Join us for a weekend full of great training, informative presentations, comradery and fun in the beautiful Meramec State Park in Sullivan Missouri the weekend of July 6th through the 8th, 2012.

• Outdoor training with instruction by Senior FSRI Instructors and NASM certified trainers.
• Tent camping.
• Campfire talks by special presenters.
• Shower facilities within walking distance.
• Camping is within hiking distance of the scenic Meramec River.

You do not need to be affiliated with FRSI to attend.

We will post more information soon.

One of the greatest programing challenges for instructors and coaches of fight and self defense athletes is coming up with training ideas for the recovery or injury prevention periods of the training cycle.

Here’s a suggestion; use the time to practice established skills in new ways. Mastery of athletic skills requires the ability to adapt them to a variety of environments and conditions. Many established skills can be regressed allowing safe, low-intensity practice in ways that would have been unproductive, or needlessly difficult during the initial skill acquisition phases of training.

Many fight athletes— especially those who have not practiced sports that emphasize attending to non-visual information in their youth have some difficulty reacting quickly and appropriately to auditory, proprioceptive, and tactile information.

Quick and appropriate responses to non-visual information can substantially improve performance and reduce the risk for injuries. Including training to enhance reactivity to non-visual information can substantially enhance skill mastery while contributing to performance.

Ideally this type of training involves progressions from very simple and not particularly reactive, to complex and substantially reactive— while allowing the student time to experience the differences in performance represented by each step along the way.

Two very basic grappling skills that we practice at FSRI are mount escapes and guard sweeps. Because these are simple, yet crucial skills that when practiced slowly and carefully represent a low risk for injury, and because most of our students have significant experience practicing them they are great candidates for this sort of training.

These can each be rehearsed a few times as “dead” drills requiring no reactivity whatsoever. After that the person affecting the escape closes their eyes and performs the drills as before. Once they are in the superior position, they reopen their eyes. This is done slowly without much intensity.

Excessive coaching here is not productive. Their partners and their coaches watch the environment for hazards and intervene only where there may be a danger to the participants. The intension is to allow the participants to experience the drills in new ways.

Next coaches should introduce some small degree of reactivity. The partner in the mount position (for example) can change their weight, or post with a particular limb in a way that requires the person practicing the escape to find an appropriate response. This is also practiced far below performance speeds or intensities.

Finally the environment can be manipulated through a variety of means. A simple one involves blindfolding the person practicing the escapes and placing them in unusual locations on the training floor-such as near a padded wall then asking them to perform the drills. Small pillows can also be randomly placed around the mat and the person practicing the escapes can be coached to scoot around and avoid them as they practice.

Valleys can be created in the wrestling mats by placing pillows or cushions under it in places. This can be especially relevant for people interested in practicing escapes from attacks that might occur on compliant surfaces such as beds, car seats, or couches.

Being “stuck” in a valley can be an especially difficult challenge so coaches should watch this one carefully as frustration may result in the intensity escalating beyond what is appropriate for blinded training during the recovery phase. Coaches should avoid making the engagements too difficult in this phase. Slight elevations in the mats can significantly change the experience of the drills. Remember that the goal is to enhance spatial and positional awareness and improve reactivity to non-visual information at this stage, not to needless frustrate students or increase the risk of injury.

Curvature of a healthy spinal column. Note the lateral symmetry.

An easy assessment for asymmetry and imbalance  is to simply watch someone throw a few crosses from their preferred front stance, observing the punch performed on both sides of the body. If the shoulders or pelvis tilt from perpendicular to the floor, or displace laterally past the outer edge of the feet, it’s a sign that control and proprioceptive awareness of the spinal column is compromised. Another simple but telling assessment is to have the individual lay flat on his or her back and simple roll their body over onto one side or the other. Ideally, the torso should begin rotation first; if the individual has to move a limb before the torso, or the torso moves in segments starting at the neck, the spinal stabilizers and/or movement system are imbalanced. In addition to an increased risk of chronic or eventual major injury, these movement imbalances and their associated compensations can drastically reduce movement efficiency and force production capabilities throughout the entire kinetic chain- meaning that movement (and therefore techniques) in all planes of motion will be affected.

