Class notes: rev the wrist

3 drill:

No energy just feeling the shapes.
Change detail - pull the lap to stop him getting the hand out to defend. Do not make the elbow ornamental, it needs to travel back whilst the forearm pulls. Do not stop the elbow as you will loose a lot of controlling energy. Crash in with the backfist to put the pressure on his defence and have him on the back foot.
Bong sau reminders - shape and where the pressure release valves are. Martin also discussed the concept of where your hands should not be in 3 drill or clinch - they need to be at least a thumb to index finger span away from your chest.
Absorb in defence and release in attacking the energy

Take down from the change - anti rev the wrist and pull into your side, other arm, put the armpit over the top of his arm. Weight down putting pulling him to where his feet are not. Elbow to the sky and replace with the forearm into the back of his upper arm.
Fold the arm for the chicken wing - head turn to stand him up, slide down the arm to DWL then release to shoulder control. Martin showed it all as a lock flow.

DWL from the front and on the ground.

Front: (off the change in the 3 drill) Upward shoulder rotation. Do not let the grip loosen on him. Keep it tight and do not let the wrists bend, keep them straight or even a little anti revved as you punch the hip and elbow through quickly for the shoulder rotation.

Ground: reach over and around to get the fingers on the meat of thumb. Pin the hand, keep the 90 degree angle and go for the DWL from side control. Get his elbow on to his hip to close off the DWL.

I have searched and searched but can't find an image of how Martin showed the DWL on the ground. See if you can spot what i am talking about and notice our modification. For what it is worth I have 4 years of grappling experience and not been shown this variation. It is the most painful variant that I have experienced.

Here is a lovely image showing the shoulder control, again similar to our but with slight variations. I just think it is great to see old photos of the same stuff we are doing today.

Guillotine:
Punch the arm through deep, magic bones up, push the shoulder away, squeeze the elbows together.

Again the type we did last night is hard to find on the internet. Here is a similar variation; the shoulder is being pushed. Most images show hands/wrists clasped. Notice that the guy in the image is not yet using his magic bones although is looks tight as anything!

Boxing sparring drills:
Jab and counter jab
Jab counter jab followed by the occasional left hook.
Jab countered with a jab and cross or jab and lead hook. Defender needs to use correct small and tight motions to defend. Nothing big.
One attacking with punches, other defend with motions, parrys, blocks and grappling in standing.

Class notes: Get your shirts off

We started off by discussing clothing in a street fight. In Martin's experience, getting rid of at least the coat if of great importance. If they are bigger and longer they can really mess up your movement potential and base. Martin also discovered that the classic wing chun punch does not work against this type of attack as your angles and range are all jammed. He said it took him 3 failed wing chun punches before he realised to turn the shoulders and start throwing right crosses.

Getting your shirt off: So don't be shy about bravado as this will give him nothing to hold onto. Especially the coat. It is almost one of those things that seems so obvious yet never taught or spoken about. This was the first time I had ever heard of going bare chested as a viable strategy. Last night when I got home I began to watch street fight videos on youtube. Most of them are clips of brutal KOs but when the scuffle happens, so does lots of grabbing. So it makes perfect sense to not give them that option.

Fighting with grips:
So what do we need to do if he does have hands on us?
Firstly, try to feel the strength of the grip as he can't have a tight grip and throw heavy shots with the other hand. This is mechanically very hard for the body to work in opposition like this. Conversely, if he has a loose grip then assume that heavy shots will be coming your way.

Hand under the knuckles: Get under the of fingers of the hand that is on you and bend the wrist with your free hand. We looked at going into DWL and striking with the elbow.

Striking from a gripped situation: chin down and feel.Have your palm on his chest as this will give you a gauge of his distance and movement. Hit on the counter by coming under or over the grabbing arm.

Grabbing at the centre: pull the wrist into and on your chest so that the back of his hand will be against your chest with fingers pointing up. You other hand will be controlling the head or neck in a clinch.

Here are a few fun clips of hitting and holding at the same time. Whilst our situation might end up looking like this, I do doubt it as

Hockey fight



A classic between Don Frye and Takayama



3 drill: on their chop forward, pull on the elbow along its powerline and step into head and hip control. Keep the head on the back of his scapular and weight on him.
From here backfist to his face, he covers, you snake the arm over the back of the neck for the wrist to elbow lever. Head on his ribs and throw knees to the face. Again keep heavy pressure on him, let him carry your weight whilst worrying about what is happening to him.

