UFC fighters vs Marine Corps martial arts experts, guess how it plays out

You train how you fight and you fight how you train.

I ran across this video in an article on Business Insider's website today (which is a reprint of the original article on We Are the Mighty that shows 3 UFC fighters, and Dana White, spending a day at the Marine Corps Martial Arts Center of Excellence (MACE), in Quantico, VA. UFC veterans, Forrest Griffin, Marcus Davis, and Rashad Evans went through a training lane where they'd have to fight their way past marines in a 'no rules' scenario of combat survival. Watch the video to see how they pan out. Spoiler alert, not well for the UFC guys.

What can we take away from this video? Combat sports and military/high risk operator skill sets serve two very different purposes.
 
Military and high risk operators train to achieve a completely different goal from what MMA and tournament & civilian martial arts train for. And that becomes very apparent at the 5:18 mark of the video. UFC fighter, Gabriel Gonzaga approaches two enemy marines.  Right away, he makes two critical tactical mistakes: 1. he puts himself between both opponents, exposing his back to one of them, and 2. he focuses his attack on one opponent. And he immediately paid for it.

In fact, each of the MMA fighters made the same mistake when fighting multiple opponents. They all focused their fight on one enemy while ignoring the other active opponent, and that's why they were each killed in the exercise.

Fighting in the cage/ring/mat against a single opponent is very different from what happens in a combat situation. But what's more relevant to us civilians, is that what happens in a combat situation is more aligned to what happens on the street. Odds are that the guy you get in a fight with has friends, who are not going to wait their turn for you to beat them up.  Environmental conditions will not be ideal (see how everyone was slipping around in the snow on the video), weapons can be pulled and used, and there is no referee or coach to enforce rules or call the fight.

Training MMA is training for sport, against a single opponent in a fairly safe environment. If you do train MMA or any other combat sport (muay thai included), it's very important to remember that the objectives of your style aren't the same as the objectives of an armed assailant or a crew that picks fights for fun. The dynamics change outside of the gym.

Here are just a few tips to keep in mind:
1. If you do end up in a situation outside the gym, assume that there's more than one bad guy.
2. In the street, never, ever take the fight to the ground, that's the quickest way to get your head stomped.
3. If/when you find yourself going to the ground, get up, fight your way back to your feet.
4. Keep moving, don't focus on one single individual opponent. Tunnel vision kills.
5. If this is a real concern for you, seek out a local school that trains reality-based self defense where multiple/armed opponent tactics & group psychology principles are applied. Check out one of the following:

•  Krav Maga - not my first choice, but given the Krav franchise, its the most widely available option. 
• If you're near a Senshido school, go there. 
• Better yet, if you can train directly with Richard Dimitri, take advantage of that. 
• If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, check out the Muay Thai Academy International (shameless plug, it's where I teach, and this stuff is what we cover).

Either way, check out the video. It's entertaining, and the exercises the UFC fighters went through looks like a lot of fun.

This video was originally posted on You Tube in 2011. Video credit, HarryBank99

How your brain impedes your muay thai training

In the process of learning muay thai the most difficult part for us Westerners is our natural inclination to over analyze everything. And if you're an American, forget about it. Our society is driven by instant gratification. I mean, isn't there a cheat code or cliffs notes? Anything?

Muay thai is inherently foreign to the Westerner. The techniques require you to purposely put your self off balance, and the ultra aggressive nature of the system goes against what society has taught us growing up. For example, think about your personal space and how uncomfortable it was for you the first time you did a clinching drill with a fellow student who you didn't really know.

The techniques, from round kicks to elbow strikes are made up of many moving parts all working in unison, and it takes a while to get comfortable with moving your body in that somewhat awkward way. For example, they say it takes 10,000 reps of the muay thai round kick before you get to the point where you can throw the kick without thinking about the technique.

