Iron Cross Training

Slizz, do you know a thing or two about systema? I think read a few times about your interested (current or previous) about sparring or fighting. If that's the case, maybe this would be of interest:

His english is a bit broken and he makes notes of differences of sounds which sometimes is different to hear (vibrations would be a better term). However, I have experienced systema from a friend who used to practice it religiously. A unconctracted punch with loose arms is definitely far more painful than any full strength punch I've ever faced.

I know that reflexive contraction is what you will get, you don't want conscious contraction. You want your arm loose, and you want your muscles to contract reflexively as you make contact. That's unconscious, kind of like of someone slaps your hand away. You don't intentionally slow your hand down before your arm spins behind you but reflexes happen anyways. Or like landing a jump, you don't intentionally contract, your body does that the moment it feels impact.

I have always wanted to learn more about real Systema, but I have never found many good sources. There's one, but it's not local. I have yet to run into any true practitioners in real life.

Cool video! I am not familiar with systema techniques, though I am very familiar with relaxed punching (not that I am much good at it these days). That was a large part of why I could hit very hard even though I didn't have a lot of upper body strength in the weight room. I had efficient movement and very relaxed punches so they moved incredibly fast. I'm still pretty fast, but not like I should be. I'll show some sparring at GSU in a week or two.

Thank you for the post!

Hey slizzard you still owe us that videos for the basics moves of fighting!!!

You guys may find this interesting. I teach a strength conditioning class in Tempe, AZ. This class is in the Grupo Axe Capoeira building. Naturally most of my students are capoeiristas, some of which have upcoming fights in the MMA. I have been training these guys in only BtGB conditioning with no weights. Everything is performed under my watchful eye, meaning lock your arms or I yell at you :wink: One of my most consistent students was wrestling the other day with a college wrestler he knew. The guy was obviously a much better wrestler than my student and proceeded to get my student in arm bar after arm bar, but could not make him tap. The wrestler started getting pretty annoyed, kinda lost it, and threw his whole body into one more bar. My student winced but proceeded to pull his arm out of the wrestlers grip. The next day when my student told me this story his elbow was still tender from that last move. He thanked me over and over saying if I hadn't been strengthening his elbow tendon he knows it would have been seriously injured. Interestingly the wrestler apparently told my student that he had never met anyone who could take that much pressure in a locked out arm bar.

This student is not ridiculously strong on rings by any means. I have only been training him for a few months, but have put most of my focus on strengthening his biceps tendon. To give you an idea he can hold 15s FL/BL tucked, and 15s wide L-support on rings. After hearing this I personally would say for a fighter that strengthening the biceps tendon should be a top priority.

It happens to me at Ju Jutsu training, partners find difficult to make me tap in Juji gatame(armbar), and Im sure Im not as well trained as your class, Dillon. I also have the best weight/strenght ratio in my class by far, due to gymnastic conditioning, I just realized how much transference has this type of training to any other sport/activitie hahah so I'll keep doing it right after training

Dillon Zrike said:

You guys may find this interesting. I teach a strength conditioning class in Tempe, AZ. This class is in the Grupo Axe Capoeira building. Naturally most of my students are capoeiristas, some of which have upcoming fights in the MMA. I have been training these guys in only BtGB conditioning with no weights. Everything is performed under my watchful eye, meaning lock your arms or I yell at you :wink: One of my most consistent students was wrestling the other day with a college wrestler he knew. The guy was obviously a much better wrestler than my student and proceeded to get my student in arm bar after arm bar, but could not make him tap. The wrestler started getting pretty annoyed, kinda lost it, and threw his whole body into one more bar. My student winced but proceeded to pull his arm out of the wrestlers grip. The next day when my student told me this story his elbow was still tender from that last move. He thanked me over and over saying if I hadn't been strengthening his elbow tendon he knows it would have been seriously injured. Interestingly the wrestler apparently told my student that he had never met anyone who could take that much pressure in a locked out arm bar.

This student is not ridiculously strong on rings by any means. I have only been training him for a few months, but have put most of my focus on strengthening his biceps tendon. To give you an idea he can hold 15s FL/BL tucked, and 15s wide L-support on rings. After hearing this I personally would say for a fighter that strengthening the biceps tendon should be a top priority.

