Trailblazer,
Damn I’m jealous! I wish I had a Mr. Badass! Actually, I do have a few partners who routinely kick my ass in one area or another.
Sounds like you are headed somewhere… hmmm… maybe MMA tourney trophies… maybe cheques?
I sure hope you post your thoughts on how your program is doing in a month or so.
Fight well,
Rolo
I train for MMA/NHB, exactly as if I were going to fight a cage match. At 55 I’m a little old for that, but I would like to enter BJJ intramural competitions eventually.
I’m relatively inexperienced, but I frequently train with semi-pro fighters who are preparing for UFC style fights. Where I train, we all spar with each other, standing, clinch, and on the ground. Nobody has to be afraid of sparring with anyone, because we all know we are only there to build our game and help each other do the same. Beginners are urged to train with the most advanced opponents they can find. Nobody has to be stuck sparring with “Mr. Badass”, though shadow-boxing has its place.
Sometimes the level escalates when people spar, and sometimes that’s just fine. When it isn’t fine, you tell your partner and the two of you go back to sparring to touch. On the ground we often spar full tilt, usually toward the end of the session.
This works for us because everybody leaves their egos at home. The ones that don’t manage this quickly wish they had, and either learn how or else don’t come around to train with us anymore.
The role resistance training plays for me in my sport is mainly injury reduction. Strength is not a huge deal. More is nice, but it’s not going to save your game if your opponent has better technique. Exploiting strength while training, on the other hand, only slows your learning. I do a full body workout with mainly functional exercises on one day a week, plus a comprehensive set of shoulder exercises on a second day. One or two days a week I work out with kettlebells and clubbells. These are great for explosive strength, anaerobic endurance, and strengthening your grip.
I currently do the direct training for my sport five days a week, from 1.5 to 3 hours at a time. Since this includes a lot of kickboxing and grappling, for now direct training provides most of the aerobic and anaerobic endurance work I need. More would probably just drive me into overtraining. Whenever I couldn’t train so frequently I’ve typically swum laps, jumped rope, and done the ‘heavy hands’ number on an elliptical machine, to add aerobic load.
[quote]Rololicious wrote:
Trailblazer,
Damn I’m jealous! I wish I had a Mr. Badass! Actually, I do have a few partners who routinely kick my ass in one area or another.
Sounds like you are headed somewhere… hmmm… maybe MMA tourney trophies… maybe cheques?
I sure hope you post your thoughts on how your program is doing in a month or so.
Fight well,
Rolo[/quote]
Thanks Rolo, but to be honest I’m not “going” anywhere with this training. Working out and MA are my favorite past times (and girls too, but that’s another topic and forum…hehehe).
Maybe a few years ago, if I had this kind of experience/drive (I’m 32 now) I’d follow a cage career…maybe not…no use in guessing at something that won’t happen.
Just doing what I love and loving what I do, that is all.
I’ll keep you all posted on things as they happen, keep your eyes on the thread occasionally, cool?
TB
[quote]endgamer711 wrote:
Nobody has to be stuck sparring with “Mr. Badass”, though shadow-boxing has its place.quote]
You say it like it’s a BAD thing. “Stuck with”…why do you think so?
I’m curious…not trying to pick a virtual fight.
I personally LOVE sparring/matching “Mr. Badass.” It makes me do many things. Most importantly of all, in order for him to “beat me”, I must think and defeat myself…thus knowing my own weaknesses.
TB
[quote]Trailblazer wrote:
endgamer711 wrote:
Nobody has to be stuck sparring with “Mr. Badass”, though shadow-boxing has its place.
You say it like it’s a BAD thing. “Stuck with”…why do you think so?
I’m curious…not trying to pick a virtual fight.
[/quote]
Yeah, we think always working out with the same guy is indeed a BAD thing, relatively speaking. To fully develop ourselves as fighters we feel we need to spar with as many different folks as possible: different body types, different tactics, different levels of skill. In almost any class they will break up the current pairings at least twice, to make sure people work with a range of partners.
