Advanced Swiss/Stability Ball training for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

by Mike

We've talked before about the utility of using a Swiss ball for learning balance in BJJ. We generally start our MMA workouts with a couple minutes on the balls and I usually like to do it to warm up before working the bags or while waiting for others to show up.

Once you've gotten the basics from the other video down, you'll be ready to try the hard stuff:



From bumptori.

Post-Seminar Checklist

by Mike

So, you used the seminar checklist and got everything that you needed to before you showed up. 12 hours of seminar and one semi-private later, you've got some bumps, bruises, the hell of a lot of illegible notes and a vastly improved game. What now?

When you get out of the seminar:

• First things first - have a beer. It'll kick start your recovery process. If there are people around who aren't sick of you from spending a weekend trapped in your stinky gi, this is a great time to go out, talk a little bit about what happened, what you learned and all the cool ways you're gonna change up your training.
  
  
• Then, shut the hell up about it. Enough already. Don't even think about bothering your friends that didn't go and/or don't train. No matter how supportive you think they are, a) they don't care and b) they're thinking, "you basically put a part-time job's worth of work into one weekend and spent it hugging dudes?"
  

When you get home:

• Take your gear out to let it air out/go in the wash. You'd be surprised how many times people forget to take their stuff out and only remember right before the next class, realize that they don't have enough time to wash anything and show up smelling like a gi or gloves that were used for 12 hours and then sat in a bag for a week. Wash your clothes!
  
  
• Hop in the bath. Hot water, epsom salts and try not to fall asleep in there. Take it from experience that if you stay in over 20 minutes, the salt creeps in your open pores and you'll be sweating medicinal salts for the next few days.
  
  
• Use your preferred painkillers and anti-inflammatories. As my wrestling coach says:

  When you get home, remember: ice. Or if you're that type, ice and Advil. Or if you're that type, ice, Advil and beer.
  

• Be careful about taking a nap. Falling asleep at six and waking up at 8 is a great way to not be able to fall asleep again that night, which not only takes away some prime recovery time, but also makes you groggy and grumpy the next day.
• Instead, use that time to review your notes. You'd be surprised how easy it is to not only not be able to read your own handwriting, but also to forget all those cryptic abbreviations you used to save time.
  
  
  

  Example of notes taken during a seminar. Note the diagram, which I think might have been copied from the Lesser Key of Solomon and not the representation of how to place your legs in the S-Mount like I intended.
  
  

  The sooner you can get back to your notes and use your memory to fill in the gaps, the better.
  
  
• Practice what you learned. Having the notes is nice and all, but trying to learn anywhere from a couple to a couple dozen techniques in a short time only allows for a couple reps - barely enough to figure out what you need to pay attention to and definitely not enough to get the muscle memory to kick in. If you've got access to others who took the seminar with you, try to get together and compare notes/review everything you worked on.
  

Most importantly:

• Share what you learned. Bring your experience and knowledge back to your gym and your classmates who couldn't attend. Sharing what you know will not only help reinforce what you did, but you'll be raising the game of everyone at your school and in turn that will elevate your game even more.
  

Seminar Checklist

by Mike

Seminars are an awesome way to progress and grow as a martial artist. We've previously covered seminars and how/why they may be useful for your training, but there are practical matters related to the seminar - logistics if you will.

Whether your do all your training on the seminar circuit with Rorce Gracie and Dan Severn,* or you have the opportunity to take a one-off with one of your idols, you best make sure you're prepared to take full advantage of the situation.

Things to bring:

• Proper equipment. If the seminar is going to be Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or Judo make sure you have an appropriate gi. If it's going to be Muay Thai drills, make sure you bring your tombstone pads. If you'll be sparring, bring your sparring gear. If it's not clear from the seminar agenda, ask the hosting school.
  
  
• More equipment than called for. Few seminars have any structure to them, let alone a rigid agenda, so it's entirely possible that you'll end up doing some fun stuff, like rolling with the instructor or sparring. You don't need to bring your whole gym bag, but some "just in case" items might prove to be worth the extra weight.
  
  
• Your notebook and several pens. You are keeping a notebook aren't you?
  
  The notebook is by far the most important thing you'll need during the seminar. You're paying good money for access to a great teacher that you likely won't see again for another year, if at all, so you want to make sure that you not only learn a lot while you're in the seminar, but that you remember it after the seminar's over.
  
