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Coming to understand more and more that it is like a game of physical chess and this determines how you teach it. There are apparently a few million potential moves in every chess game; maybe not so many in a groundfight but there are still many potential combinations of attack/counter attack with varying degrees of complexity.

You can’t teach a Chess student every potential move but you can give the bases, the building blocks of strategy, defence, attack, positioning for the counter-attack, containment etc. They will need to develop.and perfect these skills in an actual chess match with a non-co-operative opponent. Mutatis mutandis, the same applies to the ground-fighting game, you can give the tools but students need to perfect their application in a nice ground-fight, with punching etc. allowed of course, with this being UKM.

And after that use of Latin in the previous paragraph, let me just revert to type and say that if anybody tells you that if it  goes to ground all you need is to be able to bite, headbutt and eye-gouge your way out of trouble, they are talking bollocks and should spend 2 minutes on the floor with a semi – accomplished grappler to test their theory.

Great quick workout:

shoulder press 2 kettlebells then drop bells to floor and sprawl backwards, do a push up on the bell handles, get up and lift the bells over your head olympic snatch style. repeat for 1 minute.

After 1 minute hold onto the bellhandles, rest the bells on your delts, squat and kick with alternate legs for 1 minute

sit ups on swiss ball with left leg raised till failure; repeat with right leg raised; then sit ups with both feet on the floor

1 minute rest then repeat. This will set you up nicely for the rest of the day in less than 10 minutes

As a martial artist you should be focused on strength, speed, balance and cardio which you can get through the kettlebell routine described above. Also, any martial arts weight training routine should incorporate the disciplines of the olympic lifts; those ladies and gentlemen are the most powerful people on the planet pound for pound and all without bulging biceps and heavily defined triceps. I have some big bastard private students who have failed pathetically at the routine I described above.

Next Instructor/Intensive Training Course coming up 17-21 November, at the MMA Den in Battersea Park. This is a proper training gym just over the river from Victoria, near Battersea Park Station. Battersea Park is 4 minutes from Victoria and there are about 10 trains there per hour. See here for more details and contact me if interested:

http://www.urbankravmaga.com/instructor-intensive-courses

Ground/Knife DVD featuring Stewart McGill and Leo Negao. 80 minutes of quality instruction re handling knife threats/attacks plus street groundfighting techniques from Leo, Vale Tudo fighter and former BJJ World Champion. Just £10 on Amazon, only for the next month. see here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Urban-Krav-Maga-MMA-Ground/dp/B002QRJQMI/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1318408213&sr=8-3

Have seen some stuff on YouTube recently on this topic that didn’t wholly convince. Check out some of our videos here:

Double handed grab-close in

Double handed grab, attacker at distance.

Single handed grab