Postby David_Knight » Mon Mar 20, 2006 3:43 pm
A few drills that I've added to the curriculum for my MMA class, with very strong results:
1) Team grappling - Jake showed us this at the '05 Provo event. Divide the class into two even teams, lined up facing e/other. No time limit. Once someone taps out, he is removed from the round and his opponent is free to assist his teammates. This continues until one team or the other prevails. This very quickly goes from an even match to 3-on-1 mayhem, and really drives home the importance of aggression and speed. For groundfighting classes, it is probably best to start and remain on the knees, but it can be done standing and/or with weapons as well. We did a few variations of this last year in ARMA SoFL with two-man teams and various weapon combos (longsword only, longsword and sword/buckler, longsword and staff, etc).
2) Weapons grappling - Sometimes, while my students are rolling I will randomly toss a training knife or stick onto the mat, usually a few feet from where they are. The focus quickly shifts from submissions to preventing the opponent from getting the weapon.
3) King of the Hill - This is tried and true. I particularly like this one because it is open to infinite variations. We've found that it is a particularly effective way to drill throws, and I often use it to test techniques from the fechtbucher. One student stands in the middle of a circle; his object is to throw every challenger and not get thrown himself. I call the first challenger, who immediately engages. Whoever is thrown steps out and calls the next challenger, until everyone has been "king" at least once. The key here is to make sure that challengers attack in rapid succession and from different angles. We have also used this to drill kicks and strikes.
4) Partner-assisted striking drills - We usually do two 2-minute rounds of this, or, if I am feeling sadistic, one wicked 4-minute round. Partner #1 straps on a pair of Muay Thai pads and shinguards. Partner #2 puts on MMA gloves and shinguards. Partner #1 randomly holds the pads up for various strikes, elbows, kicks, etc. while circling, backing away from, and rushing Partner #2. Partner #1 can also throw low kicks, just to make sure Partner #2 doesn't get too comfortable on the offense. Meanwhile, I randomly blow a whistle and call out "Sprawl!", "Shoot!", or "Roll!", at which point Partner #2 executes the command, recovers, and continues reacting to Partner #1. At the end of the four minutes, the partners switch up. For this drill, be sure to mix up the whistle commands, include a fair amount of rolls (you can specify forwards, backwards, shoulder, etc.) to make Partner #2 slightly dizzy, and make sure Partner #1 moves around a lot.
