Escape from the Mounted Position, “Upa”-MMA Tips and Information-Aurora,Naperville,Chicago,Minooka

There are few worse scenarios in a real fight than being pinned underneath your opponent’s mount.  Sitting astride your chest, your adversary is free to strike you as he wishes.  His strikes can utilize the full rotational power of his hips and shoulders, generating tremendous power.  Your shoulders and hips, on the other hand, are pinned to the floor, making your attempts to strike back weak and ineffective.  Moreover, your opponent can easily enter into a vast array of devastating submission holds, arm locks, neck cranks, and strangles while you lack the necessary position and leverage to respond.  If you do not know exactly what to do, the chances of you emerging without serious injury are slim indeed.  One of the most fundamental and important means of escaping the mounted position is the “upa” method.  This involves rolling your opponent onto his back.  The chief advantage of this method compared to others is that it can take a wild-punching street fighter off your chest and onto his back, where he is unlikely to  have the technical skill to resist you.  Against a skilled grappler, however, the completed “upa” technique still leaves you locked in the guard position.  Still, this is far better than being pinned under the mount.  The “upa” escape combines extremely well with the “elbow escape”.  Whenever “upa” fails, it almost always generates enough space to allow you to switch easily into an elbow escape by pinching his legs together (thus narrowing his base) he becomes vulnerable to “upa.”  In unison, these two techniques can get you out of all but the tightest mounts.

The “upa” is based upon a simple, yet very effective principle.  The idea is to trap your opponent’s arm and leg on one side of his body and then to roll him over on the side of his trapped limbs.  Since he cannot base out of his trapped arm or leg, he has no means of preventing himself from being rolled over.  Your opponent can hold you in many ways while mounted.  No matter how he holds you, there is always a simple method of trapping his arm or leg on one side of his body as a prelude to rolling him over.

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Mixed Martial Arts and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Techniques-Gi Training-Chicago,Minnoka,Aurora,Naperville

A great number of people fighting submission grappling come from a martial art that uses a gi.  I strongly recommend that everyone who is going to learn submission grappling train with a gi before taking the gi off.  There are many reasons for this.  The gi makes you more technical because it forces you to concentrate on the details and posture.  In jiu-jitsu , for example, you begin wearing a gi, learning self-defense, learning hoe to escape from being mounted, and so on.  There is a program and progress.  Then, once you attain a certain level of proficiency, take off the gi, and start to train submission grappling, you find it easy to adapt your techniques to the lack of a gi.  However, if the opposite occurs–you learn to train without the gi and then someday need to fight with a gi–you will have great difficulty dealing with your opponent’s level of control over you.

The overwhelming success of Brazilian jiu-jitsu fighters in competitions such as the ADCC, Grappling Quest, Arnolds, and NAGA is the best proof for training with a gi.  (From 1998 to 2001, 75 percent of the ADCC winners were from jiu-jitsu backgrounds.)  Since you opponent can grab the sleeves and collar of your gi, you must constantly be in proper posture and be always mindful of your neck and arms; this develops great awareness of the game.  The gi also demands a lot more precision, and therefore makes you a better fighter.  The gi offers a greater variety of holds, submissions, and options for sweeps.  With the gi, you must develop an acute sense of balance and, most important, a great defense.  Because you are dry, you have to anticipate your escapes and be more precise with you defenses.

The basic gi course requires a person to participate from six months to two years to start to fully understand the game.  I believe that after one year you can start  to go without the gi and practice submission grappling, because by then you know the basics and understand what is happening in your training.

Of course, if you never train without a gi, you will have a hard time when you finally do it.  You will miss the “handles” and the grips.  You will especially miss a variety of chokes and uses for the sleeves and collars.  So definitely train without a gi for a while before any big submission grappling competition.

I train with a gi most of the time.  If I am going to compete in NHB or ADCC, then I shed the gi a month or so in advance.  I trained jiu-jitsu for many years and only took it off when I fought in the Vale-Tudo Open in Japan, which was my first vale-tudo outside of Brazil.  From then on I started to practice regularly without the gi and began to perfect a series of adjustments to the style and the techniques that I had learned, so they would be deadly effective in submission grappling.

