I was pondering something James Irvin said prior to his fight with Anderson “The Spider” Silva, talking about a wrestling clinch and a Muay Thai clinch:
Against Franklin and Henderson, it’s not that his clinch was so good. The clinch definitely favors the taller, stronger guy with more leverage. But in the Thai clinch, aggressiveness goes a long way. He just seemed so much bigger against Dan and Rich. I’m not taking anything away from him. He really bullied those guys around and was able to just reach out and grab them …There’s a big difference between the wrestling clinch and the Muay Thai clinch, and it looked like Dan and Rich didn’t know how to Muay Thai clinch. I know we didn’t see the best of Rich.
I’ve seen several flavors of clinching, and I usually just lump them into two camps – the Greco Wrestling style clinch and the south-east Asia “plum” clinch. (If someone can definitively say more than Irvin did, please enlighten me!). Since I’ve posted a more Thai-Style clinch article (link above), I wanted to show a couple of videos from more wrestling based fighters showing off striking from the clinch.
Here’s Chuck Liddell’s take on the Thai clinch and he shows off how one might sneak in a few elbows while pummeling for hooks – among other things. It’s pretty cool, and it’s about 3 minutes long.
Something that’s interesting to me is that at about 2:30 in the above vid, Chuck shows how he’d escape the clinch by controlling one arm down and then lifting the other elbow and “throw it by”. The “throw-by”, or to “throw them by” is common wrestling nomenclature; so it’s nice to see Liddell bring his wrestling background into a Muay Thai style move.
Now, for the video below, Tito Ortiz, who also has a crazy-deep wrestling background, shows off some striking from the double under hooks, single under hook. At one brief moment, Tito also shows how to fire off a head butt, assuming you’re in a NHB fight that allows it. He mentions that ” I wanna use the top of the crown of my head, … it’s the strongest part of my body probably.” With the gargantuan dome that Tito sports, no doubt its true. Anyway…
One place where I know you can get GREAT training on striking from the Greco – style clinch is the train to fight and win, with Randy Couture. It’s a cheap download. Randy goes over a lot of stuff – one of my favorites is how he angles off and strikes with a single collar tie. Here’s a clip from Randy’s DVD download, linked above.
BTW, Randy’s Book, Wrestling for fighting, is great BUT if you’re looking for striking mixed with your wrestling, I might look else where. It’s a great book and focuses a lot on the stand up game in terms of locks and take downs (not submissions though).
One last fighter who has a strong background in wrestling is Jens Pulver. He shows off how to use strikes to set up the under hooks, punching a guy up cage, etc. Little Evil calls his instructions dirty boxing, and you can see how his wrestling comes through. Notice how he engages into the clinch, fires off some shots, and then squeezes up into a body lock, maybe to continue with a Heimlich drop takedown.
Between stand-up and ground fighting, there is clinching. 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 improve your ability to gain, control, and break clinch positions.
Basically Speaking
Clinch control is about controlling and manipulating balance. Without it, your strikes lose power, throw attempts fail, and your opponent can take you down to the mat with ease. If I had to give a highbrow explanation, I’d say that balanced clinching comes from having a dynamically strong, rooted stances that allow for you to actively manipulate your opponent’s balance. As such, clinch control primarily relates to three strengths: leg power, core stability/sensitivity, and griping/pulling. Perhaps a judo master could expound more – I’ll ask Vladimir Putin about it.
But enough about that, lets get to exercises that develop muscular strength and skill to control the clinching positions.
Tire Flipping
Old-school and awesome. If you’ve never done them, make sure you read about the saftey pointers and proper technique from the guys over at EliteFTS here. They’re not deadlifts, and doing them like a deadlift can injure you. Don’t give up on deads, I think they’re great – just different.
The transfer of power from your legs helps you sprawl with strength, as well as push through a sprawl put on you, among other things.
Car Pushing
Again, old-school. This will help you get rooted and keep a good stance while working for clinches like “over/under control” (you have one under-hook and over-hook at the same time). Also, when you compete it is important to be able to drive your opponent back while clinched up. Once their back is on the ropes/cage, you can use that lack of mobility to your advantage.
If you have the access, train some drills with football linemen – the ones where they slam into each other and push right after the hike of the ball.
Crush Curls
I learned about this one over at the DragonDoor forums, and think this is a mighty nice exercise. Normally, I hate bicep curls, partially due to the immature fascination of body builders with the biceps and partially because bicep curls don’t translate really well to most sports and performance. These are a tad different.
They’re great to produce full body tension, which you need to keep your root and stance while struggling in clinches. Think about it – if you have great chest power from bench pressing, but while standing you can’t back up that strength with a rooted core body, you’ll just get pushed over to your back.