  You should take any spare moment you get to start writing down notes - drills you like, things you need to work on, new techniques, etc. I have fond memories of Renzo Gracie teaching a very high-percentage kneebar when stuck in someone's half-guard that I only wrote down, "kneebar from inside half-guard" and every time I get caught in someone's half-guard, I curse myself for not remembering it.
  
  
• Camera. If you're that type that likes to get shots of you and famous people. I'm not particularly, but somewhere a dude from my gym has a great shot of Matt Lindland choking me out that he keeps promising to email me and never does. Shoulda thought to bring my own camera.
  
  
• Cash money. Most, if not all, seminar instructors will have something extra to sell after the seminar. Books, t-shirts, videos, knives, etc. They probably won't take credit cards or checks, but definitely will take cash.
  
  Also useful for having if there's an unexpected break in the seminar and you want to go out and grab a snack, or otherwise go out to dinner/the bar with other attendees after the seminar's over.
  
  
• Water bottle and snacks. Most seminars are going to bring out many more students than the space they're held in normally hold. Thus, when there is a break, there will be a line of nerds waiting for the drinking fountain. While they're holding up the show, you can take the opportunity to take some notes.
  
  If there are going to be multiple sessions or the seminar is particularly long, having some well thought-out snacks is going to serve you much better than heading out with everyone to the 7-Eleven to get some crap to fill up on. Nothing funnier than watching people come back to an afternoon session of an all-day seminar (which are traditionally harder than the morning sessions), full of burritos and spend the rest of the day looking like they're going to puke.
  
  Unless they're your partner.
  

Other considerations:

• Make sure you arrive early... Traffic and/or your sense of direction are often worse than you thought they were. Showing up to a seminar late is bad for two reasons 1: you miss out on some learning that you're paying good money for and 2: it pisses off the instructor.
  
  Case in point, I attended a Maurice Smith seminar at the ComicCon of all places (see Bas Rutten vs. Dracula) and, due to there being a surprising amount of traffic at 9am on a Sunday, I got in about five minutes late. My hopes of being able to sneak in the back were dashed when I walked in the room and saw everyone was spread out and starting to work on drills. Big Mo was kind of annoyed as I kicked off my shoes. I bowed and said, "I apologize for being late, sir.** Can I still jump in?"
  
  He softened a bit, "No problem, just line up and we'll get started."
  
  About five minutes after that, another guy walked in, looking like he just got out of bed, kicked off his sandals and said, "uh, I'm here for the Maurice Smith seminar."
  
  Maurice looked at him and said, "You're late. Hurry up, you're wasting time."
  
  
• ...but don't expect the seminar to start on time. It's entirely likely that the seminar teacher will be in town visiting his friends the host and therefore was out all night with them, catching up and/or crunked.
  

--

* This is a joke, please don't email me about how I misspelled Hoyce.***

** In case you ever have occasion to meet the man, don't call him "sir." I'm pretty sure it's also a bad idea to call him anything other than what he tells you you can call him.

*** That was also a joke.

Heavy Bag Etiquette

by Mike

Most, if not all of these guidelines (which really should be laws) are predicated on the idea that the person dropping bombs on the heavy bag is someone engaged in Serious Work and should not be disturbed. I'm slightly disappointed when I see people at the gym walking past/through/bothering people working the bags.

Do not walk past someone working the bags. Wait for the round to end. They have the "right" to the space around the bag, so long as they are not being foolish or taking up too much space. As such, do not expect them to move for you.

Under no circumstances are you to walk in between someone working the bags and the bag. You will get hurt and people will laugh at you.

Do not reset the timer. As long as there is someone working, there is someone who is relying on that timer. Resetting without permission is a good way to get invited to a "nice, friendly" sparring session.

You may not use more than one bag at a time. Unless you have a good reason. However, I'm at a loss to figure out what a good reason might be.

Do not bring your girlfriend in to steady the bag while you push it around. You're not impressing anyone when you do this, least of all her.

If you knock the bag down, take a split second to ask yourself 1) Did this fall on someone or break something? 2) Will leaving the bag here be in anyone's way? 3) Am I training for MMA or another event where you are allowed to attack a downed opponent? If the first two are no and the last one is yes, then jump on that bad boy and keep punching - round ain't over yet!

With all of the above in mind, if you are working the bags, be aware of where other people are. The possibility of someone running past you is still pretty high.

