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.
