In this Issue

	Formula 1 CM
	John Will workshop at Revolution
	Rodney King Seminar

Revolution Gym News – April 07

Formula 1 Crazy Monkey

To celebrate the start of the new FIA Formula 1 series I've been looking at some ideas based on grip and power delivery. Grip is the key to everything in F1 – acceleration, braking and cornering are dependent on how much grip a driver can squeeze out of his tyres.

CM is just the same, especially when we look at how this ties in to balance. One of the biggest signs of bad balance is a client’s feet skipping, sliding or dragging when they throw punches without digging their feet into the floor. From that balance (and the linked control of weight placement) we can derive the following:

By getting people to get a good level of traction on the floor and continue to drive all the way through a punch they are able to deliver impact or absorb it. Lose traction and the punch loses all it’s drive.

This is the difference between your shots being bullets and being rockets. When a bullet is fired from a gun, all it’s propulsion happens at the beginning but from there on it loses energy until it hits the target. A rocket continues to have drive from when it launches to when it hits the target.

If a punch is thrown and you keep your foot in contact with the floor you can continue to drive all the way to (and through) the target. Let your drive foot skip, slide or buckle and you take away that rocket. The punch starts losing energy from there.

The confusion in this for many people is the phrase ‘putting your weight into shots’. If we throw weight forward, into the punch, we are more likely to unweight that back foot, losing traction and drive.

I had to go away and think about how weight fitted into this so I went back to F1 for the answer. Downforce. Everything about the aerodynamics of an F1 car is designed to push the car down onto the road and increase it’s grip… This is the key to good punching power.

I started to look at what happens to people’s rear legs when they throw a good cross or a bad cross. I couldn’t work out how to get people to keep their feet in contact with the floor so I expanded what I was looking at. The first thing I got people to look at was ‘pushing’ into the floor when they threw punches to ensure that there was a reactionary force to drive into the punch. Even with this there was still a common occurrence of people unrooting their feet at the end of a punch so it needed an extra element. 

When people’s feet skip on a cross their back leg is almost always straightening as they throw the punch. When they drive through a solid punch the big difference is that their knee bends and drops weight down. I’d initially thought that the knee drop was mostly about turn and opening up the hips but the main use of it is to drop weight down into the foot. Weight goes down and gives traction, traction gives constant drive, drive gives impact.

Drop your weight into that driving foot and you get downforce. Downforce gives you power for everything else.

John Will Workshop at Revolution - 07/06/07

After some juggling of dates I’m very pleased to announce that we have John Will here for a one day workshop in BJJ. John, a Machado BJJ black belt since 1998 is one of the foremost authorities on BJJ in the world.

The workshop is limited to 30 places and costs £40. Payment can be made by visiting our shopping cart.

Rodney King Workshop - 10 & 11/07/07

We’re hosting Rodney again for a two-day workshop in July covering CM for one day and Rodney’s Conceptual BJJ model for the second.

These workshops are limited to 30 places and cost £50 for both days or £35 for one. Payment can be made by visiting our shopping cart.