainstream, we are seeing it pop up everywhere. With this explosion MMA gyms are popping up everywhere and the influx of new students is growing daily. This is great for the sport and it will only continue to help the sport grow in the future.
This brings me to my next point. These MMA gyms are not only being joined by adult students, but children as well. I see the sport of MMA or grappling at the youth level as the next big sport here in the United States. The children are the future of the sport and it will only help grow the sport to new levels here in the United States.
The one thing we need to be careful with, however, with our youth joining these gyms is trying to specialize these children to early in the sport. Just like early specialization in other youth sports such as soccer, football and hockey, this could have a negative impact on the child athlete.
Having kids active in sports is great it sure beats sitting inside the house all day doing nothing but being lazy. I strongly believe that we should have our children involved in some type of sports from a young age. I particularly love when children are involved in gymnastics and martial arts from a young age. Both of these sports allow the child to learn their bodies naturally by using different movements.
Now like I said earlier there are some things to look for when children are specialize in sports to early. In his manual, The Development of the Russian Conjugate Sequence System, Tom Myslinski writes about how the Russian had a system of training their athletes from a young age. He wrote that the goal of the Russians was to have the children be exposed to a whole range of different activities. This would help develop their “functional capacities, motor abilities and knowledge base.” (Myslinski, p5)
Myslinski also has a great chart where he explains some of problems that happen when early specialization takes place. Two points that he makes that are of importance are, one, that there are “performance inconsistencies within competitions” and two, usually the athletes start to “burnout” by the age of eighteen. (Myslinski, p6) With the burnout issue also comes injuries from overuse of the same muscles, joints and tendons. Day in and day out, year after year of training in a very similar fashion will do this to any athlete especially at the younger level because their bodies are still growing.
So what is the take home message here? As the sport of MMA grows more and more children will want to get involved. Some parents will become crazy about their children winning it’s just the nature of the beast. But as adults of these child warriors it is our responsibility to make sure they train the right way. We have to make sure that these children learn how to use their own bodies before trying to control someone else’s. Get your children involved in the sport of mixed martial arts but let them play all different sports as well. This will only enhance their athletic ability in the future and just make them that much of a better fighter if they decide to take that path.
People have often asked me how I developed my meaty legs. I mean lets face it, I got some thunder thighs, as my wife says! However, thanks to a lot of specific training I have a lot of thunder striking from those thighs….and shins….and feet!
One of the big inspirations for my workouts goes back to Apideh Sit Hurin. “Who?” many ask. If you plan on improving your stand up, then you should definitely know Apideh! Holding seven titles at one time is no joke, and is unheard of in the fight industry, yet he did it! he was the Muhammad Ali of Thailand, and a legend in his own time. Having a reputation for knockout power and one of the most powerful Tdae (Round kick) in history, someone once asked him how he developed such power. He said he would get up in the morning, set his alarm for thirty minutes, and do squats till it went off! Now thats dedication! So with that idea in mind, lets get to work:
Let us start with running;you see according to most Muay Thai schools of thought you should always run on the balls of your feet. Why you may ask, and the question is quite simple:
1) You develop the muscles your actually going to be using for training and fighting.
2) Your not damaging the knees.You see when you run in the standard way your knees take up to two thirds more weight on them then your actual body weight! Just take a look at this chart to understand a little better.
If you run on the balls of your feet your ankle creates a springlike affect, thereby taking the pressure from your knees and back. If, like most, you are afraid of tearing the skin off your feet, then look into special shoes like Vibram Five Fingers.
After my runs I usually finish with “Combat Burbee’s”. You see, Burpee’s by themselves didn’t suck enough, so I modified them!
If you’re not familiar with my patent pending, awe inspiring Combat Burpee’s,
then allow me to explain:
Similar to a standard squat thrust,
you bend down,
keeping your back straight,
drop your hands to the floor just in front of you,
pop your legs straight out behind you,
do a single push-up,
in midair pull your legs back beneath you,
jump straight into the air from the crouch,
pull your knees up waist level,
land on the balls of your feet.
In between and during, I will often add Hindu Squats and Hindu push-ups to the mix.
What is a Hindu Squat or push-up? Watch the video!
A few key points,
Hindu Squat:
As you come down breath out and in on the way up, Think Accordion!
Heels come up as you bend your knees, works both sides of your leg.
Try and do them somewhat rapidly, builds endurance.
DO NOT add weight! Instead focus on endurance in reps!
Hindu Push-ups:
Vary the width of your arms to work different muscle groups.
Get your chest as low to the ground as possible!
Breath in as you dip.
Breath out as you pull your bod back, works the abs!
Try to start with sets of five, these are hard at first!
There you go amigos and amigas, some of my standard roadwork I use to keep my cardio and endurance up to par. Word of note, I do use Vibram Five Fingers when running, I find there is a lot less damage done when I use a bit of foot covering! And if in mid winter, make sure to wear a face mask for protection against the cold!
One very important aspect that many mixed martial artists neglect as well as other combat athletes is balance. If you watch MMA there are some really great athletes in the sport. Many of those athletes posses great balance in their MMA game. Let’s break down some positions fighters can find themselves in during a fight and apply what having strong balance will do.
Your balance in a fight is important throughout the entire fight. Take a look at BJ Penn, there are times when n opponent goes to take him down and he is on one leg and not going down to the ground. So balance is good for takedown defense. One area that balance is overlooked is in the striking portion of the game. When throwing combinations fighters that cannot maintain solid balance will not be able to deliver the punches with any kind of power. When delivering a kick, if done properly a fighter must get up on the ball of one foot and turn their hips explosively, if the athlete cannot get up on the one leg for the brief time the kick will not generate enough power or speed.
In past posts I have spoken about some ways to increase your ability to have better balance, from the one leg squat or pistol, to performing single leg hops. These ways are an excellent way to better your balance. Another way, which could be beneficial, and it is a very basic movement is walking across a balance beam. Yes I know the next thing you will say is “where am I going to get a balance beam?” But you do not need a balance beam.
Remember when you were a kid and you were at the playground or just hanging out on the street? Well, I do and I remember using the curb along my street to walk across and use my balance. I actually think I used to pretend that if I fell off I was falling into a swamp of alligators. Boy was I a dork. But as you can see a childlike imagination can lead to great thing in the future like having some great balance. You can also go out and purchase a nice 2×4 lay it on the ground and use that as your own personal balance beam.
Instead of myself showing you what to do, this video is of my daughter who attends gymnastics class. At only a year and half she has now started to walk across the balance beam with minimal help if any. So start using this little secret from the gymnastics world and you will only improve as a fighter.