CC licensed photo from hmmlargeart

Get Martial

by CP

Martial

Pronunciation: \’mär-shəl\
Function: adjective

1 : of, relating to, or suited for war or a warrior

2 : relating to an army or to military life

3 : experienced in or inclined to war : warlike

The martial arts world ranges from ’soft’ meditative arts, to intricate ‘forms’ demonstrations, to all-out combat. What the arts all have in common is that they are based on conflict, violent conflict. Punches, kicks, takedowns, chokes, locks and weapons-use are all techniques in the art of war. When a soldier or a police officer fires a rifle or pistol at the gun range, they are engaged in martial training. They may never get into a real firefight or shoot-out, and may not wish to hurt another living thing, but that is what they are practicing for. You may not want to become a bodyguard or a professional fighter (or go on Jerry Springer), but make no mistake about it, if you’re going to practice martial arts, you’re going to learn how to inflict pain. And damage. And sometimes worse. The dojo is in some ways your gun range.

What if I think fighting is wrong?

Ideally, combat training would be completely unnecessary because no one would mean you harm. But reality is less beneficent and less forgiving to our favorite selves when we are unprepared. If the concept of a violent contest give you the vapors, try looking at it like this:

* Nearly every country (roughly 170/193) maintains a military force, even if they have never gone to war.

* Most police officers carry a gun, but have never fired it in the line of duty.

* An unprotected house is about 3 times more likely to get broken into than one with a security system.

In short, we want peace, but someone has to be prepared for when things get less peaceful. If your heart and/or beliefs tell you that preparation is the other guy’s responsibility, you may want to substitute boxercise (or table tennis) for your hobby or fitness program.

What if I don’t want anyone to get hurt?

No one does. Sane people are not out to injure each other. But even a fat lip is too much for some. If your MA school promotes a lot of hands-on training and sparring, and that isn’t what rocks your socks, you may want to reconsider your location or your choice of art form. (For more, see: New here? How to get started in the martial arts by Mike, and Fighting and Fighting Schools by CP.) You can learn combat with varying degrees of contact. Just understand that your effectiveness is increased by the intensity of your training. In order for your skills to protect you, you sometimes have to get aggressive and ‘go there’.

How do I get my rumble on in the dojo?

MA is very much about control. If our brains worked right in a threatening situation, we would react instantly with enough fight or flight or reason to deal with it. Instead, without training we often are paralyzed in the face of danger. We freeze, cutting down our chances for any good outcome dramatically. MA is the practice of training both your body and your mind to become very awake in these situations by simulating them over and over. In sports, athletes learn to engage their competitive side and aggression without resorting to panic. Martial artists do the same, even though the stakes are higher on game day. They learn to play rough in practice without the need for gauze and paramedics.

When you train, remember to work your defense as if you were under an actual attack. That way you don’t freak out when the volume gets turned up. On offense, put the extra snap into the kicks and punches, even if you’re holding back on the force. When you spar, if your partners are game and you can trust them not to clean your clock, crank things up every so often to get used to the added speed and intensity. And work with your instructors when you can; their control should offset the terror and trepidation you feel. The results will be very rewarding.

I have had more than one student tell me that they planned to take their exit once they reached a rank where the training gets more combative. Thankfully, some have decided to stay longer and discovered that their fears were greatly exaggerated. Meanwhile, their wartime skills have made them that weapon that hopefully never gets used in the line of duty.

Wash Your Clothes!

by Meredith

Wash your shit.

Just because you're about to get it all sweaty again does not justify dragging a stinky gi out of the laundry and wearing it in to class to burn the nose hairs off of your fellow students. I always keep an extra gi and shirt in my locker. If you're one of those that sweats profusely (you know who you are) and you plan on working out before class or taking more than one class, by all means, bring an extra shirt to change into. Especially if you're going to be grappling. Or kickboxing. I hate kicking someone and then having to drag my foot along the floor afterwards until I wipe off their sweat and regain traction. Just bring an extra shirt. For me.

Also, wash your knee and elbow pads and handwraps. I've been guilty of letting this go too long once before and man... was it embarrassing. But I made up for it this Saturday when I was about to grapple and my partner asked, "What fabric softener do you use? You smell great!" And, yes, he was a heterosexual male.

Just wash your stuff. It makes for good hygiene and good neighbors.

Doc Dill has the following to add regarding the sorts of things you might find growing in your nasty old gear.