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Mastering Mixed Martial Arts-Inside Hooks Guard-Aurora,Naperville,Chicago,Minooka

The inside hooks guard, which is often referred to as the butterfly guard, is designed for executive sweeps.  However, to e effective from the position you must follow some general rules.  The first rule is to sit up into your opponent.  If you are lying flat on your back, executing sweeps will be difficult to manage.  The second rule is to position your head underneath your opponent’s chin and to the opposite side of your underhook.  This prevents your opponent from driving his head into your head and nullifying your attacks by flattening your back to the mat.  The third rule is to establish an underhook on the same side as your inside hook.  For example, if you have your left foot hooked to the inside of your opponent’s right leg, you want to secure an underhook using your left arm.  The fourth rule is to secure control of your opponent’s opposite are using either an overhook or wrist control.  This prevents him from posting that hand on the mat to block your sweeps.  The fifth and final rule is to use your control to pull your opponent forward so that his weight is resting on his knees.  If you allow him to position his weight over his heels, pulling off a sweep will be nearly impossible to manage.  Once you establish the position and have all the rules checked off on your mental list, you can immediately get your offense going by executing the inside hook sweep.  Sometimes you’ll be successful with it, and other times your opponent will counter.  If he counters, you’ll want to use his defense to immediately transition into the arm crank inside hook sweep or the guillotine control reverse sweep.  Again, the idea is to never stop attacking!

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Speed Training in MMA:Faster,Faster,Faster-The Anatomy and Mechanics of Speed-Aurora,Minooka,Chicago,Naperville

Speed is basically defined as the distance covered divided by the time taken to cover the specified distance.  The measurement isn’t really important to combat athletes.  What is important is being able to move and strike faster than your opponent.  A fighter’s speed is essentially determined by the ability of his nervous system to signal muscles to contract.

Since combative sports are anaerobic events, they require a predominance of fast-twitch muscle fibers.  These fibers contract quickly during brief, high-intensity exercises that require an above-average amount of strength output.  So if you thought all of those anaerobic exercises were just to torture you, you were mistaken.  They also help a fighter to increase his speed by developing fast-twitch muscles through exercises like sprinting and weightlifting.

Building fast-twitch muscle fibers through anaerobic exercise is also a precursor to speed-specific training drills.  The reason is that weak muscles are more susceptible to injury as a result of speed training. And if there is anything a fighter wants to avoid, it is unnecessary injury.

Another important component to consider is the adverse affect of tense muscle groups.  Tense muscles take longer to respond to nerve impulses than relaxed muscles.  Essentially, the excess tension slows down the message from the brain as it travels along the nerve en route to a specific muscle fiber.

If you’ve ever read or seen interviews with Bruce Lee, he often promoted the concept of muscle relaxation until the movement of the strike.  The more relaxed a fighter is physically, the faster his movements will be against his opponent.  To keep their muscles loose and relaxed and promote good nerve  conductivity, many fighters get regular sports massages.

The mechanics of speed involve two elements: perception of speed and reaction speed.  Both are a function of the communication between visual and nervous systems of the body.  Perception speed involves the amount of time it takes to recognize a potential threat.  In the case of a fighter, it refers to how rapidly they become aware of an impending strike.  Seeing that your opponent is throwing a kick or punch, however, is only half of the equation.

Reaction speed is your ability to initiate a response to a particular threat.  In MMA, this can mean blocking, evading, or countering an incoming strike.  Alertness is a key to reaction speed because knowing a threat is imminent puts the body into a high-functioning state.  A fighter knows his opponent isn’t there to sing songs or write poetry.  MMA warriors are already in a naturally alert state of mind because they know they are stepping into a cage to face an opponent who will be trying to beat them.

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Becoming a MMA Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Champion-Aurora,Minooka,Chicago,Naperville

So you want to become a submission grappling champion, but you don’t know where to start? Becoming a champion is no easy task; many attempt it, but only few succeed.  I like to that some champions are born and some champions are made.  You must be born with a certain amount of natural talent and inner fire, but lots of people have those qualities and never become champions.  It takes a tremendous amount of dedication, an incredible amount of preparation, and long, arduous training sessions.  Do you think you have that kind of commitment? How can you tell?

Look at the competitors you know.  There are many reasons why some people always win while others only come close.  Many people enter tournaments just for the experience or camaraderie of it.  Their goal may be winning a match or finishing in the top five.  They don’t expect to win, and they aren’t disappointed when they don’t.

There are some competitors, however, who enter tournaments to win at all costs.  They strive to become champion, and everything else is meaningless.  If they end up in second, they feel that they lost! I am one of those, and that desire to compete has led me to some great challenges.  A lot of people ask me why I fight guys so much bigger than me.  Why don’t I concentrate on fighting people in my weight division? The answer is that I constantly need to test myself.  I was born into a family of fighters.  My father before me, my brothers, uncles, and cousins all fought, whether in vale-tudo, NHB, or jiu-jitsu tournaments.  I was one of the youngest, so I’ve been fighting bigger guys since I was three!  We were always competing among ourselves–who was getting better, who was sweeping whom, and so on.  I always wanted to do better than the rest and to defeat anyone that I faced, and I still do.

