05.08.09 MMA victories plus working all ranges (Diary Entry)

Aug 6th, 2009 by Jamie Clubb

: Image via Wikipedia

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Before I begin this week’s entry I would just like to offer huge congratulations to CCMA senior student, Roger Marshall, who fought two full contact MMA bouts on 1^st August in Telford and won both. Roger is a regular student at CCMA who originally joined to begin competing in MMA. Both his wins came via submission. Well done, Roj, you are an inspiration to the whole club.

Juniors

Tonight we put all three ranges together. First we covered individually and then we put together a simple combination that involved all three.

After a specific warm-up, working all ranges, we went straight into some stand-up work. This came in the form of proactive focus movement, which was done with full sparring kits on. They then practiced high, mid and low line takedowns before moving on some ground drills. They covered pins and arm-bars. Next I introduced them to the three range combination – strikes into a takedown and then a ground combination.

The class finished with a few rounds of sparring. We also discussed the severity of submission holds. Grappling is a very natural animal and therefore human activity. It is more common with children, who regularly wrestle with their friends and siblings, and can be relatively safe. However, submission holds can cause serious injuries so it is important that all holds are done responsibly – in a training environment or in a real-life fighting situation. I believe children can be empowered to take on board this type of responsibility, so long as it is coached correctly and the dangers pointed out.

Topic of the week: Engineering. As always, my students tried to test me on a single school subject and how it relates to martial arts training. Engineering is a subject that my friend and fellow martial arts coach Tony Terranova regularly compares to martial arts training. He is also a professional engineer and qualified to comment on both these subjects. It all comes back to basic physics. Engineering relates to mechanics and good martial arts technique is all about good body mechanics. Engineering is also all about applying science and mathematics to structures. Once again, martial arts rely on sound structures in order create good techniques.

Seniors

After some functional fitness training, we moved back to the root for CCMA. This came in the form of two S1 vs. S2 drills. The first was the standard striker versus grappler, and the second began with the S2 holding the S1 against a wall. These drills are great for quarrying basic and natural techniques. The S1 student learns how to anti-grapple, how to strike when being grappled and is given the firm objective to keep making distance. This lends itself well to both self defence and MMA. S1 is a simple and desirable option that we ultimately should strive for. The S2 student learns the contingency strategy, how to grapple a strike as well as the predator mindset of closing the distance. This last point helps put the student in the mind of the real-life human predator.

The normal CCMA procedure is then to take what the individuals worked best for them and to cultivate them through a series of more and more specific drills, training accuracy, power and speed. However, this week we looked at training ranges in transition through our proactive movement drills that were explained in last week’s diary entry. The flash pad nature of drills – targets appear and you decide on the shape of technique rather than being told what to do – is still in line with the intuitive weapon selection method encouraged in the S1 vs. S2 pressure drills.

We have discussed groundwork a lot of the previous few weeks and several students have expressed interest in working on this area specifically. Some just want to gain more experience whereas others wish to learn some more submissions. I began with asymmetrical ground fighting and then we went through how to transition through pins. This was followed by basic escapes, which are all based on the simple tactic of bridging and snaking.