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)

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.

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.

It’s basically the high school wrestling “sit out”, and I think it works pretty well. I’ve been experimenting with a couple of other ideas for this situation, and when I refine them I’ll post. If you have any techniques you like from this position, let us in on them!

The longer a fight lasts, the sweatier the combatants gets.  The sweatier the guys get, the harder it is to lock in submissions – especially if your opponent is a hairless manatee, having shaven himself from head to toe. Moves that require gripping or friction lose effectiveness as things get slippery.

At first blush, it’s an odd thing to think about – but it’s important. If you have a jujitsu-heavy MMA style, you have to plan that some submissions just won’t work very well in the 2nd or 3rd rounds.  In particular, The armbar and triangle from guard are two that get harder lock in later in fights. You’ll slap them on and squeeze confidently, only to your chagrin when your grease monkey opponent slithers out his head or arm.  Conversly, the mata leo/rear naked choke is one that seems to hold up well despite the sweat coverage.

This is good news if you’re a ground and pounder – you can be agressive while in the opponent’s guard with a diminshed fear of submissions when you start to sweat.

The picture above is of two men participating in the Turkish sport of kirkpinar – oil wrestling. In kirkpinar, they rub down each other with olive oil, wear traditional black pants (leather?) and wrestle furiously. I am not making this up.

Waaaagh! Wrestlers. They’re a tricky sort, and as big names like Randy Couture, Matt Hughes, and Brock Lesnar have shown. The purpose of this article is to help fighters who have difficulties in dealing with wrestling based mixed martial artists. Certainly, I don’t know it all. Hopefully though, you’ll get some tips and ideas to take to the mat and gain an upper hand against wrestling MMA’ers.

In part 1, I discussed the basic wrestlers strategy, side control management, preventing the guard pass, and striking from the guard.

In part 2, I want to add some details about dominant positions, submissions from the ground and elaborate a bit about the standing striking game.

Get Dominant Positions

If you want to improve your chances of winning a match, focus on gaining and keeping dominant positions for greater percentages of your fight practice sessions. In jujitsu, we have a mantra that applies well in MMA: Position Before Submission – make sure you are secure in a dominant position with all the various technical points under control and the submission will be WAY easier. Instead of struggling to lock in your choke, transition to a more dominant position. Don’t fight strength against strength in neutral positions, focus on getting some place where you have a leverage and body advantage.

Part of what makes wrestlers such frustrating opponents is that they are good at putting you in disadvantageous positions. The take down, the guard pass, the ground and pound – it’s all about being on top, weighing you down, smacking you until KO or an arm/head becomes undefended enough to submit it with ease.

Your job is to do essentially the same thing. Get into a dominant position and work the techniques you know.

It makes sense when you review all the fights you’ve seen through your mind. How often does a fight get finished once one competitor takes the others back? 60-80%? It’s almost natural to just call the fight done when someone gets back mount because it’s so common to see TKO due to strikes or rear naked choke in a few seconds.

In striking realm, the essence of position before submission is no different. Beating down an opponent from the mount position is much more deadly than being restricted in guard and trying to grind out some ground and pound. Position matters.

Gaining dominant clinches assures that you’ll be able to get in some punches by controlling the body position and angles made between your body and your opponent’s. Randy Couture takes a good deal of time talking about this in his video on “Learning to fight and win.” Get a good single collar tie, step off to the side and land a straight punch to the face. Anticipating that an opponent will get wise to this, he’ll angle back toward you to try to defend. Respond by “swimming” to the other side, hooking the arm or head and keep the dominant position.

Create Angles To Land Strikes and Frustrate Take Downs

I love a still-photo that can capture the exact moment of a knockout punch in all of its sweaty head-snapping, rippled cheeks and fist to face glory. It’s a special moment, really (unless you’re on the receiving end). Just like in Sesame Street where today was brought to you by the letter Q and the number 7, there’s a big chance that the KO blow was brought to you by good attack angles.

It’s tough to over-state how useful proper angles are in fighting. Whether standing up or on the ground, moving position to get an angle on a opponent will open him up for nearly unblockable punches/submissions while simultaneously diminishing the strength of his attacks or obviating them altogether.

Leg take downs are initiated in a very linear manner. The wrestler drops his level and bursts forward. Upper body throws all have to be worked from a body clinch. Both are well countered by circling, angle movements.

It’s a deep and rich subject, one worthy of it’s own post, so I’ll keep it brief here and post a couple of specifics.