I agree. Just wait until they have a few months of full lay FL pulls and front pulls under their belts... they will be clinch monsters.

This is why I found this site to begin with. As soon as I saw Coach's article I realized just how important this kind of strength is to a combat athlete and ESPECIALLY a grappler, so I searched and ran across this site somehow, and here we are! I have next to no training as a grappler, all I know is how to stay out of trouble, but I get takedowns and reversals all the time just because the WODs make you so strong in such disadvantaged positions!

every MMA fighter should be doing this as the core of their strength and conditioning program. There are other things that should be done as well, but I don't think the WODs should be modified at all. I think they should be the foundation off of which everything else builds.

Yeah I've always thought that straight arm work gymnastics work would be the best possible option for not getting your elbow ripped apart in those 'arm bars' or whatever that position is called (english god damnit )

Hmm I don't really see how a person, any person, could withstand an arm-bar. The amount of pressure on the elbow during an arm bar is tremendous, enough to dislocate the elbow and severely damage the tendons (and that's if a 130 lbs girl does it). I am not doubting the story of a trainee fighting the arm bar but I am more inclined to believe that the person performing the arm bar is used to people tapping out because anyone who has trained jujitsu knows what happens if you don't tap. And because he knew, the performer of the arm bar, he didn't put more pressure on the elbow as to not damage the opponents elbow.

I would bet that even a top ring specialist wouldn't be able to fight against a proper arm bar. Arm-bar is the elbow vs the entire weight of your opponent's body plus strength, not a good scenario for the elbow. There is a good reason why an arm-bar means a win (unless it was poorly performed and the opponent wiggles out of it).

Maltese is arm against significant torque.. I certainly still believe that gymnastics conditioning will be one of the best options. I don't know much about MMA so I can't speak from experience regarding the withstanding of an arm bar

I am not disagreeing with you about the benefits of gymnastic ring strength for the bicep tendon. I am actually of the opinion that it is the holy grail of strengthening that area and am very glad because it has significantly strengthened a weak point for me.

But an arm bar is just a different beast. That's like saying you can train up to lifting and throwing an suv by lifting weights. Sure you can get strong, in some people's case very strong just look at strongmen. But none of them will be throwing around 3,000 lbs anytime soon or ever.

Sure the pressure on the elbow during a maltese is significant but is it body weight? Of course not because chest and shoulders help not to mention that it is distributed between two elbows not one. And this doesn't even take into account the added stress of your opponent's strength. All he needs to do is extend the hips which are capable of tremendous power (over 300 lbs of additional force by a trained individual is not uncommon).

That does really sound like some serious stuff :twisted:

AlexX said:

Sure the pressure on the elbow during a maltese is significant but is it body weight? Of course not because chest and shoulders help not to mention that it is distributed between two elbows not one.

This statement is incorrect. If it was true then anybody who could hold a handstand would be holding crosses as well. It's simply bodyweight right? Because of leverages involved the pressure on your elbows is significantly more than bodyweight. I don't remember the exact numbers as I only remember coach telling me this but every inch you move away from your hips in a cross adds something like 100lbs of pressure. This is why it is more difficult for people with longer arms to hold a cross. They may be facing a few 100 more lbs of pressure than someone with short arms who is the same weight. Don't go off and quote me on this number. I am going off memory but I do know that the number is very high up in that range.

I am not a wrestler and do not know the intricacies involved but I am simply relaying what my student told me. I am not saying the wrestler was trying to break his arm or that my student can not get his arm broken from an armbar. I simply find the fact that the wrestler told my student he had never seen anything like that before pretty cool. The biceps tendon strength may just give the fighter the split second he needed to evade the tap out.

Having the straight arm strength will allow you to avoid getting caught in most arm bars. Even a ton of bent arm strength helps there, because the hardest part of any arm bar is getting that arm TOTALLY straight, and once it's straight positioning it just right so that you can make the fulcrum right on the elbow. The stronger your arm is in those positions the more likely you are to be able to roll out or otherwise fight through and escape the attempted submission. It does make a difference.