It's very easy to get frustrated with yourself over the course of your training (it usually kicks in around the 3rd month in). But it's that over analyzing, trying to break down every component of a technique is what throws you off track. Ideally, you while training techniques, you're thinking about anything other than the technique that your practicing. If you find yourself getting frustrated with yourself, here's a couple pointers that I've found works:

1. Don't spend too much time focusing on a trouble spot. For example, you aren't pivoting on a round kick. Work on it but spending too much time on one issue will likely leave you neglecting the other parts of the technique.

2. Don't rush it! Throwing a crappy kick really fast will in no way clean up your technique. It's easier to throw poor technique quickly than clean technique slowly. Take your time, you aren't in a race.

3. Hitting bags and pads is fun, it feels good - but shadowing the technique is where you really make strides in cleaning up your form. Never neglect your shadow training.

4. This is the hardest part. Once you've practiced enough to where your body can physically throw a technique correctly (you understand the mechanics), then stop thinking about the technique while you're training. The ultimate goal is for you to be able to execute any muay thai strikes, whether it be kicks, knees, elbows, body movement - without thinking. It just becomes a natural part of how your body moves. Thinking, and over-thinking your technique will actually impede this. So think about anything else other than the technique - girls, work, school, does Taco Bell really use fake beef?

5. Step one in transitioning from muscle memory to subconscious reaction is to train thai pad drills where your partner calls out combinations at a pace that tires you out. And after you've reached the point of exhaustion, you keep going - s/he increases the intensity/complexity of the combos. Its meant to push you beyond the point where your brain cannot process the incoming orders, and its your reptilian brain & your body simply moving on instinct and muscle memory. That's where the real learning takes place.

Donnie-

Don’t Ask the Learned Ask the Experienced

I remember when I was going to high school we had a teacher who coached the swim team. Now the strange thing about it was he didn’t know how to swim! How crazy was that?

But as crazy as that was there are martial arts students who are learning how to defend themselves from people who haven’t a clue about whether what they are teaching works or not. Not only is this crazy but it’s also downright dangerous. Learning from the experienced instead of the learned tends to help cut through a lot of the B.S. As masters of mayhem and violence they tend to flesh out and put a face on violence. They help fill in the gaps between the what ifs and the what is.

It helps you to view violence from a correct point of view; you get a lifetime of learning if you pay attention to what they have to say. And if you’re lucky enough you’ll learn the differences between being experienced and having wisdom. It’s been said “Experience is what man calls his mistakes” and “wisdom is learning from others experience”. In reality there are things a book or a DVD can’t explain, teach, or show you. Such as seeing the fear in your enemies’ eyes or the moment you take his spirit and gain the advantage. Or the sound a head makes as it hits the pavement or slams against the wall in a dark alley. Or what it feels like to be stabbed or shot, these things can be best explained by those who have been through it first hand.

I have had students ask me for advice based on my experiences on various situations. Things like dealing with bullies, multiple opponents, guns, knives, fights at parties or bars etc. I tell them the ugly truth about each situation, not the politically correct version. It's important that know what they’re getting themselves into and the options that they have to get themselves out of it, if need be. Much of the advice comes from what I would call the “Grey side of the law”. I have learned from experience that this was the quickest way to get out of a dangerous situation. After all are you going to wait around for the police to show up to save the day, especially when you have two or three dudes kicking and stomping you into the ground? It's faster and easier to pick up a brick or a bottle to even the odds and get to safety. The learned can only guess as to what to do in a dangerous situation, while the experienced can tell you exactly what to do to survive and prevail.

While I don’t have any letters before or after my name such as PHD. or DR., I do have those that do, come to me to teach them how to defend themselves. And why is that? Because you don’t ask the learned you ask the experienced!

Daniel Sambrano
www.SuperHeroSystems.com

Speed kills... the other guy in the world of muay thai

"The stronger swordsman does not necessarily win. It is speed! Speed of hand, speed of mind."

