Landing a Punch

When watching movies or fights on TV, it’s easy to get the impression that anyone can hop into the cage and start throwing punches; however, landing punches isn’t as easy as it looks. Landing a clean punch is a matter of timing, speed, positioning and balance. If it’s your first time sparring with a partner, you’ll realize just how off your timing, speed, and balance really is. You can’t predetermine your moves or your partner’s moves, but you can train yourself to gain control of your position inside the cage. Training is a hard thing to do, but once you get used to it, you’ll want to do it more and more. Make use of the heavy bag and speed bag to increase your punch precision. To get more information on training go to chicagommatraining.com.

The Basic Series: The Round & The Decision

Another lesson in breaking down the basics includes being knowledgeable on the rounds and the decisions.

-The Round-

There are a specific number of rounds and time limits when it comes to fighting in the ring or cage. A non-championship fight consists of 3 rounds, while a championship fight consists of 5 rounds. There is a 1-minute rest period in between each round. Technically a non-championship fight can last up to 15 minutes long and a championship fight can last up to 25 minutes long, in which neither will usually last ½ that long. MMA makes up fewer rounds by increasing the time in each round. MMA fighters need to be not only mentally, but physically fit to fight longer with fewer breaks to rest.

-The Decision-

When the fight goes a number of rounds without a winner, the decision is then turned over to the judges to decide on a winner. There are 4 decisions that can be made: Unanimous Decision (all judges are in favor of the same fight), Split Decision (decision is split between both fighters, usually 2:1), Majority Decision (decision favors one fighter, but one judge’s decision is a draw), and Draw (one judge favors fighter A and a second judge favors fighter B, and another judge’s decision is a draw).

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The Basic Series: Area of Combat

All MMA fights take place in either a ring or a cage that has been approved by the commission. The ring/cage specifications for mixed martial arts must meet the following requirements:

A ring cannot be smaller than 20 sq. ft. and cannot be larger than 32 sq. ft. (within the ropes). The platform is enclosed by ropes in which 5 ropes must surround the ring. One of the corners must have a blue designation while the corner directly across has a red designation. The fighting area of a cage cannot be less than 18 ft. by 18 ft. and cannot be any larger than 32 ft. by 32 ft. Usually the cage is 8-sided and structured with a metal chain-link wall, which is about 5ft. 7in. high.

The platform for both the ring and the cage must sit no higher than 4 ft. above the ground as well it must also be padded. All stipulations must be approved before the start of the competition.

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The Basic Series: The Art of a Fair Fight

When it comes to mixed marital arts it may seem like anything goes inside the ring or cage; however, some of the fighting techniques are fouled against and banned during the fight. Such as:

   -Biting                          -Head-butting

-Eye Gouging               -Fish Hooking

-Groin Attacks              -Throat Strikes

Below are a few of the legal technique that are most commonly used.

Achilles Lock: A popular submission foot lock/hold that can take many variations, but is ultimately dependent on manipulating and applying pressure on the heel and Achilles tendon.

Clinch Fighting: Using a clinch hold to prevent the opponent from moving away by striking using knees, stomps, elbows, and punches.

Double Leg Takedown:  Grabbing the opponent’s legs or ankles, this leads to both contestants going to the ground.

Full guard: While lying on your back, the opponent is between your legs at waist level. This position focuses on controlling the opponent’s movement by placing them into a bear hub or holding onto the back of the neck or wrists.

Ground-and-Pound: Consists of taking an opponent to the ground using a takedown or throw, while obtaining a dominant position by striking the opponent with fists and elbows.

Half guard: This technique is similar to a full guard, except your opponent has one leg to your side, with the other between your legs.

Sprawl-and-Brawl: Consists of striking while standing to avoid fighting on the ground; using sprawls to avoid a takedown.

Submission Hold: The process in taking the opponent to the ground with a takedown or throw, and then enforcing a hold until they submit.

