First Hybrid Athlete Training Q&A Rules: Ask anything you’d like - Questions about this week’s curriculum, any previous posts, future requests for info and topics (we are going to cover almost everything you can ever think of but will prioritize something if you guys need it).
When you’re breaking down MMA film what do you mainly watch/ look for ? Is it feet, shoulders, or do you break all exchanges up and study them ? I appreciate your answer
In a fight the entire body is being used significantly for something often enough that it isn’t always a good idea to *only* give advice to focus on one spot.
It’s too easy to miss valuable details if I tell you to only look at *one* thing but I’ll give you these guidelines that might help you:
• Pay attention to the position and angle of peoples feet when strikes both land and when they miss. This is underrated and undervalued because people don’t understand how much easier it is to land shots or to avoid them when you just put your feet in the right spot. We will cover this plenty in detail in the future.
• whenever you’re breaking down exchanges don’t just look at one fighter and what their hands are doing. The shots that they select to use in relation to the defenses/reactions and position of their opponent or what you want to take note of. Like we discussed in the lecture, a combination or an exchange is not a random Mortal Kombat combo it is a relationship between the two fighters – so don’t get caught up watching one guys movements only, observe how one dude is reacting and exploiting his opponent.
• if something significant happens especially if it seemed to come out of nowhere – rewind the footage and pay attention to all the things that happened before it. If you want to see how the climax formulated it’s good to pay attention to the crescendo – this will help enhance your ability to see how to get to the finish which is more important then trying to emulate someone else’s final KO where it might not be appropriate in your own training/fight situations.
• If you can rewind or pause when you see successful takedowns or strikes he can also pay to rewind and pay attention to movements that *werent* the strike/shot itself. What I mean by this is if someone lands in over hand, it might be good to pay attention to where the Defense his hands were moving or where his feet were or his torso moved or his eyes – and also what other movements the attacker was using just before it landed. For example, last night Adesanya landed A straight left on Whitaker in the first round. Instead of paying attention to the actual punch landing I couldn’t help but notice that Whitaker had been standing on 1 foot and lifting his leg to check when he got hit – which is a clue that he was attempting to defend a leg kick that never came and I can investigate how Adesanya created that reaction in order to land the left. (make sense?)
• finally I’ll also say this if you’re watching footage that you can rewatch over and over again it’s not a bad idea to focus on certain areas of the body separately because you can always rewind and pay attention to the other parts in the exchange after. If you want to watch the battle for foot positioning watch a couple minutes of that then you can rewind and see how the hand fight goes etc. (however Don’t restrict yourself like this if you’re fighting or sparring this is just for studying footage – and again you ultimately want to observe everything at some point so if you choose to focus on just the hands for a. Make sure you go back and check for other nuances after so you don’t miss something useful.)
I’m going to write a post about how to analyze fights at some point as well as a lot of my own fight analysis will be coming. So this topic will get covered in depth in the future. I’m gonna talk about Adesanya versus Whitaker in a lecture on Thursday night I believe as well.
One of the issues I have is I’m focused on safety on both bench press and squats so I always have RIR on both exercises even though I have spotter arms. I have a garage gym given time constraints and I refuse to wear a mask in CA. What alternative exercises do you recommend or prefer to go to failure.
On Twitter, you mentioned that there are other exercises you prefer given the goals .Almost bought a leg press/ hack squat combo What do you prefer over barbell squats? When I do travel, I actually feel like I get a better leg workout on these types of machines because of the safety factor and I can go to failure. Recently, started incorporating Bulgarian split squats and goblet squats with him high reps.
Leg press and hack squat work great. However, machines are expensive to buy for a home gym for many so I'm going to give some alternative options:
Going to failure on legs can be difficult but I'd also say that reaching very close to failure with a single rep left is adequate and often superior. (As long as your being honest with your effort)
Some other choices you can try based on your equipment might be bulgarian split squats or general split squats, behind the back barbell hack squats with your heels elevated is a high stimulus one, and also full ROM split squats work well too.
Other options are landmine squats where you load one end of the barbell up and can position your squatting like a goblet squat and rep that out while always being able to drop the bar if need be. (this one works great tbh)
Excellent. Thank you Hybrid. Yes, cost is what ultimately has held me back and don’t want a one trick pony. I’ll give these a go as I have a landmine on my rack.
And for chest, are dumbbells to failure your preference? Also have a TRX and TRX flies are brutal.
Let me know how that works out and if we wanna try anything else.
Chest in terms of raw muscle building? I’d say getting strong at pushups, dips, or flat bench press with dumbbells are the main lifts. To ass a little extra then flyes are ok - doing them on a *decline* of 30 degrees is ideal imo.
This means decline as in - your head is lower than your hips. If you can adjust your bench or cables to do that it will work great. If not, flat is fine.
