Archive for October, 2011

So you have had a bit of success in competition and you are the number one guy at your gym. Congratulations – you have stopped learning.

You need your training partners to be able to push you, even beat you, so your game keeps evolving and you keep learning. Once you can beat everyone you train with then there is a very real threat of complacency. Especially with MMA, where you may be able to beat everyone at your gym with your MMA skills. You need to seek out those specialists that can beat you in their world, BJJ Wrestling and striking, so you continue to learn.

The specialists such in BJJ, Wrestling and Striking all have very developed games in their own area. With these specialists we can never match them in their world so our goal is to be able to hang with them. If we can wrestle with wrestlers, roll with BJJ guys and then strike with some good boxers / kickboxers the chances are you will get a beating in one if not all of these areas and that means your game is developing.

If you train with people that you can beat all the time then you get a false sense of your ability and, at best, your skills will stagnate as there is nobody there to push you to develop your game. The other big problem with this environment is that you become afraid of losing, because you beat everyone every time you do not want to seek out those people that can beat you as then people will find out that you are not invincible after all.

In reference to my last post, NZ is too small. As NZ is small there is going to be people at each gym who are the top dog and it is hard for them to go train with others as it may limit fights that they can get, by training at other gyms. However this does not stop you training with the specialists around your gym. Failing that do some training trips to become the small fish in the big pond and get beaten ? then your game will go to the next level.

Being the best is great but once you are at the top of the mountain there is only one way you can go and that is back down. At the very least, if you get to the top of the mountain you can no longer climb and it is only a matter of time before people catch you up, change mountains and keep climbing. If you look at any dominate athlete, it?s not that their skills decrease rather everyone else lifts their game to match them. In short make sure you have people around you that can give you hell in training.

Gareth Lewis

Head MMA Instructor

http://www.lockdown.co.nz

If you want to succeed – and by succeed I mean world class – in any fight sport, then you need to get off shore. There are plenty of good fighters in NZ, but to get to the next level they need to go overseas.

In the years that I have been involved in the sport I have seen some divisions where there are almost as many titles as there are fighters. I believe that a New Zealand title should be a stepping stone and not the goal. If you have five good wins you will be close to a title fight in New Zealand. Once you win it you can either defend it ten times and get the other titles in your weight division or look to go overseas.

One plan could be to have 5 ? 7 fights in New Zealand then have 5 in Australia, and then get over to the US as soon as you can. You should spend about a 3 years max getting your feet wet in NZ and Australia before going overseas. The reason for going over as soon as you can is because you have to start from scratch and the earlier that you do that the better it will be for your fight future.

When you are in America training and fighting you can get 5 years worth of competition in one year, as they have a lot more competitions with more competitors. Let?s face it-  there are divisions in Wrestling and BJJ in NZ that have 3 -4 people in them which makes a medal rather easy to get. In the US you will not get any easy medals and you will learn about hard competition and if you really want to get somewhere in the sport that is what you have to do.  

You can?t understand how good the top guys are until you train with them – to put it bluntly, they are just better. We can get to that level as well but we need to train in the same environment. At the fight gyms in America the average guy is the same as the average guy in NZ . The difference is that instead of having two good guys and one ?boss? on the mat you have 20 guys that are very good and 5 guys that are at that top level. Having guys like that on the mat means you get to see the intensity that they train at, which is something you can?t comprehend until you are on the receiving end of it.  When you train with guys at the top level if lifts your game as you have to improve to survive, as well as training at a higher level day in day out, so to get to the top in the fight world you have to train with the best.

There are a lot of good fighters in NZ and as the money is not there they have had to hold down a job and have a family which makes their achievements even more impressive when going up against full time athletes. Could a lot of NZ?s become world class fighters? Yes, and some have, but many of them have gone overseas to chase their dream.  

Gareth Lewis

Head MMA Instructor 

http://www.lockdown.co.nz

Due to the nature of MMA, you sometimes need to train at different locations under different instructors. If you live in the perfect world, all those trainers get along and don?t mind you bringing your bad footwork to boxing, your habit of pulling guard to wrestling, and your wrestling to the BJJ mat. As much as we don?t want to believe it we are a pain in our respective trainers butts, because we take what they teach us and modify it for to suit MMA. We don?t follow the rules of their sport, and we injure people.

The rules that I am talking about are our distance in striking (as we have to be a at a different distance due to takedowns), pulling guard in wrestling to try to triangle the guy that just pinned us, and being a munter in BJJ – crush and kill! Since we bring a different mentality in the room when we train, relative to the others there, the instructor can get a little frustrated at the other skills that we use that stuff up the other people training – you can understand their frustration.

