Monday, December 3, 2012

Southpaw Fighting Techniques: Proof Of Concept




Another great video from Damage Control MMA Having spent half of my life fighting with right lead in empty hand combat styles, and the other last half with a southpaw stance from training with blades and sticks, I can switch and feel comfortable in both stances unarmed, I do it as soon as I feel I get pressured by my opponent and while he has to adjust his plans I don’t feel any need for adjusting anything. That is one of the benefits with being comfortable in both stances, I would always choose the opposite of my opponent to start with as the odds that he has fighting experience against an opponent with stance he has trained less against is higher, better for me worse for him.


One of my all time favourite wrestlers Dan Gable has his right foot in front, as is sure that most wrestlers have trained takedowns 90% against persons with their left foot forward, so he is sure that they will do a crappy takedown and he advocates to go to the side that is the opposite of what most train to defend or attack in training. What struck me most was that his stance is exactly like in AMOK!, and one of my all time favourite MMA gyms in Brazil, Chute Box Academy have a stance that is very close to how we stand, only difference is they don’t keep their feet parallel and are off more than 15°.

I love when the pieces fit together, 2 of my favourite empty hand styles, Chute Box style Muay Thai MMA and wrestling (Catch wrestling). I can adapt it to our training as there are so many similar moves, that only confirms that it has been tested under pressure and works, hence the similarity. I don’t even need to add them as they exist already in AMOK!, but makes it easier for me to instruct newcomers with previous Muay Thai, MMA and wrestling training. All the other styles I have trained and some of them I have been an instructor also helps me to guide people better, if they have trained Wing Chun, FMA, Knock Down Karate, foil/rapier/sabre fencing. I have only added a few things that I always tell that it either is a trick from Catch wrestling, does not come from any system but from self guided discoveries I have made from experiment a lot for countless hours of sparring.

It really feels both good and bad when I discover something new that my body did by itself, that I have never trained but was a flinch response to later discover that it already existed in AMOK!, I feel good as it validates my response but bad as I believed I was the first one to do that technique. I have one which I have never seen in any system, I use it and teach it, I have to show it to Tom Sotis and see if it again is not a novelty. 

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