The actions of a fighting art or combat sport are integral to the activity’s particular goals, so simply avoiding them is not possible. One useful preventive strategy is to include planned “deloading” weeks in a skill training schedule. For example, if a group is practicing a high volume of stand-up fighting skills, a week of recovery should be included for every 3-4 weeks of that skill set. The recovery week may consist of practicing other skills that don’t place as much stress on the spinal column, practicing related skills at much lower intensity, or best yet, taking a break from the skill set altogether and implementing a corrective exercise, mobility and flexibility program. If you are reluctant to take a week off from practicing a specific skill set, don’t worry- a week is not enough time to lose conditioning adaptations (it takes roughly 4 weeks for de-training to get fully underway), and chances are good that you will feel, move and perform better after a week of relative recovery.

Kyphosis, or excessive thoracic curvature. This is a familiar sight in most fighting arts and combat sports.

A useful first line of defense against kyphosis  is using self myofascial release on a foam roller to mobilize the thoracic vertebral joints. Maintain a “drawn in” and braced abdomen throughout and be careful not to roll too far onto the lumbar vertebrae. If you experience pain at any point along the thoracic spine, stop and get yourself assessed by a sports medicine professional (pain is distinct from discomfort- the first few SMR sessions can be uncomfortable, with more discomfort being present in areas of higher muscular imbalance and repetitive trauma. Acute pain and radiating nerve pain are signs of a potentially serious problem). Use a relatively forgiving foam roll, as opposed to a dense or hardone.

Below is a supported version of the thoracic mobilization. This is useful for an individual who is just starting to work on t-spine mobility with SMR, or individuals who have poor proprioception of the spinal column and torso:

A more dynamic version, suited to individuals with good proprioception and control:

The “Brettzel” mobilization exercise below is an excellent way to maintain properly aligned transverse mobility and encourage optimal balance of the spinal stabilizer/mover systems (this comes from Gray Cook and his excellent Functional Movement approach to athletic training):

This mobilization exercise targets the thoracic spine in particular, and can both highlight and correct muscular imbalances from overuse. Try including it in class for a week or two and you will likely notice a positive difference. If you have a hard time proprioceptively feeling the cues mentioned in the video, perform it with a partner watching who can indicate when your pelvis, spine or head are out of alignment or moving at the wrong times in the stretch. As always, be sensible about it, and if any part of this stretch elicits pain in your back, get yourself assessed by a sports medicine professional. It may not bother you now, but it will eventually (as an aside, I exchanged a few emails with a long time karate practitioner who suffers from a nerve entrapment caused precisely by years of asymmetrical spinal movement during forceful kihon. In his mind, a specific action caused the acute manifestation of severe pain, totally unrelated to his training patterns. The x-ray and MRI told another story of repetitive overuse and muscular imbalance that developed over years of repeated actions & imbalance  with no correction).

Q: How can practitioners of different fighting arts or combat sports move in such different ways if the end goal is the same? For example, why are there differences in how a cross is performed in different martial arts?

A: In general fighting activities are bound by certain limitations, including physiology and physics. A punch has to be within certain parameters to still be effective as a punch; there are things that it has to do and things that it simply can’t do. However, the specific actions used to perform the skill can vary widely (Magill, 2011). I frequently remind students in our group that the demands for performing a skill in a specific context may be opposite those of other moments within the same encounter, and that one of the goals of training for self protection is being able to perform according to the conditions one finds herself in.

The differences between various “good” versions of the skill (in this case, the cross) are a product of a few groups of factors. The first is individual idiosyncrasies. Two fighters with the same relative body proportions and physiological attributes may end up with two different delivery systems for the cross. This might be due to idiosyncratic dysfunctions and strengths, from different coordinative processes, or from the sum of their different experiences and relative skill and ability levels.

