Pad Holding Has Become a Joke

Training
61

[quote]humble wrote:
Yep you can take a 1 day course and you’re a qualified pad holder, start ripping dumb cunts in offices 60-100 an hour for training and you’re a machine gun pad holder.

Before you think I am slagging MMA in general, I am not. I don’t mind it, I enjoy it at times too but I thoroughly hate the bullshit that it has also spread with it’s popularity and the injustice it has done to stand up arts.

My main beef is with pad holding.

More and more have I noticed that people don’t hit pads any more. They actually have their pad holders hit their gloves. They barely move their arms and legs with true technique to hit a target, rather the ‘pad holder’ throws out and catches the gloves. Pad holder gets more of a work out and the sound of machine gun rattatatat as the fighter hits pads makes them look like they’re decent stand up fighters.

Big Fucken LOL.

Before you get your knickers in a knot, I understand the concept of catching a punch or kick but what is now happening is a joke. Pad holders are meeting the trainee 1/4 of the distance through the trainees technique. What you have is short, ineffective, bullshit technique that cannot be applied at all in any fight scenario, even in close range fighting because the mechanics are completely out!

So fuck you MMA popularity. You’re making stand up look bad, spreading bigger bullshit with your hocus pocus pad work sessions and your fighters are countable on one hand that actually have decent stand up. Holy shit that’s some bad numbers. All the world MMA pool and you can count the decent stand up guys on one hand.

Oh sorry, I know the answer… yeah, yeah, yeah, you have to concentrate so much on not being taken down. I get it. Same excuse every time so that justifies the dog shit stand up work in MMA.

No one can watch any MMA guy or girl punch pads for hours because their is no art or beauty, skill or technique in what they do. So we have trumped up highlight reels from fucked up camera angles to hide their flaws. Documentaries that jump from scene to scene, mixed with music to arouse, angles to please and imagery to excite all because they lack the skill to properly display a still camera view of a guys technique.

One that comes to mind is when they were heralding Jake Shields as working on his stand up when he fought St Pierre. LMMAAAOO, that camera work hahahah, those snippets… poor guy still looked like dog shit in the doco’s.

Anyway, rant over. [/quote]

I agree.Quality pad work is soo rare these days.
Even when I was beginner in boxing,I got slapped with a pad so much until I learned to evade and block.I had to learn to move backward and throw sharp combos.

The thing is that you have to be a fighter or ex-fighter FIRST and learn to hold pads SECOND.
Pad work should mimic fight and not be a version of bag work.

62

[quote]SKELAC wrote:

[quote]humble wrote:
Yep you can take a 1 day course and you’re a qualified pad holder, start ripping dumb cunts in offices 60-100 an hour for training and you’re a machine gun pad holder.

Before you think I am slagging MMA in general, I am not. I don’t mind it, I enjoy it at times too but I thoroughly hate the bullshit that it has also spread with it’s popularity and the injustice it has done to stand up arts.

My main beef is with pad holding.

More and more have I noticed that people don’t hit pads any more. They actually have their pad holders hit their gloves. They barely move their arms and legs with true technique to hit a target, rather the ‘pad holder’ throws out and catches the gloves. Pad holder gets more of a work out and the sound of machine gun rattatatat as the fighter hits pads makes them look like they’re decent stand up fighters.

Big Fucken LOL.

Before you get your knickers in a knot, I understand the concept of catching a punch or kick but what is now happening is a joke. Pad holders are meeting the trainee 1/4 of the distance through the trainees technique. What you have is short, ineffective, bullshit technique that cannot be applied at all in any fight scenario, even in close range fighting because the mechanics are completely out!

So fuck you MMA popularity. You’re making stand up look bad, spreading bigger bullshit with your hocus pocus pad work sessions and your fighters are countable on one hand that actually have decent stand up. Holy shit that’s some bad numbers. All the world MMA pool and you can count the decent stand up guys on one hand.

