(Above, a clash of style and stance: Lyoto Machida’s karate and Shogun Rua’s Muay Thai)

Your fighting stance governs a great deal about how you fight.  All of your attacks will be influenced by it; your defensive structure is set by it. While there are many variations, there is a general sense of what is most useful and a majority of successful fighters only differ only 10-20% from it. Think of it like a steak.  Some people like medium-rare, others well-done.  If you were cooking for a large group (of carnivores, of course) and couldn’t individually serve them, you’d probably pick medium to medium well to best satisfy all. Serving rare steak or going with uncooked steak tar-tar would probably end poorly.

Below, a great, middle of the road stance (from local MMA instructor Brian Yamasaki) vs extremely low and impractical Shaolin kungfu stance.

I’ll call this middle of the road stance “the standard narrative”.  Remember, no one particular technique or stance is the 100% correct thing to do in all situations. Fighting is fluid and dynamic, but this standard narrative does a good job keeping in pace with all the places a fight can go.

Guarding the upper body

The main two concerns here are reducing damage to your vitals and allowing quick and powerful strikes. We’ll mainly focus on the defensive aspect, but the guard described here doesn’t really sacrifice much in terms of firepower for the benefit of great defense – one reason it so popular in MMA.

With protection in mind, your hands should to be held above your collar-bone,  your knuckles above your chin, protecting your face. Depending on your style, you can keep your knuckles at your temples (better defense), like you are answering the phone or even lowering them to the chin-level (better offense, riskier) to increase your speed of punching and relaxed shoulders.

Below, upper body high guards.

Here are some suitable relaxed lower guards with the arms.

In almost every case, you’ll want your elbows (chicken wings) to be down and in towards your body protecting your midsection. In the pictures above, many of the fighters are midway into a punch so their lead-hand elbow has drifted away from the standard position.

Especially for beginners, it is vital to keep the hands up and elbows tucked in even while punching, as it can save you from taking damage. Below right, Cain Velasquez’s high guard with the rear hand blocks his opponents punch while his punch lands flush.

Your chin should be tucked in towards your chest, “hiding” it and rooting your head to your torso.

When you are out of range of your opponent’s punches, your hands can drop slightly, but the standard narrative warns against it. This conserves some energy and allows for loose and fast punches as well as increasing takedown defense, but making your head more vulnerable to attack.

One other thing to consider – the tilt of your upper body.  Generally, you want your spine pointing straight up (chin tucked in) and only lean 5-15 degrees off vertical. When a fighter is bending at the hips past about 15 degrees, they are typically looking to wrestle (or defend it). Below left, Jose Aldo is tilting forward to be aggressive via strikes while Gray Maynard is tilting slightly away in defense.

Here, Tito Ortiz is looking to wrestle, his torso bent at about 30 degrees of vertical.

Advanced Considerations

When you are good enough, you can break any of these “rules” when the occasion calls for it. Below, Anderson Silva dropping his hands to Forest Griffin, then knocking him out. Lets be clear on this one. Silva uses superior knowledge of range to keep his opponents from hitting him, obviating the need to block. As one of the best fighters of all time, he is allowed to do what he pleases.  However, he does teach the standard narrative in his excellent DVD, Striking Combos for MMA.  He’s also got a book that goes over the basic stance – if you need a hard copy.

These are just a few of the major considerations – let me know what other things you think are important in comment section.

This semester many students have the opportunity/requirement of a kick-butt writing assignment. For those whom it is required, you know who you are.

Anyway, here are the ground rules.

You need to watch one of the fights from the TV show, The Ultimate Fighter (fights can be seen here). You could arbitrarily pick one or select one of the top ten fights from TUF – video above has snippets from each fight.

After watching, I want you to write a brief analysis (at least 200 words but no more than 400).  The analysis should have a summary of what happened (only a few sentences),  analysis of key elements that determined victory and your favorite moments with your explanation of why you liked those parts.

The main focus should be the various elements that you believe determined the fight.  What techniques seemed to be most dominant? Striking? Grappling? Conditioning? How might the loser have improved his performance?  What made this fight interesting to you?

Draw on your own experience with various techniques while you comment. Don’t fuss about being technical or ultra-knowledgeable. Speak from the heart with and edit once for grammar. Limited usage of slang and industry-standard terms is okay, but if your response reads like a comment on Youtube, I will likely stalk you down and beat you with a rubber hose.  (Flexibility will be provided for non-native-English speaking students).

Post your assignment below, using your first name and last initial, listing the fight you watched before the body of your work. This is to be finished before 12/12/11.

Ex:

BartB

Roland Delorme vs. TJ Dillashaw

This fight was ……….

I look forward to your work!

.