As I started to win all the tournaments in my weight class, I had to look elsewhere for meaningful challenges.  I began entering the Absolute divisions in tournaments, whether an NHB fight or a jiu-jitsu match against much larger opponents, to test myself against the best.  I fight these guys to push my limits and to learn.

If you recognize yourself in this description, if you think you are one of those with the drive and will to become a champion, then you must commit yourself to the task.  Winning is like everything else; it takes practice.  The more events you compete in, the better you get at competing, and the more you’ll start to win.  That is the first part of your commitment: to compete more often.  The second part of the commitment is that when you compete, you commit yourself to winning! Once you do that, everything you do has a purpose.  You lift weights harder, run faster, and train longer hours.  This involves some sacrifices.  In the past, I have rented an apartment and left my house so that I could concentrate 100 percent on training for an event.  That, of course, is really hard because I love my family and I miss them.  But that is what I believe it takes to win.  Preparation is the key to being the best.  Without that, you go nowhere.

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Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in MMA Competition-Aurora,Naperville,Minooka,Chicago

Of all the many fighting styles represented in early MMA competition, none has a more decisive impact than Brazilian jiu-jitsu.  Due to its unanticipated success against other styles, Brazilian jiu-jitsu went from obscurity to international renown in a staggeringly short time.  The biggest MMA events in North America, the Ultimate Fighting Championship, Extreme Fighting, the World Combat Championship, and Martial Arts Reality, were all dominated by practitioners of Brazilian jiu-jitsu.  Especially surprising to most viewers ws the fact that the Brazilian iu-jitsu fighters were almost always considerably smaller than their opponents.  In addition, the victories were relatively bloodless affairs.  The Brazilian fighters did not have to resort to bludgeoning their foes into defeat.  Rather, they quickly took them to the ground and then caught them in various strangles and locks, forcing them to give up.  In the few cases where Brazilian jiu-jitsu fighters were themselves taken by their opponent, they were able to use their highly-refined ground-grappling  skills to win fights from underneath opponents.  This was quite radical at the time, for most people had the notion that the man on top in a fight was almost assured of victory.  Unfolding before everyone’s eyes was the realization of the martial arts dream–to see a fighting style that allowed a smaller, weaker man to overcome and defeat a larger, stronger, skilled opponent with a minimum of violence and blood.  Early response to this success on the part of the martial arts community was varied.  Some claimed that MMA competition was immoral or somehow contrary to the spirit of martial arts.  Others gave grudging admiration of the results but claimed that the new style would not work in a real street fight where there was a danger of weapons and multiple opponents.  Progressive martial artists, however, quickly took note of the results and sought to learn Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, either as a style they wished to emulate, or at least so they could learn how to counter the devastating moves and techniques that were wreaking havoc in MMA competition.  In either case, progressive martial artists were anxious to learn this new art.  This was the shot heard around the martial arts world–the revolution had begun.

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A Fighter’s Power-Basic Strength-Training Concepts-Aurora,Naperville,Minooka,Chicago

While many fighters develop a muscularly toned athletic physique, the full-body strength of fighters is different than that of bodybuilders.  Using resistance training as well as basic weightlifting exercises, competitors can build muscle strength and bone mass without accumulating overly large muscle groups.  This helps fighters maximize functional strength while maintaining the speed necessary for the sport.  Utilizing whole-body exercise also burns significantly more calories and speeds up a fighter’s metabolism.

In addition to achieving a high level of strength output, the MMA warrior also has to keep that output going for up to five rounds.  This type of strength endurance is usually referred to as strongman training.  If you’ve seen the World’s Strongest Man competition on T.V., you know that many of the contests revolve around strength endurance concept.  While combat athletes may not need to lift cars or pull airplanes, having a high degree of strength in the later rounds of a fight could be the difference between winning a championship  and losing one.

MMA warriors typically use a combination of weight and resistance training to build their overall strength.  Weight training utilizes free weights to oppose muscle contraction, forcing the muscle to overcome the inertia of the mass in order to move the weight.  This means that the majority of the strength development occurs at the beginning movement of the exercise. Examples of basic weight training exercise are the bench press, clean and jerk, and barbell squats.

Resistance training involves the use of elastic or hydraulic tension to provide resistance to muscle contraction.  In contrast to free weights, elastic resistance training provides the greatest opposition at the end of an exercise movement.

Exercises that move a body part against a force are called isotonic.  Most people are more familiar with exercises that hold a body part in place against force which are called isometric exercises. These exercises are quite important for a combat athlete because there are numerous times in a match where one fighter may have to hold a certain position for an extended period of time. A good way to train isometric strength is to simply pause for five seconds during parts of a weight-or-resistance-training exercises.

