Tag Archives | Fitness

MMA/Muay Thai

July 27, 2023 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
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24.07.2023 Monday’s lesson was a two-hour booking for my couple clients, finishing their 10-hour MMA styles course and beginning a new Muay Thai course. After a dynamic stretch and sport specific calisthenic warm-up, we began an overview of the styles work. This began with some light specific sparring. One fighter stuck to their swarming/muay bouk style and the other to out-boxer/muay femur style. I pitted attack against defence only, forcing the individual styles to work on their own way of […]

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Testing the Ranges with One-Sided Sparring (diary entry)

January 30, 2023 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
omoplata specific sparring

27.01.2023 Hour 10 of my client’s first Mixed Martial Arts course with me focused on looking at both conditioning exercises and putting his skills under some pressure. One of my mandates for taking these sessions was to not use sparring due certain medical reasons. This is something of obstacle when it comes to teaching a combat sport. However, we have found ways to work around this challenge. We have regularly used reaction games, both touch and no-contact, and I keep […]

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Muay Thai Conditioning (diary entry)

January 25, 2023 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
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23.01.2023 My client’s seventh hour on her second course in Muay Thai continued building on southpaw strategies. Last week I introduced the back kick. This lesson was all about drilling everything that had been covered and to build up the specific fitness. After our usual warm up we went straight into rounds. These were three minute rounds with one minute active recovery, keeping the heart rate up throughout the session. Round 1 – Boxing only focus mitts Speed punching Round […]

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The Guard Drill (diary entry)

June 21, 2022 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
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20.06.2022 Hour seven of my couple clients’ submission grappling course brought them to using the guard. As with the top positions, I covered a flow drill. They transitioned from closed guard to open guard to spider guard to butterfly guard to half-guard back to the open guard and closed guard. Throughout the drill they did variations from different positions and we looked at the all-important safe transitioning. Services 

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Trapping with Sticks & Tricks with Kicks (diary entry)

May 17, 2021 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
chamber kick

12.05.21 My first client continued work with single and double stick fighting. We went through some more angles of attack, looking at extra stabs and then at one stick versus two stick sequences. The latter involved side checks to the head and I emphasised rebounding off intercepting strikes. Next we moved onto trapping with the sticks, making use of the butt end of the stick. My second client continued on the focus mitts with rhythm and flow combinations 11 and […]

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Deconstructing Basics (diary entry)

March 5, 2021 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
19TH CENTURY BOXING SPARRING

02.03.21 Work continues in my teacher consultancy regarding the progress of sparring/pressure-testing for grades, especially but not exclusively to child students. As my progressive and proactive client suggested, we began at the beginning and looked at where and how sparring should be introduced. Key things to consider would be that gradings would not be a test for everything. A club does not have to have sparring in the first grading and yet students by this stage can be accustomed to […]

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Combination 3 Partner Work (diary entry)

March 3, 2021 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
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01.03.21 Monday evening began with hour five of my client’s course on stand-up pad-work. As previously mentioned these are both lockdown partners, one of which is on the road to recovery from a knee injury. The previous course took them through the 14 Muay Thai combination for rhythm and flow. Now we are taking each combination and applying them to the focus mitts. Having a lockdown partner allows for me to coach pad work whilst not holding pads and it […]

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Combination 1 on the focus mitts (diary entry)

February 16, 2021 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
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15.02.21 This is the third hour of my client’s second 10 hour course on stand-up striking. After a 10 minute round of warming up, my client with her lockdown partner decided to completely focus on the first combination from our 14 rhythm and flow sequences. The benefit of having a lockdown partner allowed me to teach the combination in three stages: Stage 1: Shadow boxing the entire combination Stage 2: Virtual focus-mitt training – using the combination in direct response […]

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Dogs, Snakes and Pancakes (diary entry)

November 13, 2020 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
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09.11.20 Tuesday night’s teacher consultation continued with ground-fighting revision. We used escaping side control as a starting point, covering reversals, arm-triangles and sweeping from the dog fight position. The reversal – a technique referred to by my client as a “pancake” roll – came from head-lock version of side control. Here we set up for escaping to guard and timed our reversal off our opponent countering the guard escape by putting more weight forward. The fighter immediately switches from snaking […]

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Fluidity & Footwork (diary entry)

October 26, 2020 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
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24.10.20 My client reached hour seven of his course on Boxing techniques for martial arts cross training. We followed a similar routine to Tuesday and Wednesday’s clients, looking to increase fluidity through punches, develop footwork and look for small details to improve in basic technique. After our callisthenic and dynamic stretching warm-up we went through the basic punching isolation exercise. This consisted of throwing a constant flow of single straights, single uppercuts and single hooks before separating these into two-combinations […]

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Passing guard and sweep revision (diary entry)

August 18, 2020 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
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  17.08.20 The third hour of my client’s Submission Grappling/Ground-Fighting course went back over the basic sweeps as well as the Kimura arm-lock from guard and passing guard. We began with our normal solo warm-up routine of ground-fighting callisthenics, including some new movements directly related to guard passing. Next the two lockdown partners performed some guard-passing drills before moving onto some resistance work. This took the form of a guard passing game where one had to get past the other’s […]

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From Butterfly to Back Mount (diary entry)

December 6, 2019 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
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05.12.19   My junior clients covered their penultimate lesson in Submission Grappling/Ground-Fighting on Thursday evening. I introduced the butterfly guard, half-guard and back mount as well as the butterfly sweep, knee shield and rear naked choke. We also had some fun with a few advanced techniques.   We warmed up with the usual specific callisthenics for ground-fighting such as various crawls, snaking and escape movement drills. Then I introduced the butterfly guard. Here we paid attention to keeping sat up […]

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First Chokes & Chasing the Kimura (diary entry)

November 4, 2019 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
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30.10.19   Earlier on Wednesday my schools clients were on their half-term break so I was able to squeeze in my private junior clients for a lunchtime lesson of Submission Grappling/Ground-Fighting. This brought them up to the fifth hour of their course. Today we looked at three chokes from scarf-hold and north-south, and we also chased the Kimura lock around the body.   We began with movement callisthenics – crawls and snaking. Then we went back through the pinning flow-drills, […]

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Submission Grappling from the Top (diary entry)

August 1, 2019 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
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30.07.19 Tuesday night saw the first hour of my client’s first course in Submission Grappling for Martial Arts Cross Training. This lesson began with the top position and was mainly concerned with learning the major pinning positions and transitioning through them. We warmed up with bear crawls, lizard crawls, seal crawls and caterpillar crawls before snaking/shrimping forwards, backwards and from the side. Then we moved onto the first technique. Side control is a good solid position to begin from. It […]

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Vagabond Warriors Boxing Workshop Report (diary entry)

July 30, 2019 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
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28.07.19   The first of our Vagabond Warriors Workshops focused on Western Boxing for Martial Arts Cross Training. We spent the majority of the lesson training footwork, various guards and the jab. These are all key components for setting up everything else in modern boxing.   We began with an overview of cross-training. I discussed the problems with “welding” martial arts styles and techniques. That is forcing together two fighting aspects that do not complement each other. This creates a […]

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Agility Training for Clinch and Stand-up Fighting (diary entry)

July 18, 2019 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
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17.07.19   The nephew and uncle team focused on agility and grip-breaking in the clinch as well as ring-craft in stand-up fighting. The introduction of the agility ladders and cones has had an influence on this lesson too. I brought in both agility and coordination exercises to form a good amount of the first half of each of these two lessons.   The junior clinch lesson began with the agility ladder. We covered various basic footwork exercises, including the wrestling […]

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