When you’re breaking down MMA film what do you mainly watch/ look for ? Is it feet, shoulders, or do you break all exchanges up and study them ? I appreciate your answer
In a fight the entire body is being used significantly for something often enough that it isn’t always a good idea to *only* give advice to focus on one spot.
It’s too easy to miss valuable details if I tell you to only look at *one* thing but I’ll give you these guidelines that might help you:
• Pay attention to the position and angle of peoples feet when strikes both land and when they miss. This is underrated and undervalued because people don’t understand how much easier it is to land shots or to avoid them when you just put your feet in the right spot. We will cover this plenty in detail in the future.
• whenever you’re breaking down exchanges don’t just look at one fighter and what their hands are doing. The shots that they select to use in relation to the defenses/reactions and position of their opponent or what you want to take note of. Like we discussed in the lecture, a combination or an exchange is not a random Mortal Kombat combo it is a relationship between the two fighters – so don’t get caught up watching one guys movements only, observe how one dude is reacting and exploiting his opponent.
• if something significant happens especially if it seemed to come out of nowhere – rewind the footage and pay attention to all the things that happened before it. If you want to see how the climax formulated it’s good to pay attention to the crescendo – this will help enhance your ability to see how to get to the finish which is more important then trying to emulate someone else’s final KO where it might not be appropriate in your own training/fight situations.
• If you can rewind or pause when you see successful takedowns or strikes he can also pay to rewind and pay attention to movements that *werent* the strike/shot itself. What I mean by this is if someone lands in over hand, it might be good to pay attention to where the Defense his hands were moving or where his feet were or his torso moved or his eyes – and also what other movements the attacker was using just before it landed. For example, last night Adesanya landed A straight left on Whitaker in the first round. Instead of paying attention to the actual punch landing I couldn’t help but notice that Whitaker had been standing on 1 foot and lifting his leg to check when he got hit – which is a clue that he was attempting to defend a leg kick that never came and I can investigate how Adesanya created that reaction in order to land the left. (make sense?)
• finally I’ll also say this if you’re watching footage that you can rewatch over and over again it’s not a bad idea to focus on certain areas of the body separately because you can always rewind and pay attention to the other parts in the exchange after. If you want to watch the battle for foot positioning watch a couple minutes of that then you can rewind and see how the hand fight goes etc. (however Don’t restrict yourself like this if you’re fighting or sparring this is just for studying footage – and again you ultimately want to observe everything at some point so if you choose to focus on just the hands for a. Make sure you go back and check for other nuances after so you don’t miss something useful.)
I’m going to write a post about how to analyze fights at some point as well as a lot of my own fight analysis will be coming. So this topic will get covered in depth in the future. I’m gonna talk about Adesanya versus Whitaker in a lecture on Thursday night I believe as well.
Thank you ! Will implement these tips to get a better understanding and am looking forward to the Izzy v Robby breakdown
One of the issues I have is I’m focused on safety on both bench press and squats so I always have RIR on both exercises even though I have spotter arms. I have a garage gym given time constraints and I refuse to wear a mask in CA. What alternative exercises do you recommend or prefer to go to failure.
On Twitter, you mentioned that there are other exercises you prefer given the goals .Almost bought a leg press/ hack squat combo What do you prefer over barbell squats? When I do travel, I actually feel like I get a better leg workout on these types of machines because of the safety factor and I can go to failure. Recently, started incorporating Bulgarian split squats and goblet squats with him high reps.
Leg press and hack squat work great. However, machines are expensive to buy for a home gym for many so I'm going to give some alternative options:
Going to failure on legs can be difficult but I'd also say that reaching very close to failure with a single rep left is adequate and often superior. (As long as your being honest with your effort)
Some other choices you can try based on your equipment might be bulgarian split squats or general split squats, behind the back barbell hack squats with your heels elevated is a high stimulus one, and also full ROM split squats work well too.
Other options are landmine squats where you load one end of the barbell up and can position your squatting like a goblet squat and rep that out while always being able to drop the bar if need be. (this one works great tbh)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=9&v=oRVwUtJXLIQ&feature=emb_logo
Excellent. Thank you Hybrid. Yes, cost is what ultimately has held me back and don’t want a one trick pony. I’ll give these a go as I have a landmine on my rack.
And for chest, are dumbbells to failure your preference? Also have a TRX and TRX flies are brutal.
Let me know how that works out and if we wanna try anything else.
Chest in terms of raw muscle building? I’d say getting strong at pushups, dips, or flat bench press with dumbbells are the main lifts. To ass a little extra then flyes are ok - doing them on a *decline* of 30 degrees is ideal imo.
This means decline as in - your head is lower than your hips. If you can adjust your bench or cables to do that it will work great. If not, flat is fine.
Tried that Landmine squat - excellent recommendation for leg failure. Thank you.