Steppin up - training '07

[stricker]

went for a run, somewhere between 20 and 30 mins, a friend wanted to start getting fit, kept stopping and walking lol... nice active recovery i s'pose

<porkchop's blog moment>then spent the afternoon with this chick from san antonio. she's dope. scored 290 out of 300 on the APFT...</porkchop's blog moment hahaha>

[stricker]

*truly bizarre* : went back to wing chun. strange, almost surreal. anyway, i'm sorting out doing some escrima, gonna be doing a session of that once a week now, single stick...

then onto groundwork session with training partner.

ran over rubber guard bits:
primary route warm up
duda
crocodile or something, an armbar anyway
pump

then did 6x5 min rounds of very light guard rolling, just working from technique to technique depending starting in guard and restarting when passed or swept etc, alternating whos working their guard for each 5 min round...

[stricker]

MMA

warm up
round of shadow (no left hand)
round of pummelling. went feather light, drilled duckunder, armdrag etc

A:
1 min mount escape
1 min keeping guard
1 min sprawls (i did squats)
1 min keep mount
1 min pass guard

B:
1 min clinch wrestling for position (mainly light, then upped it a bit played basically one armed 'on the phone')
1 min back escape
1 min sprawls (i did squats)
1 min clinch wrestling
1 min back escape (other way round)

Did A, B, A, B, 1 min rest between rounds, then last round :
30secs on floor-ceiling bag, 30secs off
30secs on punch bag, 30 secs off
30secs on hook uppercut bag, 30 secs off
30secs on long thai bag, 30 secs off

then drilled some techniques :
kimura from guard
2 escapes for kimura'd person, one of which is passing guard
past guard, using the kimura to turnover, control head, crank kimura
then variation, come right round the head, roll over shoulder to kimura

i joined in a bit of this, on my good side...

saw thai boxing coach i used to train with on mon/fri's, i have a new nickname down his club, "ju jitsu jon" LOL

[stricker]

MMA.

seminar with some brazillian geezer called Rod. was really good.

did a bunch of stuff :
pummelling
duck under
grabbing the shoulder wrapping the elbow/arm up, to take back
trip/takedown from the pummell
open guard, hooking the legs drill
open guard, hook the leg, grab wrist, sweep
open guard, hook the leg, grab wrist, other leg pulled back so single leg takedown
butterfly guard pass
nice closed guard pass
arm bar from having one hook in on back of turtle
escape from triangle choke (that's me ****ed in rolling )

sure there were a few bits in there i've forgotten to write down, and some of the techniques we've already been doing, but some details were nice, and some of the other techniques really good.

[Nick Forrer]

Hey Jon

Glad you liked the seminar

Rodrigo is awesome.......there is an interview with him in MAI this month

Dont tell me youve gone back to wt tho

I need to show you illustrisimo escrima sometime...that stuff is the business

[stricker]

nick,

yeah i got the impression he enjoyed teaching us, and everyone was pretty stoked on what he showed. he made a bunch of new friends

the escrima thing i'm gonna do for a bit for a couple of reasons. firstly i'm taking an enforced break from serious mma training, and i see limitations as opportunities . second i really dug the seminar with steve tappin i did, felt like a bridge between what i do in mma (or a more natural way of moving) and things i did in wing chun. thirdly, i've had it on good advice to pick up some weapons work for a while. fourth, well, touch upon all arts and all that...

anyway, i'm gonna be doing escrima (branded 'escrima concepts' i think) with my old wing chun teacher, the best training is the training that you do.

p.s. i'll drop you an email...

[stricker]

Escrima

stationary #1 strike : what it is, what it isn't
then quickly #2,#3,#4,#5

counter #1 with #2
counter #2 with #1
add footwork, 1, back to point, 2, back, 1, back ...

counter to #3
counter to #4
with footwork

more on striking with the stick, mainly #1, fig-8 motion, not using the wrist or elbow as a hinge, touched on suppressed hitting

Groundwork cancelled due to tp's knee and cold

[AndrewS]

Jon,

a few things for escrima

1). Mess with things from point (empty hand and with sticks)- it forces hip and body use

2). Try stuff from sitting- interesting where you can get power from

3). Start being aware of your head motion as a function of body motion early- try to get your head motion so you move off the attack line but into the other person- I think of it like headbutting behind my hit- it builds some nice power off evasion with forward motion.

Nick,

the stuff coming from Mr. Latosa is a different beast than most other FMA. You've met Steve Tappin- go hit one of his practices and glove up with his guys.

Andrew

[Nick Forrer]

Andrew

Dont know enough about FMA to make fine discriminations between styles. Certainly the couple of times I trained with Steve Tappin I was impressed by the simplicity and practicality of it (as opposed to the gratuitous stick twirling and billions of disarms that some FMA go into)

But my teacher Mark Wiley has seen or studied many many systems of FMA (I think he said over 50) and says that Illustrisimo is light years ahead of everything else hes done. Certainly everything Ive seen in terms of footwork, blade motions and how they interrelate with one another makes perfect sense. Also Illustrisimo is first and foremost a blade system not stick and so the energy and tactics of the sword (as Im sure you're aware) differ from the stick.

