Archive for March, 2011

If you remember back to your first six months of training you mind will flick through all the times you got tapped out, taken down and punched. When you are getting a beating each session all it does is make you very defensive and training is a little less fun. As you improve you must remember what it is like to get a butt kicking and make sure you do not pass it on all of the time. Everyone will have had their nemesis, the person who taps you out 8 times in a round or takes your down over and over again or better yet the guy that punches you in the head a great number of times. When this type of training happens it doesn’t help anyone. Practicing how to tap, lay on your back or testing your chin does not make you better as you are just trying to survive rather than work anything other than survival. When giving the beating all you are doing is losing a training partner as they are not getting anything out of the round.

When there is a difference is skill level it is up to the better person to work at 105% of the less experienced person’s level. You can work a specific skill, for example the weakest part of your game, then you can still train hard and you both get something out of the round.

A very important thing to keep in mind is ‘never practice going to bad positions (there will be more on this in future), this means if a less skilled person gets a single leg on you do not fall over for them. Where as you should defend the take down and go to back under your control ie just drop to your back.

Other options is to let the less skilled person start in dominate positions, or have more than one person in a round. This works by sparring against one person as soon as they get in a bad position they call change and in comes another fresh person and the game starts again and continues for the duration of the round.

Don’t be the person that no one wants to train with, continue to make sure you work hard on your game but not by destroying those less skilled than you. You will get more respect from people if you give them something to work with rather than just smashing them. On the flip side, if you are against a more skilled opponent make sure you give them hell.

Disclaimer: You do not need to be a dick and go at 2% against a less skilled person just to show how good you are. Conversely, against a more skilled opponent spazing out will piss them off and they will have every right to smash you. keep the training intense, but safe.

Gareth Lewis

Head MMA Instructor

http://www.lockdown.co.nz

I have had the privilege of training under some great instructors and fighters, these included world champions and elite fighters. The one thing that I have picked up from all of them is that everyone has different ideas about how they do the same things – which is great.

No matter how good your coach is you will find one problem, you are only getting one perspective on the sport. Regardless if this is in striking, wrestling or BJJ, they will teach the moves that work for them and their style will flow down from the top.

If your coach is a 6’3 110kg (240lbs) monster then it is going to be unlikely that they will have had to develop rubber guard, how to work against people with longer reach in striking or wrestle with people bigger. This means that they will always struggle on how to help the small people in the club. There is no doubt that they will know all the theory about what to do, but they will have not have had the hours of training with taller, stronger people and had to figure the problems out.Big guys have a different mentality than little guys as they are all about the one big move, the knock out, the double leg and so on as they usually don’t have the cradio of the little guys.

On the flip side if you have a 5’5 70kg (155lbs) with crazy flexibility then they will most likely have a complete different game plan to big guys. This comes down to the fact that the “little” guys usually have better cardio and they are all about numbers and activity. Chances are they will get their heavyweights mobile and fit, to be fair most heavy weight strive for that. If you look at a comparison between Lennox Lewis v Floyd Mayweather Jnr they have to fight different due to the size difference yet they are both great champions. In both wrestling and BJJ the smaller guys are always more active, I believe a big reason for this is that when a big guys get caught is a bad position it is harder to get out, due to the fact that it is harder to move 110kg+ over 70kg. That can be taken in both ways if you are 70kg then it is easier for you to move, less weight = less energy, than it is for a 100kg guy to move.

In short, train with as many good coaches as you can, train with as many good people as you can eg top grapplers, to wrestlers and top strikers and learn. A different perspective on a move you have drilled over and over can give you a new understanding on that move.

Gareth Lewis

Head MMA Instructor

http://www.lockdown.co.nz

Once you hit the ground in MMA, do not give up position for a submission. Position is #1, if you secure mount it is more beneficial to keep it than to go for an arm bar on a sweaty arm and risk being stuck on your back.

The most common ways that people end up on their back when going for submissions is: The opponent goes for a double leg, The double leg gets in too deep and they give up the defence and goes for a guillotine, generally the opponent pops their head out and is now on top inside guard = BAD. Another common one is when the opponent is on their back, with an open guard, you see the attacking person either standing or grounded. The attacking fighter sees a foot in mid air so they grab it and go for the heel hook, ankle lock or toe hold to get the finish. The opponent then sits up and has the dominant position. If the person is rather dumb then they keep going for the foot lock and have their hands tied up and defend punches with their head. Then the previously mentioned armbar from mount, person on the bottom is waiving their hands around to stop punches on the face, so the top person grabs an arm swings a leg over and goes for the armbar, if they miss it then they are on their back in another bad position.

