Off the Wall Part 1 (diary entry)

The fourth lesson in CCMA’s course in MMA for martial artscross-training revised the three ranges of stand-up, clinch and ground fighting (top and guard positions). We then focused on restrictive training and standing reversals with a focus towards fighting off the wall. My client then employed some freestyle combination work off the wall. We emphasized the 45 degree footwork again, in order to access escaping the cornered position. Unlike when one fights in a ring, the cage offers little absorption when you are receiving stand-up strikes. Therefore, a cornered fighter is advised to stay there for very long. We then looked at it from the person pressing the attack’s point of view before moving onto clinch. Clinch formed the main area of learning in tonight’s lesson. The grappling needed to fight off a wall requires different tactics to a person fighting from the ground in the same position. You can tie your pressing opponent up to buy time or tire him out, but your main focus should be on trying to turn him. The person pressing will be doing his best keep his weight spread evenly as he inflicts strike. Therefore, defensive movement from the person against the cage is vital. He needs to work to subtle shifts in weight distribution, leveraging in the direction where the attacker is pressing most in order to unbalance him and reverse the movement. This should be an explosive move and it requires good timing to execute effectively, resulting in the opponent up against the cage wall.

In addition to drilling the tactics off and on the wall, I brought in some functional fitness exercises. We lifted a large medicine ball from the ground to perform a side chop or tornado against the wall. The lift at the beginning encourages the fighter to push up from the ground, getting under an opponent in order to attain better leverage for the twisting motion.  Side chops and tornados work well with car tyres. For added resistance it better to go with gravity and perform the action from your back. Here we used a small Atlas stone. Another good exercise to work the torqueing of the oblique muscles is the odd-ended barbell hook. Footage of CCMA students performing clinch fighting from a cornered position. This was shot at our workshop at The Martial Arts Show back in 2010, where the cage was improvised using crowd barriers!

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