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We did some messing around in the back yard. Had a pretty small class, because it was summer, so we decided to spar all afternoon. The guys came over about 3pm and we sparred for a couple hours, and then from 7:00-8:30 we sparred some more and put it on video.


This is me and a fairly new student in class, and has been in class about 6 weeks, so we don't spar too hard really as he doesn't have much game yet. This video is also a good example of why fat guys shouldn't wear white
(Speaking of fat, I've been yo-yoing between 240 and 280 for a while now.i'm currently 263 and dropping again. heh)

You don't really see the choke-out at the end very well, which is why I like to take two angles on most sparring matches. You can see stuff in one angle that you can't see in the other angle.



You can see the choke out a bit better. It wasn't a really well-sunk choke, more of a side press against the windpipe. After this guy gets some more practice, I'll have to work a lot harder to make something like that work.



This is me and my stepson Donovan. He's a lot better, but the fight goes quicker, because I have to spar him harder or he'll tear me up. He needs to work on crossing into range. He uses a flurry of wild swings to try to move into close range, which sets him up for a sweeping take down. It's kind of an unfair video, because it doesn't really give him a chance to show off the skills he has against a regular opponent, because getting into my guard is sometimes a matter of prayer and desperation for these guys at this stage in their training.

After he goes down, he tries to pull off an ankle lock, and I could feel it stretching my calf, but he didn't have it sunk in good up in his armpit, and he was too high up on the shin, which gave me the opportunity for the arm bar (which you can't see well in this angle)



You can see the arm bar at the end better here. I didn't have his hand pulled close to my chest as would be ideal. In the ideal situation, I'd have used my pelvis for the leverage on his elbow. In this situation, I had to use my inner thigh for the pressure. If he had wanted to continue from here, I would have attempted to go for a wrist lock on the arm i had between my legs because I'd lost the elbow pressure for a good arm bar, but had good control of the arm still.

Dude... your back yard look almost like mine!!!! the fences and the houses behind it. It is uncanny! the major difference is that your grass is MUCH greener and your fence are not falling apart.

It looks like fun. I know it's hard work, but you guys seem to enjoy it.

This may be coming from an untrained eye, but it looks like you all start in stance/style, but eventually is devolves into 'wrastling.' Are you more goofing off or is there more there than I am seeing. I've been to a few karate/tae kwon do tourneys, and I guess I was expecting a bit more form fighting.

Tin that looks fucking awesome. Your stepson's technique has improved since the last video I've seen him in, but you're right, that fury of swings seems to tire him out after he gets swept.

---------- Post added at 01:18 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:15 PM ----------

dr_awkward said:

This may be coming from an untrained eye, but it looks like you all start in stance/style, but eventually is devolves into 'wrastling.' Are you more goofing off or is there more there than I am seeing. I've been to a few karate/tae kwon do tourneys, and I guess I was expecting a bit more form fighting.

Click to expand...

Well I see Tin has control throughout. If you notice the fight with Donovan, he's grabbing at points on his son's leg and eventually wins by pulling it through. The point is to get into a dominant position in order for your partner to "tap out".

I've only ever boxed, but I think in all fights the most important thing is not to gas yourself out but to keep pace, which is what Tin is doing and his son is not.

dr_awkward said:

This may be coming from an untrained eye, but it looks like you all start in stance/style, but eventually is devolves into 'wrastling.' Are you more goofing off or is there more there than I am seeing. I've been to a few karate/tae kwon do tourneys, and I guess I was expecting a bit more form fighting.

Click to expand...

We call this "mma style sparring" in my class. Earlier that day, we did more "point sparring", which is what you might have been expecting to see, but which we didn't get on video.

The point of this style of sparring is to learn to fight on the ground and fight in close, which is a different game than standing up and striking toe-to-toe. I've taken a number of striking styles (quan po kung fu, hung gar, mantis) and a number of grappling styles (aikido, chin na, brazilian jiu jitsu) and try to bring both elements to my class. If you focus solely on one or the other, you have holes in your defense, or so I believe. So, this style of sparring is intended to be more 'real world' than point sparring.