Oh sorry, I know the answer… yeah, yeah, yeah, you have to concentrate so much on not being taken down. I get it. Same excuse every time so that justifies the dog shit stand up work in MMA.

No one can watch any MMA guy or girl punch pads for hours because their is no art or beauty, skill or technique in what they do. So we have trumped up highlight reels from fucked up camera angles to hide their flaws. Documentaries that jump from scene to scene, mixed with music to arouse, angles to please and imagery to excite all because they lack the skill to properly display a still camera view of a guys technique.

One that comes to mind is when they were heralding Jake Shields as working on his stand up when he fought St Pierre. LMMAAAOO, that camera work hahahah, those snippets… poor guy still looked like dog shit in the doco’s.

Anyway, rant over. [/quote]

I agree.Quality pad work is soo rare these days.
Even when I was beginner in boxing,I got slapped with a pad so much until I learned to evade and block.I had to learn to move backward and throw sharp combos.

The thing is that you have to be a fighter or ex-fighter FIRST and learn to hold pads SECOND.
Pad work should mimic fight and not be a version of bag work.[/quote]

Couldn’t agree more with you.

Part of the reason I like my coach’s way of doing it is that he constantly says to “think beyond the pads” - i.e., work with how someone will react in a fight.

Tag the guy two jabs? Expect one coming back and go downstairs. Hit a guy with a hard 3-2? Expect a winging right hand coming in, duck under and come back with a 2. I love that way of doing it. Not many practice is like that though, sadly.

63

[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:

[quote]SKELAC wrote:

[quote]humble wrote:
Yep you can take a 1 day course and you’re a qualified pad holder, start ripping dumb cunts in offices 60-100 an hour for training and you’re a machine gun pad holder.

Before you think I am slagging MMA in general, I am not. I don’t mind it, I enjoy it at times too but I thoroughly hate the bullshit that it has also spread with it’s popularity and the injustice it has done to stand up arts.

My main beef is with pad holding.

More and more have I noticed that people don’t hit pads any more. They actually have their pad holders hit their gloves. They barely move their arms and legs with true technique to hit a target, rather the ‘pad holder’ throws out and catches the gloves. Pad holder gets more of a work out and the sound of machine gun rattatatat as the fighter hits pads makes them look like they’re decent stand up fighters.

Big Fucken LOL.

Before you get your knickers in a knot, I understand the concept of catching a punch or kick but what is now happening is a joke. Pad holders are meeting the trainee 1/4 of the distance through the trainees technique. What you have is short, ineffective, bullshit technique that cannot be applied at all in any fight scenario, even in close range fighting because the mechanics are completely out!

So fuck you MMA popularity. You’re making stand up look bad, spreading bigger bullshit with your hocus pocus pad work sessions and your fighters are countable on one hand that actually have decent stand up. Holy shit that’s some bad numbers. All the world MMA pool and you can count the decent stand up guys on one hand.

Oh sorry, I know the answer… yeah, yeah, yeah, you have to concentrate so much on not being taken down. I get it. Same excuse every time so that justifies the dog shit stand up work in MMA.

No one can watch any MMA guy or girl punch pads for hours because their is no art or beauty, skill or technique in what they do. So we have trumped up highlight reels from fucked up camera angles to hide their flaws. Documentaries that jump from scene to scene, mixed with music to arouse, angles to please and imagery to excite all because they lack the skill to properly display a still camera view of a guys technique.

One that comes to mind is when they were heralding Jake Shields as working on his stand up when he fought St Pierre. LMMAAAOO, that camera work hahahah, those snippets… poor guy still looked like dog shit in the doco’s.

Anyway, rant over. [/quote]

I agree.Quality pad work is soo rare these days.
Even when I was beginner in boxing,I got slapped with a pad so much until I learned to evade and block.I had to learn to move backward and throw sharp combos.

