[quote]P0SEID0N wrote:
[quote]Sentoguy wrote:
Your cousin seems like just a natural athlete/fighter. You may have to come to grips with him just always being a better fighter than you, especially if he continues to train and improve his technique and skill. Also, weight room lifts don’t necessarily mean much in relation to fighting performance.
That said, if you could be more specific about what it is about him that gives you problems it might help us help you.
Here are some things to consider though:
-if he indeed is lazy about doing his conditioning work, try to get your conditioning to the point where you can exhaust him. If he gets tired enough his physicality will become less of a factor
-learn to use his strength against him, yield with his force and use it to take him off balance while grappling. A good way to do this is to push into him and then get out of the way/go under him/snap him down into a takedown/throw or sweep as he pushes back , or pull him and then take backwards as he pulls back. Most strong people don’t like to be manipulated and will try to shut down others’ attempts to move them with strength
-use angles while striking with him, work your jab, and try to keep your back off the “ropes”/out of the corner. The last thing you want to do against a bigger, stronger, very aggressive opponent is to stand right in front of him or let him walk you into the ropes or corner where he can tee off on you.
-get good at surviving on the ground first and foremost. Let him burn his energy trying to submit you, then when he takes a break to catch his breath make your move to escape. Have in your mind that “if he didn’t tap you, he didn’t beat you”, screw points at least at this point. Once you get good at surviving and can consistently not get tapped, then work on escaping without getting tapped, and then and only then start working on the offensive side of things. You may feel like you are “losing” for a while, but in actuality you will be building your skills very functionally and eventually, once you get good at surviving and escaping you will not fear taking chances with your offense and will eventually get to the point where you will start to get him into dominant positions and will start “winning”.
These are just general tips for dealing with bigger, stronger people though, like I said, more details on your part about what specifically is giving you problems will help us give more specific tips.
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Sentoguy thats a very helpful response brother, thanks a lot!
At first, by saying he is a pussy i don’t mean he is lazy with conditioning and strength work. It’s just how i tease him for not being strong in the weight room. I don’t speak English fluently so it came out with the wrong meaning, sorry for that 
He trains really hard but he is lifting for a couple of years and yet he is a lot weaker than me in the weightroom. He can only do bench and squat 1x5/200 and deadlift 1x5/265. Also he is not a lot bigger than me. He is also 6’2 but i am 180 pounds and he is around 210. He is a bit of a fattie around 17-20% bodyfat and i am around 8-11%.
Now for what gives me trouble in fighting.
At first he is awesome with the plum and dirty boxing. At mma sparring if i try to clinch with him to do a takedown he immediatelly goes into his mode and i become helpless. I try to defend myself with everything i know and what our coach tells me but his grip just can’t break. And it’s not just me, no one in the gym can fight him in the clinch or even defend themselves. So getting close to him is a very bad idea.
Also when he is at striking range he is constantly moving and angling while striking and when i try to counter or respode with an attack he isn’t there.
He has a favorite move he does all the time. Everyone knows he will do it but no one can seem stop it. He uses his left hook to go into a southpaw stance and angle on my right side then when i try to turn to face him he throws a right hook/uppercut and a variation of roundhouse depending on where i am open.
Almost every time he knocks me down even though he is not going full power.
Also i can’t establish my jab on him he is just moving around too fast. Thats part of why i am confused. He is a fattie but when it comes to fighting he just doesn’t get tired.
Now in wrestling, his sprawl is out of this world. Wrestling is my second nature and the double leg is my favorite takedown but i can’t do it to him. He has great timing and reaction to that.
When we clinch, whatever position we end up, his grip is too strong and his control is great. His takedowns are mostly from judo. A lot of hip throws, o soto gari and trips.
In BJJ, we both have injured low backs so we don’t go hard at it.We practice various moves and roll very easy.
Also he is very intimidating. We were talking about it with the coaches and the rest of the team and even though he is one of the nicest people around, from day one he started sparring or wrestling he had an intimidating aura. When he is on game mode he is really scary. And it’s not about the way he looks. I can’t really explain it. Even in his fights where his opponents did not know him they seemed very scared.
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Well, ok I understand what you mean about the weight room, but again that doesn’t really anything.
My initial response to your issue is…get better at the techniques that you have learned then, or learn some better ones because if your cousin can hold you with one hand (while you are not wearing a Gi) and you can’t get out of that position, then you are either not nearly as skilled as you think and/or the techniques that you have been taught aren’t very good.
In regards to striking, fine he is controlling the angle of the fight, therefore you need to control the distance and/or angle out at the same time. Understand that if he comes in with an angular footwork pattern that if you step backwards or even better yet at the opposite angle and backwards that he will still be out of range to hit you. It honestly just sounds like you don’t know how to control distance or set point very well and that is something you should work on. Don’t let him stand in range to punch you with his left hook without hitting him or faking to draw his reaction, that should shut down his favorite move. If he then lunges in from a distance with a left hook while switching his feet (which by the way means that he is crossing his feet in the process if he is also angling to his left), you can hit him with a straight right hand on the way in, check his hook (as it’s not going to have any structure behind it if he is crossing his feet) and then immediately throw your right hook/overhand right back to his chin between his hands, shoulder roll the hook and throw a right round kick to his body or inside of his right leg, lean away from the hook and catch him with a puch kick or side kick to the body (since he will be squared up to you if he is throwing the left hook and stepping forwards with the right foot), shield/check the hook while simultaneously stepping back to your left (taking away his distance), or any number of other counters.
The thing is though, that there is a difference in knowing how to do a technique or counter, and actually being able to do it. What you need is to figure out something that works with your body type and skills and then drill the crap out of it. Have someone just keep doing that combination to you and drill your counter a few thousand times (literally). You can start slower and then gradually increase speed and decrease structure (they can move around, vary their timing/rhythm) until eventually you both are going full speed and essentially doing isolated sparring. Once you can make it work under those conditions fairly consistently, try implementing it in sparring against your cousin. You may still get caught sometimes, but it won’t be the conundrum that it currently is for you.
This by the way is what you need to do for all of your techniques. Too many people want to just jump right in and spar all the time, when what they really need is to develop their skills so they have something to try to apply while sparring. And if they run into problems, the prescription is usually not more sparring, but more drilling.