Shadow boxing is very cool, it’s a great warm-up, it helps folks understand that hitting somebody is something you do with your whole body, and it gives practice in regaining defensive posture. Throw in a partner to react to and you get even better training. Unfortunately, it trains you to maintain the wrong distance. In the end you wind up fighting the way you train, and at some point you need to spend a lot of time hitting and getting hit. But, and this is key, not so hard that somebody doesn’t want to train anymore.
This is a great program but how do you fit this in with a wife, kids, and the good old 9 to 5?
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
This is a great program but how do you fit this in with a wife, kids, and the good old 9 to 5? [/quote]
I sure hope that wasn’t a rhetorical question. Certainly you’re not going to be doing direct training at the same rate I am, but you can still train plenty good. You take evening classes for two hours Tuesdays and Thursdays, and come in Saturday noontime. That gives you six hours per week. Or maybe you can make the noontime classes a couple of times per week and come in on Saturdays.
On this reduced training schedule, cross-training will play a more important role. You reduce what time you spend now on weights and spend some of it on flexibility, core strength and aerobic interval training instead. When you have a spare half hour, you interval train with a jump rope, or really stretch everything out good, or swing a kettlebell. When it’s time to sit down for a bit and recover, for at least a while you watch instruction on DVDs instead of whatever’s on cable.
People work it out all kinds of different ways. Some come in at 6:00 am every day to train GPP or spar with some other like-minded early bird, then again on the weekends to do their direct training. Some folks bring their kids in with them. I’ve seen infants in arms in there, and there’s no more heartwarming sight than watching some hardened Muay Thai veteran with butterfly closures on his eye sockets do the kootchy-koo number. When the kid’s a little older, well there are children’s classes too.
The bottom line is, love will find a way.
[quote]endgamer711 wrote:
Trailblazer wrote:
endgamer711 wrote:
Nobody has to be stuck sparring with “Mr. Badass”, though shadow-boxing has its place.
You say it like it’s a BAD thing. “Stuck with”…why do you think so?
I’m curious…not trying to pick a virtual fight.
Yeah, we think always working out with the same guy is indeed a BAD thing, relatively speaking. To fully develop ourselves as fighters we feel we need to spar with as many different folks as possible: different body types, different tactics, different levels of skill. In almost any class they will break up the current pairings at least twice, to make sure people work with a range of partners.
Shadow boxing is very cool, it’s a great warm-up, it helps folks understand that hitting somebody is something you do with your whole body, and it gives practice in regaining defensive posture. Throw in a partner to react to and you get even better training.
Unfortunately, it trains you to maintain the wrong distance. In the end you wind up fighting the way you train, and at some point you need to spend a lot of time hitting and getting hit. But, and this is key, not so hard that somebody doesn’t want to train anymore.[/quote]
I actually agree with you.
However,
After time, you can change the range/shape/etc of Mr. Badass. It’s not shadowboxing…it’s fighting with your “Imaginary Friend” (If you will…it’s the best way I can describe it)
You only need experience with different sparring partners and remember them. If you have real fighting experience, it is a major benefit to use it too.
Now, it does NOT help with taking a blow (one must find another way of fixing that). It will also not help with dealing with leverage or lack thereof. Nor will it help with a sanctioned match…due to the nature of the sport of fighting.
It does definately help with identifying your own weak spots in a physical conflict. It definately helps with Stand Up fighting and movement…and I’ve also noticed it helps with NOT having my opponnent take me to the ground.
Real matching is great. However, we should use everything that is at our disposal.
TB
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
This is a great program but how do you fit this in with a wife, kids, and the good old 9 to 5? [/quote]
Headhunter,
I don’t know if you are referring this question to me, however here is my take:
I think (if you are talking about the program I developed) if you have such limited time you’ll have to focus on small increments and choose something to specialize in.
I’m not married/nor kids (yet) so I think you have MANY jobs (In addition to the 9-5. Women take much time and energy and I can only imagine about kids…I teach kids on the weekends and that is only for 3 hours, so I can only imagine what it is like to have one, much less two…) so perhaps you should use your time more wiseley than I do.
I have not walked in your shoes, so please take what I’m saying with a grain of salt, cool?