The thing is that you have to be a fighter or ex-fighter FIRST and learn to hold pads SECOND.
Pad work should mimic fight and not be a version of bag work.[/quote]

Couldn’t agree more with you.

Part of the reason I like my coach’s way of doing it is that he constantly says to “think beyond the pads” - i.e., work with how someone will react in a fight.

Tag the guy two jabs? Expect one coming back and go downstairs. Hit a guy with a hard 3-2? Expect a winging right hand coming in, duck under and come back with a 2. I love that way of doing it. Not many practice is like that though, sadly.[/quote]

Definitely with you there SKELAC and Irish.

I can’t understand it. We all know there is a limit to how much hard sparring you can do in a week. Working pads should be a close substitute for sparring, except that you are focusing more specifically on a single aspect of a fighters arsenal. You see too many bag champions around. I can’t help but think that if they’d had good padwork from the off, they’d be able to translate the skills they have on the bag into the ring more easily. Padwork should really bridge that gap between bag work and sparrin.

64

Thanks Robert… Been quite a few years since I’ve seen that skit… you get the good karma of making me laugh again hahaha.

Irish, London and Skelac, you all brought back vivid memories of the slaps I would cop and how I learned to keep my hands up. Hours of holding on to your shirt in training as a beginner, holding on to a rope around the neck, literally taping them at times too!!! This was just normal. We never complained. We just did it.
It has stuck with me all these years. When I try to teach it to students, they are that utterly lazy they just don’t do it. They laugh it off and brush it off and then get tagged in sparring by lesser fighters and wonder why in all their chin to heavens glory they are copping it.

On a good note, I went to the gym the other day, had a cracker of a deadlift session and got close to a previous record of mine I set when I was in my early 20’s and then proceeded to smack the bag like a fucking animal for 10 rounds.

It then made me think about CNS primers before a fight.
Obviously I didn’t exhaust my cardiovascular and lactate threshold systems as I worked from a 10-8-5-3-1-1-1 rep range with long rests.

But having that big lift switched on all my motor units and I couldn’t help wondering if it was responsible for the added power I felt (and saw).

Some food for thought

65

[quote]humble wrote:
Thanks Robert… Been quite a few years since I’ve seen that skit… you get the good karma of making me laugh again hahaha.

Irish, London and Skelac, you all brought back vivid memories of the slaps I would cop and how I learned to keep my hands up. Hours of holding on to your shirt in training as a beginner, holding on to a rope around the neck, literally taping them at times too!!! This was just normal. We never complained. We just did it.
It has stuck with me all these years. When I try to teach it to students, they are that utterly lazy they just don’t do it. They laugh it off and brush it off and then get tagged in sparring by lesser fighters and wonder why in all their chin to heavens glory they are copping it.

On a good note, I went to the gym the other day, had a cracker of a deadlift session and got close to a previous record of mine I set when I was in my early 20’s and then proceeded to smack the bag like a fucking animal for 10 rounds.

It then made me think about CNS primers before a fight.
Obviously I didn’t exhaust my cardiovascular and lactate threshold systems as I worked from a 10-8-5-3-1-1-1 rep range with long rests.

But having that big lift switched on all my motor units and I couldn’t help wondering if it was responsible for the added power I felt (and saw).

Some food for thought[/quote]

I agree with all of this.

I’ve actually been adding rollouts in on my boxing days, so I’ve been doing a few sets of barbell rollouts (nothing heavy, 10kg or so, just enough to make the bar roll smoothly) before I do my boxing work. When I get on the bag, warmed up, there does seem to be a bit more pop in my punches in the early rounds, whereas usually it takes me 2 or 3 rounds on the bag before I really get into my groove.

66

So I’m wondering now London, as an experiment, next time you do the roll outs, warm up as per usual then add on some serious weight you can struggle with but still feel dominant about it. Only 1 or 2 reps and wait 5 mins and go into your bag/boxing work.

I’m going to experiment this with squats. kipping pullups/muscle ups, deadlifts I tried already, roll outs, standing overhead press, box jumps and explosive (launching off ground) push ups.