That's one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite stories, The Count of Monte Cristo. It is a common belief that power and size go hand in hand. Well that's bad news for a guy like me. See, I'm  5 foot six, a hundred and forty-something pounds - a self professed little guy.  I'm certainly not big, and I don't want to be big. I never had big muscles. In fact, growing up I had the metabolism of a squirrel. I tried bulking up, but my body just burned off every type of protein muscle-max weight gain product I could blow my allowance on. When I started training muay thai, I was hoping that this high impact martial art would get me yolked.

Nope.

But us little guys have a strength that a lot of the bigger guys disregard - speed. I think speed is a defense mechanism that you develop when you're being chased by bullies as a little kid. When that speed is used for fight instead of flight, bullies become a non-issue

I've noticed that during the course of their training a lot of western muay thai and MMA practitioners tend to develop the mind set that the more weight one can push the harder one can strike. Not necessarily so. Strength gives you the ability to move mass, but does it enable you to cause more damage to that mass than a person 2/3 your size?

When it comes to striking, speed is king. Developing the ability to throw with explosive speed can give a person a small as myself the ability to generate devastating power. Its simple bio-mechanics, nothing mystical. When you understand that the faster you can throw a strike in a smaller period of time, and get your body into it, your opponent is in a world of hurt.

Here's a couple quick tips to help you develop explosive power with your strikes:

1. Basic physics - your mass x acceleration = force. Don't throw punches with your arm, throw it with your body. Drive forward with your strikes, punch through your target.

2. Pivot in, pivot out - The pivot is one of the most important aspects of the muay thai round kick. If you throw a kick at 20mph, bring your leg back at 25mph, and bring it back with that pivot.

3. The faster you can pivot, the harder you can strike - this applies to elbows, round kicks, hooks.

4. Commit 100% to the strike at that moment, don't worry about counter strikes because if you're training right, you wouldn't depend on a one-shot knock out. You throw at least 3-5 in a single combo.

5. If you're like me you don't train muay thai for sport, but for protection. You can't get disqualified from a street fight, so when you strike you aim for soft targets, and you attack with everything behind it.

6. Most important tip ever! When you're learning a technique, throw it slow until you are comfortable with moving your body that way. Build the speed at your own pace, the power will increase as your speed increases. You aren't going to impress anyone firing off a half ass technique with no power.

What's your martial arts motivation?

I've been pondering that question a lot lately. What motivates me to continue training and teaching? What keeps me coming into the gym 3 to 4 times a week to teach muay thai to people, many I hardly know.

With 10 years of marketing experience you'd think I'd have been monetizing the crap out of the current MMA / muay thai craze, but I haven't. The google ad revenue from this blog covers the hosting fees for my domains. I haven't tried to sell DVD courses, and I haven't tried to start a clothing line like a lot of other people. Maybe I should.

Logically, money should be major motivator. However, every week I keep coming back to the Muay Thai Academy International where all of us instructors teach for free. Muay thai is a part of who I am, the school is my Cheers, and I'm it's Norm.

I love the feeling of satisfaction when a concept 'clicks' for a student whose been struggling with a certain technique, or the beam in a new student's eye when I show him something he's never seen before.

I love sharing what I've learned from my experiences with others. If I can find a way to make a living off of it, bonus. But my passion for the unique style of combat oriented muay thai is what truly motivates me to give what I can to who I can, without hesitation.

Boiled down: Enabling people to protect themselves and their loved ones from multiple assailants without reservation, efficiently, through overwhelming, destructive force is my motivation - and perhaps my mission statement.

Enough self-serving banter from me. I challenge you to examine your training and explore the internal drivers that motivate you. I encourage you to look beyond the ego and really be honest with yourself as to why you're doing what you're doing. You may be surprised with what you find out about yourself.

Train how you fight

How you train is how you fight - I've heard that adage from a number of instructors in my past and, as it goes, I now attempt to pass on that same knowledge to my students. In my experience as a muay thai instructor, approximately 50% of students have studied another form of martial arts, mostly sport muay thai, taekwondo, or jujitsu.