During the "wrastling", there's actually a lot of theory going on that's more than just 'foolin around'. For instance, to deconstruct the ground fighting portion (from memory) of me sparring my stepson: after i sweep my stepson, we end up in a "north/south" position..that's where our heads are essentially facing each other. I try to get him in a guillotine choke there, but he is able to escape by driving toward me. I prevent him from getting in the mount position (basically sitting on my chest) by wrapping my legs around his hips..this is called the 'near guard'. He tries to stand up and pass the guard, which I prevent by clenching my knees together in a position known as the "far guard". At this point, he recognizes a possible ankle lock and goes for it, while I try to grab HIS ankle and sweep and roll (which he prevents by pivoting his hips). Eventually, he over-focuses on the ankle lock...so, when I use a couple nuisance heel kicks to distract him, he reaches down, giving me the perfect opportunity to try an arm bar from the guard, which works out nicely. All of that happens in about 30 seconds.

6 months ago, I would have had him out at the north-south position with the choke. 3 months ago, I would have been able to roll him onto his back when I grabbed his ankle from the far guard (allowing me to move into a side mount or mount position depending on how he fell).

A lot of people who watch kick boxing or point sparring tournaments are usually disappointed by mma-style fighting, because it doesn't look 'flashy', and they don't really have an eye for the techniques being used (though once you know them, it's impossible not to see them). Way back at the beginning of the UFC, I remember Joyce Gracie (who never lost a match in the UFC and held the championship like 3 years) actually getting booed by the audience because they though he was just 'wrastling' and didn't understand what he was doing.

almost everything I did there is textbook brazilian jiu jitsu stuff, and you can see examples with illustrations of it here:
http://www.martialartsresource.com/DA/bjj.html
with the exception of me doing the arm bar from the guard position rather than from the top position.

Cool. Thanks for the explanation. I really like the idea of having strategy while fighting. Thinking moves ahead of time, like in chess. I don't have any skill or training, nor do I desire to fight any one, but would like to learn some fighting skills like this for good physical exercise, but also for mental exercise.

A little more sparring yesterday

Some background before the video. The video features me sparring Calli's oldest son. He turns 19 in a few days. He's been taking class now for a couple of years, but really only got 'super serious' within this last year.
I've taught a lot of folks martial arts over the years, and unfortunately, when some people get to this point, they get a little megalomaniacal, or as I call it "Billy Bad-ass syndrome". In other words, they get a little training under their belt, and they start thinking they're the toughest kid on the block, and get arrogant and ego-trippy.

This isn't a big deal, really. I don't want to give the impression that I'm dogging Calli's son, because I'm not. It's something a lot of folks go through in their training, sometimes more than once, myself included. It's one of those things you look for and deal with as an instructor.

You want to instill confidence in your students, but you don't want that self-confidence to blossom into a false feeling of invulnerability and misplaced egoism. This is one of the (among several) watershed moments where you can lose students. When some students reach this level, they feel like they are already bad ass, so they don't need the class any more. When some students reach this level, and then receive a much-needed lesson in humility, they can also leave due to the ego blow. Hopefully, if they stay after getting through this point, they're better students and better people as a consequence.

So, my usual sparring philosophy is to spar a little above a student's level, and not give them everything I've got. That gives them the feeling that if they push just a little harder, they might be able to beat me. This keeps them pushing their training, rather than just taking demoralizing beat downs. After sparring, I love hearing the students all excited and saying how they almost got me with some technique or other, and how next time, they're going to do it. It keeps 'em hungry and gives them an attainable goal.

That's not what happened yesterday. Yesterday was an object lesson. A little pin-prick to deflate the ego a bit.

