Dealing With Wrestlers In MMA, part 1Filed Under: Instruction
More and more guys are coming into the pro-am levels of MMA with strong wrestling backgrounds. A lot of wrestlers have been shooting for double leg take downs, asserting the single collar tie, and cradle-pinning opponents since 10 years old, some even starting even earlier. Possibly the womb.
It’s no mystery why wrestling for MMA is powerful, so I’ll omit going over that. The purpose of this article is to help those who have difficulties in dealing with wrestling based mixed martial artists.
Strategy
First of all, you need to have a passable understanding of the basic wrestling game plan. Simply, a good deal of wrestlers follow this flow: execute a take down, pass the guard, ground and pound. It’s not rocket science -you kind of know what they’re going to be doing. From here, you can start to beef up your wrestling specific counters.
Second, remember to assert your game plan. Yes, a lot of wrestlers are freakishly strong and will stuff your techniques, but you can’t fall back on a defensive strategy. In my opinion, defensive strategies are weak and reactionary. While developing specific counter measures for wrestlers, remember to do your best and get the other guy to play by your rules. You’re whole game isn’t the reversal of his. You are just filling up some of the potential holes in your game so you can fight in the way you excel.
Chuck Liddell is a good example – he’s got some solid take down defense but only does it so he can execute what he loves to do – stand up and bang away with punches. Whatever you’re game plan is, keep pushing for it.
Take Down Defense
A huge part of a wrestlers plan is to take you to the mat and put you on your back. Stop it before it starts, drill take down defenses – the most basic of which is counter to the double leg take down, the sprawl.
There are three components to a good sprawl: get your leg(s) back behind you, get your opponents head down, and start setting up attacks of your own.
There are different schools of thought of exactly how you shoot your legs back, but basically you want to get your legs away from the effective grip of his arms. If his hands are on the back of your upper thigh, there’s no way he can pull the leg into his body, but if his hands are in the back of your knees he’ll probably take you down.
Getting your opponent’s head lowered is vital, and equally important as shooting the legs back. Pushing his head down and driving your hips down will stretch your opponent out. If the guy is any good, he’s going to continue pushing to take you down, so if you’re not actively controlling him with your weight, he’ll muscle through.
Here’s a bit of instruction from Tito Ortiz, showing a distinct variation where you sprawl one leg back first, driving your hip to the ground as fast as possible. His short discussion on keeping the top of the foot down vs being on the ball of your foot is something you should consider. Also, BJ Penn likes keep the tops of the feet on the mat like this. With feet down, a the second take down attempt is much more difficult to pull off, but the trade off is that you are not as mobile. BTW, if you’re a wrestler and the guy isn’t wrapped too tightly (or you’re both sweaty) you can try to jerk out, angle, and go for the back.
When you’re pushing the head down, either with your hands or chest, you might as well be setting up an attack of your own. Once the take down attempt is being stuffed and you are flattening him down, you can slide one of your arms down by the neck and the other looping over the arm for a over/under hook control. You can attempt to lock in some submitions (guillotine, or others like these ), arm drag and go to the back, or if the rules allow stand up and do the soccer kick to the head (this video shows it from side escape to sprawl position, but it easily happen after a good sprawl off a single/double leg take down.).
Setting up attacks off the failed take down is an expansive subject, and further discussion is a bit beyond the scope of todays remarks. However, here are two videos where Chuck Liddell shows some set ups and attacks from the failed take downs.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7216622046655469876
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4384183199387922838
Some wrestlers or judoka will attempt upper body take downs and throws, which is a whole different ball game. Wrestlers are very dominant from the clinch, and if that’s not your game plan, you need to learn the ins and outs of clinch escapes and pummeling. I’d suggest Randy Couture’s Wrestling For Fighting. Also, you can check out this post for tips on pummeling out of the clinch. Also, here’s a vid by Shogun and Ninja Rua for defense against upper-body lock, in prep for a wrestling throw, probably a body slam.
We could go on all day about take down defense, so I’d suggest starting with the double leg sprawl and going from there. Make sure to grab a copy of BJ Penn’s MMA Book of Knowledge, as it has pictures and more details about take down defense. I really liked the pages that show how to strike your opponent even though he’s got a leg.
Side Control Management
I have a love/hate relationship with side control. I love putting a guy in side control, but hate being in side control when a guy knows what he’s doing. In MMA, you can take a lot of damage from side control, so you better know your escapes. Here are 4 worth considering.
The bridge and roll – from side control you hug your opponent tightly, bridge your hips and shift his weight up, then roll and flip him over. Check here for an example.
Clear the arm to hip sweep – get both arms and head clear from the guy on top’s body, push his weight down over your hips, reach up and control the head and curl him under as you flip him over with a kimura/hip sweep motion. See Dean Lister perform two variations of this escape here.
Create space and pull guard or half guard – bridge and bump opponent to create space near your hips, push his hips and weave the closest leg through (threading the needle) either across his body to pull guard or between his legs and establish half-guard. Example here.
Create space and turn to sprawl – shrimp to the side and push on opponents hips (like above) but continue to walk your legs out until you are in a sprawl position. See an example here. If this one gets stuffed, try immediately to roll back into a bridge and roll type sweep called the wheelbarrow escape, seen here.
Also, avoid the “beat down” position. This is where the nearside arm gets trapped in between the legs of the guy who’s on top. If an opponent can control the remaining free arm with his head, shoulder and arm then they’ll be able to rain down blows unrestricted with one arm. Ouch.