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Inside the Fighter’s Mind-Resolve-Aurora,Minooka,Naperville,Chicago

When you are trying to improve yourself in any aspect of life, you must connect with this aspect of the warrior.  Whether you are endeavoring to improve your Jiu-Jitsu skills or take your cardio endurance to the next level, you’ll need a specific mindset to accomplish your goals.  An iron will is perhaps one of the most critical factors of a fighter’s mental game.  The resolve to push through any pain or obstacle is what constitutes the warrior mentality.

Let’s get realistic; there will be numerous times when you will be frustrated in your training.  You may be unable to execute a particular technique, or you may be physically exhausted but have three more sets to complete your workout.  Your training partner may submit you time and time again during training matches, or your boxing coach may seem to be pummeling you for his own enjoyment.  The bottom line is the same: The combat athlete never, ever gives up.  The ability to overcome anything that is thrown his way, either in training or in life, is what defines the warrior.

When your training gets brutally hard, the best way to succeed is to stay focused on your current task as it relates to your mission.  Focus on your breathing and take a moment at a time instead of looking at how much more work lies ahead.  Let’s say your mission is to run three miles and you’re halfway there.  Your legs are hurting, you are gasping for breath, and every neuron in your brain says you would rather be at home on the couch.  If you agonize over the fact that you are only half way done with the workout, you are in for a long training session.

Fighters often overcome the painful training sessions by staying focused and maintaining a positive mental attitude.  Combining overall optimism with gritty determination, MMA warriors dig deep within their reserve of inner strength to achieve their goals in training, in life, and inside the cage.  The unwavering commitment to pushing their bodies to the limit is a part of every fighter’s mindset.

In the event that you decide to enter an MMA competition, focusing on your pain or fatigue is only going to give your opponent the advantage.  The moment you allow yourself to be mentally distracted, your opponent can capitalize on the mistake and put you in a position of disadvantage.  To win, you have to be focused on your objective: finishing the fight.

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Inside the Fighter’s Mind-Creativity-Aurora,Minooka,Chicago,Naperville

Creativity is a natural part of MMA.  You’ve probably already gleaned that MMA fighters use some pretty creative and unorthodox ways to improve their strength and conditioning.  This is important because it keeps a fighter on his toes as he prepares for a match.

In fact, some athletes purposely instruct their coaches to mix up their training so that the fighters have no idea what to expect.  By doing this, the combat athlete learns to adapt quickly to changes in circumstance.  This concept is extremely beneficial inside the cage, where a fight can be incredibly unpredictable.

If a fighter is adaptable, relaxed, and calm during a match, he’ll often discover openings and opportunities to exploit his opponent’s weaknesses.  A fighter can utilize his natural creativity if he has successfully developed the other attributes of his mental game.  Drawing on his focus and resolve, a combat athlete can also utilize his creativity to escape from dangerous situations.

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Inside The Fighter’s Mind-Self-Evaluation-Aurora,Minooka,Chicago,Naperville

The way that a fighter tempers his increased confidence is through constant self-evaluation.  To become the best at any sport, an athlete needs to constantly assess his performance.  This is another prominent part of a warrior’s mental game.  Becoming the best is about consistently tracking your progress and examining the results.  For a fighter, this sometimes means changing up the training curriculum.

For example, a combat athlete may find that he has surpassed the skills of his sparring partner and is no longer learning new techniques.  Through measuring his performance, the MMA practitioner may come to realize that he is under performing in a specific combative art.  To remedy this inconsistency, a fighter may choose to increase his practice time in that discipline to boost his skills.  From time to time, a fighter may also realize that a particular coach has taken the competitor as far as he can and it is time for a change.

To be the most capable athlete possible, a smart MMA warrior learns from both success and failures.  Some of the best fighters in the world watch videotape of themselves to spot holes and expose weaknesses in their own fight games.  Filming training segments, workouts, and sparring sessions and reviewing the footage can be an invaluable tool to locating areas that need improvement.

After a fight, many combat athletes watch the match to identify their mistakes.  Watching themselves in action also helps a mixed martial artist to see where he could capitalized on a missed opportunity.  If examined properly, this will assist in redesigning a training program to help the fighter spot the openings he overlooked during the bout.

How was his mental game?  His physical conditioning and endurance?  His application techniques and use of overall strategy?  Knowing the answers to these questions provides the fighter with the self-knowledge necessary to maximize training time.  It also shows that the MMA athlete has the ability to select positive training habits and eliminate unproductive ones.  In this way, the warrior is always seeking to improve his game through self-evaluation.

For more information and tips please check out this website: Inside The Fighter’s Mind