Self Defence Made Easy.Com

This article is aimed at any martial artist who either runs their own school or is thinking about setting up a school.

Two very different but world class coaches,Russell Stutely head coach and founder of the well respected Open Circle Fighting Method or OCFM for short. Got together with his great friend Leigh Childs who many of you will know as not only a superb practitioner of TKD who was British champion twice and runner up in the worlds.

He has also become one of the go to guys for anyone who wishes to open maintain and run a successful martial arts school.

Though Russell and Leigh have been friends for many years who have swapped ideas and run many seminars and courses for each others associations.  They have never embarked on a major project together before.  Until now that is, together they have developed what is possibly the most comprehensive guide to setting up,  running, and even maintaining a current school available today.

All the hard won knowledge accumulated over many years of hard training and running their own associations.  Will provide you with everything you need to know about creating and maintaining a successful and profitable school.

Do not get me wrong you will still have to work hard but you will avoid the many expensive pitfalls that unfortunately cause so many schools to fail.

Its a bit of a cliche but failure is not an option with these guys they have experienced all the highs and lows of running successful schools.  They have made mistakes sure but you will not have to you will get everything you need to be a success.

So in conclusion I strongly urge anyone who has ambitions to either start or take their school to the next level to check out the link below.

Click Here <<<<<……

This article was written by the celebrated author,dietician,trainer Mike Geary who has helped literally thousands of martial artists and non martial artists alike to achieve healthy balanced lifestyles. With the added bonus of sound and tested methods to help you achieve the kind of body you always wanted.

To find out more on this amazing coach just follow the link.

Click Here!

The Front Squat:

As you may have already discovered, the squat is at the top of the heap (along with deadlifts) as one of the most effective overall exercises for stimulating body composition changes (muscle gain and fat loss). This is because exercises like squats and deadlifts use more muscle groups under a heavy load than almost any other weight bearing exercises known to man. Hence, these exercises stimulate the greatest hormonal responses (growth hormone, testosterone, etc.) of all exercises. In fact, university research studies have even proven that inclusion of squats into a training program increases upper body development, in addition to lower body development, even though upper body specific joint movements are not performed during the squat. Whether your goal is gaining muscle mass, losing body fat, building a strong and functional body, or improving athletic performance, the basic squat and deadlift (and their variations) are the ultimate solution. If you don’t believe me that squats and deadlifts are THE basis for a lean and powerful body, then go ahead and join all of the other overweight people pumping away mindlessly for hours on boring cardio equipment. You won’t find long boring cardio in any of my programs!

Squats can be done with any free weighted objects such as barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, sandbags, or even just body weight. Squats should only be done with free weights – NEVER with a Smith machine or any other squat machines! Machines do not allow your body to follow natural, biomechanically-correct movement paths. You also perform less work because the machine stabilizes the weight for you. Therefore, you get weaker results!

The type of squat that people are most familiar with is the barbell back squat where the bar is resting on the trapezius muscles of the upper back. Many professional strength coaches believe that front squats (where the bar rests on the shoulders in front of the head) and overhead squats (where the bar is locked out in a snatch grip overhead throughout the squat) are more functional to athletic performance than back squats with less risk of lower back injury. I feel that a combination of all three (not necessarily during the same phase of your workouts) will yield the best results for overall muscular development, body fat loss, and athletic performance. Front squats are moderately more difficult than back squats, while overhead squats are considerably more difficult than either back squats or front squats. I’ll cover overhead squats in a future article. If you are only accustomed to performing back squats, it will take you a few sessions to become comfortable with front squats, so start out light. After a couple sessions of practice, you will start to feel the groove and be able to increase the poundage.

To perform front squats:

The front squat recruits the abdominals to a much higher degree for stability due to the more upright position compared with back squats. It is mostly a lower body exercise, but is great for functionally incorporating core strength and stability into the squatting movement. It can also be slightly difficult to learn how to properly rest the bar on your shoulders. There are two ways to rest the bar on the front of the shoulders. In the first method, you step under the bar and cross your forearms into an “X” position while resting the bar on the dimple that is created by the shoulder muscle near the bone, keeping your elbows up high so that your upper arms are parallel to the ground. You then hold the bar in place by pressing the thumb side of your fists against the bar for support.