Each at a separate time.

67

[quote]LondonBoxer123 wrote:

[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:

[quote]SKELAC wrote:

[quote]humble wrote:
Yep you can take a 1 day course and you’re a qualified pad holder, start ripping dumb cunts in offices 60-100 an hour for training and you’re a machine gun pad holder.

Before you think I am slagging MMA in general, I am not. I don’t mind it, I enjoy it at times too but I thoroughly hate the bullshit that it has also spread with it’s popularity and the injustice it has done to stand up arts.

My main beef is with pad holding.

More and more have I noticed that people don’t hit pads any more. They actually have their pad holders hit their gloves. They barely move their arms and legs with true technique to hit a target, rather the ‘pad holder’ throws out and catches the gloves. Pad holder gets more of a work out and the sound of machine gun rattatatat as the fighter hits pads makes them look like they’re decent stand up fighters.

Big Fucken LOL.

Before you get your knickers in a knot, I understand the concept of catching a punch or kick but what is now happening is a joke. Pad holders are meeting the trainee 1/4 of the distance through the trainees technique. What you have is short, ineffective, bullshit technique that cannot be applied at all in any fight scenario, even in close range fighting because the mechanics are completely out!

So fuck you MMA popularity. You’re making stand up look bad, spreading bigger bullshit with your hocus pocus pad work sessions and your fighters are countable on one hand that actually have decent stand up. Holy shit that’s some bad numbers. All the world MMA pool and you can count the decent stand up guys on one hand.

Oh sorry, I know the answer… yeah, yeah, yeah, you have to concentrate so much on not being taken down. I get it. Same excuse every time so that justifies the dog shit stand up work in MMA.

No one can watch any MMA guy or girl punch pads for hours because their is no art or beauty, skill or technique in what they do. So we have trumped up highlight reels from fucked up camera angles to hide their flaws. Documentaries that jump from scene to scene, mixed with music to arouse, angles to please and imagery to excite all because they lack the skill to properly display a still camera view of a guys technique.

One that comes to mind is when they were heralding Jake Shields as working on his stand up when he fought St Pierre. LMMAAAOO, that camera work hahahah, those snippets… poor guy still looked like dog shit in the doco’s.

Anyway, rant over. [/quote]

I agree.Quality pad work is soo rare these days.
Even when I was beginner in boxing,I got slapped with a pad so much until I learned to evade and block.I had to learn to move backward and throw sharp combos.

The thing is that you have to be a fighter or ex-fighter FIRST and learn to hold pads SECOND.
Pad work should mimic fight and not be a version of bag work.[/quote]

Couldn’t agree more with you.

Part of the reason I like my coach’s way of doing it is that he constantly says to “think beyond the pads” - i.e., work with how someone will react in a fight.

Tag the guy two jabs? Expect one coming back and go downstairs. Hit a guy with a hard 3-2? Expect a winging right hand coming in, duck under and come back with a 2. I love that way of doing it. Not many practice is like that though, sadly.[/quote]

Definitely with you there SKELAC and Irish.

I can’t understand it. We all know there is a limit to how much hard sparring you can do in a week. Working pads should be a close substitute for sparring, except that you are focusing more specifically on a single aspect of a fighters arsenal. You see too many bag champions around. I can’t help but think that if they’d had good padwork from the off, they’d be able to translate the skills they have on the bag into the ring more easily. Padwork should really bridge that gap between bag work and sparrin. [/quote]

Bag champions LOL
I call them static power generators.They try to aproach punching and kicking like some kind of shot put.They set up,throw single shot bombs with no concern for defense.