Before I suggest anything specific, may I ask how long you’ve trained, which style, your goals, perceived weaknesses, and availability to dedicate to a program?
TB
The way to deal with limited time is to make the best use of your time.
For instance why skip rope for half an hour when you can practice all your forms and or some bag work.
Take one or two powerful hand or kicking techniques like reverse punch or side kick and when you have a moment throughout the day perform a few while concentrating on the technique.
If you have to stand for a while you can work on some centering and maybe a little stance work.
Reduce your weight training sessions to a few basic power movements.
If you have kids teach them a few basic kicks and punches. Then what you do is get deep enough into a stance that you are the same height as them. Then let them practice on you while all you do is try to evade with angles and stance work and maybe some soft redirective blocks but no counter punches or kicks. This can be a real good workout and a good way to spend some quality time while teaching the kids something useful.
[quote]Sifu wrote:
The way to deal with limited time is to make the best use of your time.
For instance why skip rope for half an hour when you can practice all your forms and or some bag work.
[/quote]
For lots of reasons. I don’t have a heavy bag at home. As for forms, about the closest you could get to that in our world would be shadow boxing I suppose, and I don’t have a lot of open space to dance around in either. Forms are a karate thing you’re talking about?
The main reason to skip rope is that I can wear an HRM and really work the aerobic system without worrying about doing a bunch of practice with my form falling apart from over-exertion. About the only thing that gives me that good aerobic per unit time is the actual sparring. On a heavy bag I tend to pace myself more.
At the moment I get all my aerobic from direct training, but there are times you can’t do that. The point is, there’s always something you can do, something you can shoehorn into a busy schedule. Even if it’s only to shadow box or skip rope.
[quote]Trailblazer wrote:
I actually agree with you.
However, […][/quote]
That’s very interesting; you put a lot more envisionment into the shadow boxing than I usually can. I’m spending more of my time feeling the motions, which I find you have to partly imagine anyway since actually throwing that jab into empty space is bad for your elbow. The trajectories in the upper body can only ever be approximate. In the end to me I think it is mainly about footwork, getting the hips and shoulders to do the right things, a bit like dancing.
Besides the hitting thing, shadows (my shadows at any rate) are weak on surprises, and my guard going up against them never seems quite as tight as when I’m actually working with someone else.
“matching” sounds like it might be a bit more heavy-weight than the way we spar, but it’s not a term I’m familiar with. There’s not much in the way of competition about what we do, it’s more about opposition, we just get in there and mix it up, it’s very informal. Very often we are doing “isolated sparring”, which means you only get certain things to do, or perhaps certain things are ruled out.
But besides sparring, there’s shadow boxing, heavy bags, focus mitt work, drills, all these things have their uses.
Wait…I see…I see…it’s becoming clearer…
…
…
…
…
I see the typical end of a martial arts thread in our near future. If you’ve been on T-Nation for a decent amount of time, you’ll know what I mean.
Please prove me wrong. I hope my prediction is not true.
TB
[quote]Trailblazer wrote:
[…]
Please prove me wrong. I hope my prediction is not true.
TB[/quote]
Nah, what’s that? Does somebody start talking about Hitler or something? Just kidding, I’ve seen the typical MMA argument. Rather than compare forms I think it’s just interesting to compare how people train the forms. The fact is, I know very little about other martial arts, because of this weird end of life entry thing I did. I was never a fan, didn’t understand the attraction, didn’t want self defense; I arrived where I am in one fell swoop, by a weird route. I see things in the movies and wonder how people actually train.
I expect our shadow boxing probably looks pretty different. Mine alway makes me feel very self conscious - ridiculous, actually. Perhaps for that reason I doubt it amounts to even 1% of what I do. Earlier on I think I did more of it.
I think the typical argument about what works in a street fight is pretty silly. Any gangsta worth his salt has a gun to shoot you with. As far as I’m concerned I found a sport I like, and other folks have found sports they like.
Matching is not a commonly used term to the best of my knowledge. My friend (the only person with whom we could spar with NO ego of “having to win”) invented the term.
