Just wanted to put the word out – Brandon Ruiz is having a seminar this Saturday at Fusion, 11:00 – 1:30. Fee is only $20. Brandon is an excellent teacher and really knows his stuff. His takedowns are amazing. If you don’t know who Brandon is, check his bio below. I’ve had the opportunity to roll with him a couple of times and I can tell you, he is an animal. After he beat the pulp out of me, he gave me a number of really good pointers to help my game – which I use all the time now.
Brandon is holding the seminar to raise funds to help him go to a FILA grappling world championship. It’s a true world-tournament, and invitation only. If you want some excellent training and help support Brandon, I’ll see you Saturday.
BIO
2008 Pancrase Submission Wrestling World Champion
“The King of Combat Grappling” & Outstanding Wrestler Award
2008 FILA Grappling World Silver Medalist
2008 IBJJF Brazilian Jiu Jitsu World Championships Bronze Medalist
2004 Greco Roman Pan Am Championships Silver Medalist
3 x Pancrase Submission Wrestling National Champion
4 x Brazilian Jiu Jitsu/Grappling State Champion
8 x Greco Roman & Freestyle All-American
Judo State Champion
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Black Belt (Machado)
A fun time was had at the Utah Submission Challenge. Here a number of videos of the Gi and no Gi divisions. If you guys have any more that you’d like to put up – or that are already posted – let me know and I’ll update this page.
I have been teaching, training, and playing with the notion of pressures lately. Essentially, this had led me to conclude that achieving, maintaining and reversing positional dominance is the premier skill in MMA. That’s right. Positional dominance is the hierarchical king to all other concepts in MMA. Sure, I could be wrong. But I challenge you to outline a better one (please do! and then teach me). I dare say that positional dominance is at the root of success in MMA, indeed, it should be the prime directive of mixed martial artists.
Think of it this way – positional dominance is the ability to exert maximum pressure with minimal effort while simultaneously optimizing your mobility and decreasing your opponents.
Take side control for example. The top cross-body position is unquestionable dominant. Gravity allows you to crush your opponent pretty hard, especially when you learn the finer points of posturing for top pressure. You can switch position into scarf hold/kesa gatame, mount, north south, knee on belly, or even stand back up. Your elbows and knee strikes have “umph” and you can force openings to proper strike points. The guy on the bottom has weak control over your posture and mobility, and his pressure (hugging pressures, upa escapes, arm/knee frames) pales in comparison to yours. His hips are often blocked by your knee or arm, his shoulders are pinned to the mat – his mobility is severely restricted. The strikes from the guy on the bottom? Laughable.
Now consider the clinch game, two fighters both having an overhook and an underhook. They both exert pressure that controls movement and limits mobility. However, unless a fighter is skilled at the position, neither fighter has a positional advantage. Many times, over/under control becomes a battle of strength and explosiveness.
One last example – striking. Squaring off against your opponent puts you on an equal position. Cutting an angle behind him opens him up: striking his vitals becomes easier and his counter-strikes are hard to pull off. Often, he has to adjust his position before making any kind of offensive effort or block. Anderson Silva is great at controlling angles and space; see his book Striking for MMA, for more on that.
Positionally Dominant Game Planning
The overall frame work of your technical training can be broken up into two parts. Taking a dominant position and exploiting it. The delivery system differs on your body type, style presence, and martial art. The question is no longer “why is mount better than guard?” but rather, “Am I training in a realistic way that will emphasize my ability to gain positional dominance and exploit it along the way?”.
More and more, when I’m training or teaching, I’m trying to think, “How does this move help the application of positional dominance?” In my personal game, I’m trying to avoid just collecting a bunch of moves and instead try to build cohesive skills to gain dominant position.
Jujitsu escapes aren’t about blocking my opponents submissions – they are about advancing my position. The mantra of “Step every time you strike, strike every time you step” is becoming a way to not only increase punching power, but advance my body position by striking.
I think the overall shift in focus from details-orientation to “big picture” thinking will help my game. Its not that details aren’t important – they are. However, I want my game driven by fundamental principles from a top down approach, not a collection of moves from a bottom up approach. (I see the bottom up approach taught quite a bit)
Summary
Get and maintain positional dominance. When you do:
Strikes do more damage. Counter strikes do less.
You have increased control over your opponents movements, strategy and technical options.
You have increased freedom of body movement, more technical options and an more strategy selection.
Your pressure wears down an opponent physically and mentally, without overtaxing your energy.
Submissions become more viable and easier to pull off.
Almost every form of advantage is boosted when in a dominant position.
In a sense, all grappling begins with a battle of grips. Even in the standup game, the clinch positions and pummeling are extensions of the grip. Submissions are set-up by a proper gripping situation and to an extent, strikes can be too.
Randy Couture uses his grips to set up his preferred clinches, so does Karo Parisyan. From what I’ve seen, Jens “Lil Evil” Pulver uses grip fighting to set up his favored style of dirty boxing. A lot of fights really get dictated by the flow of the gripping positions.
Here are some videos to get your creative juices flowing.
First things first, the vid above shows some of the two handed gripping positions like the s-grip and the gable grip.
From the guard, there is one particular gripping situation that has both frustrated and delighted me – depending on who’s using it. You have one deep overhook and use that arm to reach over to the opponents non-hooked wrist. You’ve blocked his use of both of his arms and you’ve one free arm to punch, manipulate an armbar, or get into rubber guard’s mission control. In the video above, Kenny Florian uses this grip to stand up from the guard.
I was first shown this by Eric down at Fusion gym – I’ll tell you, it’s tough to escape.
Double wrist control from the guard is more potent in submission grappling than it is in MMA, and even more potent in gi jujitsu. In the video above, Frank Trigg illustrates why. Circling thumb-side and delivering elbows, compressing the hips forward when you do, helps break the grip and deal damage at the same time.
This circling applies both ways though, if you’re on the bottom and a guy is double wrist controlling you, you can swim around like this to break his grip.
Above: Greg Nelson, at Erik Paulson’s CSW, elaborates on grip training, freaky wrestler strength, and training.
For Judo players and gi Jujitsu, grip fighting is huge. Every match begins with a grip, and if you can control the grips throughout, you control the match. The above video shows a drop seoi nage drill that is pretty slick. Tony, one of my instructors, showed me something similar that the Gracie-Baja guys were killing people with down at the Mundials. You set up the same way, entering in for seoi nage, but instead of passing through the legs you disappear on the the side of the legs and remain control of the sleeve. You finish with an easy single leg take down, among other things.
I just heard about this from Noah J – there is going to be a catch as catch can wrestling seminar over at Brandon Ruiz’s Altitude Combat. Wednesday and Thursday night, $20 bucks a night.
I know it’s short notice, but Billy Robinson is one of those old school powerhouses, like Karl Gotch. Billy has trained some very tough guys – like Josh Barnett and Sakuraba. Not to mention that Brandon also has a serious grappling resume. I rolled with Brandon once at Fusion – he was messing around, let me take his back and attempt to choke him, which was like trying to submit a mighty oak tree with Olympic greco-roman experience. Epic fail. Anyway…
You’ll want to RSVP to see if you can still get in. Check the Altitude Combat page for more details.
PS – Appearance it’s tough to find the place – it’s in a warehouse like district just off North Temple and 800 West.
PSS – Did you notice the Brock Lesnar catch wrestling hold from half guard?