Yep, [keep your gear/clothing clean] and you reduce the chance of passing on or contracting an infection. Things like impetigo, pseudomonas, etc. Worse is getting an antibiotic resistant bacterial infection like the MRSA or the "flesh eating bacteria." You wind up in the hospital on IV antibiotics, which leave you with a good chance at permanent dizziness. It's not all that hard to contract either. So stop the stink!!! Wash your SHIT and don't try and cover it up with bad cologne either. That just makes you smell like an 80 yr old incontinent with a bad nose.

CC licensed image from Handforged.

Cung Le Wins! Breaks Shamrock's Arm! Makes Side Kick Cool!

by Mike

And for the next six months, I'm going to be showing every new guy that walks in the door the chasse lateral (that's Savate for "side kick").

Why? Because it's useful? Because it's a secret technique that your opponents will never figure out? Because it's the missing piece in your becoming a complete fighter? Nah, because it's trendy and everyone will think that it's the secret technique that will give them the edge.

This sort of thing happens all the in MMA where most fighters, especially most amateur/beginning fighters simply can't afford the time to learn the esoterica of the core components of the styles that make up a complete fighter, much less plum the far reaches, or what may as well be the style-of-the-week.

Minotauro and Randy Couture win by Anaconda and suddenly, the perfect submission had been found. George St. Pierre and David Loiseau nail their opponents with the spinning side kick and suddenly guys who can't even throw a Thai roundhouse properly are working them into their game. Lyoto Machida runs through his opponents and karate becomes something worth looking at again.

Will the side kick help out your game? I dunno. Compared to the "standard" MMA kicks (the Thai roundhouse and the teep/front kick), the side kick requires better balance and fine motor control. It's a little slower than the aforementioned kicks and it's sometimes hard to sneak your sideways foot in underneath elbows which means that you're either got to kick to the head (which presents massive balance/flexibility issues) and/or move while you do it. Though I'm jinxing myself by saying so, it's pretty easy to see coming and a cinch to block.

Unless you spend hours and hours doing thousands and thousands of reps both on the bags and against sparring partners, in which case it becomes a very effective technique (and one of my favorites). Getting hit by a properly extended side kick is among the stiffest shots you're going to take, even if there's little power in the kick. Taking a chasse lateral to the chest (where it's best used) can rattle your teeth and give you a case of shaken baby syndrome.

Notice that we mentioned the little-kid measurements of "hours and hours" and "thousands and thousands," that's assuming that you've got a good basis in kicking to begin with - and if you're like most MMA guys, you probably don't. In that case, it will probably take longer to learn properly.

Coming from the opposite direction, say you do have a good background in kicking, it will still take some time to work your chasse into a form that will work in MMA - though I can use the chasse to great effect in kickboxing/Savate sparring, Peterson would steamroll over me anytime I tried it in our MMA sessions. Until I figured out the timing and movement necessary to not get stuffed when throwing the kick, knocked over when it's blocked or especially end up in a bad spot if I throw it and miss.

Some diligent hours later, I get the request, "throw some kicks, but but no side kicks. I don't want a broken nose" - not that I've ever broken a nose, side kick or otherwise.

Compare that to adding the anaconda choke to your game - as long as you know some basic jiu-jitsu/wrestling (front headlock, gator roll), you're basically there. If you don't know basic jiu-jitsu...you've got some stuff to think about before you work on your anaconda.

Evolution of a style (if MMA can be considered a style) and more importantly, your personal implementation of that style is important. There's only so long you can work on your jab before spending additional time on it starts hindering our overall progress. But, at the same time, you need to remember what you're doing and figure that maybe this additional technique isn't going to fit into your style, or even be worth spending the time learning when you could be learning/improving other aspects of your game.

Moral of the story: It's good to learn new things, but you need to ask yourself: will learning this new technique really add to my game? If so, will it be worth spending the time and is that time that would be better spent working on something else, even if it is merely polishing up things I already know?

CC licensed photo from gevan444.

Making hard things easy the hard way

by Mike

Over at the Karate Thoughts Blog, Charles Goodin writes about "Making It Look Easy." The basic idea should be familiar to pretty much anyone, martial artist or not: when you see someone who has been doing something a long time doing something you've just started (or perhaps have been doing a long time and have been having trouble with):

The assumption is that the expert is doing something hard and is just making it look easy. In fact, because of his understanding and skill, what he is doing is easy...

It may sound trite at first, but meditate on it and it soon becomes a very interesting point of view - with diligence, hard things become easy. Mull it over for a bit longer and then it becomes a why-didn't-I-think-of-it idea - hard things are hard until they're not hard anymore.

