Archive for June, 2014

Recently we had a little sparring session where we had one person end up with a cut above their lip, and the other had the biggest black eye that I have seen in training over all my years in the fight game.

Now on the outside this could look excessive, but in reality it was just some good hard sparring and neither person involved had a problem with it. From my perspective it was strange as we were one week out from a fight so my attention was on the guy fighting. Usually when sparring ‘picks up’ you can hear as the shots get a little heavier and the foot work makes more noise, but I did not notice anything.

Now I am all for people having some good hard sparring just as long as both people are around the same level. We have had some people sort out issues with one another in sparring and a good hard sparring session can be a great thing. However it can become a little too much and sadly when I was kickboxing I was the worst offender. Everyone I sparred with I had to beat, try and drop with a body shot, or make them quit in some way. I didn’t look to knock people out in sparring but would usually try to make them stop before the end of the round. The worst I did was basically knock someone out – they called my fight shorts ‘unlucky’ after a loss, so I got him in the ring and unleashed on him. Looking back now I can see why I had trouble getting sparring partners, it wasn’t because I was good it was because I was such a dick.

This is how we do it at Lockdown – if you land a big shot you let the person recover rather than throw the follow up shots. The great thing with MMA is that you can absolutely man handle someone without hurting them, as you can use wrestling and submissions to beat them soundly without giving them a hiding. If I see someone who is going hard on a person that is well below their level, I get a more experienced guy to put them in their place.

For me here is the issue – black eyes, sore legs, sore ribs etc all heal, however all the punches in the head you get from training year after year must have an impact. This occurred to me when I watched to 8 year olds sparring at a boxing club, where it was dad’s against each other rather than the kids. They would wipe their tears and send their children back into sparring. When it dawned on me that if these kids continue their boxing training they will get hit in the head a worrying amount of times. Think how many punches that they will receive with 3-5 sessions a week for 20+ years. That many hits cannot be good for you.

I am all for hard sparring, but I think you need to think about with who and how often you do go hard. Sparring should be used to work on your skills and timing, to make you a better fighter – improving your skills should always be your training / sparring focus.

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

There was a UFC on Sunday, UFC 174, and to be honest I really was not fussed. With UFC Fight Nights and Fox cards, The Ultimate Fighter, UFC PPVs and Bellator it has just been over kill. It has been so much MMA on TV that I really just did not care.

Going back 6 – 8 years ago UFCs were the talk of the gym. The days of Randy Couture v Chuck Liddell trilogy, where the match ups had big stylistic challenges and got people talking. There is a blog based on that – The Golden Era of MMA.
When watching MMA now the names are not there, the talent is unquestionable, but people are just not remembering the names. Even last year there was Anderson Silva and GSP who are both more or less done and Cain Velasquez who has injury after injury. It is just that the fighters are more or less all the same – they are all good everywhere and some have exceptional skill, like a multiple world champ in either BJJ, Wrestling or Striking (DC, Yoel Romero, etc).

As I sit here writing this I can’t think of any of the new breed that I would go out of my way to watch (although Daniel Cormier is one). It seems that all the fights are the same, there is one takedown a round the fighter gets back to their feet and the striking is even. Maybe there are some transitions on the ground or a submission attempt but the bulk of the fights are 2 -3 failed takedown attempts with 1 success and minimal control or success on the ground. This is not because they are bad, rather quite the opposite. They are all so damn good that they are all very hard to take down and control. Everyone has a decent level of striking so that cancels things out more often than not. Since the level is so high there is just very little between them hence the fights go like this. No one wants to be on their back or risk getting loose with their striking in case they get taken down. Then on the ground because everyone has such good escapes they are very hard to control let alone hit with some ground n pound.

People just don’t seem to remember the fighters any more, this is because we are seeing way too many events. The UFC has too many fighters on their roster. They need to get people talking about fights again, maybe an 8 man tournament like the first UFC events. Or just some title eliminators something, at the moment it seems the fighters are faceless people who are fighting / making up the numbers until the main event. Hopefully this is just a phase and some big names will make people talk about fights again.

Gareth Lewis
Head Trainer
www.lockdown.co.nz

For the past 10 days I have been asked over and over again about the segment on last Sunday night’s current events show featuring children fighting MMA.

I watched the show for about 60 seconds before I got pissed off and changed the channel. They said that kids were fighting in a cage, and talked about how bad it was. First off, no one seems to mind if kids of the same age (6-8) to wrestling or BJJ comps. The only extra things that these kids could do was body shots and leg kicks, which happens in many karate style competitions around the world. Any of these events with kids of the same age never cause a ripple, but when you combine these events people talk about how barbaric it is.

The real problem was that the kids that lost cried after the ‘fight’, and this seemed to hit a nerve with many people, as no one likes to see children cry. However this happens all the time when kids do not do as well as they want. This bring the real problem to the surface – the kids get their idea on how well they perform from their parents. At the age the kids want to make their parents happy and their drive is from their parents.

The sad thing is when the parents are pushing their kids to do what they want, not what the kids want. The worst example of this is those child beauty pageants, where the kids get so much pressure put on them to perform and remember routines, and there are many tears at these events. I think those child beauty pageants are so wrong on many levels.
In any sport or activity where the parents are pushing their kids to succeed as means to a better life, the Tiger Woods model, is awful. Most people have witnessed this in rugby, netball or cricket teams when growing up.

So yes I have been very angry that people have been thinking that it is terrible that kids can MMA but the real problem is the parents that are pushing them in to it. If kids want to get into MMA then yes there are better ways then chucking them in the cage at 6 years old. But if done under safe rules and if the kids safety is the main concern then it should be viewed as any other fight sport that kids do – Karate, Kickboxing, BJJ, Wrestling…. Just get those over-bearing parents who put all that pressure on the kids out of it.

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