Grappling Tips Newsletter

February 27, 2005

Stretching Continued

I thought I was done with last week's topic ("Isn’t Stretching Supposed to Prevent Injuries?") but I recently had an interesting conversation on the topic with Charles Brown. Not only has Charles been a fitness trainer and competitive endurance athlete for over 20 years, but he also subscribes to the Grapplearts.com newsletter!

Below I am posting what Charles said - I think it is a valuable contribution to the discussion of stretching, grappling and martial arts:

"I noted with interest your recent comments about stretching. The recent proliferation of articles about the dangers of pre-event stretching cite nothing new. The true risks and benefits of stretching have not changed in decades. What the recent research achieves is to highlight the misunderstanding about how and when to stretch, which have existed for decades."

"The importance of stretching lies in its proven ability to prevent injury by maintaining range of motion, not as a quick-fix approach to preventing acute injury during an event. Stretching cold muscles (the typical pre-event stretch) has always had a tendency to increase injury. The problem with pre-event stretching lies not in the stretching itself, but in the failure to warm-up adequately."

"A solid warm-up requires a minimum of 8-10 minutes. There is no shortcut. Think about the last time you started running at a very easy pace. At some point, early in the run, you probably noticed a sudden onrush of perspiration. I'd be willing to bet that event occurred about 8-10 minutes into your run. That is when you were warmed up. Stretching after that point, done sensibly, would represent absolutely no risk of injury. In fact, the warm-up itself will do more to prevent acute injury than any stretching."

"The role stretching plays in preventing chronic and acute injury lies in its increasing (or preventing the decrease of) range of motion of a particular joint or series of joints. In order to accomplish this, however, stretches must be conducted with thoroughly warmed-up muscles, and must be held for 30-60 seconds. The typical 15-20 second stretch has absolutely no benefit in improving, or even maintaining, flexibility. In other words, stretching need not occur in direct proximity to your event in order to prevent injury."

"So, what can athletes, including martial artists, gain from all this?

Warm-up all working muscles thoroughly before training or competition with at least 8-10 minutes of continuous, very low intensity activity.
Engage in a regular routine of static stretches held for 30-60 seconds.
Stretch before or after an event, but ALWAYS after a warm-up."

Thanks to Charles for his thoughts and insights!

Labels: conditioning, Injuries

permanent link to this article posted by Stephan @ 12:59 PM

February 19, 2005

Isn’t Stretching Supposed to Prevent Injuries?

Stretching has recently gotten some bad press. Various studies and articles looking at runners, army recruits and soccer players have come to light suggesting that stretching doesn’t actually prevent injuries. If you want to read summaries of some of these articles check out www.runnersworld.com/article/0,5033,s6-197-200-0-7001,00.html and www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/0852.htm.

So does that mean that we all should stop stretching? Not at all! These studies were mostly conducted on running athletes. Running has quite a small range of motion, and very few people find flexibility to be the limiting factor in how far or fast they can run.

Martial artists in general spend much more time at the limits of their range of motion. Just think about how much more flexibility is required for high kicks compared to running down the street. Grapplers in particular end up in all sorts of contorted positions on the mat: they need strength and flexibility in their whole body. Even if your game doesn't require flexibility you may not have control over what positions you end up in: an over-eager opponent might tie you in a pretzel, and without flexibility you are just cruising for an injury.

These studies make fascinating reading for those interested in exercise science. They come to some surprising conclusions, but I think it would be premature to stop stretching if you are also challenging your body with the rigors of grappling.

Labels: conditioning, Injuries

permanent link to this article posted by Stephan @ 9:42 PM

February 13, 2005

The Two-Pronged Half Guard

This week I am going to take the easy way out, and let someone else do most of the work.

Andreh Anderson has trained with many famous grapplers and is a skilled brown belt under Rey Diego. Recently he posted detailed photos and explanations of two of his favorite techniques. I immediately asked permission to post these techniques on my site and he kindly agreed. The two techniques in question can be seen at www.grapplearts.com/Half-Guard-Sweep-Series.htm and www.grapplearts.com/Wallid-Ismael-Guard-Pass.htm

I found the half guard series to be especially interesting, since it mirrors a lot of what I have been working on a lot recently. In my sparring I have been concentrating on the half guard, and have come to recognize that success in the half guard relies on linking two motions:

coming onto your knees, either taking his back or doing a modified single leg or double leg takedown
diving underneath him and rolling him over top of you.

The beauty of these two motions is that they complement each other: if you can't come onto your knees you can often dive underneath him, and if you can't get underneath him then you can often get onto your knees.

Of course there are many, many variations on how to accomplish these two goals. There are many details about grip placement and hook placement that you need to consider to make this game effective and efficient. The concept of the two-pronged half guard attack is a great starting point for developing an aggressive half guard game.

In closing I should point out that I consider this sort of half guard strategy to be an intermediate to advanced-level game. You shouldn't even begin playing with it until you can reliably and repeatedly start with having your opponent in your half guard, block his guard pass attempts, and replace him into your own closed guard.

permanent link to this article posted by Stephan @ 8:17 PM

February 06, 2005

Competitive 2 Person Drilling

The last two weeks I have talked about solo drills and partner drills. There is a final category of drills I'd like to talk about: competitive 2 person drills.

When you do this type of drilling you are training a specific aspect of your game against a resisting opponent. Essentially you are severely limiting the options available to you and your partner, and from this limitation comes refinement of existing techniques and innovation of new techniques.

The aspect that you are working on could be very general (e.g. passing the open guard) or very specific (e.g. getting a certain grip or maintaining a certain kind of posture). The level of resistance that you opponent/partner gives you can vary from about 10% to full out 100% sparring.

This definition of drilling leads to a truly staggering number of possible drills. The best thing for you to do is to try to develop various drills that will develop your game. Consider the process of taking someone's back and submitting him. If this was an area that you wanted to develop, then here are some of drills you might want to experiment with. Depending on what your strengths, weaknesses and strategies are you may end up retaining some of these drills for a while, in order to hone your ability to attack the back. All these drills start with your partner in the turtle and you on top of him - your goals, however, vary from drill to drill.

He tries to put you in the guard, you try to keep him turtled using your bodyweight and moving around him
Your goal is to obtain your favorite grip, be it linked hands under-over, double lapel grips through his armpits, or whatever your favorite control grip is. You restart in the same position if you get your grip, or if he puts you in the guard, or if he stands up, or if he rolls you.
Your goal is to get both hooks in - restart if you succeed or if he escapes to a safe position.
Start with one hook in: your goal is to insert the second hook. His goal is to remove your hook and to prevent the second hook. Go for a defined time period (e.g. 2 minutes) and then switch positions.
Your goal is to keep the back and submit him: restart if you submit him from rearmount, or if he escapes, or even if you end up pinning him in any other position than with your chest on his back.
etc.
etc.
etc.

This is just scratching the surface, and you should now be able to see that you could do similar drills for virtually every position and every submission. All it takes is some honesty and perception on your part to know what your weaknesses are, and some inventiveness to create the drill(s) to fix that weakness.

This sort of drilling is very similar to what I call 'targeted sparring'. For more information on targeted sparring check out these other tips of the week':

Labels: positions, training

permanent link to this article posted by Stephan @ 6:42 PM

February 01, 2005

Two-Person Drills

Two-person drills are important training methods to develop skills on the mat. They can be used to warm up at the beginning of your training session, as part of your conditioning program, or as a finishing exercise. You can do these drills to improve your bridging power, refine your hip movement on the bottom, speed up your submissions, or to develop many other skills and attributes.

Today I will give you two examples of two-person drills. Keep in mind that not every drill is useful for every skill level or body type, so there is an onus on every grappler to choose appropriate drills. My ultimate goal is that you will use these examples to develop new drills, specific to your body, your game, and your grappling goals.

In the "kneemount spin armbar drill" (click here to download a QT preview) you are doing repetitions of the 180 degree armbar. This is a fundamental attack in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and submission grappling, but requires lots of repetition to make it smooth and fast. This drill is one way to get lots of repetitions, in a fairly painless manner.

In the final drill, "turtle flips" (click here to download a QT preview) you are developing the back arch, spatial awareness and athleticism. Turtle flips are easier to do if your partner is wearing a gi, but I first saw this exercise in a Shooto class, so it is possible to do them without the gi. This is obviously a fairly advanced drill, and requires that you have put in your time with more basic back arch/bridging drills.

Have fun with these drills.