Spreading the word

Just wanted to give a heads up and props to Stephen Holden of SKD up in Darwen for helping spread the word of what we’re doing at Revolution. Stephen has been working with us for a while now, bringing students down to train and working on developing the game of everyone at his club.

For the past few weeks I’ve been going up and running a crash course in CM, clinch and ground to help polish the game of his students on the run up to the Rodney King seminar. This has been great fun to teach and and I hope everyone has been able to get a lot out of the sessions. Stephen has asked me to continue teaching these classes as an ongoing thing, which is great.

Everyone there is really eager to learn and they have been soaking in the material and getting stuck in. It’s looking good. Thanks to Stephen for setting this class up and helping me spread the word.

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Cool video links

Don't know if you guys have seen these.

Video of Renzo and Ryan sparring

Marcelo Garcia and Renzo Gracie at ADCC

The Garcia match is particularly interesting because he uses a very simple gameplan approach to completely shut down Renzo. Reinforces a lot of what I've been discussing recently.

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One week till Rodney King is at the gym

It’s only one week until STWA Head Coach, Rodney King, arrives for a seminar and time teaching private lessons. Those of you who were down last time Rodney came over will know what to expect, for everyone else I can guarantee a fantastic and hugely performance-enhancing weekend of training.

We have turned our kickboxing training around since we first introduced the Crazy Monkey Defence Structure, and these changes are increasingly being parralleled across everything at the gym. This means that the club is going to keep on growing, changing, evolving and, most importantly, improving.

How can you make sure you stay at the front line of this revolution?

1) Get engaged with your training – set time aside to train, don’t put it off, and work hard and smart every session you do. Talk to the other students and talk to me about how you are doing. If you are really struggling with something come and see me, book a private or jump onboard one of the group private sessions (there is a booking form posted on the changing room wall). Start a training diary, keep it going and DISCUSS IT WITH ME!

2) Get engaged with your learning - The STWA coaches, particularly Rodney, are all working hard to provide a quality training and information resource that is there for you to use. All you need to do is visit the STWA Membership site and register for access to a forum, articles and podcasts that will help you broaden the scope of the training you already do. If you have internet access and are serious about your training you need to go and have a look at this – if you find the free content useful you can look at the full membership for more amazing material.

Sign up today, get posting, get asking questions, get active. Not everything you need to learn is in the gym, let’s get you all fully engaged in pushing your development.

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Playing with angles

Punches are wondrous and many-faceted things. They can be thrown a number of ways to a number of places and have a number of effects. Anyone who thinks that just working fundamental boxing techniques makes for a limited game hasn’t spent enough time playing with the variations that can be developed from simple punches delivered well.

Forget your Karate striking points poster with it’s ‘ox’s elbow’ strike and ‘hummingbird beak’—not actual strikes but you get the idea—and concentrate on learning to hit on the straight, hooked and uppercut lines.

Effective standup isn’t just about adding techniques to your game, it’s about adding game to your techniques.

There are a number of variables, timing, combination, target, rhythm… and many more. The one I want to look at specifically is angle.

If you just hit down the same lines all the time then within the first minute of a round your opponent will have learned to read everything you throw. Once this happens then it is only a matter of time before they begin to ‘time’ your game and counter everything you do. You need to learn to play angles, the angles you throw your punches at and the angle of incidence between your centreline and their centreline. I don’t spend so much time working circling for nothing.

I try and work off the idea of two clock faces, one laid on the floor around my opponent (the white clock) and one that centres on their head (the grey one).

The circle on the floor is the face I try to circle around, changing the angle of incidence between me and them, if I can get round to three or nine on the clock I am ‘t-boning’ them and able to strike with power safely while breaking their balance and staying safe.

The clock face that centres on their head shows the angles I can hit along. Use this to change your punches up slightly. Instead of always throwing a hook along the horizontal what happens if you tip up or down to the next marker on the clock? It will become an overhanded hook or an uppercutted hook, but it is still fundamentally a hook. You keep the mechanics the same but change the angle to sneak it in to it’s target.

Same with jabs and crosses, slightly hook the jab, turn it in from underneath, overhand it then do the same with crosses. Even if you just look at the hour markers I have made on the clock you triple your options for each punch. But there are degress within those markers that allow for an infinite amount of variation of just four basic punching mechanics.

