This blog will chart everything that is going on in my martial arts world at Epic Martial Arts Academy in Birmingham, UK. I will cover everything that concerns the club as we progress. A brief, non-exhaustive list follows….
My struggles with absorbing the teachings of Steve Morris and the Morris Method
Projects – using Martial Arts training to help disadvantaged groups
Struggles with conforming to ‘good practice’, i.e. multiple across agency CRB checks
Fight observations – resulting from Steve Morris’ assertion that we should ‘watch the fight’ and lessons learned from watching
MMA related information and fight/show reviews and observations
A comment on the last post, made by John of Massachusetts, indicated that the clip of the elite level Shotokan fighters did show fast Shotokan techniques delivered from traditional stances, that’s the gist anyway. I chose the clip precisely because of the high standard of the fighters. While these fighters are able to deliver fast punches and kicks, the stance they adopt, fudo dachi I think, fails to support fast positional movement. In order to successfully make ground quickly they need to adjust the starting position before they move. If you observe the video carefully you will notice this adjustment.
This adjustment, particularly from the bounce, rapidly shifts the fighter through the equivalent of the get set and go phases of the sprint start. Bouncing up and down in the starting posture does not provide the correct lower leg angle to propel the fighter forward with plyometric action at the ankle curtailed.Does that make sense?
If we return to the sprint start analogy, the get set phase positions the sprinter to explode out of the blocks, the bouncing stance does not position the karateka to explode, an adjustment is required. The sanbon kumite of the original grisly clip provides even less opportunity for explosive movement as the plyometric action is completely absent. To illustrate what I mean follow this link to an article analyzing the blocks start of Usain Bolt, notice how the angle at the ankle of the right foot changes as he begins the movement, it goes back before moving forward. This is the plyometric action or the stretch shortening cycle, which greatly increases power. The starting position in the blocks completely supports this; forward posture and lower leg angle.
The Karate fighters in the clip tend to move from a position that is not set up to support explosive movement, of course the blocks position is impossible to attain but nevertheless the fighting stances they adopt have limited forward posture and usually have a less than ideal lower leg angle. This results in them having to make an adjustment before they can explode out of the blocks, as it were. It’s the equivalent of not being in the blocks properly when the gun goes.
Despite this drawback the bouncing is clearly more dynamic than the stiff movement of sanbon kumite although the starting stance is not too different to that used in sanbon. Note the centralised weight, supporting stability rather than mobility.
To achieve the equivalent of the starting blocks position the fighting posture needs to support rapid positional movement, with the weight forward and a lower leg angle supportive of a plyometric action similar to that in the Usain Bolt link. Clearly, that would be better than adopting a posture that requires a big adjustment before rapid movement can be achieved.
While the fighters in the clip above start in a sub-optimal position they still move quickly, this is achieved through a lot of feinting and minute positional adjustment to draw the opponent into making a half movement against which they can time their strike. While the rules of the tournament are far removed from street fighting there is still plenty of skill on show. The timing and distancing is very good and this is what Machida has successfully taken to MMA, but thats another post.
In any kind of unarmed martial arts setting, sporting or self-defence the knockout is the most spectacular and effective way to end a contest/confrontation, against an armed assailant it becomes an even greater asset.
There are endless examples on you tube of boxers, MMA fighters and regular citizens knocking out the bad bloke. On the Fighting Arts Alliance Forum Steve Morris has gone into great detail on how a knockout can be effected from both close and longer range in terms of power generation and effect on the target, i.e. the head.
Using biomechanics with reference to great knockout fighters and the use of tools by skilled exponents, knowledge gleaned from these sources provides an insight to
being better able to deliver enough force to knock a guy out or stun him with a shot to the head, or drop him with a body shot, or even break bones with a blow
The article is in several parts over the course of a thread and contains numerous links for supporting evidence and illustrative purposes. The outcome is a wealth of information and tips and how to use this effectively to improve your chances of executing a KO on the bad guy. There really is a ton of information that can be applied to your training to bring BIG improvements. It’s a very well produced piece of work.
Some of what he covers includes
different ’shots’ to effect a knockout
how the knockout occurs
rotational knockout
increasing mass, increasing velocity
levers & supportive structures
hammers & nail guns
the role of the body
training tips
Personally, I find the combination of science with real life examples invaluable, it really gives you something to chew on! Why not join up and have a look?
In the last post I likened the three phases of the sprint race start to the initiation of movement or attack in martial arts. I proposed that the ‘get set’ position was the better of the three, with the ‘on your marks’ phase being unprepared and the ‘GO!’ phase being over committed. Put simply it’s better to be ready to move than not but not at the expense of over committing.