Second are differences in morphology and physiology. A taller fighter typically has a longer reach and higher center of gravity, whereas a shorter fighter has shorter limb segments and a lower COG. The percentage and distribution of type I and type II muscle fibers between them might be very different, joint angles might be different, etc. The preferences and strengths that either may have will be a reflection of these factors, and of their experiences with exploiting their attributes against other sets of attributes. The taller fighter may feel awkward using the shorter fighter’s preferred method and vice versa. Both are throwing a cross, which has the same outcome and goals regardless of the different action patterns used to achieve it.

Finally, technique is heavily influenced by the goals of the art/sport, and the cultural beliefs concerning violence, anatomy & physiology. Those two factors together heavily influence what training methods will be used to achieve a goal. For example, a southern Chinese boxing system (not necessarily similar to Western pugilism) may base its fundamental posture on the idea that force production and rate of production are best when the spine is segmentally extended and flexed during a punch. Conversely, someone like Muhammad Ali fought with a very upright posture and relied on rapid ankle dorsiflexion and plantar flexion to facilitate hip flexion and extension to support trunk rotation. Neither is “right” per se, but is dependent on the fighter’s particular body, attributes, skills, and the situation in question. Practitioners of either method may produce significant amounts of power. That being said, there are still optimal general action patterns for each skill, which are the preferred actions when conditions are ideal. Learning to adapt them to non-optimal conditions is one of the most important tasks of training, and that requires experimentation, intrinsic feedback, the opportunity to make mistakes, and repeated problem solving to achieve a goal under different parameters- not simple repetition of the optimal version.

Q: How would you go about training someone to recognize these differences, and make the best use of them?

A: For the purposes of punching/upper body striking in specific, I would make a priority of developing awareness of their head and shoulder positions relative to their feet. Transitions between postures is most efficient when movement is initiated by the head (although this is not necessarily an absolute), since the body will go where the head goes. Knowing where a neutral posture, a “set point” is, is just as important as knowing how to produce power in a preferred method.  This can develop “in the moment” awareness of how movement needs to be altered to take advantage of affordances (in this case, available targets, and incoming threats to exposed areas) as they develop and exploit them. At times an upright, “stacked” posture is an efficient way to generate a cross, maybe when the fighter is on control of the fight and the opponent’s weapons aren’t as much of a threat. The same fighter may adopt a more kyphotic, chin-down posture to fight his way into closer range, or to ward off a more aggressive fighter. One posture will be more advantageous when striking on the move, and the other when attempting to generate maximum force and power. In both cases, the kinematics required differ to perform the same skill: in an upright exchange, the feet, knees, hips and head may be vertically aligned; in a crouched position the head may displace transversely from the hips, with the spine anteriorly flexed or laterally flexed. Whether or not it’s the “right” variation depends on how well it achieves the fighter’s goal under a given set of conditions.

Q: Do you think that research could show a connection between different striking styles and specific mechanisms of injury?

A: A study assessing posture in relationship to injuries among martial artists and combat athletes would be extremely worthwhile. Regularly assessing fighters for posture and functional ranges of motion over a few years, as well as volume and type of training, and competitive schedules could establish a profile. I would be willing to bet that various posture types can be directly correlated to general and individual styles, and those to predictable injury rates. If we want to talk about it in terms of a particular general style, predictable patterns would be evident among groups: boxers might tend towards upper crossed syndrome, rigid karate styles (Shotokan in particular) tend towards lower crossed syndrome, Wing Chun and Uechi tend towards swaybacked postures. The same predictability would extend to assessments of an individual’s personal style and it’s action patterns.  Of course all crossed syndromes are associated with particular patterns of muscular imbalance and associated injury, which can be used to program corrective and preventive conditioning.

