3 components of good standup fighting / Don't eat the sand

There was an expression going around at the audio engineering school I attended that was sort of a nice way of saying "Don't be an idiot!" ; the expression was "Don't eat the sand!" You know when you are sitting there in an exam, scratching your head, trying to come up with the answer: then you realize the answer is right there in the question? Remember when you used to play in the sand box at the park and your mama would yell out "Don't eat the sand!" Well, both of those scenarios are similar.
Most of the time we over think things that would otherwise be simple and put unnecessary pressure on our selves. I had a student once tell me another expression - "Don't try to reinvent the wheel man!" He was referring to how I would get stressed out about trying to come up with brilliant new techniques to dazzle the students and not trusting my already comprehensive repertoire to satisfy their quests for knowledge. In my ongoing search for better training, diets, and mental and athletic performance enhancements I sometimes over think things. 
I have seen so many fights where one of the combatants is throwing bombs and combinations and rarely landing a shot.
I have also seen amazing talented fighters using minimal effort but connecting with every blow. A great example is a brilliant fighter from Leone Italy by the name of Giorgio Petrosyan. If you watch video of his fights you will see how he gets his opponents to charge in and how he perfectly sets up his counters. It is not magic, this is the result of hours of intelligent training and thoughtful practice.



At Carlson Gracie MMA in Maple Ridge British Columbia we are very strict with the process of training a fighter and learning new techniques. I often get asked to teach spinning flying kicks and other fancy moves but these fundamental building blocks of stand-up fighting are crucial and without a strong foundation, you can not build the top floor! 

Three components of good standup:
1. Timing
2. Distance
3. Accuracy

1.
When it comes to timing there is only one way to train and that is with a partner. When your partner throws a punch, for example, you parry and counter with your kick or punch. This takes hours of training with partners to develop your reflexes but staying strict with your technique and slowly but gradually increasing your speed will get you amazing results in a short time.
I FEEL A STORY COMING ON!
I recall one student who had been training his basic head movement and it saved his eye or maybe even his life. He was at a pub and as he walked outside to head home, he witnessed a fight taking place in the parking lot. Two guys were laying a beating on a smaller guy and my student, being a good Samaritan, tried to break it up. He yelled "Hey, come on guys you're going to hurt him!" and as he stepped toward the group, one of the guys pulled a knife and threw it right at my student's head! He slipped to the right and the knife cut his head along the temple but missed the eye. The point is that, through hours of drilling you can create new pathways in your brain and "muscle memory" that will not only improve your reaction time but also condition you for the correct response.

2.
Distance can be learned, at least in the beginning, by bag work. Moving away from the bag after every combination and coming back into distance to land the next will teach you the optimal landing place for the front foot. The problem with the bag is that it doesn't go anywhere which is unrealistic compared to a real fight. Working the pads or training with a partner also helps to train your distance. The main thing to pay attention to while doing any drill is, where your front foot lands. For boxing punches, it should land directly in the opponent's center line (point your toes at his nose).

3.
You don't need me to explain accuracy. Landing a punch on the "button" is more effective than any one technique known in martial arts and combat sports! ( http://neurology.about.com/od/Trauma/a/Treating-Traumatic-Brain-Injury.htm )
A great way to train your accuracy is to place small pieces of athletic tape on strategic spots on the heavy bag. Try hitting the mark on every jab and right cross that you throw to improve your accuracy and eye/hand coordination.
Hitting the focus mitts also helps, provided you try to hit the dot in the center of the mitt with every punch.

Low carb diets

People with Diabetes milletus are constantly testing, using a blood sugar meter to track changes in their blood glucose levels because they have lost the ability to control it naturally. I like to say that a blood sugar meter also works as another kind of BS meter. You can't BS about your diet when you are reading the effects of it on the BS meter! What this means is that if you test a type of food or diet regimen, you could wait for the results - a big belly or loss of same - or you could easily check your blood sugar with a meter and know without a doubt how you are affected by it.

How is this useful to people without diabetes?
The mountainous volumes of information gathered on the effects of various foods on our blood sugar has given rise to things like the glycemic index. The "GI Diet" and any other diet that reduces your consumption of carbohydrate will lower your dependance on insulin, raise your sensitivity to insulin, along with other hormones like leptin and adiponectin which regulate the hungry or full signals.

