April 12, 2010
Tips for Female Grapplers
Recently I've received a flood of emails from women and smaller men, wanting to know how to deal with larger, stronger opponents.
The thing is that - at 200+ lbs myself - I'm NOT the best person to address these questions. Of course I've had to deal with a few huge steroid monsters who outweighed me by 100+ lbs, but those were the exception, not the rule.
So my solution was to draft the ever-eloquent grappler Krista Scott-Dixon from Stumptuous.com. Weighing in at a massive 113 lbs Krista deals with larger stronger opponents almost every time she steps onto the mat. And to figure out how to survive and thrive on the mats despite this inequality she's picked the brains of some of the best smaller grapplers in the business!
Over the last couple of days Krista has put together a really good piece called Tips for Female Grapplers for you. It's got tips, techniques, principles and lots of practical advice for the smaller grapplers among us. I really enjoyed it, and I'm sure you will too!
Labels: bjj, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, submission grappling, women
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August 16, 2009
Why I'm Training Like A (Strikeforce) Girl
I had a great conditioning workout today, motivated by two entirely different things.
The first thing firing me up was watching a Christiane Cyborg conditioning session on Youtube. She was preparing for her recent fight in Strikeforce against Gina Carano. Love her or hate her, Ithink you'll agree that she's incredibly fit!
The second reason was that I've recently had less mat time than I would like (that's because I've been working day and night on a brand new, top secret, grappling-related project). It's ironic that when I'm focusing on creating material to help other people with their grappling, then I get too busy to concentrate on my own training...
But I know that soon I'll be able to start training a lot more, and I don't want to be completely out of shape when that happens! That's why, whenever I'm grappling less often than my normal routine, then I try to do some additional conditioning to
compensate.
Anyway, here was today's workout:
I started out with a brief jog, and then did four circuits of the following Cyborg-inspired exercises:
This was followed by one warmup set and three working sets of the bench press
Next I knelt down in front of the cable machine, and did 20 kneeling one-handed cable pulldowns (2 sets per arm). This roughly resembles the motion of a one-armed chinup, but is a lot easier than that elite-level exercise.
Coming close to the end of the workout, I picked up some dumbells and did two sets of curl-and-press movements.
At the end of most of my workouts I usually do some abdominal, lower back and neck strengthening. Today was no different, so I did one set (not to failure) of each of the following exercises:
Whenever I post something like this I usually get emails from people honestly trying to help me and concerned that I'm doing everything wrong... Either my workouts are "too long", or "too short," or have too much aerobic endurance stuff, or I need to do more sprints, or I need to add Olympic lifting or start doing isometric holds...
Am I doing the 100% optimal workout for grappling? Honestly, everybody has an opinion but nobody knows for sure.
My mantra when it comes to conditioning is that doing something is better than doing nothing!
So was this workout session better than sitting on my duff, watching TV and eating potato chips?
You bet!
Until next time...
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The first thing firing me up was watching a Christiane Cyborg conditioning session on Youtube. She was preparing for her recent fight in Strikeforce against Gina Carano. Love her or hate her, Ithink you'll agree that she's incredibly fit!
The second reason was that I've recently had less mat time than I would like (that's because I've been working day and night on a brand new, top secret, grappling-related project). It's ironic that when I'm focusing on creating material to help other people with their grappling, then I get too busy to concentrate on my own training...
But I know that soon I'll be able to start training a lot more, and I don't want to be completely out of shape when that happens! That's why, whenever I'm grappling less often than my normal routine, then I try to do some additional conditioning to
compensate.
Anyway, here was today's workout:
I started out with a brief jog, and then did four circuits of the following Cyborg-inspired exercises:
- Tractor Tire Flips x 10 (this sucker weighs at least 300 lbs)
- Plyo jumps up and down onto the tire x 10
- Bodyweight squats x 20
- Sledgehammer swings (hitting the tire) x 20\
- Brief rest to catch my breath
This was followed by one warmup set and three working sets of the bench press
Next I knelt down in front of the cable machine, and did 20 kneeling one-handed cable pulldowns (2 sets per arm). This roughly resembles the motion of a one-armed chinup, but is a lot easier than that elite-level exercise.
Coming close to the end of the workout, I picked up some dumbells and did two sets of curl-and-press movements.
At the end of most of my workouts I usually do some abdominal, lower back and neck strengthening. Today was no different, so I did one set (not to failure) of each of the following exercises:
- Back hyperextensions
- Abdominal crunches
- Neck harness work
Whenever I post something like this I usually get emails from people honestly trying to help me and concerned that I'm doing everything wrong... Either my workouts are "too long", or "too short," or have too much aerobic endurance stuff, or I need to do more sprints, or I need to add Olympic lifting or start doing isometric holds...
Am I doing the 100% optimal workout for grappling? Honestly, everybody has an opinion but nobody knows for sure.
My mantra when it comes to conditioning is that doing something is better than doing nothing!
So was this workout session better than sitting on my duff, watching TV and eating potato chips?
You bet!
Until next time...
Labels: conditioning, MMA, Strikeforce, women
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February 17, 2008
Survival Story
An anonymous person contacted me recently and shared a story of how a female friend had used a few months of BJJ training to escape from an assault and/or attempted rape situation. Using BJJ she managed to escape a pin, stand up and then run away and get help. She probably just used very basic pin escape movements, but pulling them off under emotional duress, with limited training and a large size and strength disadvantage points to the effectiveness of both the techniques she learned and the training methods used to ingrain them in her.
Arguments about the relative importance of grappling in MMA go on and on, but women's self defense is not MMA. Virtually all rapes end up on the ground, and I think that some form of grappling is critical for women everywhere. This takes us back to the article written by the female readership of this newsletter entitled 'Why Should Women Grapple" - it's an article that is still very relevant and I'm proud to have it on my site. Please feel free to forward this article to the women in your life, it might just make them a little safer.
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Arguments about the relative importance of grappling in MMA go on and on, but women's self defense is not MMA. Virtually all rapes end up on the ground, and I think that some form of grappling is critical for women everywhere. This takes us back to the article written by the female readership of this newsletter entitled 'Why Should Women Grapple" - it's an article that is still very relevant and I'm proud to have it on my site. Please feel free to forward this article to the women in your life, it might just make them a little safer.
Labels: self defense, women
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