I can forgive them all that shit,but I cant forgive them training like they are on Valium.Half-asleep! For fucks sake,youre training for fighting! Its kill or be killed.Get some intensity,some aggression out there.All that muscle & bad tattoes,strutting and posturing,but they train and fight like bunch of 90-year old grannies.
Sorry for the rant,but that soft mentality is what undelies all that training related crap.When you train to fight and win,when everything is centered arounf fighting and sparring,then all the other elements of training fall into place.Mentality,concentration,quality of effort,training hard and smart,etc.

68

[quote]humble wrote:
Thanks Robert… Been quite a few years since I’ve seen that skit… you get the good karma of making me laugh again hahaha.

Irish, London and Skelac, you all brought back vivid memories of the slaps I would cop and how I learned to keep my hands up. Hours of holding on to your shirt in training as a beginner, holding on to a rope around the neck, literally taping them at times too!!! This was just normal. We never complained. We just did it.
It has stuck with me all these years. When I try to teach it to students, they are that utterly lazy they just don’t do it. They laugh it off and brush it off and then get tagged in sparring by lesser fighters and wonder why in all their chin to heavens glory they are copping it.

On a good note, I went to the gym the other day, had a cracker of a deadlift session and got close to a previous record of mine I set when I was in my early 20’s and then proceeded to smack the bag like a fucking animal for 10 rounds.

It then made me think about CNS primers before a fight.
Obviously I didn’t exhaust my cardiovascular and lactate threshold systems as I worked from a 10-8-5-3-1-1-1 rep range with long rests.

But having that big lift switched on all my motor units and I couldn’t help wondering if it was responsible for the added power I felt (and saw).

Some food for thought[/quote]

CNS primers? Theres one dont try it at home ;))

Put your hands for a second or two in a hot water next to a boxing bag.Immediately as you pull your hands out in a pain induced rage,do a combo on a bag.

On a serious note,tuck jumps and repetitive med ball throws into the floor- its explosive and triple extension-works like a magic!

69

To those of you saying that pad holding should be done by fighters (past or present), does this mean you wouldn’t expect it to be worked into a class?

If you have a class of 10-15 students (which is standard at my gym). How would you structure it with no pad work? We have a head trainer, and one or two other trainers coming around (one moved back home last week so down to one extra at the moment) and correcting what people are doing. We do some pad work (probably a couple rounds in 90% of classes I have done) and we are shown wha tto do before we start.

But there is no way that you could have trainers for every student. The fighters are obviously different, they get more one on one attention.

Would you set up so that its just shadow boxing, heavy bag and clinching? (I do Muay Thai).

70

[quote]Kirks wrote:
To those of you saying that pad holding should be done by fighters (past or present), does this mean you wouldn’t expect it to be worked into a class?

If you have a class of 10-15 students (which is standard at my gym). How would you structure it with no pad work? We have a head trainer, and one or two other trainers coming around (one moved back home last week so down to one extra at the moment) and correcting what people are doing. We do some pad work (probably a couple rounds in 90% of classes I have done) and we are shown wha tto do before we start.

But there is no way that you could have trainers for every student. The fighters are obviously different, they get more one on one attention.

Would you set up so that its just shadow boxing, heavy bag and clinching? (I do Muay Thai).[/quote]

In a situation like that I think pad work is almost mandatory. That is also a situation that may necessitate a more “heavy bag substitute” type of pad work as opposed to the “freesyle” type work humble’s videos show. In that case the feeder’s main job is to be a surface to be hit. Space/skill limits will determine how “live” vs how robotic the actual drilling is.

Now, when you get actual one on one time with a trainer/experienced student and plenty of space my take, and I think the general idea of those posting here is that you shouldn’t waste it by doing drills where we could just sub a bag in for the holder. That is squandering time/opportunity.

Does that make sense?

Robert A

71

[quote]Robert A wrote:
In a situation like that I think pad work is almost mandatory. That is also a situation that may necessitate a more “heavy bag substitute” type of pad work as opposed to the “freesyle” type work humble’s videos show. In that case the feeder’s main job is to be a surface to be hit. Space/skill limits will determine how “live” vs how robotic the actual drilling is.

