ground work for MMA

Hi Steve, I'm about to enter my first cage fight at 37 years young. Although I actually teach a couple of cage fighers stand-up, and have fought in full-contact kick-boxing I'm a relative novice on the ground. If you had the choice, which art would you chose? And if you only had the choice between bjj and judo which would you go for? Obviously it's tough because you could have a shite bjj club and a fantastic wrestling club or vis versa but I would still appreciate your views.
Also have you any tips for ground fighting, especially for someone like me ho doesn't want to be there! Cheers Rob

Rob, as far as tips it's a difficult one without seeing you. But to win a fight from a stand-up, you have to either knock him out through offence, or counter-offence. The problem is, how do you do that without being taken down? And if you're taken down, how can you get into a position to strike, or get back to your feet where you can get back to trying to knock him out again.

So you have to run this in drilling. You need to get a couple of guys to act as dissimilar adversaries. You set it up so that every time you strike, he tries to take you down. You try to stay on your feet. And when he takes you down, you try to get back to your feet or to get in a dominant position for striking on the ground.

You need to break it down into snapshots and focus on the snapshot that you're having the most trouble with. If your biggest problem is getting back to your feet, for example, then you have practice this over and over from various positions, even to the point where, when you successfully get up from underneath one guy, another immediately jumps on top of you,a nd so on for five minutes. So you build your conditioning specific to the skill.

And that's the same for the standup. You have a lineup of guys that you are going to try to attack. That's your mission. Their mission, in a 30 second period, is to try to take you down. And hold you there. And then when that 30 seconds is up, the next guy comes in, until again you've completed 5 minutes. There's lots of variants on this, but that's the general idea.

We can't talk about submissions from your perspective because you ain't got time to develop those skills. You've just got to create the situations and let the situation teach you what you've got to do so you stay in your game plan. And to do it at very high intensities, as if your life depended on it. And keep doing it until you've completed the fight period.

And your opponent has to really take his mission seriously, too. He's trying to prove that what you're doing is shit. That's your feedback system. And he'll do that for a very brief period, and the next guy will come in and do it again and again.

If you haven't go anybody in your gym who can takedown or grapple well, then just work with rugby tackles.

In an ideal world, you would work on your submissions before taking such a fight, but since you haven't got time for that, you've got to find a quicker way.

If you've got guys capable of doing it, get guys to apply submissions on you to the point that you tap out, and then let them back off that position slightly, and start the match from there. So that you have to get out of these bad positions before you can be submitted again. Lots of variants on this one as well.

But next time, ask my advice BEFORE you take the fight. And come to Coventry, we do it all. We've got some really skilled guys, both on the feet and the ground.

Cheers Steve, good advice. Unfortunately Coventry is a bit far away, but I gather that with you, you are always trying to go that bit further than what you can expect in the ring/street whatever. This obviously makes so much sense and I would have thought could be applied to almost anything even stuff such as exams, marathon running whatevr situation you have to prepare for.
Steve, if you get time can you state your preferences/views on the different types of groundwork. Cheers, Rob

If I’d known you lived in Spain I wouldn’t have suggested you come to Coventry but if you could ever make it, it would be well worth the effort.

With regards to your question about ground fighting, I don't advocate a particular school; I never have. I've always worked outside the systems. If you want to get your ground skills up to speed, take a look at how the best MMA fighters in the world win and defend on the ground. The best example of that would more likely be found in Pride clips rather than in those of the UFC (which in my opinion is very watered-down nhb). You should also take a look at submission fighting, BJJ, sambo, judo and freestyle\Greco-Roman wrestling in competition so as to get a broader perspective of grappling and ground work ‘live,’ so to speak.

But at the end of the day, whatever you come up with by way of moves, drills and conditional fighting methods, whether on the feet in the open or closed positions or in the numerous positions on the ground, it has to be tested in some form of dissimilar training or an actual fight; i.e., MMA. My method is supportive of a personal approach to fight training and one in which as your experience and perception of the fight changes, so does the way you train. You’re not locked into a way of training or prescribed solutions.

Simply analyse real experiences--both yours and those of others--and use that information to devise or employ exercises, drills or conditional fight training methods that will support you in attaining the necessary mindset, level of athleticism, conditioning, skills, tactics and strategies to fight with. For me this has been a life’s work, but what I’ve found is that it’s a shorter route to the fight than looking at systems and trying to sift out the good bits from the bad. And because I’ve done a lot of the work for you, I can give you a grounding in how to go about training. That’s what my method does, and once you understand it, you can take it and run with it. You won’t need any of the other stuff anymore.

Cheers steve, much appreciated. Have already found some good guys to train with, went there last night, still hurting! Thanks for your time, Rob Mac.