spitting TIP #9: STANCE IN MOTION
When you move about the cage or ring, you always want to maintain your stance. If your feet get spread too far apart or you lean too far to one side or the other, your base and balance will be compromised. In addition to making you vulnerable to your opponent’s attacks, it will also be difficult to execute attacks and counterattacks of your own. Although maintaining your stance while circling, advancing, and retreating can be difficult when you start out, there are ways to improve in this department. One such way is to tie a shoulder’s-width length of rope between your legs while shadowboxing. After a few weeks of this, you’ll be surprised at how much your footwork has improved.
get off my TIP #10: NEVER CROSS YOUR FEET
As a rule of thumb, you never want to cross your feet because it compromises your balance. To prevent this from happening, always begin by stepping the foot that is closest to the direction you want to head. For example, if you want to move to your right, step with your right foot first and then slide your left foot in the same direction to maintain your stance. The same rule applies when moving toward your left, forward, and backward. When you follow this simple rule, you will never have a problem crossing your feet.
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Wanting to move to my left, I step my left foot toward my left side. Once accomplished, I reestablish my fighting stance by sliding my right foot toward my left. If you look closely at the photos, you’ll notice that moving in this manner actually makes you a larger person. Seriously. When I began fighting, I was five nine, like the coauthor of this book. Now I’m six eight. It’s all in how you move…By the way, I was trying to set the world record for the number of different fonts used in a book, but my editor shut me down. However, I managed to sneak this one by him. Cool, isn’t it? It’s the font angry pirates use.
hidden TIP #11: CREATING ANGLES
Creating angles utilizing footwork is a very important aspect of fighting. When you are standing square with your opponent, it can be very difficult to land a strike or score a takedown because his lines of defense are directly in front of you. If you throw a punch to his face, he can block it with his arms. If you shoot in for a takedown, he can sprawl his hips straight back. Instead of confronting his defensive lines head-on, it’s better to get around them. This can be accomplished by utilizing footwork to reposition your body off to his side. The goal is to create a brief moment where your hips are facing him but his hips are facing away from you. Before he can turn and once again square up with your body, you launch an attack from your new angle. The better you get at creating dominant angles, the more success you will have with your offensive techniques.
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1) With my hips square with Neil’s hips, it is difficult for me to break through his defenses.
2) As I throw a jab to distract Neil, I step my right foot toward the outside of his left foot.
3) I square my hips with Neil’s left side by rotating my body in a counterclockwise direction. Before he can turn to face me, I will throw a strike or execute a takedown.
thick shaft, tiny TIP #12: STANDARD VS. SOUTHPAW
When you fight an opponent in an opposite stance, which means he has his opposite foot forward, the goal is to position your lead foot to the outside of his lead foot. For example, if he has his right foot forward and you have your left foot forward, you want to position your left foot to the outside of his right foot. Accomplishing this gives you a dominant angle from which to attack and allows you to score with a greater percentage of your strikes and takedowns.
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1) I’m in a traditional stance, and Neil is in a southpaw stance. 2) As I throw my left hand into Neil’s face to blind him, I step my left foot to the outside of his right foot, giving me a dominant angle of attack. 3) Neil steps his right foot to the outside of my left foot to eliminate my dominant angle. 4) While Neil’s weight is still on his right leg, I throw a right Thai kick to his inner right thigh. 5) Never ask Erich Krauss to Photoshop shit. Look at the first picture in the sequence above. Does that look like a foot? No, it does not. It looks like a talon of some sort. If you could do me a favor, e-mail Erich at authorerichkrauss@ hotmail.com and tell him what a retard he is. I’ll owe you one. I mean, the guy found the time to remove the word sprawl from my pants, which cost me sponsorship money, but he was too busy to fix my foot? What kind of a guy does that?
mushroom TIP #13: SENSE OF DISTANCE
Having awesome strikes and blocks means nothing without a keen sense of distance. It’s not an easy trait to develop, especially for guys who spend all their time striking the heavy bag. Don’t get me wrong; working on the heavy bag can do wonders for your punches and kicks, but it does very little to prepare you for a live opponent who knows how to use his feet. To develop your sense of distance, you have to spend an ample amount of time sparring and drilling footwork with a training partner. One of the more helpful drills is to stand into the pocket with your opponent and track his movements. If he comes forward, you move backward. If he moves to his left, you follow him by moving to your right. At first, no strikes should be thrown. Your only goal is to remain in striking range by shadowing your opponent’s movements. Once you get comfortable, add very light strikes into the mix. With time, you will automatically react to your opponent’s movements, even when sparring at full speed. At every moment in the fight, you’ll know whether you are in or out of striking range, allowing you to utilize techniques accordingly.
slowly rub my TIP #14: DON’T CIRCLE INTO THE POWER
When your opponent is standing with his left foot forward and his right foot back, he will be able to throw much more powerful strikes from his right side. His right cross will pack more power than his left jab, and his right kick will pack more power than his lead left kick. For this reason, you always want to avoid circling into your opponent’s power side when in striking range. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule, but when first starting out, it’s generally not a rule you want to break. It’s okay to circle toward his power side as long as you create enough distance, but if your sense of distance is off, there is a very good chance that you’ll eat a powerful shot. So to reiterate, if your opponent’s right foot is back, circle toward his left side when in striking range, and if his left foot is back, circle toward his right when in striking range.
zipper caught my fucking TIP #15: PRIMARY TARGETS
The goal in any fight is to inflict the maximum amount of damage with every strike you throw. In order to accomplish this, you must first know what the optimal targets are. I’ve included a list below, but it is important to note that I’ve only included targets legal in MMA. If you’re in a street fight, gouging your opponent’s eyes and soccer-kicking his gonads are not just fair game, but highly encouraged.