Striking on the break: As he starts to escape, which he inevitably will, and fight for space you need to decide when it is time to let him up and attack. It is too late when he has escaped as he will be better set to attack. As you let him out charge with HQ footwork and throw hands. This will be tremendously difficult psychologically for him because he is under constant pressure from your grappling then striking attacks. Hopefully someone under this pressure is reacting instead of pro-acting.

Breaking the hands risk: A very real fear and concern of mine is my little boy hands and inability to land sustained blows to the head of an opponent. Martin did say that there is a good chance the hands will break when hitting skull and facial bones, regardless of conditioning or hand size.

Even the former heavyweight champ of the world breaks his hands in a street fight:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Tyson_vs._Mitch_Green

Martin said that the option is heel of the palm or punching the jaw. Jaw is the fist target. Knuckles to skull will hurt you more than his head.

Pummeling then using the 4 attacks - DWL, head and arm, arm drag, neck and shoulder clinch.

Thai clinch - defend - pull in for head and hip control

Lots of pummelling with everyone. Turning and extending to find the gap in the pummell. Rotate around the spinal axis.

Boxing sparring rounds and incremental development:
Jab catch the ball jab counter

Jabs to the body only, both sides

Throwing the punches and the other simply moves and defends but always thinking about returning fire

Attack with any punches and only defend with movement and the jab

Striking to clinch vs anti grapple and counter striking.

Really loving the sparring and how it is developing. The concept of the protective shell and being defensively minded, accurate in your movement and timing. I feel so more confident and precise since my time in MMA. All the tools I learned in that system are being refined and improved. In addition we are learning a lot more strategy and i find this helps m too. Thinking about strategy prevents me from feeling like a fish out of water. I am interested to see how the sparring will develop in terms of it becoming incrementally 'harder' and lesson to be learned in there.

On a final note, I passed on some wisdom from the class last week to my own students (8/9 years olds). We are currently getting ready for our class assembly and during practise this week I told how important it is to practise really well rather than hoping it will ok on the day. Martin mentionned this last week; in training we should always be trying to perfect our movements as that is what we are there for. Should we need this stuff, how effective can we be if our practise has been poor?

Hope you enjoyed the cartoon violence in the YouTube clips!

Class notes: DWL, arm drags and jabs

Technical
3 drill and range. Initially we quickly looked at the chin position and where it should be. Depending on the range is important and range was the general theme for all aspects of training tonight.
Using the feet to keep the range. Ayyaz is very good at getting the hit through the centre and Martin showed how using the feet will keep you out of range of this strike. Of course you need the presence of mind to feel the energy from the attack as well.
Pressure from the back fist and deciding where the pressure is; throw the hands down and use the hook with the holding hand. We then considered how to use inside or outside gate lap against the pressure being given.
Using the backfist as a way to get deep to look for some head and arm control. this was the first time that I had seen the 3 drill in context and application. So often you will find yourself fighting for hand positions in the clinch and grappling so now it is time to look for those opportunities to apply this learning.


Grappling
Hand on hip - DWL
Hand on same side shoulder - arm drag
Hand on opposite shoulder - head and arm
Thai clinch defence - head pull and shoulder butt to break their grip. 3 attacks from this grip break - head and arm choke, DWL, arm hug to DWL

Ground fighting - the head and arm using the forearm bones attacking the defensive turtle.

Striking
Range for the jab: Step in to deep and you will get Dugan'd

Jab and counter jab drill
Just out of range and in range jabs to get you used to feeling the difference in a few centimetres.
Out of range punches against the counter puncher. Martin gave a quick demo showing how that punches that land just out of range still need to moved against as you can't predict if the next one or combo is going to land. This keeps you moving and not mentally or physically getting a chance to settle into your own rhythm.

Jab x 3 they respond with jab and cross, this gives a chance to practise getting behind the wall with your roll. On your third jab use a pak sau to draw the punch (their right cross) in along the power line, then chop and follow up immediately with the right cross

Jab x3 then right hand but moving away from the right hand so that when he has to throw it he is punching across himself. I always used to think that fighters were doing this to get away from the power punch. Now I know that this is setting them up for your attacks. When he throws the right across himself you can simultaneous slip left parry and uppercut. You are then in range to blast with you punches.