How does your technique go from being something hard to something easy? Hazmat talks about The Magic of Muscle Memory - aka drill, drill, drill; test, test, test; refine, refine, refine.

Keep in mind what you're doing isn't hard, it's just not easy yet and I think you'll find that changing your outlook will help accelerate your progress.

CC licensed photo from O pirata.

Remember what you're doing

by Mike

Trying new things in the gym and trying to evolve your style is all well and good, but one also needs to keep the ultimate goal of their training in mind. 

While watching some guys doing MMA sparring, one of them busted out the Philly Shell.

"Dude, what are you doing? Get your hands up!"

"I'm working on my Mayweather."

"Mayweather don't fight MMA. Put your damn hands up!"

MMA Workout 3/16/08

by Mike

Theme: Now that we've got a couple months until Jim's next fight, we're able to try to work some new techniques into his game. Ideally, the theoretical bits of this workout should carry over into other parts of his game. Specifically, keeping hips low, maintaining pressure on the opponent when in a dominant position and keeping mobile despite the semi-awkward position. Also some strategic decisions and worked the "Ettish" and Downed Guard.

Warmup:

With little time, we hopped right into pummeling for position.

Worked from this to pummeling to takedown and passing to dominant position.

A little bit of dirty boxing and we were off to

The Fun Part:

One of my favorite techniques is to hold someone in my guard and then let them out. When they stand (either to slam or pass), I like to break my guard and bust out the Silat, getting something like the Saddle and then working for a heel hook or forcing a takedown into a very strange position to allow for some ground and pound.

This is easily accomplished if someone has their hips high. If they're slightly more clever and following BJ's advice in the MMA Book of Knowledge, you need to get tricky as well.

Staying in the shell/downed guard is kinda boring and doesn't let you do too much except stall and force a standup or wait for the opponent to kick the hell out of your legs and/or try a low-percentage but fun cartwheel pass or even the vaunted somersault pass.

Will probably never work for you, but the crowd sure loves it!

In the interest of staying mobile on the ground, forcing a standup and/or training your opponent to abandon the ground game, we worked on what we call the "Ettish."

Affectionately named after the ill-prepared kareteka from UFC 2, the position is a basic one taught in martial arts schools all over as a "self-defense" technique but derided due to Fred Ettish's not-quite-enough attempt to use it - it may be more familiar to Jiu-Jitsu players as the butt-scoot. But now you get to kick and maybe even roll into a takedown.

We'll cover the Ettish in-depth in the future, but needless to say, the last thing you're expecting someone lying on the ground to do is kick you in the face. Especially when you're about six inches taller than they are and you know for a fact that they can't kick above their waist.

It's a surprisingly strong position, much like the kick is a surprisingly strong kick.

Getting back to the workout:

Working the shell

Moving in on the shell

Working the Ettish

Moving in on the Ettish to pass

Once some basic principles are understood, it's surprisingly easy to pass the downed guard, while it's possible but frustrating to do so to the Ettish.

Don't be a cheap-ass

by Mike

We were training a couple days ago and one guy stopped in the middle of a round. He grimaced and held his elbow.

"You hurt your other elbow?"

"No, same one. PT says it's overuse and I should get a tennis elbow splint. I don't know though."

"Why wouldn't you get one?"

"It's $15, man. I just keep thinking it will go away."

"Dude, it's either $15 and get better, or your elbow is screwed forever."

There are some things in your training that are going to be worth spending a couple bucks on. First Aid gear is one. A decent pair of boxing gloves that will last you years is another. You might not need to pay someone to bring back a pair of Reyes gloves from Mexico for you, but dropping a few extra bucks to get a decent pair of gloves is going be much more cost effective (and better for you in general) than trying to save a couple bucks on crap gloves.

That is to say, buying a pair of $60 gloves that will last you years is going to be much better for you in the long run than buying $10 pair of gloves that you're going to need to replace three times a year and that will potentially injure you through general use.

Getting your ass kicked is a great way to find holes in your game

by Mike

Our school held a tournament last weekend, where I participated in a boxing match. Though I walked out with a loss, I ended up with a much better understanding of the holes in my game, which I hope will serve me much better than having pulled out a victory.

I have a buddy who uses the phrase "I didn't get what I wanted so it was a learning experience" as a mantra.

To some degree, this is true. What I wanted to was to skate through the couple rounds, get the W and show off how good my legs look in a pair of Sprawls. What I got was bullied into corner, had my reach advantage stuffed and spent most of my time covering against combos that fortunately didn't land cleanly. I did get to show off my legs, so at least that worked out.