Here is a summary: (Ultra-simplified)
We know that sugar in all forms, including starches and the so called "complex carbs" spike our blood glucose, thereby spiking our insulin. We know that insulin is a fat storage hormone. We know that at no time in history have we ever had such a multitude and availability of food and refined sugars and starches. Put these facts together and try to understand that what we think of as a "low carb" diet is, in evolutionary terms, still a very high carb diet. Now take into account that over consumption of carbs in any form breaks down the beta cells of the pancreas and desensitizes the insulin receptors throughout the body creating a higher need for insulin production. The vicious cycle begins and you set yourself up for a rough time. We evolved to do this, it is not an accident. Picture yourself in a frozen wilderness, subsisting on small animals you can drag back to the cave. You need a tremendous amount of stored energy; like the hump of a camel or a bear fattening up for hibernation, to get you through the winter. In the fall when you are hunting and you run across a huge berry patch, every cell in your body tells you to eat all you can before you move on. Bring that forward to today and you walk to 7-11 and snag the legendary "Big Gulp" with your great hairy hands gripping its neck like a saber-tooth on a wild boar! Red liquid running down your chin like the blood of your fallen prey!! You tear the wrapper off your snickers bar with you teeth and pieces of its nougat skeleton crumble under your bite! Thing is, you can do this three times per day and the average store is within a block of the average couch!   

The 7 Steps To Learn How To Fight

We have so many tools at our disposal in the gym to work out each technique or combination. Every tool that we employ lends different dynamics to the training.  At some gyms I have witnessed people doing countless hours just hitting the bag, some gyms jump the student right into sparing and others just working the shit out of the pads. At Carlson Gracie MMA in Maple Ridge, we use a progression from Coach Toby Combat Systems, which I developed from my studying under Sifu Hon Lee and attending many martial arts schools, Muay Thai gyms and Boxing clubs. I apply drilling methods using different strategies adapted from years of music training and my study of how the brain works and how we learn using cognitive learning principals from DeBono and Erikson. As a coach it is my job to communicate with the student and transpose the knowledge between their body and brain; easier said than done! A structured process is absolutely necessary. (learn to box here)
Whether you are learning to fight or teaching a class, try taking a technique and put it through this formula. 

The 7 Steps To Learn How To Fight:

1. Basic instruction: This is usually not so basic, as there are so many elements to a particular technique. The instructor can spend time correcting all of these pieces of the puzzle before bad habits set in and make sure that the student is strict with their execution. Show the student exactly how to do the technique properly and make sure they understand.
2. Mirror: The student, looking in the mirror, will try to mimic the posture, hand and foot positioning and movement patterns of the instructor as well as the more advanced students. A side benefit to punching and kicking the air is that it teaches you how to balance and control your trajectory in the event that you miss your target. As you get to know the proper way to do each technique, you can begin to self-correct. I often call the mirror "the other coach in the room".   
3. Bag: The stationary opponent is great to work out your reach from one position and striking an object that provides resistance will teach you to compensate for the stopping of your movement when you do connect in a fight. The more advanced training on the bag will work your angles left and right. Remember, bag work is not about how hard you hit it. Pounding the crap out of a heavy bag will only accomplish joint problems, besides, there aint no judges there to give you points and it’s very hard to knockout a punching bag.   
4. Pad-work: Now we have the dynamic of unpredictable movement and forward and back that we never had on the bag. The pad man can call out combinations and throw punches and kicks to work on some defensive skills and reflexes. This method will teach you timing and distance much better than a punching bag! Also, hitting focus mitts and Thai pads are very different. I like using the Thai pads to train powerful punches because there is a weight to them that is similar to hitting a chin and if you practice carrying your power through the target it will give you that leverage you need for that knockout punch.
5. Specific, one-on-one drills: This is not sparing but we are getting close. An example would be; one student punching and the other countering with a kick. Another would be, slipping and countering with a jab. Now we are drilling a single technique but we are under pressure to defend and while remaining composed. This method will teach you timing and distance better than any other form of training in my opinion, partly because you feel safe enough to execute your technique in good form while the pressure is minimal, therefore you have less chance of developing bad habits!   
6. Single technique sparing: The students begin, usually by jab sparing to establish timing and distance, then add one technique at a time to teach them how to pull off that punch, kick, take-down or combination while in danger of getting hit. It is important mentally to be able to pull off the technique in real-time; otherwise you will never feel confident enough to use it in competition. Use this strategy for learning a ground technique while the opponent sits up and throws punches at your head, try to set up that submission. It is a much better time to do this while in the gym than wait until you are in the cage on the receiving end of “ground and pound”! 
7. All in: For Boxing or MMA this will look different but the idea is to put all your skills to the test. The trick with this stage is to have several levels of intensity which are agreed on by the students. One way to do this is to use percentages i.e.: 50% intensity would mean that you are not hitting very hard, mostly working your technique and timing. Closer to a fight you might want to build it up to 80% or more to prepare you mentally for the battle. If you or your students spar full out all the time they will develop bad habits, particularly getting "punch shy". They will lack the confidence to “do their thing” and, instead, work off instinct; which we know is the wrong way to fight against a trained competitor.