In his view (and I agree) there are 3 types of martial training with a partner:
Slow and controlled for pure technique…“Sparring”
“Matching:” Faster and more powerful…still holding back, although black eyes and bad bruises, and busted nose and lips,and other minor injuries were not uncommon. You can take a hit, say “Good F’ing Hit…come on you bastard” all with a smile and perhaps laughing. Sometimes we took a few of them before we stopped. BUT we always laughed and smiled…even through some HARD hits! lol. Is this what you mean by “heavyweight?” Teaches you how to “take a blow” and keep going…This was my personal favorite way of training…but it takes a while to find someone whose ego does not try to “win”…when they feel they must “Win” and it is a “competition” then it turns into a…
Actual fight…no explanation necessary.
Please remember that I’ve trained in MA for over 17 years. Due to this (although it’s only a small time of training, in all reality), I am able to not worry about the mechanics of a punch or kick as much as someone of lesser experience (I’m not saying I’m “All that” because I’m not). When I want to check the mechanics, I do repetition drills focused primarily on mechanics.
To me…my version of shadowboxing…allows me to always box someone better than me (“Mr Badass”, as I affectionately call him)…and (if I can explain it right), if I can make my shadow opponnent “see” and take advantage of weaknesses in my techniques, then I must be able to analyze them as well. "Mr Badass is only as good as my analytization and feeling of myself.
Did that make sense?
That being said…everything can be used for training if we can imagine the possibilities…
TB
[quote]endgamer711 wrote:
Trailblazer wrote:
I actually agree with you.
However, […]
That’s very interesting; you put a lot more envisionment into the shadow boxing than I usually can. I’m spending more of my time feeling the motions, which I find you have to partly imagine anyway since actually throwing that jab into empty space is bad for your elbow. The trajectories in the upper body can only ever be approximate. In the end to me I think it is mainly about footwork, getting the hips and shoulders to do the right things, a bit like dancing.
Besides the hitting thing, shadows (my shadows at any rate) are weak on surprises, and my guard going up against them never seems quite as tight as when I’m actually working with someone else.
“matching” sounds like it might be a bit more heavy-weight than the way we spar, but it’s not a term I’m familiar with. There’s not much in the way of competition about what we do, it’s more about opposition, we just get in there and mix it up, it’s very informal. Very often we are doing “isolated sparring”, which means you only get certain things to do, or perhaps certain things are ruled out.
But besides sparring, there’s shadow boxing, heavy bags, focus mitt work, drills, all these things have their uses.[/quote]
Endgamer (I like the name, BTW),
May I ask you a personal question? You said you came to the MA game by an unusual route. Would you share what that route was and how it was unusual? If not, then it’s cool, ya know?
Yeah…shadowboxing does feel wierd at first. I realized it really made me concentrate and focus everything out. When I “get it” it’s quite intense…sometimes I’ll do it in “pseudo-public” just to improve my concentration…but EVERY TIME a hot woman watches I lose “it”. hehehe. However when I’m matching, if I know a hot woman is watching I do better…go figure…lol!
About the street fight thing: Again, full agreeance about your whole paragraph. When someone tells me they learn MA for “self defense” I tell them to buy a gun or pepperspray (exactly what my favorite Master used to say…MAN, I miss him). To tell the truth, I HAVE had to use it for real life but it just “Happened” without preparation or thought. And when the opportunity came, I immediately fled the situation.
TB
[quote]endgamer711 wrote:
Trailblazer wrote:
[…]
Please prove me wrong. I hope my prediction is not true.
TB
Nah, what’s that? Does somebody start talking about Hitler or something? Just kidding, I’ve seen the typical MMA argument. Rather than compare forms I think it’s just interesting to compare how people train the forms. The fact is, I know very little about other martial arts, because of this weird end of life entry thing I did. I was never a fan, didn’t understand the attraction, didn’t want self defense; I arrived where I am in one fell swoop, by a weird route. I see things in the movies and wonder how people actually train.
I expect our shadow boxing probably looks pretty different. Mine alway makes me feel very self conscious - ridiculous, actually. Perhaps for that reason I doubt it amounts to even 1% of what I do. Earlier on I think I did more of it.
