Sorry for the wait ladies and gentlemen. Here’s the Gunnar Nelson vs Eugene Faidora fight video from BAMMA 4 which was held at The NIA in Birmingham on 25th September 2010.
I came across this video after it was linked from a “How a 2 stroke engine works” video
Many things sprung to mind as I was watching this. The first was how I knew NOTHING about the mechanical workings of a car and second was that the ‘coach’ was explaning things in such a way that I can only imagine mechanics understanding it.
This stamps the point of NEEDING a technically sound and confident coach when it comes to BJJ/MMA instruction. Anybody can be good at their chosen sport but it takes somebody special to be able to break something down to the point of where a layperson could understand it. For example, the very basic BJJ ‘Scissor Sweep’.
The Scissor Sweep is where your opponent is in your guard (between your legs) – you want to reverse your opponent (sweep) so you end up in the more dominant position. Before Iget into the tiny details of it, the basic principle is you want to put your shin across your opponents chest, take a grip of their collar and basing arm, use your other leg to unsettle their base, then sweeping them using a scissoring motion with your legs. As below:
Now if I was to show you the basic motion of the scissor sweep, you’d get it immediately. You’d know WHY you would need to do it that way and the right motions. BUT, it takes an entirely different person to go into more detail. Explaining how to load your opponent’s weight onto your shin/leg by unsettling his base and pulling him into you, how to stop your opponent from sprawling down and flattening your legs thus nullifying the sweep, how to get your hips under their centre of gravity and use leverage to complete the sweep, where to go once the sweep i complete and what to do if your opponent reacts in certain ways.
Discussing this coaching theory with a friend of mine, he brought up a good point. “People who are generally self taught like Karl Tanswell, Nathan Leverton, Evan Tanner and Greg Jackson have that ability to break things down to understand the technique better – then commnicating it across takes an entirely different skill set (one which the above all have)…” and it’s true. You can be the most amazing, accomplished wrestler but until you can sit down and break something down to a layperson, you might as well leave the coaching to somebody else.
By all means, coach away – the more experience the better. But observing somebody else’s style of coaching could help you in limitless ways in regards to how to plan and structure your session, clarity of communication, how to adapt your approach to different people and more importantly – catering for those of different levels.
You don’t want to confuse people now do you?
Here’s a basic scissor sweep taught by Expert Village on YouTube
Catching up with a friend and fellow training partner last night, I mentioned that I was planning to make a return to gi training soon to which he replied with “Your white belt is looking a little dark… like a tinge of blue…”. Over the last few months a few training partners have accused me of being a sandbagger (where somebody holds back from being graded when they’re blatantly the grade above) but I don’t agree as there are different ways of looking at the situation.
I truly do not believe in any way shape or form, that I am ready to be a blue belt. Reason? The mistakes I still make during rolling are very white belt mistakes. I use strength when I shouldn’t and try to use technique to escape when it’s too late. My triangle defence, although improved is disgusting. I forget to posture and up until a few months ago, my only mount escape was to bridge a few times.
Fundamentals such as hip movement and keeping your elbows tight to the body are all forgotten and replaced with the latest crazy go to move, such as the elastic Muslim hand control guard. Instead of sitting up for a kimura or hip bump sweep, white belts are using attributes such as flexibility to lock their opponents down and trying for omoplatas. Instead of using leverage, leg to hip to upper body control to pass the guard, they’re now relying on athleticism to boost past the legs.
Over 2 years ago when I was newbie rolling in a gi class in an old t shirt and shorts, the white belts were brilliant and the blue belts were pretty phenomenal. Now I’m having to roll with Mr 3000% White Belt who uses all his 90kgs of muscle to hold me down in side control but yet when the roles are reversed, a stiff arm, shrimp and bridge are completely lost on them.
Blue belts have been widely known to be freely handed out in some clubs and this is wrong on so many levels. Some require that you win a few competitions before being promoted but again I think this is wrong. When promoting one of our blue to purple belts, Karl said something that still rattles in my head even to this day; when you are promoted to another belt, that is because he believes that you are able to enter any competition in the world in your weight bracket and belt division and hold your own. Winning competitions don’t mean squat as there are many people who are outstanding at what they do but just can’t bring it to the table when competing for whatever reason.
There are far too many people belt hunting nowadays. 6 months ago I would have killed for a blue belt but now, I’m more than happy to hang back and use this invaluable time to make my mistakes and become very good white belt instead of a shit blue. I have no interest in letting somebody grade me as I don’t feel like the belt is justified if the student is uncomfortable.
Saying that, there are many instances where people GROW into their belts. When they’re promoted that tiny bit too early but within a few months, their game has shot up. Almost as if just wearing the belt has given them that new lease of Jiu Jitsu life and now they have to prove their worth and doing very well at it.
Which leads me to my next post…
It’s almost midweek, where you’ve just gotten over the weekend just gone but just out of grasp of the one approaching and I never expected to be so confused in the middle of the week. On a weekend you have the right to be confused, you’re not at work, you’re probably off training and you’re sat around with friends wondering what the hell to do. OR it’s a Monday, you’ve just gotten out of bed and you’ve just put your socks down to put the kettle on and you suddenly forget where you put your socks – you don’t want to get another pair out of the drawer because you want to know where the first pair are… Monday morning haze…
I was with a few friends last night and one of them asked me if he could start training MMA with me and of course I replied ‘Yes’. I always try and encourage people to train at SBG to open their minds to competitive sport which is what MMA ultimately is. Plus it gives people the chance to see it as a sport rather than listen to the media and people who know nothing about it label it as ‘cockfighting’ or ‘ultimate cage fighting’, also because I want my friends to see why I love doing it so much. To see if they can see why it’s so addictive. I digress.
I replied ‘Yes’ and told him the best day and time to come would be the Intro Stand Up Class on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7pm til 8pm. As much as I love Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and grappling as a whole, my friends aren’t the type of people to ‘roll around on the floor’ with other guys.
“Yeah Thursday sounds good man, I wanna learn how to bang man out…”, I stopped him there… “You’re not gonna learn how to bang man out, if that’s why you wanna go, you’re goin’ for the wrong reasons…”… to cut a long story short I was faced with the question;
“So how do you measure how good you are? Surely the only true measure of how good you are is to bang someone out…”
I had no reply no matter how hard I tried except for a feeble “When you go boxing, you don’t learn how to bang someone out, you learn how to BOX. They’re two different things”. I got an agreement from my other friend who loves boxing who went on to break down how boxing is as much an art form as it is a combat sport.
People do MMA/BJJ/Boxing/Muay Thai for different reasons, some to lose weight, some to fight and others because they enjoy it. I suppose some people can measure their success by how much weight they’ve lost through training and some can measure it by how good/healthy they feel/look. But how do you measure how GOOD you are without actually competing? Because at the end of the day, no matter what you’re competing in, whether it be chess, boxing or bobsled racing, your objective is to beat the other person.