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Finding your feet – getting your base

Over the past few weeks we’ve been looking at the drivers of an effective game. Balance; Tight, economical structure; Good defence; Conditioning. Of these the root, quite literally, is balance. If you're working stand-up, clinch or ground it's the same, you are only as good as your base. Without this solid foundation you have no chance of working effectively in any of the other areas.

So what is balance?

'A state of equilibrium or parity characterized by cancellation of all forces by equal opposing forces.'

Physical balance and the control of it can be broken down into a number of themes. Subtle interplay between these is key to using your balance effectively.

1. Finding your balance
By far the most neglected of all aspects of balance. Most people never reach a state of equilibrium and blunder around constantly trying to recover something they never had in the first place. Take time to learn what your balance feels like. Learn to find that feeling and recognise it when you get there.

The easiest way to do this is to shut your eyes and ‘settle’, once you’ve done this open your eyes and carry on. Learning to quickly assess and find your balance is vital to performance.

2. Maintaining your balance
Small shifts, constantly made, is the key to maintaining your balance. The tricky part of doing this is that you are not the only person applying force, every time you get hit or someone pulls or pushs you your equilibrium is affected just as much as when you through a punch or a kick.

Added onto this is the ‘recoil’ of your techniques, the energy and reactionary force you need to absorb to apply force and power into someone or something else.

The most important part of your body for allowing you to control your balance under these myriad forces is your core. If your stomach and back are weak then you have little ability to stabilise yourself and you can't brace to deliver or absorb force. Imagine trying to push something heavy without locking your core stable, there would be no way to channel the power from your legs through to your arms and you'd just push the top half of your body away from the object. The same thing would happen when you delivered punches.

Centre of balance is often called centre of gravity. If it shifts too far outside of your bodyspace gravity takes over and you fall over. During standup this tends to happen when you over-punch or don't correctly counter-balance a kick – two results that are due to lack of adjustment of your balance, letting your centre of gravity get away from you. When you start to look at throws, sweeps and shoots then you see the power of controlling your centre of gravity.

The Fosbury Flop used in high jumping works by displacing the centre of gravity outside of the body. By arching over the bar the athlete passes over the bar but their centre of gravity passes under the bar. Strange but true.

Turn the Fosbury flop on it's side and you're not a million miles away from a sprawl. If you sprawl properly the arch in your back keeps your centre of gravity behind you, blocked by your hips, and makes it difficult for people to take you down. If you lean over the top of someone as the shoot on you, your centre of gravity moves forward, into the space that they control. You'll get dumped on your head if that happens.

Being able to play with your balance and maintain it even under the effects of external forces allows you to keep in the game regardless of position.

3. Resetting and catching your balance
Sometimes it goes wrong despite your best efforts. At this point good reflexes, light feet and an understanding of what your balance should feel like will save the day. The ability to get your feet or knees back underneath you will save you time and time again. On the feet it stops you getting driven off balance, allows you to recover if you trip or slip and makes you very difficult to throw. On the ground it is the thing that keeps you alive in a scramble.

Getting your base back under your centre of gravity and getting your head back over it is a key skill that needs to be drilled. Learn to reset your feet during combinations, dance around people's attempts to tie you up and pop back to your feet on the ground and you'll become all kinds of Chuck Lidell dangerous.

4. Sacrificing your balance
After spending time working on all of that there will be times when you just have to give it all up and take a flyer. Knowing when to sacrifice your balance allows you to bend like a reed in the wind, quickly reversing forces and taking people off their balance in an unexpected way. Unexpected being the key, you know it's coming, they don't, so you can immediately switch into your balance-finding game and come out on top. Often literally.

Learn to play with your balance but, most importantly, learn what and where it is. The best fighters should look like dancers, scary, mean-looking dancers but dancers none the less.

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Why do you train?

Again this is a topic I bring up a lot at classes and when I'm visiting other clubs. This is because I think it is vital to ongoing development to keep on asking this question.

Most people come into a martial arts gym with a strong reason for training – self defence, fitness, stress relief, desire to learn martial arts, aggression control... the list goes on. It is very important that you reassess your motivations for training on a periodic basis.

