Setting up Sweeps and Functional Fitness

This is the eighth of my client’s 10 part stand-up grappling course for martial arts cross training. I am very impressed with the level of his progress. Grappling is not always the easiest area to teach an individual when they are not regularly training with other grapplers. Many grapplers suffer in a way not experienced by the majority of strike-based martial artists in the respect that solo training drills are readily explored in the mainstream. However, thanks to a renaissance in grappling cross-training since the emergence of Mixed Martial Arts a lot more attention has been given to movement and specific behaviour building exercises. I have been able to send my client home with a series of simple solo exercises that have helped him training the right muscles groups and reinforce good grappling behaviours. I have always held that being constantly aware of what you are training ensure good progress. A fighter should always do his best not to just go through the motions and visualize the purpose of his actions. This ranges from actively engaging the correct muscle groups and/or force vectors being addressed in a conditioning exercise to having a fight synopsis in his head when he shadow boxes. This type of functional fitness, combined with the intensive nature of one-on-one coaching, I am happy to say has clearly benefitted this particular client.

We began with a revision of headlock takedowns, cross-buttocks throws, standard hip throws, shoulder throws, Jiu Jitsu double-leg takedowns, spearing double-leg takedowns, hip throw single leg takedowns and leg-trap single leg takedowns. These were done as walking entries and then into the actual throws. Before layering sweeping throws, we did some grip fighting sparring. Here I demonstrated the importance of destabilizing an opponent and when to attack with a sweep. We then worked through the seesaw motion needed to set up for a foot sweep. This followed by the quarter nelson into a pin. The principle worked off the shoulder locks covered in the previous lesson and touched upon ground work from a wrestling perspective.

Training took place in the new gym location kindly loaned by one of my other regular clients and we took advantage of the combat conditioning equipment made available at the end of the session. We covered the following exercises: Log Twirls – Forces the fighter to not rely on his grip, to keep a firm upright posture and constant arm movement. Sprawl/Deadlift – Works the combined motion of defending a takedown with lifting from a back-hold and overloads the muscles required to regain a footing after defending a lowline takedown. Tyre Flip – This variation on the deadlift engages all the right muscles required for shooting takedowns. Resistance BandThrow Entries – Here the fighter can use the bands to create resistance against the motion of throwing or taking an opponent down. Relevant ArticlesFunctional Fitness (Hierarchy of Training Series)