I train and teach lerd rit, muay boran, and muay chao cherk for the purposes of street defense, not for cultural demonstrations. A high percentage of our training is focused on multiple opponents, and I teach that when you strike, you strike to demolish, not to score points. My school (I teach there, I'm not the owner), Muay Thai Academy International does not participate in competition mainly because we don't we don't believe in watering down technique for ring or cage application.

I've seen that most western martial artists are trained to strike targets in the hopes of scoring points, or applying a form because its the "proper technique", not because it generates maximum force.

If you're training a martial art, specifically muay thai, and you find that you throw round kicks to the head more often than not, your switch kick is all but useless, and you believe that the purpose for an elbow is to cut your opponent's eye I have some bad news for you. All that training at your camps or gyms may be for naught in a real fight in the streets. You're training to win a competition, not to survive an attack in a situation where there is no referee, no bell, no one to throw in the towel if things go south. Are you really going to go to the ground against 2 or 3 guys? Just remember that the habits you form in the gym are the same habits you'll take with you into a confrontation. Now I know I'll probably get some unsavory responses for this post, and that's fine. Agree to disagree, right?

If you're still reading this and you're considering augmenting your training to apply your existing skill set for street defense, here are a few things to think about:

1. Aim for big targets: Forget about trying to hit someone in the jaw for a knockout. The head is a small target that's difficult to hit. Imagine an invisible triangle starting at the jaw and expanding down to right above the pectorals. You have a much better chance of hitting that area which contains the throat, clavicals and large nerve masses. Think center body mass.

2. Don't hit, smash: When you strike, strike through your opponent, don't just hit. For example, when doing thai pad drills, visualize your kick / elbow / knee going right through the pad holder, knocking him back.

3. Your attacker is one big target: Take the human out of the equation. You could be fighting for your life and your attacker won't certainly be treating you like a sparring partner. You need not care about his/her feelings. No more, "oops, I threw that one a little too hard."

3. No more rules: Eye gouging, biting, groin shots, head butts, and weapons are now allowed. Train accordingly. Here's a great source for info on unorthodox street defense.

4. Train in your street clothes in different environments, on different terrain. I've said before, it's important that you're as comfortable fighting in slacks as you are in shorts. Set up staged situations such as an office, a living room, a dance floor complete with strobe lights and loud music. You'll soon learn how difficult it is to defend and attack with multiple distractions and obstacles.

5. Improvise: Learn how to fight with what what you have around you. Almost anything can be used as either a weapon or as a defense tool, and then a weapon.

6. Multiple baddies: Start to put it into your head that you may be facing more than one opponent. In reality, more often than not you'll end up against 2-5 attackers.


Those are a few basics to think about and when integrated into your regular training regimen, you'll find that you're getting a lot more out of your martial arts experience.

Another MMA Fighter Shot and Killed This Year

Hey guys just wanted to give you all the heads up, sadly another MMA fighter was killed this year.

His name was Justin Eilers, he was shot and died shortly after on Friday morning, the day after Christmas.

In an apparent domestic disturbance at an acquaintance's home in Canyon County, Idaho.

The cause of death was a single gunshot wound to the chest, the bullet punctured his lung before exiting his body.

Justin Eilers was 30 years old.

The shooter James Robert Malec, 48, was arrested and charged with second degree murder in relation to the shooting.

Justin was a heavyweight fighter who fought for the UFC Heavyweight Championship against Andrea Arloski at UFC 53 in June 2005.

He also fought for Elite XC in 2008 for a title shot against Antonio Silva.

What I wanted to point out was his killer wasn't a big heavyweight MMA Fighter or a tough thug, but a 48 year old man who wasn't a fighter but someone who became deadly due to the use of a firearm.

This tragic death could have been avoided but unfortunately wasn't, what started out as an argument ended deadly.

For all you MMA Fighters or Martial Artists out there you need to be careful what you do outside the gym, that secret stand up combo or new jiu jitsu move won't work against a committed individual willing to kill you with a weapon.