This curl can be done with medicine balls, kettlebells, or rocks. Anyway, Chris Smith describes the exact process of doing them in an article on EzineArticles.com,
To perform the kettlebell crush curl, you simply grasp the kettlebell on each side with a palms-facing grip. Squeeze as hard as you can, like you would with a box of valuables while moving. This will serve to keep the kettlebell from falling to the ground. I perform the kettlebell crush curl with the handle on top, this seems to be easier for me.
Starting at the bottom position, your elbows will be fully extended and the kettlebell should be in front of the thigh area. Keep your back straight throughout this exercise. While squeezing the kettlebell, slowly curl the kettlebell up. Pause at the top and lower the kettlebell in a controlled manner, all the while “crushing” the kettlebell.
Also, if you have shoulder or elbow problems, this curl is friendly to your joints.
Pull Ups
Pull ups are challenging – they engage a lot of muscles to do them right. As a general rule, MMA training exercises should be compound, multi-joint movements that incorporate many muscle groups and link them cohesively together, mimicking some specific movement from the sport ( isolation training is a no no!). You want to be able to use your body as a whole, integrated unit instead of a collection of parts.
Anyway… you can do these with either grip – as shown above or by gripping the bar palms facing you. The key to good pull ups is to keep stabilized and don’t cheat kinetically. Cheating is when you swing your knees to help you pull on the way up, or other such shenanigans.
If you can’t muster one full pull up yet, don’t fret. Over at The Art of Manliness blog, there’s a article on how to do more than one stinking pull up. If you look at the picture there, you’ll notice a fun variation that I give two thumbs up.
**Update**
Due to popular demand, I’ve put together a huge resource about pull ups called pull ups for fighters.
Beating Tires
Primarily, this exercise is used to gain rotational core strength. That core strength will help you pull opponents off balance and keep yourself rooted, not to mention it’ll help punching power. Fedor Emelianenko and his team, the Red Devils, beats the crap out of tires with sledgehammers – its a big part of their training. Enough said.
Suitcase Lift
The suitcase lift is like a deadlift, but you are only picking weight on one side of your body. It strengthens the core. Just like the photo, squat down like you’re sitting in a chair and drive with your hips on the the way up. Keep your shoulder girdle parallel to the floor – you should stand erect like you don’t have any weight in your hand. The opposite side obliques will be hit hard! Additionally, it can increase your grip strength.
Sand Bags
Oooo…. this is just the tip of the iceberg. You can shoulder carry and practice body slams, put it on the ground and do over head throws (like a back suplex), or just bear hug squeeze for all you’re worth. Front squats, turkish get ups, it doesn’t end. Also, you can use medicine balls.
One I enjoy is the partner drill where you are in sit up position (at the top), back to back, and pass off the medicine ball to the side to your partner. If you’ve got Pavel Tsatsouline’s book, Bullet Proof Abs, his combat twist is awesome too.
Learning to pummel, or in other words, learning to break clinches/holds and gain your own dominant position while standing is very important. When you get tied up by an opponent, he’s going to be working his game plan – which probably includes brutally kneeing you to the face dozens of times. Since this isn’t part of your plan, learning to pummel is a good idea.
When you first start into clinching and pummeling with a partner, go easy. If you’ve never sparred with guys who wrestle by tying you up like this, your neck will be very sore the day after. To strengthen your overall clinch and pummeling performance, workout the neck with proper back bridging. NOTE: It’s very important to do this correctly by bridging with your forehead on the ground, pushing your nose to ground instead of bridging on the top of your head – see Matt Furley’s book Combat Conditioning for more detailed instruction.
Here’s a vid with fighter Yves Edwards showing the basic plumb clinch and pummelling.
Here’s a video of Daniel and Jenny working the pummel for several minutes. Watch how they work the head, push off from the hips, and use angles to break out. Copycat what they do to train your pummel and clinch. Flow from one tie up to the next, just grappling. Later you incorporate practicing strikes, but for now, just get the motions down.
If you want more info on pummeling, consult either Randy “The Natural” Couture’s book Wrestling for Fighting or this devilishly under-priced Amazon.com download, Learn to Fight and Win with Randy Couture . Between the two, they cover all sorts of neat stuff – single collar ties, takedowns, advanced pummeling, ect. I’ve gone through both, and their filled with awesome stuff. Randy is a fighter who knows his stuff and pummels really well.
Previously posted are two of ESPN.com’s MMA for dummies videos about the Muay Thai clinch. Since the readers of SLC MMA are no dummies, we’ve amped it up a notch with some advanced techniques from the plumb clinch.
Kenny Florian instructs on the Muay Thai Clinch and two attacks from this position, from ESPN.com’s MMA for dummies. This is type of clinch is also called the plumb clinch.
