Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Specific Preparation for Combat Sports

Since this is our first official post we thought we would start it off with something beautiful.

In the video below, Osvaldo Alves 9th degree displays some beautiful examples of drills that would be used during your Specific Physical Preparation phase. You can clearly see the explosiveness, agility, power, speed and grace that these drills develop. These are attributes that are needed for high level performance in combat sports.

These drills can be used as a warm-up or as an entire combat sport specific workout depending on your fitness level.

One problem that exists especially in BJJ circles is a lack of practice. Often times, one class will contain 4-5 seperate skills without giving the students sufficient time to LEARN and REHEARSE those skills. Then the students are released to roll live and try out the skills they just went over.

Repetition is the mother of skill and 3 very important features must be present in order to maximize skill training, namely, high specificity, high quality of movement and high frequencey.

When training with the drills on the video below try to keep those 3 features at the forefront of your mind. Clearly, these drills were developed to enhance the quailities you need to excel in combat sports without actually working on a physical skill or submission.