Three weeks ago, I was showing the upper level students a double-leg standing take down. The boys had a little trouble with it, so after the fact the oldest got on the internet to see what the 'right' way to do it was, found a completely different take down, and concluded I was teaching it wrong. This week, when I was teaching class, we were working on "chicken wing"--also known as kimura, ude-garami, or hammer lock. Halfway through practice, the oldest stepson decides he wants to work on a 'better' way to do it, rather than the way I showed him. The contention was that the way I was teaching it didn't work well from the 'side mount' position.

So, when we sparred today, I figured I'd show him how those things work for real.



I didn't really want to get into the punching/kicking game too much here. I mostly just wanted to grapple and show those techniques. So we spend about a minute feeling each other out, while I wait for a good opening. Sean likes to keep his distance, and I'll wear myself out if I chase him around the yard too much. I see a good shot to get in and grapple at about 1:10 mark. I pop him in the head which distracts him enough for me to get in close, and pretty much can choose whichever take down I want here. I have to actually fight to get the leg take-down, though, because he's not in a good position for it. Lots of other techniques would have been ideal, but I wanted to prove a point. At 1:16, I get his leg levered up, and do a single-leg variation of the take down I'd shown them that day.

From 1:16-1:22, Sean is working to keep me from getting in the mount position, and I'm just trying not to get hit too much as I work my way into the side mount position. I want him to think I'm going for a full mount, rather than a side mount, because it makes it easier to slide into the side mount position once I have it lined up. From 1:22 to 1:27, it's a pretty straightforward chicken wing from the side mount position. At 1:29, he taps out. To his credit, it took a lot more cranking for the pain to reach tap-out level in sparring than it did while we were practicing.

You can hear one of the kids go "from the side mount!" at the end of the video. I was glad they recognized that I'd just done exactly what I was showing them in the class.

Hey Tin, something I was wondering. It may just be the video angle, but it looks like your primary stance is a side stance. Now, I know my own experience is far, far below yours, but I was always taught to avoid that stance as a primary stance because it exposes your back and kidneys.

Is this a stance you take to encourage your students to try harder to strike back at you, or would you use it when sparring against an opponent of your skill level as well?

We have some more forward facing stances, but most of them are primarily side-facing stances. It's not that easy to hit the kidneys, really. And if I had my choice of taking a roundhouse kick to the big meaty part of my back, or to the solar plexus, I'd choose the back, and not even think twice about it.

More forward-facing stances expose the centerline, which is an imaginary line that runs from your nose to your crotch. Most really damaging targets on the body lie on the centerline. If you watch the first video in the thread, the guy there is more forward facing, without guarding adequately, so I manage to slip a lot of little front kicks up into his centerline. I recently saw a middleweight kickboxing match where the victor slipped about eight front kicks to the face into a guy who had the same forward-facing guard inadequacy.

I take the side stance a lot. But when I want to encourage the students to come in more, I'll take a more forward facing stance (again see my first video posted) precisely because it exposes more and hopefully encourages them to take more opportunities.

I'm not against forward facing stances. But I do feel that they take a bit more skill and work to keep the more damaging shots away.

I would say, more than back vulnerability, the biggest weakness of the side-facing stance is sweep vulnerability, and the fact that your medulla oblongata is more exposed for strikes like spinning backfists.

Also, the side stance is more of a striker's stance. While there are some takedowns that rely on it, many bjj and chin na grapples require a more forward-facing stance. So, you'll see me side-stancing when I'm at a distance and want to control the fight, but once we're inches apart, I tend to transition to more forward-facing postures.

Last thing to note: You'll see my side stance is not a 100% side-facing stance most of the time. I'm always turned a bit toward the opponent. Rather than imagining my feet are on a line that runs to my opponent, it's easier to imagine that my feet are on the corners of a rectangle that has the long sides running toward the opponent.

A 100% sideways stance limits what you can throw with the back hand or leg quite a bit. I like to leave enough open to let that back leg or hand come out if the opportunity arises, and the slight opening of the stance helps mitigate the sweep vulnerability.