The grisly old clip in that post provided an example of the ‘on your marks’ phase in action. The stiff, robotic, linear movements in this clip are practised in a lot of ‘traditional’ martial arts but is a very crude example. The Karateka are ’stuck’ in a long stance and can barely move as a result, the weight is centralised with the legs so wide that ’stance’, as in a way of standing, is indeed an appropriate word.
Often in karate people are told that movement comes from the hara/tanden or the centre. Pure nonsense of course, ask any child how they move and penny to a pound they’ll say with their legs or feet. The trouble is, when starting from a position that does not support free movement a preparatory movement is required, which could come from the core. Of course the core plays an essential part in the process of movement, linking the top and bottoms sections of the body.
Clearly, if you adopt a fighting posture analogous to the ‘get set’ position, i.e. ready to go, you have an advantage over someone in a posture synonymous to the ‘on your marks’ phase, i.e. requiring a preparatory movement before you can move. Put simply, if you start from a position which allows you to move you have an advantage over an opponent who isn’t ready to move, that’s obvious.
Of course the old clip is karate at its most crude, here’s a more dynamic clip of two karate men training in a ‘traditional’ format, ippon kumite (one step sparring) and so starting from an ‘on your marks’ start.
The video shows the attacker and defender switching roles scrolling through a number of pre-arranged attacks. They start and finish in a long stance that fails to facilitate movement, clearly a huge flaw in the drill which leads to some rather peculiar adaptions to the standard model in the old clip. The bloke on the left has a tendency to ‘flail’ with his back leg when retreating in an attempt to move quickly, while both ‘bounce’.
Despite showing far better movement than in the old clip, including lateral retreats, the whole premise is to block and counter. This manifests in the competition version of karate, thus…..
These are elite level karate athletes, moving much better than the blokes in the old clip, freed from the restraints of formal training but still not as well as they might. Starting from a position that is sub-optimal for movement, synonymous to ‘on your marks’ position rather than ‘get set’ the movement options are limited. The rules of the competition don’t help and other factors contribute to creating a fighting environment that does not support free movement; if something goes wrong they cannot get out of the way again. For example, once they commit to a movement, if it doesn’t work they get hit, via block and counter even. If they feint a movement and the opponent reads it they are in trouble because they return, or are in the process of returning, to the starting position. The whole moving in stance premise is flawed, with the stance being a huge part of the problem.
As these fighters adopt similar movement strategies they start on an even playing field. If a fighters were to adopt a ‘get set’ posture that fighter would be set for movement and would have an advantage over the others, but the years of training sub-optimal movements make this radical adjustment unlikely.
On your marks; get set; GO! The starters orders as a race is about to begin. These remind me of how to and how not to hold yourself in sparring or when addressing pads or involved in any type of training. The picture illustrates the phases of the start of a sprint quite nicely; preparing, ready, off! If we compare the ’state’ of a sprinter in each of these three phases to those of a martial artist addressing focus mitts or a sparring partner we can pick the most suitable. You will need a bit of lateral thinking for this post, lose the literal thinking…..
On your marks
During this stage the sprinter is merely getting into the blocks, placing his hands and feet in the correct position. The athlete is not ready to race either biomechanically or psychologically, he is preparing. In the picture above the bird on the red pepper is on his marks.
Get set
Now the sprinter is in his blocks, hands are in position, the body is raised and the optimal posture to drive forward is assumed; biomechanically ready. He is focused, ready to explode; pyschologically ready. The bird on the yellow pepper is ’set’.
GO!
The trigger has been pulled and the sprinter is off, exploding out of the blocks and the race has begun. The third bird has pushed off and is flying.
If we adopt a posture or stance analogous to the ‘on your marks’ position we simply are not ready to move let alone strike. While nobody is likely to adopt a position literally resembling the ‘on your marks’ position of a sprinter, i.e. kneeling on the ground, people do adopt analogous postures which are unprepared for movement. The adoption of ‘on your marks’ postures unsuitable for movement is rife in Kihon training in Karate.
This old clip makes grisly viewing, and it’s not just the blokes on the beach in their thongs that’s unsightly. The protocol of adopting a posture that is difficult to move from and then expecting efficient movement is an oxymoron. The sprinter moves to the ‘get set’ position for a reason, he/she wants to be able to explode into the race. The clip shows no explosion whatsoever, just stiff robotic movement. The Karateka in the clip may be psychologically prepared but they certainly are not prepared for biomechanically efficient movement.
If we reject the ‘on your marks’ position as too static for explosive movement, we may be tempted to opt for the GO! position as there is plenty of explosive movement occurring. The bird is flying while the sprinters have exploded out off the blocks and are off. Obviously, a posture analogous to this is not plausible as we would be too committed to a particular movement and therefore unable to adapt to a changing environment, focus pads being moved for example. We would be fine psychologically but over-committed biomechanically.
That just leaves the ‘get set’ position, which of course is ideal. Starting from a posture that supports free movement naturally supports many explosive actions to be made. Being biomechanically set for movement it is possible to express the psychological preparation in a bagwork session. From a fighting posture analogous to the ‘get set’ position we are literally set, ready for action; obvious really.
This logic leaves Sanbon kumite and the like redundant as it attempts the impossible. The old clip shows dynamic movement (moving to strike and avoiding this movement) being attempted from the equivalent of the ‘on your marks’ position, which does not support such movement. The postures adopted fail to ’set’ the body biomechanically for effective movement, resulting in sub-optimal movement. If the practice is redundant it needs to be binned, that would be a small progressive step.
I’ve recently been given a link to the youtube section for clips from Fedor’s training team (thanks Tommo). It’s a pretty good insight into some of the practices they get up to. One very obvious thing is the simplicity of their training methods. In the clip below, Fedor’s group are doing some circuits out in the forest at a kiddies playground. Yep a kiddies playground. The greatest MMA pound for pound fighter trains in a kiddies playground making do with whatever there is around, they’re doing crunches on a park bench!
Hammer swinging and some basic exercises put into a circuit. Great. The ‘make-do’ element is continued in this clip, where they are using rocks and even a kettlebell for medicine ball slams. In an article on the benefits of hill running Ross Enamait says
……..people seem to discredit simplicity. They falsely assume that complexity trumps simplicity, when often the opposite is true……. In the words of E.F. Schumacher:
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction.”
I’m a big advocate of using science to ‘get an edge’ but sometimes this approach can overcomplicate matters detracting from the real goal, improved fighting performance in Fedors case. All training should be applicable to that goal.
By taking science into account but without losing sight of simple methodologies a progressive form of trainnig can be achieved. Drawing from many sources can be inspiring but also potentially confusing. With youtube and other internet resources a massive array of training information is available but simplicity should not be ignored. Ask Fedor!
On the Fighting Arts Alliance forum, there’s a huge amount of information available on numerous topics related to martial arts training but simplicity is not ignored. People are using hammers, tyres, bulgarian bags and all sorts of similar simple, often homemade equipment to compliment punching things.
This in many ways is similar to what the Okinawans were doing with their hojo undo in the late 1800’s; using simple training equipment. This practise seems to be less prevalent in the west and with the information available on the internet could probably do with being updated and augmented. That would allow some progression in traditional karate and the like, rather than being restricted to a historical approach. My experience of the hojo undo exercises was along the lines of performing the exercises in a prescribed manner only. There was little if any innovation and as such no progression.
In the hojo undo clip the bloke is performing exercises that clearly provide decent conditioning potential, however by incorporating kettlebell exercises the ishi sashi could become a more versatile piece of equipment, for example. The trouble with being historically accurate, as karate often purports to be, is progressive training methods are negated. All down to personal preference I suppose, my preference is for progression…….
Both Tyson and Fedor have been dubbed ‘baddest man on the planet’ but while both were or are top of their respective games they are very different men. Last night I watched documentaries on each of the ‘Worlds baddest’ and while one rose and faded the other continues to rise and looks unlikely to fade in anything like the same way. Nevertheless there are interesting parallels.
By the time Tyson became the youngest ever World Champion he had a fantastic team around him. Cus D’Amato had taken him out of reform school and away from his troubled neighbourhood in New York and with Kevin Rooney and Teddy Atlas was guiding his boxing potential. After D’Amato died Rooney took responsibility for Tysons training, resulting in his distinctive style that brought him success and fame.
Tyson’s Peek-a-Boo style allowed him to slip and weave his way in close, avoiding his opponents punches, allowing his devastating speed, power, and aggression to wreck the other fighter. In the documentary “The Tyson Story” Kevin Rooney time and again mentions how Tyson, right from the start threw punches with ‘Bad Intention’. That’s the phrase he uses; ‘Bad Intention’. You only have to watch him training to see that while the knockouts are dripping with bad intention.
For me this ‘Bad Intention’ is the overriding similarity between Tyson and Fedor. If you watch Fedor training the same ‘Bad Intention’ is evident and again he’s dripping with ‘Bad Intention’ in the ring. In the documentary ‘Baddest man on the planet’ Fedor says he trains “relentlessly, like an engine”. He has a strong team around him practicing with his trainer Aleksander Michkov for many years, he is comfortable with his surroundings and just gets on with it. His aggressive style re-wrote ground and pound in MMA.
Outside the arena there are similarities, both literally fought their way out of poverty, both liked to fight as kids but I can’t see Fedor fading the way Tyson faded, he just doesn’t have the distractions. Tyson faded because of those distractions and sacking Rooney was clearly a mistake, he changed his fighting style and became a beatable fighter, and then there were the frustrations boiling over with inexcusable results in and out of the ring.
Despite the inexcusable side to Tyson the ‘Bad Intention’ in the punches, training and the fights is key; besides Fedor has shown that these inexcusable outcomes are NOT inevitable. Regardless, this ‘Bad Inntention’ is the type of thing you get from Steve Morris’s assertion to ‘Watch the Fight’ take it, absorb it and use it in training. This ‘Bad Intention’ attitude can then be taken from training into the fight if you have one, in either a sporting or in self-defence setting. In essence you’re preparing properly and you will improve.
Over on the Fighting Arts Alliance Forum, Steve Morris has been posting a lot on a thread called Basic Training. For someone coming from a Karate background the basics I’m used to are way more basic than the methods he’s been explaining, to say the least.
Having trained at Primal quite a bit, I’m fortunate enough to have been exposed to quite a lot of what he’s talking about, although this particular thread has been a bit of an epiphany in many ways. He starts off with some clips giving an impression of a typical training environment in Thailand. These set the scene for the fantastic padwork clips that follow, far more sophisticated than those I’ve witnessed in Karate basic training.
One of the problems I have had outside of Primal is getting the idea behind the padwork over to people; the padwork exchange has to be representative of the fight, with the role of the padman being critical.
So I tend to break drilling right down to minuscule elements of a fight. One drill we do is to get the pad man to move around back, forth and laterally holding a shield while the kicker has to land thigh kicks, sounds easy, try it. Mixing distancing, timing and footwork with the technical skill of a round kick to the thigh ramps up the difficulty no end. Add in the padman coming back at you, and you’re onto something. But my efforts to get this over have never been to my satisfaction.
This also helps ensure that the striker is always switched on or loaded, it’s so very easy to hit the pad and …… stop, which is of no use to anyone. SM wants us to bring the fight to the training, without being switched on this is not possible. So to try to get this over we have been doing some basic, drills emphasising being switched on while performing minuscule elements of a fight, with some success.
In one post, on the basic training thread SM says firstly that
padwork comes in at three levels, basically: technical, where you’re learning the mechanics and how to apply the power in a particular way; conditioning where you’re repeating the skill in an anaerobic, hard-contact manner; and tactical, where you’re actually engaged in a fight with the pad man
and then
In order to fulfill this (achieve real padwork), 1) you have to be technically sound and be a fighter, and 2) the pad man has to be the same
I did know this, it’s not new as such, but it hadn’t occurred to me that padwork can run from technical through conditioning to tactical, and a single round within a session of padwork could contain all of these elements. I feel a bit daft, again, for not realising this, but that happens when you’re learning.
Over the last two nights I have tried to get the concepts of always being switched on and bringing the fight to the pad work across, emphasising the importance of the padman. I think we really made some headway. The lesson plan went along the following lines
switched on explanation and drills
movement drills
put elements of both these into the three levels of padwork and pad holding
Went for the 100 submissions last night and made it! Hurray! It took a while to get through them and there were repeats on either side of the body and the same thing done from different positions, but 100 nevertheless.
These 100 didn’t include triangle, the ’standard’ armbar, or any form of twister. Plenty of chokes/strangles, cranks and figure fours though. The best thing is that it’s made the doubters believe it’s completely possible, the main doubter managed 88!
While getting to 100 is a reasonable achievement in itself , it’s of limited value if these cannot be applied when needed, although I can now ’see’ possibilities more clearly. So the next goal is to improve application of submissions. All very enjoyable.
In last weeks post about creating an impression of the early years Tyson I tried to get over how I attempted to achieve this rather abstract concept. It’s not easy to describe, almost by definition, because describing the process requires you to be left brained about a right brain activity. While, of course, the left and right hemisphere’s of the brain interact through the course of our everyday lives, the left hemisphere is dominant.
This is essential to enable us to complete our regular tasks, although at certain times the dominant side can interfere where it’s not wanted. An obvious example is when we’re under pressure, the left hemisphere can bully its way to the fore when really the right side is better placed to take control.