There are people out there that use armbars as an escape from under mount. They leave their arm out set their escape and wait for the top person to take the bait.

However there are some very talented BJJ guys out there who have been pressure tested in comp, these guys can go for subs however and whenever they want, Damian Mia, Jacare and Robert Drysdale come to mind. For the rest of us it is a better idea to keep the top position apply pressure and wait for the guy on the bottom to make mistake – or just go for the finish via ground and pound.

In Short: Lockdown MMA’s tip – get the top position and keep and you will win a large percentage of fights.

Gareth Lewis

Head MMA Instructor

http://www.lockdown.co.nz

Train with the best people available it is that simple. If there are people that are highly skilled that you can train with make the most of it. To improve you need to train with people who are better than you so you know where the holes in your game are. People like to stay in their safety zone and not go outside it due to fear, but that will not help you improve.

However if you go against the ‘skilled’ people all the time then your defence improves but you become very defence orientated as when you do try to attack it gets stuffed and you usually end up in bad positions just trying to survive. Since you offence gets stuffed you don’t attack ,due to the bad outcomes, then you never get to practice your offence and obviously your overall game suffers.

In general you need to practice moves on the smallest weakest person in the club to get success and confidence, then you move up to the next smallest and worst and so on until you are getting the move with lots success on a number of different people.

With your new move and confidence you then go pick a fight with the skilled people and see how you go, if you miss the move ask questions “where do I need to improve with that…?” if they are skilled they will be able to help you.

Above all if you get a chance to go against your instructor take it at every chance you can get, they are the ones who know your game the best and what you need to do to improve.

Now go train and pick a fight with the best in your club.

Gareth Lewis

Head MMA Instructor

http://www.lockdown.co.nz

MMA is broken up in to two sorts of fighters those that want to keep it standing and those that want to get it on the ground. For a fighter to keep the fight in their desired zone they need to control the 6 inches.

What are the 6 inches? ? this is the area where you go from being just out of striking range to inside that range. A striker needs to control this distance with strikes usually their jab, so every time a person enters the zone they are going to pay with a few punches on the end of their nose. This is where it gets interesting though. If a striker over commits then there takedown defence will be severely compromised. Generally the striker will want to make the opponent pay every time that they are in the zone then move off and repeat until the opponent get?s frustrated and makes a mistake where the striker can end the fight wining shot.

For a ground fighter they need to get inside the 6-inches, make the striker over commit with out sustaining damage to get the takedown. The ground fighter needs to draw the striker on to the front the foot so their balance is off and slows down any take down defence. If a ground fighter sits in the zone they will get punished, the trick is to get in with out taking any damage.

Now it gets interesting, how is a striker going to get the KO with out committing to their punches? On the other side how is a ground fighter going to get the take down with out getting inside the danger zone? The answer is – this is why it is called Mixed Martial Arts, you have to be able to mix striking, takedowns and takedown defence and some how make it flow.

Now go train and control the 6-inches.

Gareth Lewis

Head MMA Instructor

http://www.lockdown.co.nz

Throughout New Zealand MMA there is a missing link, it is called Wrestling. This happens as there are very few good wrestlers in New Zealand, even fewer willing to train MMA. This starts the cycle of people who are not great with wrestling showing the techniques to their students, their students then learn the techniques and practice them on people who also have limited wrestling knowledge – almost like the blind leading the blind.

With wrestling you can decide where the fight goes, if your opponent is better than you on the feet then you can take them down and keep them there, also if your opponent is a ground fighter you can keep in standing or at the very least, if it does go to the ground, you can keep top position as it is almost impossible to sweep a good wrestler.

Another thing that wrestling teaches that you can not learn any where else is the absolute desire to not get taken down and then the absolute non stop attitude to get the takedown – they just will not stop driving when they have a double leg. A wrestler has no concept of going to their back or coming second in a match.

Getting put on your back is something that has decided a fight for thousands of years, lucky BJJ came along so we can now fight of our back, basically getting pinned on your back is a primal ass kicking. Even after all we have learned through the evolution of MMA there is one fact that remains – who ever controls the transitions from standing to ground and vice versa will usually win the fight.

Now get to your local wrestling club and learn from the guys that focus purely on takedowns and takedown defence. It will help your MMA like you would not believe.

Lockdown MMA is lucky to have the help of Tawa / Linden Wrestling Club which has two Commonwealth Games Wrestlers, Nick Lane and Sian Law, as well as two of the top coaches in NZ with Graeme Hawking and Scott Laurenson.

Gareth Lewis

Head MMA Instructor 

http://www.lockdown.co.nz/