If you’re really in a bad way, totally unable to escape and defend side control, you can sometimes bait your opponent to go into mount – while he’s trying to establish mount you can maybe hit one of your mount escapes with better luck. It’s not pretty, but if you’re in a bind …
One more thing. Depending on the ruleset your playing under, you may be able to throw knees while on the ground. Your opponents head may be exposed, so you can take a shot at a knee to his face from your back. It can loosen him up enough for you to fire off one of your side control escapes. The danger in doing this is that if he’s not already throwing knees, it reminds him that he can, and top position side control knees are much more deadly.
Preventing The Guard Pass
When a guy wants to pass guard, it’s hard to keep him there. Primarily, you need to be attacking in such a way that attempting to pass guard will weaken his defenses against your onslaught. If you merely play a damage control, defensive “lay and pray” guard strategy you’re risking a potential beat down, or in competition going to the judges score cards.
In any case, you want to be on the offense when you’re in the guard. Study specific counters to the basic guard passes. One of the most common guard breaks, the wedge, can be stuffed by opening your guard, hips moving laterally, and attempting a triangle choke. Or a kimura/hip throw. Practicing the transition between open and closed guard, and moving securely into attacks will be invaluable. Make sure that you’re performing technical, mindful drills to properly install the moves. Guys who just spar and roll all the time have notoriously sloppy transitions and submissions. You need both to properly integrate.
In terms of prevention, other than continuously attacking, keep a good squeeze and high guard. Keep making angles by lateral hip movement. If you’re practicing rubber guard, keep your foot firmly on the hip and that same knee squeezing towards the other one.
Also, get to know half guard and butterfly guard. Undoubtedly, some one’s going to break your guard and pass one leg of your guard. Instead of just giving into his transition to side mount, slap on the half guard lockdown to stop him in his tracks (see the lockdown here).
Striking From The Guard
In accord with the phrase, “a good defense is a good offense”, take some time working on striking from the guard. Many straight punches don’t work well, but hooking punches are fair, depending. Take a look here how it is to be done.
To Be Continued
I hope I’ve brought up some things will give you some ideas and places to start when training to beat wrestlers in MMA. If you’ve got some insight or specific questions, make sure to speak up!
Other posts you may enjoy:
Tags: grappling, jujitsu, wrestling
- Permalink
- BartB
- 27 Oct 2008 8:30 AM
- Comments (4)
October 27th, 2008 at 9:19 am
Great post! Very informative. I do have questions about guard passes. When caught in strong guard is stacking the only way to pass? A wedge technique isn’t really effective against a tight guard. And vice-versa, how do you prevent stacking?
One thing I’ve noticed from wrestlers who aren’t aware of JJ tactics is that they don’t hold back and put their full weight into everything they do. I have personally found that the “opening the door” method of moving their momentum to tip them over, or let them pass to take the back is very effective. Most smart wrestlers will only go about 80% to get their dominant position but not risk having that motion continued.
October 28th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Sam,
Great questions!
One thing you need to know is that no guard is unbreakable, un-passable. Stacking is a great way to set up a pass, or as a pass itself. However, the wedge pass is still very effective, even when your opponent’s legs are squeezing you tight.
Chances are, though, it’s posture control that’s making the guard tough to pass, not a strong squeeze. Check to see if his legs are controlling on top of your waist – if this is the case, push them down (without opening yourself to an attack) as low on your hips as possible. With good balanced posture, you can begin guard breaking by slightly leaning over on leg (not upsetting your balance), driving and driving one knee into the tail bone. At this point if the opponents hips are not down, the wedging won’t work.
Now, if you are having trouble getting the ankles to unlock, here are a few tips.
Grind your elbow into the medial, upper part of the thigh, four inches below the groin. There are nerves and arteries that pass through there and moderate elbow pressure can loosen up the legs.
Relax and make your opponent work. Keep your elbows in and your hands close to your neck. “Weight” as heavy as you can, reserve energy, and cover his mouth and nose with a cupped hand (or a gi if he’s wearing on). Burning down his energy will loosen his guard.
Set up the guard pass as a move #2 in a series. In MMA, just punch the face. Mental resources will go into head defense and guard passing becomes easier.
Fake a stack-attack then smoothly transition into a wedge.
In fact, try mini-body slams to loosen the ankle lock and slide his legs down your body.
On the flip side, to truly prevent stacking you need good posture control. Whenever the opponent has a stable base – three un-challenged posting points – he can try to stack. However, you can deal with the stack by seeing it coming and releasing closed guard and pulling De La Riva Guard or X-guard and attempting an immediate sweep. Even if you don’t know much outside of closed guard, release your ankles and don’t get lifted off the ground or have your hips get stacked over your head – you’ve lost control in these positions.
“Opening the door” philosophy is M O N E Y. Even most jujitsu players attack in a linear, uncomplicated way. With high guard control, just move those hips laterally, create an angle and tip them over into your mount. Or omoplata.
November 7th, 2008 at 3:39 am
[...] Maybe you’re a judoka looking to improve your throws, or an MMA’er trying to beat strong wrestlers – maybe you just want to be able to disable relatives with a fierce bear hug. These exercises will [...]
December 1st, 2008 at 5:21 pm
[...] In part 1, I discussed the basic wrestlers strategy, side control management, preventing the guard pass, and striking from the guard. [...]