Note that this isn't to say that every loss is a good thing, or that it's OK to lose constantly because you're learning from the experience, but having that occasional situation where you're taken entirely out of your element* can be a good, if annoying thing.

Especially if there are over a hundred people watching and a hi-def video to be produced.

* I should like to poiont out that in this case, we're not discussing going into a situation knowing you're going to get handled, similar to the situations described in Quit yer bellyachin'. Specifically, this applies to situations where you expected to win and the result was the opposite.

The pic's not me, but it may as well have been. CC-licensed photo by pixel0908.

If you are training without insurance, you are stupid

by Mike

You really should not be training if you don't have health insurance.

Paying for insurance, whether your employer provides it or you're paying it out of your own pocket (especially if you're paying for it out of your own pocket) sucks. Paying for medical bills without insurance is worse.

Do your homework and run a spreadsheet, it might actually be cheaper to get a lower-deductible plan than it will be to get a higher-deductible plan when you factor in premiums and that deductible.

I know everyone knows someone who has managed to train for 18 years and never got hurt but if you ask around, I'm sure you'll find someone who has been injured while training and either a) is really glad they had insurance or b) really wished they had insurance.

Training without insurance is a really bad idea. Hopefully, you'll never need to use it, but it's better to have it waiting in case you do than not to.

Advice from an amateur fighter

Talking to a guy who watches his buddy fight on the local/ammy MMA circuit, specifically on the uncertainty of their next opponent. The best advice he had to give was

Always assume that the other guy is going to be a lot bigger than you and the best toughest fighter you'll ever face.

Given all the confusion of fighting on a local/low-level circuit, what with no tape available on opponents (not that it's useful anyway because the most progress they'll make is at the beginning of their career), matches being changed or dropped the day of the event and more, there's really no other/smarter way to approach a fight like this.

Quit yer bellyachin'

by Mike

There was a great scene in the Krav Maga episode of Fight Quest where Jimmy gets floored by a Thai kick to the leg. He curses and growls as he tries to gather himself and get back on his feet, but the instructor says something to the effect of, "Nobody cares about your screaming. You need to get up and keep fighting."

Which is, in effect what the episode was about. And really, what much of your training is all about - keeping your cool when things aren't going your way.

What we can learn from Jimmy getting beat up

Obviously, Jimmy was frustrated - he'd taken a number of shots, he "knew" what to do, but his body just wasn't reacting the way he wanted it to. It's the hell of a place to be, but in the end, it's not about what you intend, it's what you accomplish.

Getting angry doesn't accomplish much. Unless you've got the ability to "Hulk out" (recall Chris Leben vs. Terry Martin), you're really only doing yourself a disservice. A couple months ago, Sifu Z delivered a great post-class pep talk. He said, "when you get frustrated, you're not mad at the other person or the situation, you're mad at yourself. You're frustrated because you're not as good as you thought you were."

Which is all well and good for when you analyze the night on your ride him, but what's one to do when you're in the middle of a ten-man kumite against a bunch of legitimate badasses who keep picking on your obvious handicap?

Exactly the opposite of what you want to be doing - instead of hoping someone stops the fight and everyone takes it easy on you because dammit you're trying, you need to do whatever you do to center yourself - take a step back and shake out your arms, do the hoppy-hoppy thing or touch your nose, then get right back into it.

Frustrating as it is to spar with the multi-time everything champ and get blasted with a jab that almost breaks your nose (even though he's going light) and then five more that you can't seem to stop even though you know they're coming, whining is the last thing you want to do.

Nobody likes a whiner

A couple weeks ago a bunch of us were getting ready to spar and waiting for the ring to open up. The boxing coach had a couple relatively new students in there sparring. One dude got popped and turned his back. The coach shouted, "don't turn your back."

Dude looked like he wanted to say something, but was too busy trying to work out of a corner. A couple seconds later, he got popped again and turned his back. The coach repeated his earlier command and this time got an answer.

"But he hit me in the nose."

Inadvertent as his reaction may have been, that guy's foreverafter going to be remembered as "the guy who was surprised that he got punched in the nose while boxing" by everyone watching.

What should he have said in that situation?

It's impossible for anyone but him to know what was going on in his mind or what it felt like to take those shots, but the correct answer is, "nothing." Or, if he felt like his health was in danger, he could have taken a knee, which is a suboptimal ending, but not something anyone would fault him for.

