Fundamental movement patterns on the ground

For reference/inspiration

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=Hut7zYx5RII

Good Find Nick,
Great movement !

I like the way the Brazilians move, I've always said so--nice and easy.
But I can't see anything in it that we haven't been doing over the last five weeks at Primal (as a warmup, rather than a cooldown). Even in Monsters we were doing some of this stuff, even getting you to do the freeform versions of it. In fact, we do more.

At the moment in Primal we're breaking the moves down so people can get familiar with them, but the idea isn't to have a group warmup but rather to put them into a freeform as you see here, because normally it's the individual who's doing the warmup and not a group. So you want to make it your goal to watch the fight and draw out of the fight your drills, and then you can put them together in a personal freeform like you see on the clip.

And needless to say, our warmup includes standup. I tried to persuade Tony Pillage to hang a rope but because of the way the building is constructed he was reluctant to do so. Because I've got a whole bunch of rope exercises, as well as many more ground patterns lined up.

It's a bottomless pit. Jump in there!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDG8HacqGx4

I've always said to Trish that if I got a big enough gym, I wanted to put up a climbing wall. It's the most natural way of grip development. Of course you can substitute grip development by using ropes, towels, but that's a little one-dimensional.

If ropes are not possible, maybe Mr. Pillage can attach some handholds in the wall:
http://www.franklinhandholds.com/

That clip is a bit too arty-farty for me, Luciano. The first clip was better, but it still didn't hit the mark in that my dynamic warmup targets those elements that are essential to skills; i.e., speed, core stability, dynamic balance, etc. as well as the underlying movement patterns of the skills themselves. And I do that both on the feet and on the ground. It's still undergoing an experimental development, and has been for many years now.

When it comes to the clips, particularly the second one, it addresses movement (and the pattern of movement fundamental to a skill is important) but it does not address all of the elements necessary in an integrated way that's directly applicable to the fight. I'm enhancing the neuromusculoskeletal structure in both specific and non specific ways for the fight. I'm not trying to support a way of fighting (ie. BJJ) but what's essential to the fight.

Teh second clip is obviously yoga-derived, and it has a lot of static posing. To me, it ain't functional as far as the fight's concerned.

With my warmup, I need to put the guy in the mindset, physiological state, and physical conditions for the fight. My warmup's a mini fight, performed solo. It's not a gymnastic exercise. And it's not choreographed.

I've been doing these kinds of ground drills since Tom O'Shaughnessy secretly filmed the Wu Shou team in the early 1970s when they visited London, part of which was Dog Boxing or ground boxing. I adapted this and came up with something similar to breakdancing, without ever knowing what breakdancing was at the time. In fact, I wouldn't mind betting that breakdancing was not only influenced by the moves of wresting, but by the Wu Shou tour which was going on worldwide at the time and would have been seen in American cities.

All the way back in Earlham Street, my guys were working on this stuff. Like with the nunchaku, we just ran with it. And that's what I'm trying to encourage guys to do now. But remember, it's about the fight in all its dimensions, and enhancing the attributes that are essential to it.

It's easy to get caught up in doing exercises for their own sake, and that's something I want you to avoid. Be creative in what you're doing, be innovative, be open--because that's essential in a fight as well--but don't lose sight of the fight.

That's why you need to test what you've got in some form of conditional dissimilar training.

All threads lead to the same place. Test it! And it's hard to find a way of doing that safely and realistically, but I've found one.