Archive for June, 2013

What are you willing to give up to win? Right now there will be reading who be thinking that they would give up anything to win. Guess what – most of you are wrong.

The desire to win comes from sacrifice – what are you willing to sacrifice to win? For most people they are not willing to sacrifice to get the win. Take sleep for example, most people do not want to get up early and train. Especially when winter rolls around as it is dark and cold and so much easier to stay in bed. Most people who train consistently wake up most morning’s a little stiff and sore, which is another great reason to stay in bed. There are always reasons to stay in bed: too wet, cold, hot, windy, dark…. Take your pick.

Most people aren’t willing to sacrifice sleep to reach their goal, if you are not willing to give up sleep what then what are you willing to give up? It seems that the guys who win world championships, top level, seem to be able to sacrifice anything in order to get the win. These sacrifices include but are not limited to: sleep, family, job, money, comfort, personal life, air.

So how can you sacrifice air? Yes we all breathe air and need it to survive, but the most competitive guys are willing to die for the win. In real terms they will push and push past the point of burning lungs and muscles burning with lactic acid to get that win. These guys hate losing anything, if you are on a treadmill they will want to make sure that you are off that treadmill before them no matter what. This attitude flows over to anything, these are the guys that want to win every wrestle, every BJJ roll and every sparring session.

For most young fighters the hardest thing to give up is the social life, all their friends are going out drinking and having a great time. If there is a fight or competition coming up the guy is unable to go out and have fun with his friends, due to the fight prep that needs to be done.

Sex – many questions about if you should give this up – and this is my opinion on it. I am not sure if it helped me or not to give up sex the week before a fight, but I thought it did. I was willing to sacrifice more than my opponent, therefore I wanted it more and had an edge.

Overall, When I have guys fighting I want them to sacrifice in their training camp. It is very important that they believe that they have given up more than opponent for the win. To be successful at anything you need to have sacrificed to get there. So what are you willing to give up to get the win or to get where you want?

Gareth Lewis
Head MMA Instructor
http://www.Lockdown.co.nz/

Over the years I have sparred countless people and there is constant and that is what happens when you go up against a sparring virgin, and it is frustrating as hell.

For their first time they are always nervous which means they are tense and this makes them hit a lot harder than they realise – they think that they are going soft but in reality there is some weight behind their punches. This causes a problem as you are being nice against this first timer and as you are relaxed and then a relatively heavy shot comes in and the tempo can increase. If you then hit them as hard as they are hitting you they think you are going too hard, and you can’t win. This means that for the first sessions you are hitting them as softly as possible, so basically your glove contacts their skin and that is about it, no impact behind the punch at all. After 3 or 5 rounds of putting the brakes on all your punches and them trying to take your head off, you give them the chat about how sparring works and that they need to relax. This is when you get the comment ‘it’s a lot different to pad work’.

Whenever we have a first timer sparring I find it is better to have the most experienced guy in the club going up against them first. I do this because the more experience they have the more that they can control the situation. They know the new guy will go hard and will not confuse the tension for aggression and try and take their head off.

case scenario is two new people up against each other and they both mistake the tension for aggression and it get ugly and messy and no one learns anything as they are just two unskilled people trying to hit each other (also known as a street fight!). Another bad situation is the guy that has been there for 6 months, or so, and has not found his place yet. This is the guy that has been on the losing end and now sees someone he can dominate, so he go hard on the new guy to get that winning feeling. Sadly this always happens as most of us have done that with in the first year, and every now and then it is kind of fun (just being honest here).

The first sparring session is very important, because if you just give them a hiding they learn nothing and you will not see them again. Also you are passing on the club etiquette, which they need to know from day one. This first sparring session sets all kinds of precedents for you and your club so you can’t afford to mess it up.

If you go back to one of the first times you sparred you will remember a time where you were afraid and sparring did not go well. You should also remember from that session that you didn’t learn anything and you just became gun shy and did not throw for fear of being hit. I keep that in mind when I am sparring someone new and I do everything I can to make sure that the person does not fear sparring me. However there is that one in a hundred student that you do need to put in their place for the first session and then the green light rules apply, but for everyone else an experienced opponent, gentle punches and a talk afterwards seems to help the situation for me.

