Nathan Leverton in action at NAGA European Championships
Recently I've become a bit of a seminar junkie. In addition to the Neil Adams and Dean Lister events that I've reviewed here I've also been along to two seminars in the Leverage Grappling System Fundamentals series. Those of you who check in here occasionally may have seen the link that I posted to Slideyfoot.com's review which went in to some considerable detail about the LGSF Closed Guard seminar. In part it was this review that made me want to check out the seminars although, obviously, as a regular student at Leicester Shootfighters I know the quality of the instruction and training on offer, especially by Head Coach Nathan Leverton whose system Leverage is.
My training time is limited so any opportunity that I get to work in more mat time I try to take. Spending 5 hours of a Sunday focusing in detail on an aspect of the ground game seems good training economy to me, especially with my grappling needing all the work it can get and jits being such an important part of amateur MMA.
Back in October I signed up for the side-control seminar. I've always felt comfortable in side control, it seems more stable than mount although sometimes the attacking options aren't as obvious. This was the first Leverage seminar that I'd atttended and retaining the information gleaned over 5 hours seemed daunting. It's for this very reason that Nathan recommends bringing a notebook, and why wouldn't you? You wouldn't attend any other workshop, lecture, seminar or training without some way of recording the information being imparted.
Prior to beginning Nathan distributed an agenda for the day and gave a little bit of background to the Leverage system. Essentially, Leverage is his response to student grapplers learning techniques on an as-and-when basis, depending on what classes they attend where and at what time. Through Leverage Nathan is presenting a system that, starting with the fundamental series, gives fighters/students/coaches a solid grounding that builds on the basics and adds in complexity going forward. After all, what use is the Peruvian Necktie if you can't pass the guard?
After taking us through the fundamentals of hip movement - shrimping, bridging, etc - and getting from a lying to a standing position, Nathan moved on to the top game focusing on the correct way to pin the bottom guy with side control. The thread throughout the seminar, and, in fact, all Nathan's teaching, is the attention to detail, and it's often these details that make all the difference. It's easy to lie across someone but to optimise your position to get real pressure through the points of contact...... that's where the details prove their worth.
Nathan discussed the 4 positions that arms and legs can be in and the merits or otherwise of these - staggered offers better control with elbow and knee pinching hips. We worked through under/overhook positions, the 'VW' pin and sitting through to regain control and position. Once we'd established some competence in holding the pins we moved to transitioning to mount.
The seemingly most obvious submissions from side control are Keylock and Kimura and Nathan demonstrated both of these, again with attention paid to the details that may determine whether you get the tap or not. The mistakes with hand/arm position that Nathan covered can be seen at pretty much every MMA event, preventing finishes from such a dominant position. Following the armlocks we looked at the Side Choke and Nathan was able to use a bout from the previous night's UFC as an example of a common mistake being made by a very high level fighter leaving him unable to finish the submission (Nog Vs. Herman in case you're wondering). The final submission of the day was the armbar. I've trained transitioning from side-control to armbar before but being able to focus on it in this session has really embedded it in my mind and I can actually see myself trying it at some point.
Throughout the seminar Nathan stopped so that people could write up what they had learned. He was also cool with people taking video as long as it's for their own use and not publicly broadcast. I tried taking video of the teaching segments but I found that this doesn't work for me. I may have a video to refer to afterwards but I take almost nothing in at the time! I made two short videos and then just concentrated on watching and learning.
The final session of the day covered being pinned in side control, surviving and escape. Starting with positional theory Nathan taught escaping to guard and to the knees. Another key feature of Nathan's teaching, for me at least, is his emphasis on principles that are applicable in various situations. For example, underneath side control 'framing' with the arms in order to maintain space is a key principle that also applies to half-guard (more on that in Part 2).
The whole five hours was tiring but extremely valuable and being able to focus solely on one aspect - albeit many facets of that aspect - brought improvements in my understanding and hopefully in my game. The quality of the instruction was awesome at any price but Leverage seminars are priced extremely reasonably. Attending these seminars has to be one of the best ways of building or reinforcing your ground game. I really wanted to get down to the Open Guard + Passing Seminar that Nathan taught next in the series but Terror were playing Nottingham that night so..... I did, however, book in for the Half-Guard Seminar as soon as it was announced and I'll be posting up a review of that soon(ish).
There will be further 'Fundamentals' seminars next year, if you love ground fighting and want some quality instruction that will impact your game, there can't be many (any?) better ways to spend a Sunday afternoon. See you there.....
http://www.leverage-grappling.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment