Submissions

Steve Morris will talk about watching the fight, in fact he calls the fight his teacher. At Primal we are encouraged to ‘watch the fight’ and so to learn from the fight. The idea is not to merely observe but to glean useful information and to use it.

Steve has challenged us to improve our submission repertoire, and of course being Steve Morris he’s given us a substantial target. He wants us to have 100 submissions! Now he set this challenge two weeks ago and we had the first run through of what we’d managed. Rob Dick managed 44, I have no idea how many I got to, but I’d say a fair few less. Nevertheless I have improved on what I had through a mixture of watching others at Primal, using you tube and practicing at our regular EPIC training classes.

It’s been interesting as I have managed to understand locking better. By that I don’t mean particular techniques, although I have managed that too. Rather I mean the concept behind locking. Steve took us through Eddie Bravo’s TWISTER today showing us the simplest method of getting it on.

Prior to that I’d watched a collection of twister submissions on you tube that someone had compiled. It was just a writhing wriggling mess and very difficult to suss out what was happening. However, the outcome to the other bloke was always impressive, trussed up like a kipper, springs to mind!

I managed to glean the main idea, to twist the opponent one way and then the other, like wringing a flannel, and then tighten. Oddly enough I managed to get it wrong, although the end result was reasonable enough as what I thought was the twister, but wasn’t, still works as a submission! The reason for the non-twister being successful is that I’m still wringing the flannel.

This revelation opened the door somewhat, leading to the discovery of more techniques. We’d been doing neck cranks and I noticed that while cranking a partner locked my jaw. So I found a submission hold for the jaw  by applying the flannel wringing concept, simply pull the jaw in the opposite direction to the crank, easy. There are lots of possibilities.

I don’t claim that this is anything new, especially as today Steve showed us the same concept for all the submissions we were doing, wringing the flannel, or more precisely compressing/extending at both ends. Great stuff.

Learning locks and submissions in this way makes it so much easier, as there is no need to get caught up in confusing instructions similar to the following extract taken from a book on Chin Na

the opponent uses his right hand to grab your shirt behind you, step your left leg back while circling your left arm around hie right arm and placing your right hand on your left wrist

All the rights and lefts get my poor mind boggled, I like general concepts to work with. I do also like to have help, of course, after all a demo is worth a thousand words. But a good conceptual explanation with a demo is better still gives the opportunity for further learning at your leisure.

Change – deciding to change

I was a bit stuck with my martial arts training but was enjoying sessions with various instructors I’d come across from the United Goju Forum and subsequent United Goju Seminars. I was traveling around the country to train or bringing instructors to Birmingham and making improvements as a result. I was sick of only making minuscule advances and for want of a better phrase, needed input. My eyes had been opened and I wanted more. It seemed that an awful lot of the ‘training roads’ were pointing towards Steve Morris.

On the back of the aborted Karate Underground Seminar I arranged a session with Morris in Birmingham, which followed the one at Shikon early 2007. I invited everyone in the association I was involved in, expecting people to be as enthused as I was, but no. I only received one reply, saying he was unable to come, although he’d like to. To be fair it’s quite a journey from Weymouth to Birmingham.

I had been reading Morris for a while and learning from the dvds I’d bought, but that first session introduced a lot while promising much more. I was surprised though that no-one had been interested enough to attend. Okay you would probably have to put up with hearing that the karate method was crap, but here was a chance of a way into substantial improvement. You only have to see one dvd, or read one article from Morris or receive one recommendation about him to see that here was a chance to improve significantly. But having your martial world completely rocked is probably not the top of the list for many happy with the status quo.

At the time one of the attendees, with a karate background, said “there’s no going back”, and of course he was right. I am from a scientific background, and the scientific process involves change, if it did not we would still be basing medical treatment on the four humours! I am asked how I reconcile the Morris Method approach with Karate. For me it’s easy, I treat it like science.  The scientific process embraces change, science replaces the obsolete with cutting edge, as one theory or model passes the next rules until it is usurped by a better option. This often isn’t the case in martial arts.

So for us line up kihon is long gone, because this and associated practise has very limited validity, now I use what we do at Primal or similar that I or others in the club devise. Often Kihon is referred to as basics, which is what it is, whereas we practise the fundamentals, this in itself is a step forward and is one small change for the better. If we embrace the status quo that’s all we can ever get…….

Mushin #2

mushin

In a previous post I postulated that the preferential level of physiological arousal required for MMA or a fight is similar to the concept of mushin in Japanese Martial Arts, rather than a raging state. The following quote is from a short piece on developing mushin through makiwara training

“Makiwara training also develops mushin, which literally means “no mind”. If you only concentrate on the pad in front of you, your sense of awareness is limited to the board alone. The moment you make impact the mind, the spirit, and the body must join together and then instantly relax, again allowing the spirit to absorb whatever is going on around you. This total physical/spiritual contraction and then relaxation is essential to develop the ability to defend yourself against multiple opponents. Commit just as fully to the completion of the technique as you commit to the execution. The mind should be the same throughout and only with mushin can this be accomplished.”

I don’t know the person who wrote the above quote, and as such I have no idea as to the training advocated by the club/association he represents. I am fairly certain though that this approach to mushin is on the esoteric side and not really set up for defence against multiple opponents at all. It all sounds a bit airy fairy to me.

At Primal Steve Morris would get us into a heightened state of physiological arousal, by performing drills intended to set the CNS (Central Nervous System) to a high level of motor unit recruitment so we could strike with increased power. That sentence doesn’t do the drills justice, it’s very difficult to get the feeling over in the written word. He wrote on his blog about how the sprinter Ben Johnson would do heavy squats prior to running the 100m, in order to prepare the CNS for full explosive power.

(You can read what Steve Morris says about this here, here and here.)

It sounds counterintuitive, as you’d think the squatting would fatigue the muscles. Its an approach that works and enables you to get more than you think you can get. I first described the one drill on the old Shikon forum and will try again in a later post. But it’s not just the drill, it’s a case of using the drill to reach a level of intense power, an impression of which can then be “memorized” and repeated. This impression is then surpassed and a new impression “memorized”. The main outcome of the drill was very powerful strikes, but also along with the impression of power was the impression of the heightened arousal required to enable the expression of the power in the strike. Hopefully, that makes sense, you could even think of it as a mushin like coming together of the mind, spirit and body, because all of that happens. The mind is clear, you’re just observing whats happening, the spirit is high, you’re highly aroused, the CNS is set to fire at a high rate and the body fires off the shot. It’s a release, a big big release.

So while you could fit that description of mushin to what we did, it’s a giant leap, and there’s no actual indication in that description of the amplitude of arousal required, which is high, although not raging. In the previous mushin post I suggested that people may be inclined to develop a kata performance mushin, which seems to be more in line with the description above, and kata mushin is not whats needed for MMA or a fight.