Class notes: standing grappling sparring.

Warmed up with pummeling.

Then looked at the inner forearm choke that Gastelum used in UFC 180 against Ellenberger

We looked at this from mainly a seated view (front to his back), we played briefly with it standing so mainly sitting. The new bit of learning for me was about using the forearm to apply the choke, the hands were the fulcrum and you pull the elbow back to your shoulder to close it off. Tight, painful and generally horrible. I liked it also as you do not need to only go for the bicep and forearm suppression with the chin at the elbow fold. This gives you other options. In playing around it helped if the head was folded forward over the arm as this gave the choke great initial tightness.

The rest of the session was standing grappling sparring. After each round we sat down as a group and spoke about 1 thing our partner did well and something they need to think about next round. This is something I use frequently in my class as a teacher as articulating your learning and that of another will make the learning deeper, therefore staying in the memory longer.



Yet again, a really good honest session.

MMa ground syllabus: centre control (MOUNT)

CENTRE CONTROL:

Centre control detail: soles of the feet touching right near his arse, spine long and slightly concave, head higher than his, arms out wide as if free falling and just off the floor. This will put tremendous pressure on his torso. Feet are in tight as this prevents him from really being able to use them to escape the position. Hands out wide to counter any bridging he attempts. Chest relaxed and pressing down on his face. The hands and forearms can be used to re-centre his head under your chest.

Achieving centre control from side control: Establish strong control of his torso and head. Raise the far shoulder of the ground and pass with the following methods.
• Shoot the shin on to belly and pass.
• Passing the leg over dynamically (high arc).
• If they defend the pass by crossing the leg at the knees, pull on the blade of the foot. This should start him trying to defend a lower limb submission therefore he will want to pull the foot away. As you let go the foot will open a nice gap to enable the pass.

Upward and downward shoulder rotation: (DWL) from centre control then transitioning into side control to complete the submission.
From centre control if his arms come high to the head then attack with upward shoulder rotation, if he looks to control your posture with under hooks then look for the downward shoulder rotation. The key point of learning for me tonight was the angle of the arm under. I discovered by practise and observation that it needs to be nearer the elbow than the shoulder for tight and effective results.

Shin choke: pass the shin onto his neck, weight towards the foot or you will get rolled. This one finishes quickly. It looks like a simplified gogoplata from mount.

Triangle: sitting in a nice a high mount offering attack to the head. He should cover up this giving you the chance to gain wrist control, push it to his chest as you step over put the shin behind his neck. Fall to the side as you close the triangle

Leg over sit on arm. Essentially you are sitting on the shoulder joint. This was my first experience of this position. This does require lower body dexterity as you need to essentially triangle his arm. Take a tricep control keeping the arm nice and tight. From this position we then learned a series of submissions.

Fall into an inner leg suppression. It is important to get it in very quick as if you don't they will escape or pass. Secondly arm extension. Thirdly wrist compression.

Calf compression: Heel to heel under their legs, feed one instep over their thigh, manipulate the arm to extend above their head to give them extra things to think about. Turn towards your feet and ensure your shin in tight in behind their knee and calf. Look to grab the foot and pull towards yourself. Your shin bone will compress the back quarter side of their calf causing plenty of distress. Key is keeping weight on them throughout the transition to the leg to avoid escape.

Bicep compression: Feed an arm across his neck and put your weight on this. Already this is an unpleasant feeling from the bottom position. Secure your elbows on the floor either side of his head, palms on the mat too. Same side as arm across, feed your arm through the armpit on to the side of his face so that your palm is on his ear. Now move your elbow back onto his ribs to apply pressure to the bicep. Now grip palm to palm and turn the hands to the sky to finish the compression. If not working you can put the top hand on top of his forearm to cinch it in even tighter.

Calf suppression from sitting centre control: Sitting on his belly turn towards his legs and drive the forearm behind on of his knees. Then use your other side leg to trap your arm in position. Then use your other leg to complete the hold. It looks like a suppression (triangle) of your own arm and his leg. Fall to your shoulder and turn the forearm towards the soft tissue of the calf.

INVERTED CENTRE CONTROL:

Submission from north south: Instead of taking the inner forearm head control (guillotine) you assume a reverse version and insert a fist suppression to the front of throat for a painful and swift submission.
Elbow extension from the same position.

MMA ground syllabus: back control

BACK CONTROL:

Chest spins with hooks in: keeping pressure just between their shoulder blades as spinning and thus transitioning from top to side to centre back control. Hands kept off the floor until in centre back control. By sitting up the hooks slide in easier than with the chest down. It does need to be swift as pressure needs to be applied to the back

Side back control ankle pick and hook in: From here with back pressure applied control the far side arm and pick up his far side ankle, nice and high. Step over whilst keeping hold you momentarily trap your own arm. Strip it out as the hook makes contact.

Side back control arm extension roll: a tricky sweep and submission needing a lot of commitment. Essentially you roll under his chest pulling him on top of you as you pass your leg over his head and he lands in a very deep arm extension. A tricky sub to pull of successfully but one that is most fun to practise.

Calf choke from back control: pass the lower leg around the neck and secure with the other hand, fold the foot onto his shoulder to secure the position. Lean forward as if rolling over his head. This will cause tremendous strain on the front and back of the neck and when released coughing and gagging might occur.