I think the typical argument about what works in a street fight is pretty silly. Any gangsta worth his salt has a gun to shoot you with. As far as I’m concerned I found a sport I like, and other folks have found sports they like.[/quote]
[quote]Trailblazer wrote:
In his view (and I agree) there are 3 types of martial training with a partner:
[/quote]
Thanks, I understand. I guess to fully get it I’d have to watch. Sad to say, I’ve never actually watched a Karate competition, though I do have one former school friend who studied with a certain Mr. Oshima when he was at Caltech, half a lifetime ago. She’s still at it, but she has never brought her sport into her social life.
Anyhow, what I call sparring would most closely correspond to your “matching”. We also do slow work both in stand up and on the ground, which yes, is fantastic for building technique. When someone prepares for a cage match - a process I’ve watched a few times now - the sparring, the notion I begin to get is that sparring is a continuum that includes an actual fight. After all, even an actual cage match has rules, there are things you’re penalized for doing, that can cause a referee to intercede in ways no fighter wants. This continuity, this extensibility of sparring is a godsend if you’re the guy preparing for that fight.
[quote]Trailblazer wrote:
Would you share what that route was and how it was unusual? If not, then it’s cool, ya know?
[/quote]
It’s a little long. I sometimes wonder if there’s a book in here somewhere, but I’ll try to keep it to the executive summary.
My childhood was a pretty bookish affair. At the same time I always felt that anything athletic was beyond me: I had a bad attitude. In HS I had a friend who turned into a varsity wrestler. Unlike my Karate friend, he delighted to bring his sport into his personal life. He terrorized me sufficiently that I concluded that along with all sports, wrestling in particular was and would remain a kind of polar opposite to my entire way of life. At the same time, evidently, this friend had also planted the seeds of envy.
This pattern of thinking and acting persisted in me for a long time and pretty soon I’m locked into this amazing career in computer science, like totally. My work is what I’m about. Along the way I’m plagued with this psoriasis on the soles of my feet and palms of my hands, and like I am now really sedentary: walking hurts. I’ve gotten pretty well immersed in Bay Area food culture, so at age 48 I weigh 270 and feel like hell.
About that time they made some real advances in treating my disease, I catch a side glance of myself in some windows while walking downtown on a sunny day, and my work moves into this place that is right across from this little tiny friendly community gym. The steady customers in this place are a real family to each other. Alas, it’s gone now, destroyed by the dot-com real estate surge. Years later when I went back there the building still hadn’t been leased. The old signage was still in place. I wept. It was like my life had started over again in that place, and now it was gone.
So I had turned into a body builder at age 48, but at first I guess it is more like draining the marshes. This too was the exact time I discovered testosterone.net. Being a scientist, not being sure about all my trainer was telling me, I went and did my research. That’s how I bumped into this place in 1998, not long after it first started.
Then my career brings me to Portland, OR and about this time I am starting to actually control my diet for the final plunge down to 10%. I make it and stay there for all of about five days. What I find is that about 5% of that last 10% looks really awful on me, down there at the bottom of my abdomen, though the rest of me looks pretty lean. After a while the firm I’m working for goes under. It is hard to find work, I’ve got time on my hands and there’s money in the bank.
I figure it’s time to get really physical. So I start doing hypertrophy, like I mean I’m hitting the gym twice a day and I’m eating and sleeping for it too. I have nothing else to do with myself, really. And after about twelve or fourteen weeks of this of course I am farther from 10% than ever, and I’m really getting disgusted with the process.
The mandatory over-eating is blowing my mind, I’m finding it really repulsive. I’m putting heart and soul into the workout, but what am I getting back? I’ve added more muscle than fat, but at the end of the day I am not in that good shape. My aerobic is nothing. I stretch better than most at my age, but I’m not really flexible enough to do much on a mat.
But I’m not ready to quit working on my physical side. The lightbulb comes on: let’s try being an actual athlete with an actual sport. But what sport? And this little long buried thing blossoms and I find myself looking for anywhere I can go to learn how to wrestle. After all, wrestlers are undeniably in great shape in every important way, and they look it.