In the end though, it goes something like this

• Stress testing like Jimmy's mini-kumite, or me getting handled by a guy not even trying is an awesome opportunity to figure out how comfortable you are with how much you suck - except for the time you actually spend in the "middle" as it were - then it's the most embarrassing and frustrating few minutes of your life
  
  
• If you make it to the end, you've "won." If you can swallow your ego and quit in the middle, you've "won." Hell, you can still win if you spend your time complaining and later realize that you made a fool of yourself and work to correct it
  
  
• Quit yer bellyachin'
  

There is a flip side to this - namely the "I'm a warrior/es mi vida" mindset where it doesn't matter if you get beat up and crippled, the important thing is that you didn't quit. We'll examine this in a future article.

CC-licensed image from _KoAn_

MMA Workout 2/24

Theme

Catch everyone up who wasn't there last week. Hips, hips, hips.

Exercises

More balance ball madness, learning to keep your hips under, working cartwheel pass (I recently nailed a cartwheel pass from my knees against a very skilled player, so don't tell me it can't be done, even from standing)

More work with the Paulson pass

Due to injuries, we couldn't work guard passes on a person necessarily, but went with different passes on the grappling dummy

Technical work on thai-kicks and showing your junk, as well, as the proper way to block (shield and parry-by-opposition) with stuffing or moving away from kicks. Some full-speed drills to work on reaction time and technique.

Short session due to the aforementioned injured people and that we needed to put on our shoes and help out the Savateurs who are going to be competing in April. Exciting, because it looks like we'll be sending a good contingent to face the Belgians.

Basic Injury Prevention

Almost as a follow up to our last article about visible injuries, White Collar Jiu-Jitsu has five easy rules for injury avoidance 101.

Hazmat does a good job of describing some basic safety precautions you should be taking to eliminate or at least mitigate common sources of injury.

The only thing I'd add is, "dont' be stubborn, know when to tap."

Etiquette advice: once you put your mouthguard in, leave it in. Constantly taking your mouthguard out and putting it back in is disgusting - you may as well lick your training partners and the floor.

Also, wearing a mouthguard doesn't excuse you from swallowing. Don't drool all over your partners. Or the floor. You're not 6; have some pride.

MMA Workout 2/17/08

by Mike

We hold an MMA workout every Sunday at our gym. Usually, these are workouts to tie together what Eric and Jim have been working on with their specialty coaches and training specificly for upcoming fights.

We're going to record our workouts here. Normally each workout has a theme, whereby we work on a number of drills that accomplish the same thing in different areas. That is, if we're working on movement, like we spent most of Jim's training for his last fight on, we'll work circling both while striking, defending takedowns and escapes on the ground.

This week only had one student show up, which wasn't surprising considering bad weather, one guy coming off an injury and another taking a break after his fight. This session was a little more "so whadda you want to work on today" than they normally are.

Also, since we only had one student, we were able to cover a lot more ground without having to take time to swap partners, let both sides practice, etc.

Theme: Balance and keeping hips low. Maintaining balance while keeping the other guy off balance to set up for your offense.

Time: ~ 3 hours.

Warmup

Balance Ball drills to work keeping weight centered and work scrambles

Guard passes on grappling dummy

• Throw legs to overhand
  
• Throw legs to Paulson pass
  
• Throw legs to knee-on-belly
  
• Somersault pass

Transitions on grappling dummy

Kesa-Getame to cross body to knee-on-belly to mount to knee-on-belly to cross body to kesa-getame and back

Striking on grappling dummy

Mount, "crucifix," knee-on-belly

Grappling dummy drills for when you're lonely

• Clinch
  
• Striking to changing levels and takedown
  
• Throws
  
• Strength & Conditioning

Stuffing kicks and returning punches

• Drill
• Assaut a thème

Guard Passes

• Knee-in-the-ass
• Standing break to Lindland squat
• Standing break to cross body
• Bear walk

Defending the slam

Standup sparring

Finisher

• Jump squats/broad jump
  
• Bear crawl
  
• Shrimping

Quiet time and note-taking

Quick note for anyone competing

by Mike

If you're going to be competing at any level, one of the most important things you can do is to make sure that you have all of your own equipment. Gloves, shorts, mouthguard, cup, gauze & tape, headgear, no foul protector, shoes, whatever may be required.

You may find yourself in a situation where the promoter requires you to use specific equipment that they provide, but in all other situations, it's your responsibility to ensure that you have the necessary gear - don't rely on others to lend it to you and certainly don't assume that you'll find someone at the venue to lend you their gear.