Nothing can help you in a fully applied submission, once you're cranked you're done. Straight arm conditioning can definitely help you make that final position very difficult for an opponent to get you into.

Now I'll grant that most arm bars fail because of a lack of thigh pressure. If someone is squeezing their knees together as they apply the armbar you are probably not getting out of it because there is nowhere to go. For some reason this is almost never the way arm bars get applied. I suppose that being super beefcake could help some even in that position, but I don't know. You'd have to have yellow spiky hair or something.

Dillon Zrike said:

AlexX said:

Sure the pressure on the elbow during a maltese is significant but is it body weight? Of course not because chest and shoulders help not to mention that it is distributed between two elbows not one.

This statement is incorrect. If it was true then anybody who could hold a handstand would be holding crosses as well. It's simply bodyweight right? Because of leverages involved the pressure on your elbows is significantly more than bodyweight. I don't remember the exact numbers as I only remember coach telling me this but every inch you move away from your hips in a cross adds something like 100lbs of pressure. This is why it is more difficult for people with longer arms to hold a cross. They may be facing a few 100 more lbs of pressure than someone with short arms who is the same weight. Don't go off and quote me on this number. I am going off memory but I do know that the number is very high up in that range.

I am not a wrestler and do not know the intricacies involved but I am simply relaying what my student told me. I am not saying the wrestler was trying to break his arm or that my student can not get his arm broken from an armbar. I simply find the fact that the wrestler told my student he had never seen anything like that before pretty cool. The biceps tendon strength may just give the fighter the split second he needed to evade the tap out.

Thanks for correcting my post as I definitely did not word it properly. My point was to try to illustrate that the pressure is much greater during an arm bar vs a maltese, not to downplay the difficulty of a maltese cross. And as I said I am not doubting the great benefit of straight arm strength from ring work, I try to convert anyone that will listen.

EDIT:

Slizzardman's post explains what I was trying to get at which is that escape from an arm-bar is possible when it is poorly applied and strength does help in escaping before it is fully applied. But once in an arm bar no amount of straight arm strength will help, the physics are just against you. Here is an interesting look at it from a physics stand point to give an idea: http://www.sherdog.net/forums/f12/do-yo ... ndex5.html

It's the third post from the top of the page.

AlexX said:

I try to convert anyone that will listen.

Ah, how much easier this would be if Jesus and Mohammed were ringsmen!

slizzardman said:

AlexX said:

I try to convert anyone that will listen.

Ah, how much easier this would be if Jesus and Mohammed were ringsmen!

Haha there would be an army of super athletic Muslims and Christians and church would be training.

I would make a joke, but it would be in poor taste.

I guess we need TLC to come to Coach Sommer's gym or a gymnastics gym and wire them all up and measure all the forces out like they do on one of their shows where it shows how much force they can strike with and etc.

This reminds me of asking my physics teacher how a dream machine worked for crosses. Absolutely no idea, but they certainly do work.

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On the issue of arm bars and GB training I have a story as well.

A week or two ago my instructor was demonstrating an arm-bar on me to a new student. He is a 250lbs. black belt. He said that everyone taps to his arm-bar without even having to extend the hips. However, I was not doing so and he had to extend his hips to get the tap. I wonder if this has to do with my GB training as my elbow does not extend past 180 degrees. I just have a normal elbow! The only other exception he said was a guy that had elbows that hyperextended.

That's interesting, where are you in terms of progressions for your straight arm work? and were you actively trying to resist it?

I would be really interested in comparing how much it would take to force a tap with a fighter, someone who could hold basic ring positions (FL, BL, Pl etc) and someone who could hold a cross. Is there anyone who knows how we could test it?

Tap challenge !!!

LOL! I have no idea how that would be safely done. I suppose you could use force sensors and whatnot on the fulcrum and emg data on the attacker's muscles to see how hard they are working, relatively speaking, to tap each person. This would require an extremely sensitive attacker so that they dont put on too much pressure too quickly and so they quickly respond to the person in the arm bar.