As you drill for take downs, one variation is to train as if you see the take down coming. Remain light on your feet and angle off to the side, push the head and shoulder girdle to the side of you, letting them go past you as you side step and angle off their attack line. If the take down is already underway when you notice it, you’re probably too late avoid it altogether, but you can still angle a bit as you begin to contact. As they close that distance, see if you can gain advantage via over/under hooks. See if you can notice which leg they try to grab first – either by intuition or fight videos – and get that leg back first. As you “retreat” that side, turn or pivot and parry their driving energy forward to that side behind you. Punch to the face or send a knee up to the head.

Watch the fight where Lyoto Machida defeats Tito Ortiz. It’s almost like Lyoto’s a matador, and Ortiz a charging bull. Ole!

When exchanging strikes, always trying to work your way out of the power zone of your opponent by circling around them. In a nutshell, that striking power zone is shaped like a round support pillar – imagine your opponent hugging a stone column, barely able to connect hands. Looking on the floor, the power zone can be seen as a circular arc between where their feet are pointing.

There is a good boxing DVD on the market that deals with attack angles specifically – see Fight Resources bottom of the post for the link.

Create Angles To Get Submissions

My Sensei summed up getting jujitsu with two words – hip movement. In this context, I’ll throw in an extra word – lateral hip movement. If you’re not a jujitsu player, this advice may be lost on you. If you are a jujitsu player, this advice might be beyond you. I certainly haven’t achieved that level of grappling nirvana where two words is all I need. Still, it’s the root of the idea and I’ll try to do my best describing it.

If you’re in guard, don’t let the guy get his posture. Even if you’ve broken your opponent down so you’re chest to chest, their body laying directly on top of you like the two hands of a clock at 12:00 is bad. In this case, you will always need to push or pull off on one side and try to isolate one half of their body – either an arm or the head and one arm.

Think of the omoplata submission; you start off in a twelve o’clock position but push off one hip to move your body to the side, going to a body position that’s about two o’clock. As you do this, you get your leg up the back of your opponents body and in front of his face, trapping his arm – you’re probably at three o’clock. Continuing on, you go into a jiu-claw position (six o’clock) and sit up and start tweaking the shoulder joint. Check out the article “Omoplata Omoplata Omoplata” here to see what I mean.

Angle off the body line and see how your opponent may expose himself to submissions. Additionally, one of the great pluses to this is that angling off gives less for an opponent to strike.

Fighter Resources

I’ve mentioned a few things you might want to check out.

First of all, if you didn’t catch Dealing With Wrestlers In MMA Part 1, check it out here.

The learning to fight and win DVD with Randy Couture is well worth the money. He breaks down the clinch game really well. As it’s a wrestler staple that he’s been using, you can use it to fight with or avoid it. To really know how to defend an attack, you have to know it yourself.

With all the talk of clinches, you’ll want to bring yourself up to speed on pummeling and the different clinch positions. The article Basic Pummeling, can be found here.

here

The other DVD I mentioned was the Title Boxing Attacking and Punching at Angles. It’s a solid video from some of the best in the business.

As for hip movement, I mentioned that it’s a tricky thing to describe. Instead, watch grappling guru Jean Machado perform his 5 favorite submissions. The armbar recounter (2nd shown in the vid) is very instructional on lateral-hip-movement. See it below, or click here.

Also, three posts in the archives were mentioned directly, or indirectly.

Omoplata instruction : Tons of omoplata variations and how to pull them off. Watch the hip movement!

Extra Bonus:

Here are some pics that show some good attack angles.

On this one (above) notice how Rich Franklin’s right foot is out side his opponnet’s left foot.

Above, Liddell is square up to Rampage. Both of Liddell’s feet are the same distance away from Jackson, “squaring” his shoulders and face for impact.

Side step and uppercut: It could equally be a failed take down attempt.

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!

Here are a few vids on taking your opponent to the ground.

The Classic

A few pointers:

• Drop your level by bending the knees, not bending at the waist.
• Keep the curve in the small of your back, and drive the takedown with your legs.
• Once you’ve shot in deep and have control, “cut the corner” – push his weight back and around his back leg (like a door swiveling open)
• Let your weight slam into him
• Wrestle into side control

Double Leg Slam

Here’s a nice animation from the show Human Weapon that illustrates a more athletic, lift and slam variation double leg. Matt Hughes comes to mind. Also, it’s got two extra moves in the vid too – icing on the cake.

A few pointers:

• Keep your head glued to his body – you don’t want an arm sneaking down an attempting a choke
• Make sure to get his center of gravity disconnected from the ground while lifting him up
• Get at least one leg totally off the ground before you start to “cut the corner”

Double Leg with Sweep Assist

This is a great variation if your opponent is good at sprawling.

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.

Pummeling: Stand-up grappling 3/18/07 Jenny and Daniel

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.