The ABC’s of MMA has been a pet project of mine for quite some time. The idea was to construct a manageable curriculum for my students up at the U to be able to quickly gain their bearing in the sea of mixed martial arts techniques.  I worked with my instructors and friends to narrow down what I felt were the most basic and useful techniques in MMA. To accompany these techniques, I wanted to codify a variety of warmups and drills I used over the years that help condition the body and strengthen ability to do the moves.

Next, I wanted to systematize it in such a way that it was easy to remember, teach to and track progress on. In essence, the ABC’s of MMA are to help someone develop a workable vocabulary of fighting techniques and training drills. It’s not meant to be everything to everyone; I’m not a guru and don’t know all mastery points for the moves contained therein. However, I think you’ll find it a slick way to organize teaching and learning.

The format of the program defines the three main areas of MMA (striking, grapling and conditioning) and has 3 levels of difficultly for each area.  If a coach thinks X is more important to Y, it’s easy to adapt or insert parts into the 9-cell program.

Below are two PDFs that define  the curriculum and help you keep track of your personal progress. The intent of the checkoff list is for your instructor/coach/mentor to initial each block after you show proficiency.

Explanation of the ABCs of MMA program

Checkoff list for the ABCs of MMA

I’m currently working on fleshing out instructions for each individual move inside the ABCs.  I hope you find the approach laid out here to be useful. If you have any ideas or would like to help, let me know.

Also, remember to sweep the leg.

Just a reminder to all students – classes start tonight!

This semester we’ll be officially introducing the “ABC’s of MMA” which will be our syllabus, more or less.  This more formalized curriculum will help students progress from class to class, semester to semester, keep track of progress, and more.  I’ll  post a ton more details and how we’ll be using this syllabus, found here: ABCs 05172011 Keep in mind that while the ABC’s of MMA is in beta, you’re experience and feedback is going to help the program evolve.

I look forward to training with you!

• A water bottle
• Appropriate workout clothes
• An athletic cup
• A mouth guard

If you don’t have any of this stuff, don’t worry, I will forgive you … for tonight only!  Protective training gear becomes more and more important as time goes on. As always, I am excited to begin training with you.

For those whom it concerns:

Fall semester started Monday, and MMA classes begin tonight (Tuesday) at 8 PM.

For those interested in the sport-science part of MMA training, there are some upcoming exercise physiology lectures up at the university of Utah that may interest you. Topics range from things like “Fatigue as a Specific Sensory System” to “Oxidative Stress and Muscle Dysfunction Following ACL Injury and Surgery“.

These talks are held on various dates, but are always on Friday starting at 2:00PM. To check out the schedule for the colloquium, see it here.

For those looking for information about the U of U MMA classes, look no further.

I’m extremely excited about this coming year.  I’ve streamlined the course a bit and believe that students will learn more, faster, and with a greater degree of technique because of it.

For starters, we’ll make sure to emphasize the MIXED part of mixed martial arts. No matter the class title, if it’s taught by me, we’ll be doing MMA.  Striking, grappling, conditioning. Every few semesters I’ll focus on a  a specific  martial art textbook. This semester I’ll be teaching a good deal from BJ Penn’s MMA Book of Knowledge. This hopefully will allow students to study at home and after the class is over. It’s a cheap textbook, and I think it’ll be invaluable to student’s MMA progression.

I’m teaching three mixed martial arts classes this semester. The scheduling department hasn’t been kind to me this year, so the classes may not be listed exactly correctly. However, the following should get you through without fear. Basically, for the morning classes if it says 9:40-10:30 AM and is taught in the HPR W 106 room, that’s my class.

Class Numbers and Times

ESSF 1415 section 001 and 002; W 8:15-10 PM

This class is posted as Martial Arts Elem: Mixed Martial Arts.

ESSF 1420 section 001 and 002; M/W 9:40-10:30 AM

This class is listed as Judo: Jujitsu grappling for beginners. Supposedly, the class name (not number!) will be changed to Judo: Mixed Martial Arts.  It says that it will be taught by “Staff” and that really means me.

ESSF 1440 section 001 and 006 ; T/H  9:40-10:30 AM

This class is listed as Aikido: Elementary. Supposedly, the class name (not number!) will be changed to Aikido: Elementary : Mixed Martial Arts.   Again, another strange listing error. I’m not listed as the instructor, but fear not. This is really my class. And yes, really, this is an MMA class, as I really don’t know any Aikido.

Additional Notes

Spring semester at the University of Utah starts Monday January 12.

Make sure to sign up for both half-semester classes to make sure you can get in.

You don’t have to be a U student to get into the class – take the class from the continuing ed department.  Go directly to http://continue.utah.edu/noncredit/ and look for my classes under the ESSF course list. BTW, it’s super cheap to take the class this way.

If the class fills up before you can sign up, come to the first session and I’ll give you an add code.

This semesters textbook is Mixed Martial Arts: The Book of Knowledge by BJ Penn.

As always, if you have any questions drop me a line and I’ll do my best to answer them quickly.