I’m really thinking of sporting examples, Tim Henman was a great tennis player but toward the end of big matches you could see him tightening up and not going for the ‘big shots’. It was almost as if he was trying to consciously control what he was doing, when really he needed to let go and just play. The irony is, that letting go and just playing his game is probably what got him into the good position in a match.
In times of stress when snap judgements are required the subconscious is really set up to draw on our experience and to make a rapid decisions. This is part of the survival mechanism if only we were to work with these cognitions, see the Blink post. Of course, if the stress response is too severe we can become too aroused for anything other than fight, flight or freeze.
When not under stress we can relax the conscious left brain and allow the right brain to have more of a say. This is a very natural process and we all do this on a daily basis, when we are drifting off to sleep, or start to daydream. Any creative process involves fanciful right brain activity, but often though default left brain will butt in to rubbish that creativity with its logical criticism.
In terms of absorbing the impression you may want to build of Tyson you really do have to let the right side get fanciful, become child-like. This always reminds me of a TV program I watched as a kid. It was of a schoolboy who dreamed of playing cricket for England. It really struck a chord with me because I used to behave so much like the hero of the program. He’d be walking down the street with radio/tv commentary going on in his head as he struck the winning runs.
I’m not suggesting you actively embed a commentary of you destroying fighters in a Tyson-esque manner, although that might work, rather it’s that kind of daydream mind you need to activate in order to absorb the essence of Tyson. Open up and soak up the impression of him you get from watching clips like those in the previous post, then take that feeling and use it in training. It’s amazing how you can feel like you ARE Tyson.
I image my brain as a sponge, mopping up the essence of Tyson, this may or may not be appropriate for you, it’s a pretty personal experience.
It may sound ridiculous, but suspend belief, don’t listen to Mr Logic Left-brain, and give it a go. It’s not an immediate thing, and it does take some effort to try to extrapolate from watching to doing, but it’s a great tool and can help you improve if you give it a good go.
I read a recommended book called ‘Blink‘ recently, thanks Random Flow. It’s about those moments when you instinctively know something without knowing why. The author, Malcolm Gladwell, provides many examples of when a snap judgement is more effective than a cautious decision.
The idea is that by trusting subconscious processing we are not aware of, years of experience in a given situation can be drawn upon in an instant. A good example is of the fireman who ordered his men out of a burning kitchen because something was just not right. Moments later the floor collapsed, because the fire was actually in the cellar below. The fireman somehow knew the fire was not burning quite ‘right’. In this case he saved the lives of his men.
There’s many more instances and if intrigued you really should read the book, it’s very good. A recent conversation with a friend reminded me of ‘Blink’. As head doorman at a club he described a ‘Blink’ moment when refusing entry to a member of the public. The person refused entry had previously been a nuisance when one of his friends had lost a phone that one of the doorman was looking after. Some trouble occurred and the phone got lost while this was being sorted out. The bloke who owned the phone was fine about it but this other one was being obnoxious.
My friend was in the process of permitting entry for the nuisance and his friends when he recognised them from the previous incident. The nuisance was saying something and at one point my mate saw a certain look in the eye for just a flash and this was enough for him to refuse him entry. My mate told nuisance that his friends were fine but he was not, because he recognised trouble in the look in his eye and he didn’t want the headache. Of course nuisance was not overjoyed at being omitted on the basis of a look in his eye. But my mate was later proved right as the nuisance had to be removed four times that night after somehow getting into the club ’round the back’.
The point is that if we ‘trust’ our intuition or instinctive feelings in a situation we can avoid trouble before it happens. In the case of my doorman friend it’s fairly cut and dried, he has a lot of control over who to allow in to potentially cause him a headache. If we are on out own we can head a ‘bad feeling’ about a place and leave before any potential headache occurs.
A decision does not have to be based on all the facts, there are examples in ‘Blink’ when too much information clouds the issue, snap decisions can be more advantageous. In self-protection situations it is essential to trust subconscious processing as delayed action could be costly. If you get the impression that the bad guy is about to hit you, he probably is, you don’t have the time to weigh up the rights and wrongs or the various factors that have taken him to that point. Some people believe they have the time to do so, I once argued this with someone on the Karate Underground forum. Better to trust your instincts, I’d say.
Despite this drawback the bouncing is clearly more dynamic than the stiff movement of sanbon kumite although the starting stance is not too different to that used in sanbon. Note the centralised weight, supporting stability rather than mobility.
In last weeks 