Here is the beauty of MMA; by nature fighters believe that it is all about them, and that they are actually helping everyone out with these different skills. Sadly that is just not the case.

In the real world, unless you live in a city where MMA is popular then you are going to have to travel to get your MMA training fix, as well as improving your skills in the individual areas. In a lot of cases the travel is needed as your kickboxing coach doesn?t like the trainer of the other club down the road, the wrestling coach?s top student jumped ship to the other local club so you can?t train there and you are a Gracie BJJ student and the other school is run by another name which is not as cool so you can?t train there either.

Everyone that has trained more than one style has had this issue where you have closed-minded people that stop their students training any other styles. In my history as an MMA trainer I have had 3 guys kicked out from various other styles because they are training MMA. To me this is very small minded as those guys are going to bring back new skills to their schools and everyone will get better for it.

In most cities the martial arts community is relatively small and in my experience the various schools never get along. The instructors have never met and may have sent an email to each other, just to confirm that they do hate each other. But if people put their ego to the side to grow the sport then everyone would do better for it. Why can?t we all just train at other gyms every now and then? Now don?t get me wrong here – you stay loyal to your club and instructor. But if you miss you normal session due to work then why can?t you go down the road and get some training in at the other club? Training at other clubs is great, as you get to see what different things people do as well as experiencing different styles.

I believe that we need an open door policy so anyone from other clubs can train with you, especially in MMA – all it can do is grow the sport. Therefore if you are a trainer or senior student get to know the top guys at the clubs around you and see if you can pick a fight with them to get some training in with other top guys ? just make sure it doesn?t limit your possible fighting opponents.

Gareth Lewis

Head MMA Instructor

http://www.lockdown.co.nz

Are you in the way of your own progression? Excuse me while I talk about myself for a little bit. My MMA career can be broken down in to two parts – before I trained at Xtreme Couture and after I trained at Xtreme Couture.

Before I trained at XC, I was training wrestling, BJJ and kickboxing – nothing strange there. In each of those classes I always felt like I had to be the best, there otherwise I was a failure. In my mind, if I couldn?t beat all the people I trained with then how could I beat opponents in competition? This would mean that if I got tapped, pinned or punched in the head I would go home and mentally beat myself up as in my mind I was no good.

Then I went to America and trained at XC – this is where everything changed for me. At XC, the first few sessions that I did were with the ?normal? guys – I did well and was happy with how it was going. Then reality turned up in the form of the pro training, where on my first session I did live wrestling drills against Randy Couture. I got a great lesson in wrestling from him, and many others. In my mind I could deal with this, as wrestling was not my strength, but I wanted to see how it would go with striking.

The striking didn?t go so well as I came up against one of the best K1 fighters of all time, and got my beans! All that was left was BJJ. I got my answer in BJJ in the form of Robert Drysdale, and became the first person I know to get physically get turned inside out!

This left my one saving grace – an all rounder. I was sparring with an English guy who was one of Dan Hardy?s training partners. He was older and smaller than me so I was feeling rather confident. We started striking and I was using every trick in my book to hang with this guy who was 6 inches shorter than me. It went to the ground and in my head I thought ?lets see what this guy?s ground is like?. After being swept, passed and hanging on the edge of surviving and tapping out I got my answer.

After that trip I found out that there was no point trying to be the best, as there are guys out there with crazy skills, who will be better than you. Rather than being depressed, I found a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders as I didn?t have to worry about being the best, because that was so far away for me to even worry about.

So after that change I had to do my best to put my ego aside and work on my skills to become better. This didn?t come easy for me and I still struggle to this day with it. There is a guy that I train with and I have more experience than him so I have seen his growth and it has been rather impressive to see the change in him. What he does is pick a move and work it for a few months. The first time he tried this on me I defended the move got in a good position and tapped him and didn?t think much of it. A few months down the track he went from the same move and had fixed the holes in the move and had me in all sorts of trouble, then further down the track he got me and I was tapping. Next thing I know he has put that move on the shelf and he is working his new skill. This guy has no ego about how he goes on any given night as he is working on improving his game not winning each and every roll.

In short, it?s not about that night and defeating the people you are up against, but it?s about making yourself better by working your skills. Yes, the first few weeks suck as you can get a hiding, but slowly and surely the bad spots are few and far between and things start working for the better. Eventually you develop a new skill set that you can rely on.

Gareth Lewis

Head MMA Instructor

http://www.lockdown.co.nz