Twister: Involves facing the opponents feet while in half guard, putting your hand on your opponent’s knee and creating space to spin into full mount.

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Beginning of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu- MMA Training, Workouts and Jiu Jitsu

We have seen already that Maeda offered to teach jujitsu to Carlos Gracie. Maeda had created a  martial arts academy where he taught what he called”jujitsu.” It appears that the content of his teaching was largely a mix of classical Japanese jujitsu, kodokan judo, and his own strategy and methods of fighting that he had developed over his years of fighting. Carlos Gracie enrolled and became a student.  Maeda was often traveling around Brazil at this time. It would seem, then, that a good deal of Carlos’ s training would have been under Maeda’s top students, who often took on teaching responsibleness in Maeda’s absence.  What is clear from the historical record is that by the early to middle 1920s, Maeda had moved on to immerse himself in the Japanese colonization project.

In 1925, Carlos opened his own jujitsu school. He had begun training his brothers, and together they began teaching jujitsu based on Maeda’s technique. It is interesting to note that Carlos was only in his early 20s when he opened his school, and he had trained for only about four years- it was a situation similar to Jigoro Kano’s. As a student of Maeda, Carlos had learned the crucial underpinnings of th art that would become famous as Brazilian jiu jitsu.

Maeda taught Carlos the excellent training methods of kodokan judo, with its emphasis of live randori and ne waza skills. He also taught classical submission holds that were not part of the judo curriculum. In addition, because Maeda had been exposed to numerous fighting styles during his travels, he did not limit his teachings to judo. In fact, in one old photograph Maeda is shown training without the traditional Japanese gi jacket, and it reveals him using a standard control and submission technique of Western catch wrestling- a half nelson and hammer lock. Maeda was a regular competitor in catch wrestling events while in England, and there is no doubt that he absorbed what he took to be useful from these arts and incorporated them into his training and teaching.

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Offensive Guard Position – MMA Training and Workouts

Among contemporary MMA fighters, none has excelled in the use of the guard position to the degree of Brazilian jujitsu expert Antonio Rodrigo “Minotauro” Nogueria. In fight after fight, Minotauro locked up the best fighters in the world in his guard and made them quit. Quite often these opponents were far larger than Minotauro, but it made no difference-they found themselves caught up in a barrage of submission attacks inside the guard position. What distinguished Nogueria’s game from most fighters was his constant and unremitting attacks from the bottom position. Most fighters use the guard in a largely defensive fashion. Norgeira, on the other hand, constantly looked to lock his opponent in a combination attack using the triangle choke, kimura armlock, and omo platte arm lock. As his frustrated opponents battled out of one lock they inevitably found themselves caught in another. In the face of this concerted attack, they could hold out only so long before defeat came by way of another perfectly-executed submission hold.

Part of what made Nogueira such a different opponent was his skill in the standing position. He had strong boxing skills and takedowns. Thus, if an opponent attempted to stand up and escape his guard, he faced more punishment on his feet. This threat kept most people down in Nogueria’s guard where they were exposed to the submission hold attack. In this way they were put in a dilemma; If they stood up they risked being knocked out or taken down to a bottom position. If they stayed in the guard they would be finished by submission holds. Everybody knew what to expect inside Nogueira’s guard. His submission attacks were well known and quite basic. What made the difference was the precision and determination with which they were applied . Faced with the constant pressure from underneath, few opponents were able to mount any effective offense while locked in Minotauro’s guard.

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Analysis of Fusen Ryu Jujitsu – Jujitsu, Muay Thai and MMA Training

One of the greatest surprises of marital arts history is that there is so little attention paid to the remarkable feats of the Fusen ryu. Few people in the martial arts community have even heard of the Fusen ryu or Mataemon Tanabe. This is  stage, given the tremendous and unexpected success they had in challenge matches against the nightly kodokan judo school. A number of intriguing questions immediately come to mind when one first hears of their remarkable exploits. First, who was Mataemon Tanabe? Second, had Fusen ryu always focused on ground grappling in the roughly 65 years of its existence before the challenge matches? What kind of training methods did they employ to get their students to such a high level? Third, what ever became of Fusen ryu? Why did it fade into obscurity after such a brilliant achievement?