Ankles crossed into lower calf compression: This requires some manipulation of his legs to get them in the right position. Crossing the ankles is a no no.

Forearm and bicep suppression (the lion killer)

From side back control look to get to centre back control. Put the near side leg in first and keep underhooks at the arm pit. When moved in to centre back control keep the toes pointing straight to avoid crushing when flattening him out. Keep the weight of your chest between his shoulder blades as opposed to the base of the back. Take the leg out back to the starting position, do a chest spin to the other side of his body and repeat.

Flattening out. Drive the hips towards his head and keep hands of the matt to give more pressure through his back. If he tucks the arms under to defend, take wrist control and pull towards his hip and flatten his shoulder to the matt.

INVERT BACK CONTROL SUBMISSION:

inner forearm and bicep suppression

elbow extension

Inner forearm choke from inverted centre back control(x2). As he defends by turning the face away from the bicep he is now setting himself up and thus asking politely to be choked. Pull the suppressing arm out a touch to get the forearm on his throat. Close for a quick and friggin horrid choke. The variation on this was taking the palm to palm, pressure driving with own head towards his and use more strength to pull the forearm across the old windpipe.

Arm bar: Get the head away from his by pushing away on his head to get the legs over his chest. Now sit up to ensure your hips are tight to his shoulder joint. Cross the ankles, keep the knees squeezing together and wrap the arm. As you lie back keep the ram close to your chest. When the arm is extended push your heels and knees down. This will be very hard as each of those actions will counter the other. This move actually does require an awful lot of presence of mind in all these areas of your body. Now raise the hips to finish. Doing these things with the legs means that the arm is being extended and stretched in the forearm, horribly before the elbow breaks.

MMA striking syllabus

I have gone back through my MMA blog and broken all the learning down into sections. I trained MMA for 18 months, 2 sessions per week. This is not chronological, simply listing. Hopefully there are no duplications.

Here is the striking section:

STRIKING:

Prone heavy bag striking working from all the grounded positions possible.

Kicking: We moved into kicking only and straight away the range becomes greater for obvious reasons. I tried to work the concept from last week of using the round kick to put the body in what the opponent should perceive a s a weak position then launch attacks from there.

Landed round kick:
• Outward strike (turn the lead foot to begin the motion, follow with the hips and then the arm)
• Back elbow (shift weight from the rear to front foot as you thrust the elbow strike to the face)
• Back kick (lean the head away, pick the knee up right up to the collar bone and extend out with the strike)
• Spinning back strike

Faking the low kick (use the eyes to look down too) as you throw the rear hand to the head.

Long range striking: Round kicks to the thigh, checking round kicks; if they continue to check then attack the rear standing leg; Use footwork to evade out of range as well as to step into the kick. Both mean you don't get hit where the kick is at it's most effective and powerful;

Attacking with the rear hand when the kick comes in.

Round kick then front kick drill. Only allowed to defend with footwork. Round kicks attacking the upper legs and front kicks at the torso.

Movement away using feet no hands: The point is Lee is showing us why moving back in straight lines is rubbish for so many reasons. When you are not allowed to defend with your hands the feet certainly work much, much harder.

Head movement = flat feet so go for the level change: At this point Lee made reference to the fact that if an opponent is moving lots, his head is still on his shoulders and if the head is bobbing and weaving continually then the feet will generally be more planted.

Low hands v walking down striker: to circle away from someone walking you down with quite wild punches and your hands are down.

Ridge hand to thigh

Double punch

Single leg shot spinning elbow or high reverse elbow

Mirror striking shadow boxing with specifics inserted: body shots, head shots, knees and elbows, sprawls, push ups, double knee whilst maintaining.

Footwork round kick drill: shin pads on and round kicking delight to our partners legs. No checking, blocking just evasive footwork combined with eyes up and tidy attack position hands.

Hitting the rear side and countering with 1-2: This drill lasted for several rounds. Attacker had to attack the rear side of the opponent and the defenders job was to counter attack with a 1 – 2.

Footwork for evasion no head movement: One partner attacks with anything and the defender needs to simply evade by using footwork and keeping a disciplined guard. Head movement was also prohibited.

3 for 3, 2 for 2, 1 for 1: As it says on the tin. Each throws said amount of strikes and the idea is to limit the time between defending and attacking.

Try to throw first attack as they finish their final attack. The last drill (1 for 1) was essentially fighting in the proverbial phone booth

Bag striking whilst being grappled Tenacity drill In the fog of war.

1-2-1-2-6 (6 is right body hook)

1-2-low lead round kick-2

1-2-lead uppercut-2

1-spinning back fist-4-neck clinch to knee

Jab – jab – uppercut

Jab – jab – uppercut – rear knee

Jab – jab – uppercut – rear knee – front elbow and out

Jab - Jab - Rear cross – knee

Jab - jab- rear hook - round kick

Jab - jab - rear hook - spinning Backfist

Jab - jab - rear hook - round kick - spinning backfist

Head movement from partner feeding straight punches. Simply getting used to integrate the torso.

Head on belly from striking: A challenge of getting your face on their belly in boxing sparring. When done they need to sprawl as a punishment.