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FREE MMA MASTERY: STRIKE COMBINATIONS PDF Mark Hatmaker | 192 pages | 01 Jun 2011 | Tracks Publishing,U.S. | 9781935937227 | English | Chula Vista, CA, United States mma striking combos list | MMA Active A great deal is happening at any given time in a mixed martial arts fight. Transitions between the sport's component arts—muay thai, wrestling and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, to name only three—take place in a split second. Fighters might execute dozens of different techniques in hundreds of individual moves in any given fight, and the commentators rarely have time to explain the mechanics or nuance behind each one. This piece examines 10 of the most common techniques that one might find in an MMA fight. It's not enough to know how to strike, wrestle or grapple; any fighter who has a hope of competing in one of MMA's major promotions has to MMA Mastery: Strike Combinations least know the basics of every art. Consider this a technical introduction. If you've ever wanted to know what a proper jab looks like, how a double-leg takedown works or why we see so many rear-naked chokes, this is the piece for you. I'll walk you through the individual techniques, provide pictures and helpful videos and regularly link to GIFs to illustrate the principles at play. A fight is much more than individual moves, of course. MMA Mastery: Strike Combinations output and pace, transitions from phase to phase, confidence, rhythm and a dozen other advanced concepts all matter. Each of those things, however, is built on the foundation of basic technical acumen. The jab is any striker's most useful and important tool. At its most basic, it is a straight punch with the lead hand. That description, however, falls far short of describing the full range of uses to which the jab can be put. It can be taught in a single lesson, but it takes a lifetime to MMA Mastery: Strike Combinations. A jab ranges from a probing shot that is little more than an extended arm to a battering ram that can break faces through repeated application. Measuring and setting the user's preferred distance, establishing a rhythm and timing, and setting up the following shots are all potential applications. It's the quickest strike that can be thrown and therefore has particular utility as a counter, as former UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva used it against Forrest Griffin and Yushin Okamior to disrupt the opponent's rhythm. It serves to cover the forward movement of aggressive fighters such as Cain Velasquez and Daniel Cormier by giving the opposition something to think about as they push their foes back. He threw it in a variety of ways, all of them effective. These weren't pitter-patter strikes, either: He shattered his opponent's orbital bone and pummeled him from safety for all five rounds. UFC bantamweight champion T. Dillashaw has become a budding master of the jab under the tutelage of Duane Ludwig. He uses it in a variety of ways, constantly probing with his lead hand, as he does here before firing a cross and head kick, and occasionally firing vicious jabs as counters or to disrupt his opponent's rhythm. If anything, the jab is even more useful than it is in boxing since fewer MMA fighters truly excel at applying it, which gives the experts a whole chunk of safe distance where their opponent has little to offer. In a sport where takedowns are a massive factor, the ability to keep your opponent outside of range to shoot is a major advantage. Despite the lack of skilled users in MMA, the jab is the most basic tool in any striker's arsenal, and it's the most essential. The overhand—a looping punch thrown from the rear hand that looks like a baseball pitch—isn't as common as the jab, but it's particularly characteristic of MMA as opposed to the other arts that include striking on the feet. Two reasons. First, MMA gloves are smaller, which makes it more difficult for a default high guard—tight elbows, hands covering the sides of the face—to block it. Second, overhands are best set up with level changes, where a fighter bends his or her knees and ducks down. Level changes are much more common in MMA, which includes takedowns, than they are in boxing. The MMA overhand was, for a long time, the target of derision from boxing purists. It's an ugly-looking strike even when executed perfectly, a windmilling swing that can land almost vertically as the user pulls his or her head off line. It stands in stark contrast to the boxing fan's adoration of a clean cross or a piercing jab. This was always a straw man, though: Plenty of boxers throw an overhand, particularly those from Cuba or Eastern Europe, and the punch's utility is undeniable. Yet the overhand remains more characteristic of MMA. Former UFC heavyweight champion Junior dos Santos won the title with the punch and dropped the iron-chinned Mark Hunt with a vicious overhand. No punch is more characteristic of MMA than the overhand. While symbolic of the undeniably cruder nature of MMA striking, it's prevalent in the sport for good reasons: It's a hard punch that suits the smaller gloves and broader tactical context. The round kick is native to practically every art that includes kicking, with some variations. In MMA, most fighters learn to throw it in a fashion that MMA Mastery: Strike Combinations derived from muay thai, and as such it should be landed with the lower part of the shin. The motion is straightforward: Step or pivot on the lead foot so that it's turned perpendicular to the target, thrust the hip so that it leads the kicking leg, and turn the hip over to get maximum force into the strike. A discerning observer might add a scrunching of the abdominal muscles and a chopping motion with the hand on the kicking side, but these motions aren't strictly necessary. Unlike a karate-style round kick, of which we see a few in MMA from fighters such as Lyoto Machida and many of the Russian fighters now entering the UFC, the muay thai-style kick has more of a whipping than a snapping motion. It's a powerful strike that's reminiscent of getting hit with a baseball bat. The round kick can be thrown to all three levels—low, middle and high. The low kick is the easiest to land, as it's thrown from the greatest distance and has a substantial margin for error. The middle kick is the most dangerous, since the user can easily be countered with punches. The high kick is the most difficult to MMA Mastery: Strike Combinations, since it's the slowest and gives the opponent plenty of time to react. Not only is he unbelievably fast, but he sets them up beautifully with punches. His MMA Mastery: Strike Combinations is incredible, and he places his shots in exactly the right spot as his opponent turns his MMA Mastery: Strike Combinations. UFC lightweight champion Rafael dos Anjos, another talented kicker, destroyed Nate Diaz's lead leg with repeated shots. Former champion Anthony Pettis is a master of the body kick. MMA Mastery: Strike Combinations blasted Donald Cerrone's liver with a beautiful left kick and used a series of them to tenderize Benson Henderson's body in their second meeting before the armbar finish. When a kick lands cleanly to the head in MMA, it's generally because of a clever setup or gross negligence. Pettis flashed his hands before landing one on Joe Lauzon's dome. Dillashaw used the threat of his straight left to set up this head kick on Renan Barao. Wherever they're thrown, round kicks are an essential part of any MMA fighter's arsenal. The clinch is one of the fundamental phases of MMA. It's unique in that it combines pieces of different combat sports into a diverse whole in a way that range striking, wrestling and grappling don't. There's MMA Mastery: Strike Combinations bit of boxing's short punches, a dash of wrestling's takedowns and MMA Mastery: Strike Combinations and a smidgen of judo's trips and throws, but knees from the double-collar tie—colloquially MMA Mastery: Strike Combinations as the "muay thai clinch"—reign supreme. The double-collar tie actually comes MMA Mastery: Strike Combinations MMA from both wrestling and muay thai. It's a simple enough grip, with the hands placed on the crown of the opponent's head, one over the other, and the forearms tightly pinned to the sides of the opponent's jaw. You should feel the squeeze in your chest as you pinch your forearms together. Properly executed, this gives the user full control over the opponent's movements: where the head goes, the body follows. With full control over the opponent's balance, posture and position, knees follow shortly thereafter. Once again, Silva provides the clearest example of mastery from his first fight with Franklin. The Spider mixes up the placement, throwing first to the body and then using the double-collar tie to pull Franklin down into a crushing knee to the face. Wanderlei Silva did the same to Rampage Jackson. OnThisDay in SpiderAnderson started his reign. Knees from the double-collar tie can be effective in sequence, but they're also effective transitional strikes. Jake Ellenberger grabbed a quick hold, stepped back to give his hips room and then fired two knees to finish Jake Shields.

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