References:

Magill, R.A. (2011). Motor Learning and Control (9^th ed., international version). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Rear view of the latissimus dorsi. Note the broad connection to the pelvis, and the insertion on the humerus. An overactive (hypertonic) lat will cause alterations in shoulder and hip function, impairing good technique by reducing strength and mobility, while increasing the chances of an avoidable chronic injury.

A dysfunction at either the shoulders (inability to maintain starting flexion) or the LPHC (excessive arching of the lumbar spine) will be apparent. The degree to which the hypertonicity is distal or proximal may be assessable by the order in which shoulder or LPHC ROM are affected. Hypertonic lats can also indicate problems with internal shoulder rotation and a relative under activity by the external humeral rotators. An athlete or student who cannot squat without his or her arms moving past the plane of the ears exhibits these symptoms, and will likely demonstrate “forward rolled” shoulders.

Although squatting and punching may seem like two unrelated actions, the ROM for either may be affected by hypertonic latissimi. The cross provides a fairly good example for examining how the lat acts as an antagonist and synergist during punching actions. The fundamental actions of the initiation of the punch are shoulder flexion, elbow extension, and scapular protraction, with the degree of flexion possible at the shoulder being a major determinant in both the trajectory and velocity of the punch. The degree of adduction and abduction required are variable, but typically, alignment of the fist with the shoulder is optimal (Dempsey, 1950). If the lats are hypertonic, optimal kinematics for the punch will be difficult to achieve, and chances of chronic glenohumeral or rotator cuff  injury are increased.

The shoulder kinematics of the cross are accompanied by ipsilateral hip extension, knee flexion and plantar flexion, the subjective feeling of which has been described as “sitting down” on the punch. At this point in the kinetic chain, the lumbopelvic hip complex can be affected in the frontal and transverse planes by the status of the latissimi on either side. Shoulder ROM will also be affected via the actions of the lat upon the humerus. A combat athlete or martial artist with hypertonic lats will exhibit excessive lumbar extension and/or inward humeral rotation while punching, and will also demonstrate an inability to maintain shoulder flexion during the OHS (open martial arts seminars can be a virtual buffet of examples of this, with accompanying complaints of shoulder pain/injury). Similarly, preferential use of the trapezius to achieve shoulder elevation (to compensate for the lat’s lack of extensibility), and/or lumbar hyperextension can often be observed during performance of the punch.

Due to the shared role of the latissimus dorsi in punching and in the OHS, the OHS (Clark & Lucett, 2011) is a useful evaluation of the status, or the effects of training upon this muscle. Considering that fighting arts and sports typically involve movements that require concurrent proximal and distal actions of the lats, upper and lower body performance deficits for a variety of skills and techniques may be indicated in OHS assessments.

References:

Clark, M. A., & Lucett, S. C. (2011). Chapter 6 Movement Assessments. NASM Essentials of Corrective Exercise Training. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Dempsey, J. (1950). Championship Fighting: Explosive Punching & Aggressive Defense. New York: Jack Dempsey.

Within physical culture, old practices or concepts aren’t necessarily good or better than modern ones just because they’ve been around awhile. There is belief in martial arts circles, especially in “traditional” groups, that something which has been passed down for decades is unquestionably valuable, or even superior to modern evidence-based understandings. A common defense is “do you think technique x would still be around it if it wasn’t battle tested?” Another is “look at practitioner x- if it worked for him, and he had no fancy research.”

The plain and unglamorous truth is that sometimes techniques or training practices got passed down simply because no one knew any better, or it fulfilled a cultural function (particularly in Confucian-influenced societies)  or because they maintained a certain personal prestige or power structure within a group. A technique may have never actually been used in a fight;  a conditioning activity may routinely cause joint damage that actually weakens a student over time, but the status of the originator serves to enshrine it. Old can be good; old is not automatically good.

Customizing Your Medicine Ball

Watch this video and try incorporating the exercises into your weekly physical training routine to try and offset some of the potential damage.