After six months are your reasons for training the same as they were when you started? If you started training for self defence have you honestly needed those skills to protect yourself or has an increase in confidence brought about better results? Have you noticed that you are getting into training for it's own sake rather than to serve a purpose?

Are you not sure why you train or where you're going with it?

Training is a long-term commitment to personal development. If you stay in the same midset you had when you walked in the door for the first time your training career will be cut short, you'll burn out and get bored. If you let your motivation evolve as your skills, knowledge and understanding do you'll keep finding new reasons to train and new avenues to explore.

Post your original reasons for training and new motivations that you have discovered on the way. Or discuss at the very least. ;)

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Playing to learn - not to win

I keep on coming back to this idea in class. I think it sits at the core of what we do at Revolution and at the core of an egoless training approach.

Not everyone is training for competition and we need to look at how training can be most useful for most people. We see a common pattern of behaviour with all new students… they roll and spar as hard as they possibly can, gas after 30 seconds and want to go and be sick.

It can’t be fun but everyone does it when they first start training. It normally takes a good few months of repeatedly telling people to chill out before they do. All the senior students roll and spar to be controlled, fluid and technical. But leading by example alone doesn't do the trick. So we re-iterate the same message… ‘Roll to learn not to win.’

Once people have learnt to relax and stopped listening to the ego-voice in their heads they are more able to train in a positive and productive way. It is tough to do, as a beginner training can be overwhelming and the easiest response is to try and impose your will to keep yourself safe.

However, the best response is to trust your training partners. The more experienced students and coaches will work with you. So you don’t need to work against them. Trust is the key. If everyone is working to learn then no-one is working to win and everyone is safer.

A safe training environment with a focus on development is built on the actions of everyone involved.

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Serendipity and building gameplans

I’m a huge believer in the power of convergent events. When I hear the same thing from two or more places in quick succession it is the Universe’s way of telling me I need to pay attention. :)

Last night I got asked a common question, ‘How do I figure out what to do in sparring/rolling? I never know what to play for.’

My usual response is to discuss gameplan thinking, which I will get onto, but I want to add to that with some ideas on how, as astudent of the game, most people develop as self-sufficient athletes.

I was listening to one of the excellent coaches podcasts that are now being provided on the STWA Membership site, in which STWA Head Coach, Rodney King, was discussing the four stages of learning in a coached environment.

Coach dependent - Inter-dependent - Codepenent - Independent

The first stage is where most beginners start off, they are learning techniques, drills and strategies from the coach, doing pretty much what they are told to do when they are told to do it.

The Inter-dependent phase is when the athlete has a reasonably solid foundation in what they are doing and are able to give feedback, develop strategies and most importantly ask pertinent questions to explore problems with their coach.

Codependency is when students begin to work more closely with, and learn from, their fellow students. This is the bushfire phase of learning where knowledge spreads very quickly through a group.

Independent learning is where the athlete needs little coaching as they are innovating and driving their own development.

So how does this relate to the earlier question of what to do when rolling? This question marks the point at which you move from the first to the second stage.

In stage one of your development you are effectively working by rote, even when sparring or rolling you are doing little more than a series of drills and will operate in fits and starts with no flow from one technique to another. As soon as you begin to look for the mental map that will help you break out of those drills you are making possibly the biggest step in your training you will make.

It is this drive to move beyond just doing what the coach tells you and look for your own responses that shows the nascence of your game.

So, gameplans. What is a gameplan? It is a map of a fight or roll. You work out what you want to play for, what obstacles an opponent might present, what counters or subsequent techniques you will use off those obstacles and repeat this cycle till you get what you want. Ideally you want to be restircting the options you give to an opponent and at any point have responses to those options when they are taken. This game plan can be written as a series of IF statements.

IF ‘I’m caught underneath side control’

THEN ‘I will work to my side and shrimp to make space to pull guard’

You can make these quite rough or highly detailed depending on the level at which you are playing. Most importantly you need to address your weakest positions and define what you are going to do to work back to your best moves/techniques/positions. Take into account what your opponent may do and develop contigency plans. It tales work but it helps a lot.

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