Introducing Atlas Stones for Clinch (diary entry)

  07.01.15 Tonight’s lesson was geared towards lower body strength development. My client focused on the clinch range and also broke his current heaviest dead lift record. He is well and truly back on track to regaining his former strength and fitness, but this time with a new set of martial arts skills to boot. Despite being older and having suffered various injuries and a chest infection that has left some scarring, I am confident that I can get my client to at least match his best level of physical condition if he continues with his current attitude. We warmed up with some standard Indian wrestling exercises – Indian press-ups and Indian squats. I also brought in some dynamic leg stretches because, along with the Indian press-up, they comprise the best warm-ups for dead-lifts I have seen. This was followed with some neck wrestling, under hook pummelling and arm-drag/double leg takedown combination drills. We then did some takedown entries. These consisted of the major hip throw and the shoulder throw.   We then focused on some lower body strength exercises. These began with a standard dead lift. However, we warmed up with some Romanian deadlifts. We then moved up the weights and my client shifted 10kg on top of his maximum weight lift. I am very confident this is all a mental barrier that we can easily overcome steadily over the next few weeks and he can lift a lot heavier. We don’t have a squat rack in this particular gym, but will have soon. So, therefore, we couldn’t tackle the back squat, which I find you can load the maximum weight for squats. We made up for this by doing Zercher squats. They’re a great compound exercise for grapplers anyway and bring in extra work for the arms as well. Finally we tackled the Atlas Stones for muscular endurance. I cannot express to you what a great piece of kit this is for grappling development. The stone, being smooth, makes it virtually impossible to get any sort of purchase, taking the grip side of training out of the equation. The athlete is forced to rely on whole muscular strength in order to wield these objects. A common piece of equipment found in “strongman” contests, the Atlas Stone has a clear functional place in grappling conditioning. The user has to recruit strength from a stable and active lower base, retain a strong core and engage the back muscles with the shoulder muscles. These are all requirements found when attacking and defending in a wrestling contest. The clinch range, in particular, can gain a lot of raw useable strength from the various ways these stones can be moved about. Strongman exercises have become popular with MMA fighters who have moved out of the shadow of a lot of bodybuilding training and are attracted to the apparent extreme functionality that seems a part and parcel of this sport. However, it is easy to run into the same trap as kettlebell users. You can become absorbed in the exercises for their own sake and forget the purpose of your training. “Fighters Only” ran an article in 2011 that put forward the opinion that several strongman exercises were not superior to their mainstream gym equivalents as far as MMA conditioning was concerned.   We began with a basic anti-grappling/takedown defence strength conditioning exercise. It starts with both knees on the ground and the lifter rolls the stone into them. Hugging the object, the lifter then rises to one knee and lifts the stone onto their shoulder and stands up. The stone is then switched to the opposite shoulder in one smooth motion and the action is reversed on the opposite side. The original lift is repeated on this same side and switched back to the original side smoothly when completed. The stone should be travelling along a continuous inverted “U” path, as the lifter rises and kneels. The lesson finished with a series of solo stretches to the upper and lower body, many of which resembled the actions trained tonight.