20 Sep How to Grow a Striking Program From the Ground
The other day someone asked me to describe how I structure and teach striking. I have trained under great boxing, kickboxing, and muay thai coaches. I have also worked with many coaches who have worked for a long time with MMA fighters and understand how to apply their traditional background to a new and ever evolving sport. That said, when the time came to start a program I wanted to have a fresh beginning and think about how to implement a structure that provides the widest benefit for all while allowing others to reach the highest levels. I thought about what I needed to pass on and it basically came down to a few categories.
- Principles serve as the foundation and allow for long term growth based on a solid fundamental base. Principles are elements such as keeping weight over your feet, having a strong center of gravity and twisting around it, using the whole body to deliver a strike. Correct principles allow each student a lens to view each piece of knowledge that will come in the future.
- Tools are the individual techniques. The jab for instance is a technique, however, these can increase in complexity as there are multiple versions of the jab. For each technique there must be clear expectations in execution. Selection of tools early on is based on most common and effective techniques, and later tailored to each students body type, style and personality.
- Tool Sharpening: the drills and training implemented to make each tool razor sharp. I aim to make sure each drill has a lot of volume combined with easy feedback for the student. Each time a student’s fist lands in their partners palm they can feel the power, landing surface, and overall connection of the whole body in the strike. These drills are the key to the day to day development.
- Tactics: how to employ and when to select each technique. Parrying the jab in order to counter is a tactic. After the parry there are endless options and the selections of these options all comes down to tactics.
- Strategy: is the web that ties it all together. Once I finally understood striking on a strategic level is when the art came alive for me. The more tools and tactics I knew the more I could drive my opponent into an outcome of my desire. The sharper the tools the more effective the overall strategic goals. If I want to utilize a southpaw stance early on to gauge my opponent’s reactions my effective will be determined by all of the above factors as they relate to fighting southpaw.
These 5 factors provide the basis of how the Elevate Striking program has been built and how we will continue to train. The sport of MMA and martial arts in general are always evolving and therefore the ideal training set up is always a moving target. The program will continue to grow and evolve but always rely on this foundation.