Regrettably, there is little information available to answer these questions, and most has to be inferred from indirect sources. To this day, Mataemon Tanabe remians a shadowy figure, but there is a famous photograph of Jigoro Kano with a group of leading classical jujitsu masters, including Tanabe, around 1906.  At that time, Kano was in the process of attempting to formulate a record of traditional jujitsu technique so that he could create a set of kata that would preserve that technique. Most of the jujitsu men are from well-known schools and are quite old. Tanabe stands out, looking young, strong and fit. That he should be placed in such highly ranked company at such an age is an indication of just how highly esteemed he was. This makes it all the more strange that he should quickly fade into obscurity.

Of Tanabe himself, we know very little. It is said that he was the fourth grand master of Fusen-ryu jujitsu, which makes sense. The Fusen ryu began 60 years before these dramatic events transpired, and in that time frame, a school would have gone through approximately four top instructors. Tanabe, through, appears to have attained considerable frame and renown in turn-of-the-century Japan as a result of his exploits. He is mentioned by several other highly regarded martial arts-for example. Mitsuyo Maeda.

We do know, however, that Jigoro Kano-by then the grand master of Japan’s leading martial arts school and a powerful figure in the Japanese government-came to him to ask for instruction in ground grappling. It was a request that Tanabe agreed to, and it may well be that this action- the one that consented to reveal the core elements of Fusen ryu ground grappling- led to the demise of Fusen-ryu jujitsu. One ground grappling was made a part of the kodokan judo syllabus, it became extremely popular. In a short time, judo became dominated by ground grappling expertise. In the period immediately after the Fusen-ryu matches, there was an explosion of interest in ne waza technique, almost to the exclusion of standing technique. This might strike the modern reader as strange since we typically think of judo as predominantly a standing, throwing art, with only a little ground grappling. In the early years of judo, before World War II and especially from 1900 to 1925, there was a tremendous emphasis on ne waza. The majority of judo matches were won and lost on the ground. In the face of this ne waza explosion, it is likely that Fusen ryu simply faded away.

As for the training methods of Fusen ryu, we can rationally speculate that they included the same element that was crucial to the success of kodokan judo, namely the practice of live training. We saw earlier, that Kano’s insistence on randori as the backbone of training gave his students a decisive edge in competition over their rivals, who trained solely with kata. Such live training was made possible by the removal of dangerous elements of technique so that students could train safely on a daily basis at something close to full power on resisting live opponents. The available evidence suggests that Fusen-ryu students did the same thing with their ne waza training. We can infer this by the fact that they were happy enough to engage in sporting competition with rules. Clearly they had progressed beyond the foul tactics and striking blows that were so much a part of classical jujitsu. They had adapted to the idea of sporting competition.

As such, there was nothing to prevent them from safely engaging in randori practice. The submission holds that were so much a feature of their ground-grappling game-all their victories in the challenge matches were sure to submission holds-could be made a safe part of randori training if both partners agreed to stop when a submission hold had been successfully applied. In addition, one of the most well-known Fusen ryu students, Yukio Tani, regularly employed randori training with his students in England, a place to where he emigrated at the turn of the 19th century. Clearly he was employing the same training methods that he learned back in Japan.

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Shared Conditions Theory – MMA Training and Conditioning

Another theory of the history of the martial arts that has gained widespread acceptance is shared conditions theory. The idea behind this theory is that the central problems and conditions that create a need for a martial art-warfare, interpersonal conflict, crime-are present in virtually every culture and time. In addition, the raw material around which a martial art is design-the human body-is roughly the same at all times and places. Accordingly, different people in different regions at different times have been faced with the same problems. Given the physical similarities between the peoples in these different times and places, it is unsurprising that similar answers were provided to those original problems. An  excellent statement of shared conditions theory was made by Koizumi Sensei, seventh dan, kodokan judo.

