Use these 4 tips to improve your matches!

It's not about being big.

The old phrase "the bigger they are, the harder they fall" can be true in martial arts. Sports like jiujitsu are often built around the premise that your opponent's weight and momentum can quickly be turned on them. That's why it's not always about being the bigger or stronger one, but the one who can utilize leverage and martial arts principles.

Understand that winning a sparring match isn't about being big or small, it's about having the stronger presence of mind. Your beliefs and skills will be more important than your body weight; the more advanced your skills, the more you'll be able to maximize your own.

Enhance your strikes.

Putting the force of your body weight behind your strikes will add more power to your moves, catching your sparring opponent off-guard and letting them know you're not to be trifled with. An amateur will punch with his hand - a professional will punch from his shoulder. You will seem to gain strength and power out of nowhere if you can properly leverage your body weight.

Take advantage of your opponent's weight.

Taking advantage of your knowledge of body weight means you should be able to use that knowledge on your opponent. For example, you can grab their hand, but it's more powerful to grab the area that controls more weight - the wrist. The more control you have over your opponent's weight, the less power they'll be able to muster to fight back. It's important to understand how to use your own weight so that you know how to keep an opponent off balance.

Staying grounded.

When defending, it's important that you don't lose your cool and forget to keep balanced and grounded. It's much harder to attack someone who has strong footing than someone who is distracted and off their guard. Try to stay balanced as much as possible - oftentimes the person with the best balance wins the sparring match.

Photo Credits: parhessiastes

Originally posted 2009-08-19 03:09:31.

Improve your confidence.

How? By improving your confidence. Is this really the case? If you don't believe me, here are three ways sparring improves your confidence in the other areas of your life:

• Sparring forces you to trust yourself. When you're sparring with a partner, there's only one way you can win: through your own action. You're not going to win unless you have the self-belief that tells you that you can win. That's how sparring will improve your belief in yourself: by forcing you into a situation in which you must trust yourself, or lose. Trusting yourself is one of the most important features of confidence: when you trust yourself, you are both relaxed and alert. You believe you can win. And when you practice this kind of self-trust habitually, it leaks into your life as a whole.
• Sparring simulates real-world danger. It's one thing to punch and kick at the air, but there's something different when you actually fight someone else, isn't there? The rules you've learned seem to go out the window and you wonder how you simply win this match in front of you. Sparring teaches you that there are variables you don't always count on when faced with someone else. Not only that, it gives you practice in working against someone who has his or her own interest at heart.

Let's use another sport as an example: golfing. You can read all you want to about golfing - proper grip, how to transfer your weight when swining, proper mental techniques - but they don't mean much until you actually strike that first ball. It's the same way with sparring, and you'll learn that confidence is often achieved through experience.

• Sparring gets you to confront a real obstacle. Part of developing self-confidence is about striking down obstacles. This doesn't mean that you want to obliterate your opponent; it simply means that you have to take on an obstacle head-on. When you spar, there is someone standing between you and your goals: will you stand to the challenge or go back into your shell? When you find that you can stand up to challenges, your self-confidence increases.

Photo Credits: parhessiastes

Originally posted 2009-07-23 05:49:09.

Mixed Martial Arts

MMA was created around 648 B.C. during the high point of the Greek empire.  While it was then known as Pankration, this sport was played in the first Olympic Games.  There have been other similar versions of this martial art; however, many of them were never officially introduced.  Later, MMA resurfaced during the late 1800s and early 1900s when it was finally recognized as an official standardized sport in 1993, marking the opening of the UFC, otherwise known as the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

The Ultimate Fighting Championships that the media televises today are increasing popularity at an incredible rate, beating out other huge sports such as boxing.  In terms of tickets sales and ratings, more and more people are starting to tune out of other contact sports and tune into MMA fights.