Ive got about 2 hours of footage of tatang illustrisimo with edgar sulite and tony diego and his skill with the blade is sick. I recommend you look into it if you have the chance (I think Roy Harris does it in your area).

When I get a bit more competancy with the stick im gonna go out and do somw sparring/competing for sure.

[AndrewS]

Nick,

(Jon sorry for hijacking your blog, btw)

I glanced at some Illustrisimo clips on youtube and would love to catch Roy's take on it. The beauty of Latosa's approach is in the abstraction and variability. He has actively thrown out the silly disarm stuff and the ornate counter for counter and pattern drills, favoring random practice from very early with patterned drills being present for reps only. Teaching-wise this is much more in line with modern motor learning stuff (see criticisms on chi sao, etc). As far as weapon use, each weapon is itself- you don't use a stick like a knife, you use it to club the h*ll out of someone. That being said, each weapon informs the others (the idea of transition)- so the stick has an 'edge', helping focus power, and zoned shots are draw cuts (so you don't have to swing through with every shot); conversely every knive attack should be backed by the whole body spiralling so you can both change and easily shuck off arm based attempts to stop a stab, and so on and so forth. As Mr. Latosa has a good bit of boxing experience (and still spars), his empty hand grows well off his weapons work. Personally, I think his approach to escrima bears the same relation to other escrima which Yi Chuan holds to Xing Yi. It's an attempt to focus on the meat of what makes FMA work.

Andrew

[sanjuro_ronin]

A thread about Latosa would be cool guys, *hint hint*

[stricker]

MMA

warm up
round of shadow (no left arm)
round of pummelling (soft)

partnered with guy with a broken rib, so we worked real soft, doing circuits :

round A:
1 min clinch wrestling
1 min clinch wrestling again
1 min squats
1 min clinch wrestling
1 min clinch wrestle

round B :
1 min mount escape
1 min guard pass
1 min squats
1 min mount hold
1 min keep guard

A-B-A-B, 1 min rest interval

straight into :

30s on heavy bag, 30s off while partner on...
30s on hook uppercut bag, 30s off
30s on long thai bag, 30s off
30s on floor ceiling ball, 30s off
1 min clinch wrestling (light)

2 rounds of that, 1 min rest interval

ripped the **** out of the hook uppercut bag with my right hand, sweeeet

then rounds rolling, went super soft, just flowing from technique to techniqe giving each other stuff for a few rounds with a couple of different people, then last round was resisting, maybe 60-70%, barely using left arm...

interesting chat with mma coach about how to get good.

[stricker]

Jon,

a few things for escrima

1). Mess with things from point (empty hand and with sticks)- it forces hip and body use

2). Try stuff from sitting- interesting where you can get power from

3). Start being aware of your head motion as a function of body motion early- try to get your head motion so you move off the attack line but into the other person- I think of it like headbutting behind my hit- it builds some nice power off evasion with forward motion.

Nick,

the stuff coming from Mr. Latosa is a different beast than most other FMA. You've met Steve Tappin- go hit one of his practices and glove up with his guys.

Andrew

Andrew,

cheers for the input.

1. I'm not 100% sure what 'point' is yet. I think its the bit before you step off to 45 right? like escrimas equivalent of neutral stance?

2 & 3. will play with, cheers.

[AndrewS]

Jon,

Point can mean a couple of different things- the first is the one I'm talking about.

1). The position where both feet are together, a single point. Typically, a transitional point in footwork.

2). An ideal state of balance, not tied to any particular outer shape. When 'on point' you can take force and put it in the ground from any angle (to an extent), move in any direction freely, and express power from any point on the body, with minimal telegraph.

SJR- where do we put it though? If Jon wants we can move this to my blog, but, being KFO, there's no FMA forum here.

Andrew

[stricker]

guys, its cool no prob with the hijack well, i say that, 20 page flame war later ...

Few things :

yeah nick, i was also really impressed with the steve tappin seminar i did. we did a couple of really basic drills almost exactly the same as i've done with in mma/boxing but with the stick... my being slightly tricky to steves assistants went down well, and they also did structure tests from within group/melee work ('freeze!'), which i thought was a nice touch

stick vs sword : this did come up in my first lesson to do with the counter to #3, doing like a bong sao with the stick works with a bladed weapon better than just #1-ing it. yeah, transferability to different weapons (knife stick pool cue, chair) was brought up too...

roy harris : interesting. he's quite a dude then, i've picked up a few tasty submission wrestling moves of his off youtube which i've used

anyway, carry on... i've had like one lesson so far. my knowledge level is about equivalent to knowing jab is the lead hand cross is the rear hahaha