The historical evidence in support of this theory is strong. Several clear instructional manuals, illustration and art works that depict combat styles similar to jujitsu are from areas and times that cannot possibly be related to the development of jujitsu in Japan, or anywhere else in the Far East. The implication is clear; Combat styles evolved and developed in disparate regions out of necessity. The same conditions and problems were encountered in all places and times, and the human body is relatively the same in all times and places. It can only be locked, punched, kicked, thrown, off-balanced, tripped, and swept in so many ways. Therefore, and unsurprisingly, each group arrived at similar answer to the shared problems. No culture has a monopoly on inventiveness; hence, it makes perfect sense to think of every culture independently developing an indigenous fighting style with some strong family resemblances to styles of other cultures.

The main problem with the shared conditions theory, however, is its difficulty in accounting for important difference between fighting styles and also for the changes and revolutions that periodically occur both within a specific martial art and across the martial arts in general. Although there are clear similarities between the arts of different times and places, it is equally clear some important differences exist as well. Some arts emphasize long-range kicking attacks; some favor gymnastics and rhythmic skills; others favor linear striking; others specialize in clinching and in-fighting. The list of styles is long, and each bungs its own particular emphasis to the table.  Shared condition theory has little to say about these deviations, other than the obvious point that local conditions may have influenced the unique direction of a particular martial art’s growth. In addition, there is the problem of change and evolution within the arts.

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Phases of Combat- MMA Training, Muay Thai and Jujitsu in Illinois and Indiana

Experience has shown unequivocally that single combat can be effectively divided into three principal phases. These phases are divided by the degree of body contact and control that the two combatants have over each other, and they have proven to be the most important factors in determining the behavior and tactics of the two fighters in the course of a fight.

If neither fighter has any body contact or grip on the other, then the two fighters are free to move as they please. They will move, strike, evade and shoot toward their opponent at will, since nothing constrains their movement. We can refer to this first phase of combat as the free-movement phase, since its greatest feature is precisely the freedom of movement enjoyed by both fighters.

The moment the two fighters get a grip on each other, however, the nature of the fight changes. Once body contact and grip is established, the movement of one fighter is constrained by the other. They are no  longer free to move about as they please, but they must now take into account the movement grip, and body position of each other so that they can decide how to move and act. This second phase of combat is referred to as the clinch, a term commonly used in all combat styles to refer to a situation where two fighters have a tight, controlling grip on each other in a standing position that severely constrains movement.

The third major phase of fighting occurs when a fight goes to the ground. This phase happens in almost every serious fight, especially once a fight enters the clinch phase. The third phase is called ground combat, and it is entirely different from the first two phases. Skill on the ground has repeatedly been shown to be the most important factor in determining success in MMA competition. Even those fighters who prefer the other phases of combat must know enough ground-fighting technique to survive and regain their footing. So much for the three distinct phases of combat. At this point, we must go on to see exactly how knowledge of these three phases can be used to overcome and defeat an opponent.

The crucial idea in the phases of combat theory is that of taking an opponent into a phase in which he is least skilled, relative to your own skills. As a fighter I would stand the greatest chance of success when I take my opponent into a phase of combat in which  I am more skilled than he is. For instance, if I can keep a fight on the ground, then it would not matter if my opponent were a far better boxer, since boxing skill is of little value on the ground.

The key is to determine the phase of combat in which you have the greatest skill advantage and to endeavor to keep the fight in that phase. The fact that most people are by nature weak in ground combat has created a natural bias toward ground combat on the part of jujitsu fighters. However, if two skilled jujitsu ground fighters meet each other in combat, the one who is stronger in the standing position would be well advised to keep the fight there, since that is where he has the greatest skill advantage.

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