The major contrast between the MMA that we all recognize and the style before the beginning of the UFC was that the MMA was founded to take fighters from various styles and compare them in battle.  Doing this allowed studiers to analyze and determine the strengths and weaknesses of all the various martial arts techniques.  In these unofficial leagues, there were not as many rules whereas now there are rules--weight class, winning guidelines, illegal fouls, and fighting arena--established for the purpose of keeping everyone safe and preventing injuries that many feel to be inhumane.

1.  Weight Class

With Mixed Martial Arts fights, the opponent is determined based on their weight class.  The five MMA weight class include lightweight, welterweight, middleweight, light heavyweight, and heavyweight.  These classes are calculated based on the fighters' weight in kilograms; a simple extra pound in weight gain can bump them up to the next level.  There are a few other weight classes, but they are not a UFC standard.

2.  Winning Guidelines

The goal of Mixed Martial Arts is straightforward; you must either knock your opponent unconscious or hurt him enough to where he will give in and tap the floor thereby declaring a submission to the other opponent.  However, if neither fighter backs down or gets knocked out by the end of a round or match, the winner is determined by the judges.  The only way a fighter will lose a match is if he gains a foul called by the referee.

3.  Illegal Fouls

A foul consists of any form of illegal contact committed by a fighter onto their opponent.  If the referee sees the contact was deliberate, he has the power to disqualify the fighter from the match and if it was not intentional, the referee can declare the match to still be in play.

4.  Fighting Arena

Another huge difference between MMA and other sports is that the MMA arena is in the shape of an octagon, resembling a structured cage, and the fighters are restricted from using padded gloves.

Photo Credits: mkm photography

Originally posted 2010-03-23 03:22:47.

Street Fight

Nowadays so many Martial Arts schools claim to teach realistic self-defense.  But how can you teach realistic self-defense purely in a dojo training hall with padded mats.

When it comes to any kind of physical encounter (where you are attacked), your biggest threat is not your attacker, but your environment.

Did you know that you do not fight the same on the sand or ice as you do in a parking lot or on concrete?

You need to be comfortable and flexible with many different environments if you want “realistic self defense” training.  Most attacks will not happen on a mat in a dojo environment.  They will happen outside of your work, on the beach, in a night club, etc…

If you only train in a dojo on a mat, you will not know how to handle obstacles like tables, street curbs, loose gravel, trees, etc…

Imagine you are attacked while taking a nice walk on the beach.  One of the best things you can do is kick or throw sand into your opponents face.

If you are attacked in a night club, put distance between you and your attacker.  Roll over a table and use that as a buffer until security comes and takes him away.

If you are attacked in the street, make sure your attackers back is to the curb, not yours.

When you are attacked, you blood will flow to vital organs and your adrenaline will sky-rocket.  Most people in these types of situation don’t have the time to take a minute and assess their physical surroundings and place themselves in the best spot.

You will need natural reactions, this will need to be done without thinking.  The only way to build this kind of natural reaction is by training in many different kinds of environments and terrain where this becomes second nature.

Don’t limit yourself to the dojo mat when learning – switch it up a bit and introduce other environments such as the jungle, desert, beach and more.

So, next time you spar with your friend, try sparring on a different surface and really feel what its like to be swept and land on something other than a soft mat.  I can guarantee you, it will not be as comfortable as sparring on the mat, but you will be on your way to learning “realistic self defense"

Photo Credits: digitalshay

Originally posted 2010-04-13 03:59:39.

David and Goliath

Gaining leverage over your opponent means that you are able to use something small and make it incredibly important. Has anyone - perhaps a teasing older brother - ever held your hands in such an uncomfortable position that you weren't able to fight back at all? This is the concept of leverage, of which the root word is "lever." By changing one small element of a combat situation, you are able to change the entire momentum.

Common leverage points usually deal with weak areas on the human body, such as joints. When you're able to disable an opponent's joints, they won't be able to bend. The joint is a small area that enables a whole lot of movement, which is why it's important to focus on joints in a combat situation; you want to keep yours free and inhibit the bending of your opponents' joints.