Alternatively, you can hold the bar by placing your palms face up and the bar resting on your fingers against your shoulders. For both methods, your elbows must stay up high to prevent the weight from falling. Your upper arms should stay parallel to the ground throughout the squat. Find out which bar support method is more comfortable for you. Then, initiate the squat from your hips by sitting back and down, keeping the weight on your heels as opposed to the balls of your feet. Squat down to a position where your thighs are approximately parallel to the ground, then press back up to the starting position. Keeping your weight more towards your heels is the key factor in squatting to protect your knees from injury and develop strong injury-resistant knee joints. Keep in mind – squats done correctly actually strengthen the knees; squats done incorrectly can damage the knees.

Practice first with an un-weighted bar or a relatively light weight to learn the movement. Most people are surprised how hard this exercise works your abs once you learn the correct form. This is due to the more upright posture compared with back squats.

Click Here!

Tweet

Tweet

The following article was written by Eric Wong one of the worlds top MMA strength and conditioning coaches who has been kind enough to allow us to publish for you. To receive your Free copy of Erics celebrated Crazy 8 MMA workout book just follow the link it will take you to our shop where it is available for immediate download.

http://www.russellstutely.com/ashop/catalogue.php?shop=2

If you got a chance to catch UFC 90 and saw Patrick Cote’s knee injury when he was fighting the Anderson “Spider” Silva, you were probably disappointed that the 2 warriors didn’t get a chance to properly finish what they started.

I sure was. I love getting a chance to watch Silva at work, and I thought Cote showed that he definitely has a chin.

But what I want to talk about is the knee injury that Cote suffered. You could see the shin bone kind of move forward and out laterally when he hurt himself. In some interviews he said that it’s an old meniscus, but from the way it looked, I believe that he hurt his ACL. Often with a buckling type injury, it’s a ligament that gets damaged.

The ACL functions to stop the shin (tibia/fibula) from sliding forward under the thigh bone (femur), but only when the muscles aren’t there to do their job.

Cote also mentioned in interviews that he hurt his knee when he was kicking Silva. This would correspond perfectly with the common mechanism of ACL injury – when a person kicks, their lower leg is being whipped out, and the shin bone will slide forward on the thigh bone if the muscles/ligaments don’t oppose the force.

PICTURE it this way: put your right fist up like at the top of a bicep curl, then put your left fist on top of your right fist. When you slide your right fist forward towards the computer screen, that’s the movement that the ACL prevents, and that’s what happened to Cote’s knee.

So the ACL will come into play in a really quick pivot type move, like a running back who cuts hard, or during something unexpected, like getting pushed right before you land from a jump, missing a kick completely or partially.

The ACL will also work to stabilize the joint if the muscles aren’t strong enough to do the job, so even if you’re expecting the movement or it’s a planned movement, like a hard cut in football, if you don’t have strong muscles, you can still tear your ACL.

To prevent ACL injuries, you need to make sure your hamstrings and calves (gastroc) are strong and powerful. So exercises like Stiff-leg deadlifts and Swiss ball leg curls are crucial to knee injury prevention. The muscles worked in these exercises do exactly what the ACL does, prevent anterior slide of the lower leg on the upper leg.

You must focus on 2 specific portions of each exercise: the Eccentric phase, and the transition from the Eccentric to Concentric motion.

So for the Stiff-leg deadlift, it would mean controlling the motion to the end range, then quickly changing from lowering to lifting the weight. These exercises are all a part of my MMA Strength and Conditioning program.

You must keep the muscles strong, but even more importantly, powerful. The muscles need to be able to react quickly, so doing exercises such as repetitive, explosive jumps like Lunge jumps and others found in my NRG system complexes will train this quality.

Preventing ACL injuries in MMA requires numerous specific exercises to ensure that the muscles surrounding the knee joint are strong and powerful.

Integrate these exercises into your strength and conditioning program and you can prevent buckling your knee in the middle of a fight.

If you’re interested in a complete strength and conditioning program for mixed-martial artists that will prevent injuries and improve your power and conditioning, check out the Ultimate MMA Workout Program.

http://www.ultimatemmastrength.com/

Tweet

The self defense groin kick is without a doubt a valuable technique in close quarters combat. (Any guy who’s ever come crashing down on the crossbar of his bicycle knows that.) But there’s a bunch of mistakes that many martial artists make when executing a groin kick for self defense – mistakes that can actually end up hurting YOU as a result if you don’t do pay close attention to these aspects of your technique.

Self Defense Groin Kick Secret #1: Use In Close Quarters Combat!

Don’t go for a groin kick from far away! As men, we have a subconscious radar that register when someone is going to hit our groin. This makes it harder to deliver an effective groin kick because he’s more likely to turn to avoid the kick as an instinctive reaction.

Self Defense Groin Kick Secret #2: Beware The Headbutt!

Consider all of these techniques the next time you train for the self defense groin kick!

Tweet