Well, if you’re an adult you can’t really find instruction. I missed my best chance back in high school. But Oregon is like bouncing off the walls with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and MMA, it is all over the place. I find myself comparing the local BJJ shops, looking at their web sites. Wow, one of these MMA places looks really neat, they talk a lot about learning by doing, and there is even some cool information in there about cross-training. Yes, this is the kind of thing I need to be doing. But what’s this Vale Tudo stuff?
So I go to visit the next day, on a Saturday afternoon, it was. The Gym is in this little store front in a not so toney part of town, and they have got an actual ring in there in the front and the back is covered with mats. And there are these guys in the ring and they are wrestling, well that’s what it looked like at the time. Really they are doing BJJ no gi. It looks pretty brutal because one guy is holding the other flat on his back by sticking a knee on his stomach. That part’s not so bad, but the level of exertion is palpable, the guy on the bottom is flopping around like a fish trying to get out from under that knee while people shout advice from the ringside and I’m thinking, what place can a 52 year old fool in bad condition have among such athletes?
Then two guys get into the ring and go at it with gloves on. They were sparring stand-up with no kicks, I know now. If they had actually sparred Vale Tudo I’d probably have fled the building. But they are getting into it pretty heavy and fists are landing and heads are snapping back and the sweat is flying off of scalps. But there is this strange beauty in what they are doing there, a driving rhythm and pulse of fascination like some wild new form of dance, while a voice in the back of my head insists “you could never be so fast.”
It turns out that what I’m looking at is training for instructors so, yeah, the level is up a bit higher than usual.
I mentioned to the guy at the counter that I was a little worried about brain damage, and he said I could just train Jits if I wanted to. But I guess that was a bad thing for him to say, because that night it just started me thinking: “what the hell, two nemeses for the price of one.” Only much later, as I recover from a double concussion, I learn that he is an MD, a research neurologist at OHSU.
And there you have it. The rest of this story is not about me really, but about a place, an (I find) unbelievable place. Going in I figured they’d probably tell me to train elsewhere. It looked like this outfit, which has an international reputation, was just for the elite. But that’s not what happened. No, not at all. And if I had felt reborn back at the Supreme Athletic Club, that was just a foreshadowing of the rebirth awaiting me at the Straight Blast Gym.
Man, I make the best threads…
On a side note, what tournys do you guys compete in? And where? And how-often?
[quote]GriffinC wrote:
Man, I make the best threads…
On a side note, what tournys do you guys compete in? And where? And how-often? [/quote]
It’s all over the map, depending on who’s training. It goes wherever the individual wants to take it. That’s what it looks like to me, at any rate. I’m not asking for this kind of advice so I’m really not aware whether Matt has some coordinated plan for taking the flag anywhere in particular.
At one time Couture trained at SBG to take and hold the UFC championship, but that was years ago and nowadays he runs his own shop here in town called Quest. From reports, they run more to the former HS wrestler crowd, and folks with “attributes”.
The guy I mentioned in another post, the one with the butterfly closures on his eyebrow, was a professional from Northern Ireland on his way to some large annual pro open MMA thing in Hawaii. Not sure which one. Sorry, I still don’t follow professional competition.
The semi-pro fighters are typically fighting in e.g. FCFF and other such small leagues in cage matches here in town or elsewhere in Oregon, as they decide.
Amateurs enter various elmination tournaments e.g at OSU in Salem. Sorry to be hazy. It’s somewhat off my radar, the only thing I have my eye on is SBG’s own intramural competitions usually held about twice a year. These are called the Gorilla Cup.
When people drop into the Gym from distant places, it often has to do with them wanting to take how we train back home with them, i.e. they are instructors more than competitors. Beyond superb preparation for its athletes in competition, this is the truly remarkable thing the Gym has to offer: its methods of instruction. They are really meant to be all-embracing, something that anyone can use, and are continually refined and improved with contributions and feedback from folks working at all the different SBGi affiliates. I find it’s really wonderful to watch that process, you can see it unfold during the Spring and Fall camps.