When real violence enters your life you may not be able to make it tap out or be able to knock it out!

What you really need to know doesn't involve strength or sweat, a punch or a kick.

What you need to learn is awareness and deescalation skills and tactics to deal with this type of situation, no amount of kicks or punches will help when the bullets start flying.

Also if you're not training in how to deal with weapons of any kind then you're training is incomplete and needs to be reevaluated.

So take off the gloves and get up off the ground and start learning how to protect yourself from this type of violence, at the very least you'll have some options that may save your life and those of your love ones.

Take care and be safe.


Daniel Sambrano
"Keep It Simple and Savage"
www.SuperHeroSystems.com

One of my favorite online martial arts resources

When it comes to martial arts, I'm not a big fan of learning techniques through books or websites. With that said, I have to give credit to StickGrappler (http://stickgrappler.tripod.com/), a fairly comprehensive martial arts knowledge base. The site covers the traditional martial arts as well as the less common systems such as bando and jail house fighting.

The site is basic - devoid of design elements - which is something you can appreciate, especially when you're there solely to reference information. Systems are categorized well and it also includes information on nutrition and conditioning. Although, the muay thai section provides technique outlines, most of them are applicable for the ring. There's info on krabi krabong but nothing I found on ledrit or other traditional muay thai sub-systems.

Stick to the conditioning, nutrition, and street smarts pages as if you practice ledrit or muay chao churd you probably know everything the muay thai section covers.

http://stickgrappler.tripod.com/

The Foolish Illusion of Reality

Ritual: A customary procedure.

Everyday martial artists train in ritualized confrontations, complying with each other as they train.

Never realizing that what they do may condition them to fail against an adversary that will not comply.

They may not be able to “Turn On” or worse yet, they may freeze up due to indecision and the adrenaline rush.

“Violence of Action” the intensity and full commitment of going after a target will not be present as the adversary attacks at 100% intensity.

The martial artist will find that his flashy techniques and movements do not stand up against the onslaught of a committed attacker. What went wrong?

In ritualized confrontations the danger or element of death is not present or does not exist.

Emotion or intensity is not challenged and put to the test.

Once rules and familiarity enter, the confrontation soon becomes a “Game of Skill” and not true combat training.

It is not the same thing to fight for survival as it is to fight for ego based gratification set by rules which are respected by both combatants.

And yet it is another thing to know the difference.

All martial artists must be cognizant of the knowledge they posses and its usefulness in real combat.

The traditional movements of their style long ago forgotten and used for something it may not have been intended for in actual combat, never truly tested or questioned.

If they’ve been trained in the art of “Ritualized Confrontation”
(Rules, Sports, Win or Lose) they may be in for a rude awakening
when fantasy and reality clash.

Remember the difference between fantasy and reality is reality has bad breath and hits hard!

The martial artist may find that the opponent he is facing in the street does not comply with his fighting style or he fights with 100% intensity and feels no pain.

Or worse yet, the one opponent may well be many and carrying weapons.

It is then that the “Foolish Illusion of Reality” hits him right square between the eyes and the school of “Hard Knocks” will be in session teaching a new student the fine art of survival.

It has been said “Experience is what man calls his mistakes” and if this new student survives, he will have learned a lifetime of experience in one session.

When the smell of death and uncertainty is in the air, your training will lay bare, naked for all to see.

And you will know what is real and what is illusion.

It is when the shackles of tradition and theory are cast off that you soon discover what it takes to survive.

When this epiphany illuminates the dark and secret areas of your heart and mind and you come to know the truth.

You will find that “Life and Death Conflicts” are their own entity, different from the dojo and the ring.

What you do with this knowledge is up to you, but know this, you will never be the same again.

You will possess what every warrior before you has known for centuries, “You are Mortal” and the illusion of invincibility will not be there.

So train hard, intensely and most of all truthfully and never fall for the complacency of ritual.


Daniel Sambrano
“Keep It Simple and Savage”

www.SuperHeroSystems.com www.PrevailToday.com