Now, when you get actual one on one time with a trainer/experienced student and plenty of space my take, and I think the general idea of those posting here is that you shouldn’t waste it by doing drills where we could just sub a bag in for the holder. That is squandering time/opportunity.

Does that make sense?

Robert A[/quote]

Ah ok.

It does, and we usually are given set drills/combos that we should be doing, rather than freestyle.

But I thought one of the main problems people have in this thread is people not holding them properly ie. not allowing people to extend fully on punches etc. Not just the inability of some pad holders to turn it into ‘sparring’

But if people are talking purely at the more advanced level, and during one on one coaching, I guess I take my question back.

72

[quote]Kirks wrote:

[quote]Robert A wrote:
In a situation like that I think pad work is almost mandatory. That is also a situation that may necessitate a more “heavy bag substitute” type of pad work as opposed to the “freesyle” type work humble’s videos show. In that case the feeder’s main job is to be a surface to be hit. Space/skill limits will determine how “live” vs how robotic the actual drilling is.

Now, when you get actual one on one time with a trainer/experienced student and plenty of space my take, and I think the general idea of those posting here is that you shouldn’t waste it by doing drills where we could just sub a bag in for the holder. That is squandering time/opportunity.

Does that make sense?

Robert A[/quote]

Ah ok.

It does, and we usually are given set drills/combos that we should be doing, rather than freestyle.

But I thought one of the main problems people have in this thread is people not holding them properly ie. not allowing people to extend fully on punches etc. Not just the inability of some pad holders to turn it into ‘sparring’

But if people are talking purely at the more advanced level, and during one on one coaching, I guess I take my question back.
[/quote]

No need to retract your question. And I am not trying to speak for the others, nor am I qualified to do so.

Just that the way I read the criticisms of more “static” pad work was in terms of opportunity costs. You are wasting the pad work time to accomplish something similar to heavy bag work. Now, if not everyone is a seasoned “feeder” than it isn’t a wasted opportunity. Having 16 heavy bags is a tall order for most gyms. On the other hand 8 pairs alternating rounds of feeding vs hitting is doable. No opportunity loss, so way less of an issue.

As far as holding goes, anything between the “wet noodle” issue Sento addressed and the feeder providing most of the impact is going to be better than punching air and pretending you are working. If the drill is more formal the coach/coaches can address the pad holding enough so at least the majority of the strikes have the desired target. That is still pretty damn good training to my, feeble and addled, mind.

Regards,

Robert A

73

[quote]Kirks wrote:
To those of you saying that pad holding should be done by fighters (past or present), does this mean you wouldn’t expect it to be worked into a class?

If you have a class of 10-15 students (which is standard at my gym). How would you structure it with no pad work? We have a head trainer, and one or two other trainers coming around (one moved back home last week so down to one extra at the moment) and correcting what people are doing. We do some pad work (probably a couple rounds in 90% of classes I have done) and we are shown wha tto do before we start.

But there is no way that you could have trainers for every student. The fighters are obviously different, they get more one on one attention.

Would you set up so that its just shadow boxing, heavy bag and clinching? (I do Muay Thai).[/quote]

Pad work should be something between heavy bag work and sparring.It should be done replicating fight.It takes a fighter who knows fight inside out to replicate fight with pad handling.Boxing,kickboxing group sessions I trained in usually had ex or present competitive fighters as instructors who would hold pads for 2-3 rounds each session for me and others more advanced members.

And the best pad holder I trained with was assistant coach for Croatian national boxing team and the head coach of my own boxing club *Metalac Zagreb * Mr Radjen.Ex-boxer in lower weight classes with hundreds of matches,Mr.Radjen would really challenge you in those 2 rounds on the pads-technicaly,tacticaly,mentally,conditionaly.He would correct you on the spot and later give you tips about areas you neeed to work on.Even when he would sometimes just more or less go through the motions,you had quality work and quality insight into you present abilities.