Gareth Lewis
Head MMA Instructor
http://www.Lockdown.co.nz/

In short, talent you are born with and skill is earned.

When they say someone is a natural talent it means that they are blessed with, but not limited to, athleticism, strength, speed, timing and co-ordination. These are all things that you are born with, yes you can go to gym and work on it but if you are not blessed with it then you are going to find it tough.

This is where we are lucky that our sport is a skill based sport not a talent based sport. This means that if you got the most gifted athlete in the world in the cage he would not trouble a good fighter any more than a weekend warrior would trouble a good decathlete as there is just too much skill involved.

Have a think about how many hours you have put in for MMA training and how many moves you have learnt over the years. In striking all the foot work, punches, kicks, defence and movement needed to be an effective striker. Then in BJJ all the positions, transitions, submissions and submission defences then all the little positional things you learn along the way which separates the blue from brown belts. Wrestling, the positions the counters the set up’s and that is before you have taken anyone down. That is hours and hours and years and years of training to make you effective.
The best example of this is the big strong guy at training, could be striking, BJJ or wrestling and they could beat you in a bench press competition no problem however you have no problem with them. Their talent – strength – is letting them down in the first round as they are using every ounce of strength to beat you were when you are using position and technique (also known as skill) to beat them. Here is one of the best things about skill, that unlike strength, speed and power, it does not run out. No matter how tired you are you do not lose your skill.

To get all the skill takes hours and hours, years and years of training and to do that much training demands drive and dedication and no matter what happens – you need more than just talent when you come up against a skilled person with drive and dedication. Therefore we all hope we have natural talent that we can enhance with skill to make us a true handful.

Gareth Lewis
Head MMA Instructor
http://www.Lockdown.co.nz/

In the fight game, like any other sport, there are people who are just better. This is not down to brain power, training or luck – they are just better. All their gifts, both physical and technical, add up to more than yours.

To put in bluntly no matter how hard you train or what drugs you take you will not be able to beat Usain Bolt in a sprint. That is because he is faster. In fighting terms there are guys in a different class, yes they may get beaten here and there but overall they are just better.
You get examples of this in most fight nights and almost every UFC. Think of the guy that has won his last 9 fights and is a on a tear. Then they have their shot, against the #1 contender and whoever wins get the title shot, this is a guy that has dominated his opponents with transitions and positions. Now when he comes up against the #1 he finds that he can not dictate the terms of the fight, his transitions are blocked which keep him out of the good positions. This is something that this guy has not come up against, someone who is that little bit better in each area of the game and knows how to keep the advantage.

You see this type of thing all the time, there is a reason why the guys in the top ten are there. If you watched Velasquez v Silva in the weekend there was evidence of this. Silva went into that fight with all the belief in the world that he would win, how their last fight was bad luck, and this time it would be his. Velasquez just knew he was better and no matter what Silva did he would win. Turns out Silva threw an upper cut to stop Velasquez going for the takedown and went straight in to a big right hand that dropped him. End result the was the same as the first fight. That is because Velasquez is a class above.

There are many levels of fighters – from the first time fighter to the semi experienced guy, to national champs. to people with international experience, to B class fighters at international level, and all the way to A class fighters (top ten) and then to the A+ guys who are GSP, Anderson Silva and Jon Jones. Every class is a step up from the last one and 99 times out of 100 means that they will win.

This is where fighters are ‘interesting’ – every fighter thinks that they are the best and that they can beat anyone on any given day, and this is what makes them tick. As I mentioned sometimes some people are just better, and you see that day in day out in the fight game. Yes there are always going to be upsets and new people moving in to and out of each class, but overall if you are a class above you are better. To put it in BJJ terms a Purple Belt is better than a blue belt and as the blue belt improves so does the purple belt which keeps the gap at the same distance and that purple belt will always be the class above. This is what keep Jon Jones, GSP and Anderson Silva on top as they are just a different class to everyone else in the division.

Gareth Lewis
Head MMA Instructor
http://www.Lockdown.co.nz/