21.06.2023 My 1.5 hour class looked at better ways for elbow impact development on the ground as well as tactics for landing more elbows in mount and guard. Using guard we looked at ways to throw horizontal and chopping elbows whilst controlling an opponent’s head. We also set up knee strikes from side control using backward elbows. After the technical section we covered 3 x 5 minute rounds of MMA sparring Round 1 – Top versus bottom sparring Round 2 […]
16.06.2023 Hour eight of the brother clients’ Mixed Martial Arts course began with agility ladder drills where we went through all the ranges. Upon arriving at a sit-out exercise we all decided it would be best to look at its application. This brought in double-leg takedowns, sprawls and the aforementioned sit-out escape. The position also allowed to look at ways to take the back using this escape or taking an arm for various locks. We also very briefly touched upon […]
15.05.2023 As the title to this blog states, Monday’s lesson for my couple clients (hour three of their current course) confined our training to MMA boxing. So what is MMA boxing? Unlike shoot-boxing, which I have used with my clients, this is not combined boxing with clinch. Rather in this lesson we used modern boxing rule restrictions whilst wearing MMA gloves on. On the one hand this allows us to focus on the benefits of modern boxing where we might […]
05.05.2023 Friday saw my two clients return for the fourth hour of their MMA course. With such a layoff between sessions, I thought it was appropriate to do a line-work revision on stand-up before we looked at the clinch and a takedown. The line-work was built out of the warm-up. After some simple loosening up and muscle activation exercises, we went through punching exercises to work the four basic techniques of boxing, followed by elbows, knees and kicks from Muay […]
10.03.2023 Hour two of my Friday client’s lessons saw the beginning of his elder brother joining us. These are now another variation on my small group lessons. At present I have a couple, an uncle and nephew and a father and son training on regular basis. I have also had mother and daughter, mother and son, and brother and sister combinations. My clients in this case are both young adults. We went back to foundational skills and went through everything […]
30.01.2023 My couple clients began their 10 hour full MMA course. This is following their 3 x 10 hour courses on MMA clinch, submission grappling and MMA ground fighting. We began with using the jab to set up low line shoots for the single and double leg. These setups were drilled using level shifts. The fighter attacks the highline with jabs before switching to the body and then immediately going back to the head. This last punch is designed to […]
23.01.2023 The final hour of my couple client’s Mixed Martial Arts Ground Fighting course continued our work on defending with the knee-shield. We covered two sweeps. Both sweeps diverge at the dog-fight position. In the previous lesson we looked at shooting from this position. This time we looked at what can be done when an opponent attempts to counter the shoot. An obvious response is to block the shoot by posting out with a wider base kneeling position and to […]
20.01.2023 Friday night was the ninth hour of my client’s course on Mixed Martial Arts. We used the championship match framework to go through visualisation training and progressing the ranges. The one minute “breaks” were used as active recovery sessions performing sports specific callisthenics and shadow boxing. Round 1 – Mainly stand-up pad-work with some takedown defence Round 2 – More chaining of kicks. Round 3 – Clinch dominant. Pad-work was supplemented with defending against clinches. Round 4 – Ground […]
16.01.2023 The ninth hour of my couple clients’ course on Mixed Martial Arts ground fighting took us on to using the knee-shield tactic. This is provides a very strong base of defence against top position striking and it was important to get both clients familiar with its use. After the warm-up I had them do some very light specific sparring where the objective was for the bottom fighter to defence against the striking opponent. We looked at responses to the […]
09.01.2023 Tonight’s first lesson was hour eight of my couple clients’ course on Mixed Martial Arts Ground Fighting. We are currently exploring the use of half-guard strategies in MMA. Half-guard, in the traditional sense, does not really suit MMA. However, many of its adaptations, such as the Z-guard and the knee shield, have evolved to become very popular over the past 10 years or so. Going deep with a half-guard is usually very risky due to the exposure to head […]
28.11.2022 Hour five of my couple clients’ Mixed Martial Arts Ground Fighting course looked at stacking from guard. This area concerned the fighter standing as the opponent gets their feet on the fighter’s hips. Posting with feet on hips is a very effective and common method to escape to standing. In MMA ground fighting, getting to a standing position from underneath is the top of the hierarchy and fighters should seek it above sweeping and submitting. Likewise, the fighter in […]
07.11.2022 Hour two of my couple clients’ course on Mixed Martial Arts groundwork brought us on to layering the striking work from last week with submissions. All of these submissions came from the opponent defending the strikes and taking advantage of the positioning presented. We covered the following: Side control – hammer-fists to the head, knees to the near side ribs and elbows to far side ribs to set up a cutting armbar. Scarf-hold – hook punches into arm-triangle. Knee […]
02.11.2022 My third and fourth sessions on Wednesday were my junior Mixed Martial Art and my senior boxing lessons. The junior lesson looked at ground fighting where we used punches from side control and scarf-hold to set up the arm triangle. This is set up in response to the opponent trying to shield strikes with a single arm whilst their other arm is trapped. We finished the class with 2 x 2 minutes of attacking from the top position sparring. […]
28.10.2022 My client’s fifth hour on basic Mixed Martial Arts brought us onto some linked transitions from stand-up to ground. We segued into this via training slips. Using boxing methodology, first we covered the different ways a fighter can slip a jab or a rear hand straight. We focused on the jab and coordinating an angled position to the opponent’s blind side. The fighter slips a jab and lands his own whilst moving into an angled position. From here we […]
14.10.2022 My new Friday client continued into hour three of basic MMA course. We tightened up his guard, discussing the adaptations that need to be made in MMA due to the smaller gloves, and also addressed bad behaviours such as dropping defending hands when punching. Then we revised the punch-kick combinations introduced in the previous lesson followed by set-ups for the double-leg. The idea is to be able to adapt from punching combinations to punch/kick combinations to punch/takedown combinations. Services
07.10.2022 My new Friday evening client continued onto hour two of his MMA course with a look at Western Boxing and Muay Thai correlations. We warmed up on the agility ladders and spent a large amount of time looking at how to use to better develop the rear leg round kick. Moving onto the focus mitts I showed him different cadences for striking. We used the classic double-jab/cross/hook combination to look at loading strikes as well as changing tempos. The […]