Homework:
3 drill visualisation
Shoulders back in the sockets in all you do
5 mins footwork a day

Class notes: standing neck crank plus give and take a shot

Firstly it was great to see more newer faces tonight and old ones. The class felt busier and had a real energetic buzz to it. I will also apologise to the newer members of the class for not blogging about what you guys did. Hopefully the stuff below will become relevant to you very soon and not seem that new as you have already ready about it...


The pummel: addition of detail from previous blog entries, when turning the shoulders for the underhook there is a slight pushing motion with the upper arm and shoulder. This subtle motion adds to moving the partner and affecting his balance. The rear arm is also activated so that the lat muscle is helping to secure his underhook and give it no space to move around.

Half Thai clinch: This was covered a few sessions ago but new details worth mentioning is that as he goes for his underhook you take the back of the head. You still have the underhook on the other side so clasping the shoulder and pivoting with help to to control him. I think we only looked at pivoting one way and that was towards half Thai clinch side.

Full Thai clinch: don't let go of the contact to get it. Steps of the ladder. Swim your underhook out to get full clinch.

Arm drag: Trace the arm back, punch the hips and no matter what his size grab around at the hip bone. Any further and he can look for the DWL.

DWL: Trace the arm back, rev the wrist and reach over his arm, maybe catching a naughty elbow on his nose on the way over...

This is what can happen to the elbow on the ground if you chose not to tap when in a deep DWL:





Standing neck crank and the magic bones. If he goes low with the Thai clinch or head control you can look for this which at first glance is a guillotine. In fact it is a bloody horrendous neck crank.
His head needs to be at your ribs just under the pec muscle and you want the hairline at the forehead to be on you. Slide your forearm along his jaw bone using the key bones of the arm, the 3-4 inches of ulnar and radius bone from the wrist crease, then go palm to palm. This driving of the forearm will cause the head to turn, as if he is looking across the front of your torso. As you push your hips forward pull the radius bone towards you causing both big pain in the jam but tremendous pressure on the neck.



This is a nice technique to use if you have gone for the choke and he has worked his head out. Even though we were not doing it hard, my neck is still not 'right' almost 3 hours later. If this was done in the heat of combat it really would mess up someone's neck for a long time.

3 Drill with a low and deep stance using any attacks that we remembered. I worked with Dave, Ayyaz and Trist. All felt very different in their feel and attacks. Ayyaz kept nailing me with the throat attack through the centre off the back fist. Trist kept getting deep chops in and Dave was most excellent at controlling my elbows. I found it hard to stay low and deep and my tendency was to raise up with the attacks which straightened the legs, plus it is more taxing on the legs to stay low.

Give and take a shot drill with 2 extra attacks and being balanced in all points of the punching phases.
As last week, left head hook, right head hook, left body shot, right body shot. Notes on these, specifically the body shots - keep the hands up when turning into them to prep the uppercut counter. Keep the hands up.
The extra 2 shots and counters were after the right body shot and he has countered with an uppercut, drop the right shoulder and attack with a left uppercut. He blocks (catching the ball left) and throws a right cross. You roll the shot and drop the left shoulder and attack with a right uppercut. He blocks with his right hand (catching) and attacks with a left hook to the head. You duck under and come up on the outside of his left arm.

Footwork - the 3 basic motions with punches and looking to get fluid and balanced in our motions. 1: Step out and pivot away. 2: step out turn the hips and move perpendicular, 3: retreating in a curve with feet that in my mind were making the noise da-da-da-da-da

Jab and counter jab drill. Range, range, range. Do not step into range and have a jab that lands with a bent arm and you in range for him to attack and not needing to step forward. Tonight the next phase of the jab was throwing with forward footwork but then getting back out of range when you bring the arm back to the protective shell. Don't stay there.

The catch them every time right hand. Jab, jab and regular right hand then every so often step out to the left and commit to what looks like a left hook. Circling under extend the right hand to land. Even though I knew what was coming, it vexed me every time. This was one of those one time only tricks so hopefully no one will read and remember this...

The slight edge and the percentage of messy and working. It is better to train well and with precision so that when we actually spar and fight it will be messy. However if we have trained the techniques well then when it gets messy we have a higher percentage of being successful than if we learn poorly. Poor learning will always equal poor execution.

Inside and outside gate pak sau against the jabs. An elusive boxing drill. I did not get a chance to do this other than in the air. The partner throw jabs and you stay alive with footwork. Martin analogised by saying his glove has dog shit on it and you do not want that glove to touch you. So using alive footwork and the inside and outside gate pak sau you can practise being out of the shitty glove range.