The antagonistic martial arts have existed for thousands of years, with philosophies, history, techniques and laws very specifically for each martial art. Each boxer can believe that his martial arts are the best for the upper radio and fight.
It is clear that the specific rules of each subject, developed over the years, will create specific specifications. For example, the “player” of boxing never had to worry about being kicked in the legs, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) player did not have to worry about punching in the face, so their defensive demand for such attacks was not necessary.
And so, when we step up to MMA ring, where the Code is expanded quite a lot and the typical rules of the subject are no longer applicable; Striking will no longer be pure to fight; Grappling will no longer be simply a object and lock.
So what are the differences that martial arts face and adjust when entering the MMA arena?
In part 1, we will consider the subjects belonging to the striking category – fighting.
Stance (Stance)
Standing posture, Stance, or some translated documents into “The Tan”, is the first step when we enter the martial arts content. Good standing posture while ensuring fighters can move fast, flexible in all directions; At the same time, the boxer will not fall or slip due to imbalance.
Some traditional martial arts often appear with the image of the boxer face face to face the opponent, two legs standing equal, the legs are wide compared to the shoulders.
This should be a standing posture that starts a right, not a standing posture for the opposition – with this position, although the hands can freely welcome external forces, but the entire upper body will become a beer to live for the opponent. Not to mention, the horizontal foot posture will also make the boxer easily push, deceive, and can not use the entire body weight to generate the force of his shot.
Coming to Karate / Taekwondo in Full Contact content, their standing posture has a special way of standing “thin like a blade” – two feet spread wide, toe towards horizontal, tilted people, side towards the side and turning to face the opponent.
This posture comes from the normal tournament when the boxer hits the opponent in the upper body, and just touching the opponent is a point that will be calculated. Immediately after the target hit, the two boxers were re -arranged again.
The strength of this posture is that it allows high kicks, bridge stones with more orbit of moving more openly, more land shows; But at the same time, it is quite difficult to perform the kicks from the front leg (LEG KICK) as well as the side kick.
The standing position of Muay Thai, with the front legs of the toe front; The horizontal horizontal leg forms a right angle with the front leg; The distance between the feet is a bit narrow, the closest to the majority of the current MMA boxers.
Because the legs are closer to each other, the center of the body is easily transferred from the hind to the front leg. That allows boxers to make kicks at extremely fast speed without losing balance.
This is also a feature of adapting to the calculation of the point in Muay – not facing Takedown, the most scoring kicks, intensity and frequency of the blow are respected.
The Stance's posture of all of the above martial arts will need to be adjusted, or more or less, when the boxer entered the MMA arena.
The principle of correction is always the martial artist that can stand firm and balance; The focus of the body is low enough to defend before the tensing, knockdown (Takedown); But it must be flexible enough to apply footwork, comfortable moving in the directions.
Therefore, in many recent MMA learning guidelines, the coaches often ask students to make the front toe front, the hind legs do not place horizontally like Muay Thai but only 60 degrees angle, the distance between the two feet is not as narrow as Muay but shoulder or more.
The way the fighter moves (footwork) still follows the principles similar to boxing, which means that the foot is closest to the moving direction, the first step. For example, moving to the left, the left foot steps first, moving back, the back leg first. Do not put two foot cross -legged as an X -shaped – the boxer will both lose balance and not in a powerful position if you need to attack while moving.
Cage control, floor (Cage Control / Ring Control)
Cage Control, Ring Control is a very typical problem of MMA when compared to other antagonistic sports, especially antagonists on the carpet, such as karate, canopy, taekwondo.
This problem is involved in a concept, which is “squeezing angle”. The attacker will need to force the opponent into the corner of the ring, using a radio or the edge of the iron cage to limit the ability to move the opponent's blow. Meanwhile, the forced boxer will need to load the blow, need to flexibly counterattack and lighten the movement, escaping very quickly so as not to fall into the situation of “mouse trap”.
With square floor (ring); The corner tricks are still similar to the same antagonists using the same battle station, such as boxing, Muay, Kickboxing. The attacker tried not to let the opponent escape himself, moving back into the center of the ring; After that or they put the opponent straight into the radio wire, or sliding the opponent into the corner of the radio. It is important to “seal the way back”, leaving no gap for the opponent to spleen.
With round or octagonal cages (Cage), the principle is still the same, but the implementation is more difficult; Because the cage will not have a square corner to put the opponent in, which means that “the mouse has trapped” easily slipped out of the corner.
This requires the fighter of the boxer to be high – not necessarily chasing is good, but it should be more attention rather than keeping the accurate attack corner, not allowing the opponent to “escape”. The attacker was inherently explosive, more effort, kept constantly letting the opponent escape from the trap, where to chase, but chasing the prey forever.
Trip tricks (Trip) and Takdown (Takedown)
“EXCELLENT STANDARD without knowing anything about Takedown, the cage is broken” – this view has been proven from the first UFC periods, that is, from the 90s of the last century.
The importance of Takedown is undeniable when it forced the familiar boxers to fight to face objects and battlefields, areas where they were not knowledgeable. Moreover, MMA's grading also gives a high score for boxers who can perform Takedown and hold the control from above (On Mount / Top Position).
Therefore, if the boxers can connect the hit scenes with tricks, trailers – Takedown, it will be a big advantage in pulling opponents into the water, opening the ability to win with the Submission lock, or punching Ground and Pound rice.
This field is not easy – including big names on the world ring, such as Matt Hughes, Ronda Rousey or Koscheck, often does not combine their ability to fight striking with Takedown techniques. They simply rushed in, shot in, purely based on the Wrestling technique to let the opponent fall to the floor.
But there are also people like Georges St-Pierre, or especially the “last Tsar” Fedor Emelianenko, so smoothly that they can use to stand to pave the way for the falling objects, knocking down; And use objects / sambo to lure the attack, causing the opponent to lose balance and then rush to overwhelm.
In the case of Georges St -Pierre (GSP), the technique of launching Jab and constantly changing the body's focus on the body up and down makes the opponent hard to guess what the GSP is about to target – tossing Jab into the upper body, preparing to double Leg Takdedown, or are luring?
Georges-St Pierre also often has a punching screen (including a blow and real blow) into the opponent's head. After that, as long as the opponent stepped back or in the defense to support the blow, the GSP will rush down to catch the foot, falling down the opponent to the ground.
Fedor Emelianenko offers another style. As the Sambo / Judo master, Fedor may be in the internal switch that suddenly lowered his body, his legs behind his knees, behind the ankle of the opponent, then deceived the opponent to fall.
The Fedor also often catches the opponent's front hand, or to pave the way for the back punch, or to enter the Clinch lock, where the Fedor has a lot of options such as falling down or falling with a body lock.
In part 2, we will consider the subjects belong to the category of grappling – objects and lock.