That's all.

Review: Evolutionary Fitness

by Mike

www.ArthurDeVany.com

One-Liner

More science than an undergrad course, but simple and easy-to-apply principles make this a superb all-around diet/fitness system. May not be ideal for high-level athletes though.

Overview

The Evolutionary Fitness system encompasses both diet and exercise to work your body in a way that is consistent with it's evolutionary history. Like other Paleo diets, De Vany wants to eliminate modern foods (including grains, beans and dairy) and work out according to how a hunter-gatherer would have worked (short, intense bursts of activity).

The basics of the diet are pretty simple - eat nutritionally dense foods, stay away from grains, sugars and other foods that promote inflammation or have otherwise detrimental effects on the body and try to even out insulin spikes. A big sticking point for a lot of people will be the no supplements (De Vany does take an antioxidant supp).

On the exercise side, things are equally simple: short, intense workouts one to two times per week (both the day of the workout and the exercises in the workout should be randomized to a degree); intense work to limit oxidative stress and promote anabolic hormone release.

Easy enough, right?

In my personal experience, I went from heavy lifting and a diet pretty close to what was in the Grappler's Guide to Nutrition and hit a plateau at 195# (my goal was to get to 205# - I'd never been heavier than 195# in my life). From there, I injured my shoulder, stopped lifting and started eating in an EvFit manner (to be sure, I kept my normal class load at the gym). Within about six weeks, I had dropped about 10#, was noticeably leaner had more energy than before. Though I had stopped lifting, I had instructors notice the difference and ask what sort of lifting program I was working.

These four docs/posts from Art's blog will get you up to speed, after digesting (as it were), you can go through the rest of the Evolutionary Fitness posts for more background.

• The original Evolutionary Fitness essay (pdf file)
  
  
• Chapter One of the book - lays out some guidelines and background (pdf file)
  
  
• Sample workout
  
  
• "The Best Workout"
  

The Good

• Once you understand the basic principles, it really is easy to follow
  
  
• You'll become a much better cook, trying to work with essentially fewer ingredients
  
  
• The workouts are short, challenging and fun, even for people who don't like slinging iron
  
  
• I think this is the most comprehensive and useful diet/workout got all-round health. However, see the last point under "The Bad"
  
  
• Art's OK with drinking beer
  

The Bad

• I'm pretty sure the book is never coming out. Fortunately, aside from more science I don't know what else he's going to put in there.
  
  
• One big turnoff that's going to get to people is the "your body knows what it wants"/"do what you feel is right." This leads to the standard comeback, "if you knew what your body needed, you wouldn't be such a fatass in the first place." I can see this to a degree, but even in a rigidly monitored diet, there's still a lot of trial-and-error, so I'm not sure that there's a problem past a given diet guru's own biases. If keeping a journal helps you, keep a journal. If you don't have the discipline to stick to a diet of any regimentation, keeping a journal or not won't matter.
  
  
• No deadlifts? No bicep curls? No bench press? DeVany uses machines on occasion? Don't worry, it's OK, but these may be reasons for some to pass this workout by.
  
  
• This diet is for optimizing the human body, not sport-specific training. As such, I don't know that it's the best plan for martial artists competing at high (or even intermediate) levels of competition - Grappling/MMA requires you to be in some very strange positions, positions that DeVany wouldn't suggest to anyone (those with a high amount of shear forces on the spine). Neglecting to train those is asking for injury.
  
  Also, the daily, intense practice required, even for just skills training, is phenomenal and a full-time job for many pro fighters. This is vastly different than the "1-2 workouts a week, do something fun in between" that DeVany ultimate proposes.
  
  Then, there's the issue of supplements which are almost necessary to aid in recovery (if nothing else) for most athletes.
  
  That's not even getting into the diet and the difficulty of trying to stuff all those calories and macronutrients into not-six-meals-a-day.
  

Recommendation

Despite falling off of the EvFit way due to laziness, I was really happy with my energy levels and etc. while on it. Art's not a big fan of martial arts (from the perspective of keeping everything in line with what it's supposed to do, not necessarily what you can do with it), or at least considers it suboptimal, the training and diet methodologies make the most sense to me of anything I've read and combined with better results from this, I'm definitely a fan and recommend giving it a try if you're looking for something new. Just be sure to give yourself enough time to make sure you've got it and can gauge the results.

Updated 2/16/08 - totally forgot about the beer thing