Ground fighting from a kf viewpoint
First a little background:
Ive been trying to instigate a little NHB style fighting and sparring into my workout as i was noticing i was getting complacent and needed to properly preasure test my skills.
Me and several other students and teachers have gotten together and are doing weekly sparring sessions.
At the moment we have me a Thai Boxing instructor, a Shan Shao and kickboxing + southern Shaolin instructor, a high level Wing Chun and BJJ guy who is also trained in the internals. Plus several others who's main claim to fame is just being a student of one of various styles.
Usualy we wack on the gloves and go the tonk standing with basicaly no rules except for dont try to debilitate one another and if someone cops a hard one then step back and let them recover.
Ok now to the point, sorry but a little background seemed necersary.
Today was our second week getting together and as luck would have it we had no access to any protective equipment. We decided to play on anyway and even decided that for once we would actualy keep playing once we hit the ground. Not being able to strike hard made this seem like a good idea at the time.
If ANY of you in CMA have not tested yourself on the ground i HIGHLY surgest you do so now! Its a BIG eye opener, we quickly realised that basicaly we were terrible and the only one of us who had the slightest idea was the BJJ guy, big supprise...
After picking up a few hints of him and a few ground rules suddenly we started to actualy perform reasonably well. We were taking each other to the ground without to much hassle and once there we could continue to fighting reasonably well.
The lessons i learnt...
1 Its hard to take someone to the ground... Unless you know how, all of you guys in CMA who like me used to think that you couldnt be taken down, get ready for a nasty supprise.
I play Bagua and what would frequently happen is whilst i was executing a throw my partner would simply grab hold of ANYTHING and therefore take me with him. If that was not happening everytime we got grappling one of us would finaly start to bring it to the ground, before we NEVER did this.
2 Unless you have ANY ground game chances are you will get trounced by anyone with even minor ground experience.
3 Being on the ground feels VERY alien but supprisingly is not THAT scary. After a while we were basicaly doing a bastedised version of kung fu bjj. Rolling around using minimal force on force and contantly looking to either slip out or pin something for further advantage.
4 Being on the ground is the MOST physicaly demanding form of combat bar NONE. It wears you out at a rate of knots and if your not conditioned well its likely you will lose of fitness alone.
My conclusions.
I have a new found respect for groundfighting and am finaly starting to see its uses. I think i was a fool for taking so long to actualy start practing there but im actualy REALLY happy to know have SOME idea of how to handle myself there.
By the end of the day we were all getting free of mounts and nearly all basic ground locks with no problems and most of us had learnt to sprawl and use leverage standing quite well.
I have a big peice of advice and by now it should be pretty obvious. Get some friends and get on the ground and see for yourself just why we often get distroyed by groundfighters.
Its exactly like being a fish out of water.
Up and down, forward and backward, left and right, its all the same. All of this is done with the mind, not externaly.
------------------------------------
Shaped dragon and looking monkey, sitting tiger and turning eagle.
"I wonder how they would do against jon's no-tension fu. I bet they'd do REALLY WELL."
- Huang Kai Vun