Grappling Tips Newsletter

January 21, 2010

Sleepwalking Through Your Sparring

Back in my early teens, when I was infatuated with Kung Fu, I read a book purporting to describe about 50 supernatural abilities that Kung Fu masters could develop. Skills like levitation, or making your body impervious to weapons, or killing people with a poke of your fingertips...

Crazy stuff, I know! Even as a youngster I was fairly skeptical that any of this was true. The funny thing is that at least one of the skills in that book is actually quite feasible: the ability to defend yourself blindfolded. The magical Kung Fu book explained that blindfolded combat skills were the result of being able to sense your opponent's energy at a distance, and know exactly where he was and what he was going to do.

Doing this at a distance is far-fetched, but most good grapplers would be completely capable of continuing to spar if all the lights suddenly went out. And it's not anything mysterious.

It's simply that years on the mat create a high-level of touch-based sensitivity to your opponent's movements and positioning. Do this long enought and eventually you'll be able to close your eyes, hang onto an opponent's arm and have a pretty good idea what the rest of his body is doing.

Sparring with your eyes shut is actually a pretty good training method, especially if you're sparring with someone who is a lot less experienced than you. If you could completely dominate and crush your partner then neither of you will learn very much.

So what can you do instead? Some solutions to keep things interesting include limiting the techniques you're allowed to use, and also always starting in bad positions.

But you can also try keeping your eyes closed and just rolling. Flow through as many different positions and transitions as possible, trying to 'see' with your arms, your legs, and your body.

This gives your sparring partner a bit of an advantage, and simultaneously forces you to work on your sensitivity and body awareness.

Plus it impresses the heck out newbies...

Labels: sparring, training

permanent link to this article posted by Stephan @ 9:47 PM

Don't Be Shy

This coming weekend I'm headed to Seattle to train at Erik Paulson's MMA and submission grappling seminar (hosted by Chris Clarke of www.nwkali.com).

If you're at seminar please introduce yourself; I always enjoy meeting my virtual friends in real life!

Labels: MMA, seminars, teachers

permanent link to this article posted by Stephan @ 9:44 PM

January 11, 2010

Successfully Dealing with Claustrophobia in Grappling

Once upon a time I had an MRI.

For those of you who've never had this diagnostic procedure, you start by lying down on a narrow board. Then they slide you into a narrow hole within a gigantic donut-shaped machine. And then you lie there, very still, for a long time while the machine scans your body using a gigantic magnet.

Have you seen the movie Avatar? It's like the little pod from which the hero pilots his alien. Except the space inside the MRI is even smaller, and nobody has any furry blue tails.

After the procedure I chatted with the MRI technician. One thing she mentioned was that about 3 in 10 people have problems with claustrophobia in this machine, and about 1 in 10 people freak out and are unable to complete the procedure.

So if somewhere between 10% and 30% have problems with an MRI, then how many people have problems with claustrophobia in grappling? I'd guess it's roughly the same number...

I'm not claustrophobic myself, and so this topic was largely off my radar until I found out that a friend and fellow grappler used to struggle with claustrophobia on the mats. And then a reader contacted me with the the same problem. And then I found out that I had a SECOND training partner who was also claustrophobic.

I did a bit of googling, and found out that there wasn't too much sport specific advice on the topic. So I asked the Grapplearts readership for tips and advice on dealing with grappling-induced claustrophobia, and was stunned by how many other people face the same challenge (read the whole article on how to deal with claustrophobia in BJJ and grappling here).

But here's the cool part: BOTH of my claustrophobic training partners have tackled this problem head on. And mostly dealt with it. And both of them have done very well in high level grappling competition. And both of them competed successfully in MMA, each with 10 fights or more!

From all accounts, claustrophobia is a horrible feeling. But I've seen first-hand that it CAN be overcome.

Not everyone is claustrophobic, but it's fair to say that we ALL have our fears, challenges and perceived limitations. I'm proud to know these grapplers. They're an inspiration to me.

Labels: bjj, claustrophobia, submission grappling

permanent link to this article posted by Stephan @ 11:03 AM