As a coach I watch closely all of the students and fighters to make sure that they are keeping composed. If/when I see their stance and proper technique start to fall apart, I stop them and bring them back to basics then slowly work everything else back in piece by piece.

Sport Specific Training For MMA

Over the last few years we have been pelted with thousands of posts, articles, books and lectures on "sport specific training". I want to take a minute to hash out some of my ideas on this subject. Of course, a lot of "my ideas" come from studying other people's theories and putting them to practice. ("Theory To Practice" I even stole that from Keith Norris. Theory To Practice ) after all, we are the sum of all the people who influence us and our experiences. The basis for doing extra-curricular training is to somehow make ourselves super-human; to gain an edge over our opponent through scientifically superior methods. We are striving to work "smarter not harder". There is always room to improve our physical strengths, coordination, endurance and skill set. I'm not opposed to finding new ways of doing this, in fact, this is my mission for the most part; to find the fastest and most efficient ways to improve and build a fighter from the ground up. I often use examples of my music days and how my journey to become proficient at lead guitar playing parallels my search for skill building methods in martial arts. An example would be doing specific exercises to strengthen your fingers without playing any actual music or practicing scales and arpeggios over and over to improve your speed. Of course we have to prepare in so many ways to train our muscles, nerves, bones and brains to be ready to fight but we need balance in our schedule. We lift weights and run miles, ride the Aerodyne and roll our shins; anything to build the machine! We use tools like punching bags and focus mitts to drill one particular combination at a time which we need to gain the muscle memory to pull it off in the ring but nothing beats sparing and fighting to make you a better fighter and get you into fight shape.



Next I'll give you 3 reasons why doing "sport specific training is a good idea and 3 reasons why its not. Make sure to weigh these variables as you put together your training camp.

3 Reasons why it IS a good idea to incorporate "sport specific training": 
1. Overuse injuries: If you are punching bags or jumping and kicking pads for thousands of reps or in the case of a sport like football hitting the tackle dummy a billion times, the chance for repetitive stress injuries goes up substantially.
2. Pre-hab: Doing loaded stop and start as well as rotation and anti-rotation type training not to mention strength training can prepare you for unexpected, violent movements and lessen the damage caused by these events. You can also correct imbalances like those caused by being in your stance for hours and turning your punches and kicks out always the same way.
3. The over-load principle: Doing something like adding weight to the body, hands and feet while shadow boxing as well as wearing an elevation mask or doing under-water running can add load to your cardiovascular system training and cause an over-compensation effect to give you an advantage in endurance. Here are some great trainers who have worked out fantastic programs to improve the fitness of fighters:

MMA FITNESS TRAINING AND CONDITIONING

THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE COURSE ON MMA SPECIFIC TRAINING!

3 Reasons why its not a good idea: 
 1. Time limitations: You have a limit to the amount of time in a day so training your skills as part of your conditioning work will kill the proverbial "two birds". If you have 5 hours per day to train, BJJ, Boxing, Muay Thai, Wrestling you aint got time to do no Crossfit!
2. Risk of injury: Any strength or power lifting exercise has the potential to cause injury. Even doing ladder drills or aqua fit can have their hazards! The lead up to a fight is fraught with perils and you have already won that contest if you make it to the ring.
3. The best reason: Nothing approximates the sport like the sport and nothing prepares you to do a particular movement like actually doing it.