But leverage doesn't only have to apply to the levers in the physical human body. Leverage can also refer to using one aspect of a fight to your advantage: in jujutsu, you learn how to use an opponent's weight to your advantage, and against your opponent. By utilizing momentum and gravity, you can utilize this idea of "leverage" to defeat someone who is larger than you.

Oftentimes, getting leverage over an opponent is a simple matter of quickly discerning their advantages and working to inhibit them. If you're fighting a smaller, quicker fighter, then you'll want to get that fighter in a situation where their quickness doesn't count - such as wrestling on the ground, where your strength can overpower them.

In the Battle of Thermopylae, 300 Spartans and other warriors famously used leverage (in this case, the terrain) in order to repel a massive army. What can you accomplish in your martial arts sparring - or even your life - if you understand leverage? A lot.

Photo Credits: maha-online

Originally posted 2009-11-17 03:02:50.

Bullying.

What starts a fight in the first place? If you're of a certain age, then alcohol can be one of the leading contributors - two men fighting over a girl, for example, is a frequent theme around the world's bars and pubs. Understanding that alcohol can lead to these situations will hopefully encourage you to drink moderately, even when out with friends; losing control is exactly what the martial arts ask you not to do.

When you feel a fight coming on - and it's usually detectable simply by feeling the tension in the room, or observing the startled, frozen reactions of "bystanders" who are simply witness to it - it's time to be the calming presence. It's tempting to use your confidence gained through your mastery of martial arts in order to assert yourself over two people who are about to fight, but this can often just add fuel to the fire. There's already too much testosterone in the air, and the wise martial artist knows that more testosterone is not the answer.

So what do you do? You stay calm and try to shake the attention of the two fighters away from each other. If you have other people around, you enlist their help to separate the two fighters away before they can start hitting. It's important to stay calm and relaxed so that you don't add any more tension to a rope that's about to be cut - figuratively speaking, of course.

As mentioned already, prevention is the best way to avoid fighting anyone. Fights are generally a bad idea, as you never know when a stranger has friends waiting in the corner, or a weapon located on their person. Avoid them at all costs, and do it through a clear presence of mind, using other people to your advantage, and not adding any fuel to the fire. This should help you in the future.

Photo Credits: Chesi - Fotos CC

Originally posted 2009-12-08 03:47:23.

Go for the neck.

GROIN

The groin makes for a good break up tactic. It won’t permanently take out your opponent, but it will distract them.

KNEE

The knee is a very good place to strike because this can leave your opponent immobile and make it easier for you to either, run away or break away from the attack.  Attacking the knee is also great prior to a takedown or as a break up before you commit to another attack.

THROAT

The throat is a very good target or primary striking area because it will work as a breakup tactic and it is great as a strategy for removing the threat of further attacks. This can be done by a controlling the opponents breathing, choking them out by constricting the carotid arteries or in the worse case - striking hard at the windpipe and forcing the opponent to deal with a more serious threat than attacking you. Never strike to the throat unless your life is at risk!

EYES

And finally we have the eyes. The eyes make a great primary striking area because they are vulnerable soft tissue areas with a variety of ways to attack. The eyes are extremely sensitive regardless of your opponents size and training  - which makes them the number one target in a street fight.

There are few ways to go about attacking the eyes. One simple strategy is to simply strike at the eyes with the tips of your fingers. This will cause the eyes to water and sting which makes it hard for your opponent to see. Strikes to the eyes will also break your attacker’s concentration, allowing you some time to either escape or prepare for another attack. Another way to attack the eyes is to use dirt or other small objects that can be thrown or sprayed directly into the eyes.

This is why pepper spray is so popular as a self-defense tool. You can also use keys, clothing, shoes and other items to throw into the eyes again either as a breakup or an attempt to scratch the retina making it hard for the opponent either see you or continue with their attack.

The reason this becomes the most practical strategy is because if the person cannot see you, it’s going to be very hard for them to attack you.

Photo Credits: dangoodwin

Originally posted 2010-04-04 03:55:54.