Toe Home Physical Therapy Exercises

apparently (he) was under the influence of steroids and other drugs, and it took four police officers, two stun gun blasts and four sets of handcuffs to restrain him.

Steroids and “other drugs” indeed.

Read more here

At some point, Miranda’s attention was diverted and the victim was able to grab control of the gun and the two wrestled.

During the fight, Miranda accidentally discharged his gun, shooting himself in the ankle, Mirabelli said.

Read the rest here.

What better way to remember him than by watching some highlights of his first (1971) fight with Ali, in which he gained the heavyweight title and delivered his opponent’s first professional loss:

Last night we worked on social scenarios, incidences of sexual assault that begin in a social environment that lend themselves to opportunistic victimization. One scenario involved being passively or forcefully denied exit from a closed room or space after willfully entering. Throughout these scenarios, I had the participants use proxy “cell phones” to rehearse calling for help once their request to leave was denied (made of plastic bags bundled into a phone shape with duct tape, so that they can be used as impact weapons without causing injuries). The partner in the defensive role starts out with the “phone” in her pocket, and is asked to “use” it in the same way that their current phone operates (touch screen, keypad, etc.). As the defensive partner request or attempts to leave, the partner in the aggressive role blocks access the door and becomes aggressive or manipulative, and the partner in the defensive role immediately pulls out the “phone” and makes it clear that she is calling for help, progressing into aggressive action if their partner advances or becomes violent. If the aggressive partner advances, the defensive partner then begins to fight for access to the  exit through use of body weapons and defensive shapes, attracting outside attention and use of weapons of opportunity (phone, appliances, furniture, etc.).

In just a few rotations the participants began to move and respond in very effective, physically aggressive ways that were far superior to anything I could try to teach them, and the role playing from the aggressive partner got richer and richer. In between rotations, observations from the participants who just finished the scenario and from the observing participants who watched it were discussed and use to evaluate what was successful or less successful. One issue that immediately became apparent after a few rotations was the need for the defender to put her visual focus on the “phone” for a moment or two in order to “dial” 911 and hit send. During this moment, she is open to surprise by the aggressor if the aggressor begins an aggressive approach. On a few occasions, the defender was quickly overwhelmed by the aggressive partner while looking at the phone, and lost several feet of ground while attempting to recover from a shove or hold, or being pinned to a wall.

One participant commented “It would be better if I didn’t have to look at it but could just push one key.” This observation reminded me of a smart phone app that I heard about a while ago. Several developers now offer “panic buttons” that can be set to send an automatic message to a specific number, or to dial the local 911 dispatch. By holding down a pre-set key or screen feature the app is activated. Some even offer automatic inclusion of location and identity information. Installing such an app and spending some time rehearsing activation while the phone is in a pocket or held in a defensive position would provide one with the ability to quickly contact emergency help without significantly compromising his or her attention to a developing situation.  After discussing this option, all participants agreed that being able to pre-set a phone to this function would be an excellent preventative measure, and that it would lessen the chance that using their phone under duress might expose them to further risk.

When we repeated the scenario with the assumption of a panic-button enabled phone, the problem of losing eye contact with the aggressor was resolved. And each participant was much better positioned to respond aggressively or access a weapon if the aggressive partner encroached or attacked. The defensive partners’ ability to escape, attack or access weapons (in this case, plastic 12 oz bottles wrapped in a layer of padding) to enable escape was immediately and drastically improved.  Given that almost everyone carries a phone around these days, panic button apps are a preventative measure that women could easily adopt and include in self protection training for  scenarios that afford a moment to access the phone.

Below are links to a couple of panic button app providers. Some are available for a fee and others are free. Features also vary, so take a look and decide which one offers what might be important. Note: some provide email or text contact with preset emergency lists, while others dial 911 or a preset number. If opportunities to access and activate the phone and app are limited, 911 contact is a high priority.

Blackberry PB app

Red Panic Button app for iPhones and Android

iTunes store Silent Guardian App

Train hard, eat plenty.