THE JAW
Striking your opponent square in the chin with your fist or shin can produce a devastating knockout. It causes the neck to jerk violently, which drives the brain against the skull and temporarily puts your opponent to sleep. When you strike the chin hard enough, sometimes it will cause your opponent’s muscles to spasm, making his arms and legs shudder like a dying cockroach. Striking the chin in this fashion also sometimes causes your opponent to shit himself.
THE TEMPLE
It’s possible to knock your opponent out cold by landing a hard strike to the temple, but most of the time it will cause a flash knockout, which a lot of people refer to as “seeing stars.” The difference between a knockout and a flash knockout is that flash knockouts are easier to recover from, making it important that you continue to whale on your opponent until the referee or cops pull you off.
THE NOSE
Breaking your opponent’s nose is awesome. It causes his eyes to water and blood to drain down the back of his throat, which impairs his breathing. Although it’s not a fight finisher, it will usually steal a portion of hi
s heart, cause him to fatigue faster, and disrupt his focus, which makes him vulnerable to other strikes. It also temporarily makes him uglier than you, which is good.
LIVER AND KIDNEY
Striking these vital organs not only knocks the wind out of your opponent, but it also causes him an immediate burst of pain that will affect him long after the fight is over. To strike the region that contains the liver and kidney, target the soft tissue between your opponent’s rib cage and hips on the sides of his body. The best strikes for the job are circular ones, such as Thai kicks and hooks.
THE SOLAR PLEXUS
The solar plexus is located in the center of the sternum. When you strike this area of the body, it will usually steal your opponent’s wind and cause him to drop his defenses. Sometimes you can even cause enough damage to get your opponent to quit, but this is rare.
SCIATIC NERVE
The sciatic nerve runs down the side of the thigh, and the best weapon to damage it is a circular Thai kick. Although landing one kick to this sensitive area usually won’t cause much damage, landing ten of them will. For the best results, you want to target the same area on your opponent’s thigh over and over. As the fight progresses, your opponent will find it increasingly difficult and painful to put his weight on his leg. Not only does this limit his offensive movements, but it also draws his entire focus to the injured area, creating an opportunity to land other strikes, such as punches to his face.
TIP # 16: CONTACT POINTS
When people get into a fight, the majority of the time they will instinctively use their fists. This is primarily due to the control we have over our hands. We use them for just about everything—writing, driving, groping a massive set of tit-ties, and, in your case, excessive masturbation. While your fists are certainly formidable weapons, they tend to shatter quite easily. I’m sure if you looked up the statistics, you’d find that the most common injury in MMA is broken hands. Punches are also quite easy for your opponent to spot because they are generally thrown from eye level. To avoid injury and become a more unpredictable scrapper, it is important to learn how to use the other weapons your body has come equipped with. However, you want to master each weapon before you attempt to use it in a fight. If you learn how to throw a Thai kick on Tuesday, you probably won’t want to pull it out of your arsenal in a fight on Friday night. Just as it took you years to learn how to gain proper control over your hands, it can take years to learn how to throw effective kicks and knee and elbow strikes. Like everything in fighting, it just takes time. Below, I’ve included a list of your body’s primary weapons that are legal in MMA. Once you’ve mastered these primary weapons, I suggest learning how to use your secondary weapons, such as the shoulder, which can be used in the clinch, and the palm, which can be used to deliver the highly touted pimp slap.
THE FIST
When throwing punches, always strike with the knuckles of your index and middle fingers. In addition to limiting the damage caused to your hand, it allows you to maximize the energy transference between your arm and your opponent’s face…In short, it allows you to inflict more damage.
THE FOREARM
When you assume a top position on the ground, the forearm can be used as a grinding stone to crush and rearrange your hideous mug. In wrestling, this technique is commonly referred to as the cross-face.
TIP OF THE ELBOW
The tip of the elbow is responsible for opening more cuts than any other weapon. For the best results, throw your elbow along a downward, arching trajectory toward your opponent’s face. If your goal is to draw blood, you want to graze your opponent’s face with the tip of your elbow rather than land a solid blow.
TIP OF THE KNEE
The knee is the battering ram of the human body. When used properly, it can cause severe damage to your opponent’s legs, body, face, or cock ’n balls.
THE SHIN
When throwing kicks, you do not want to strike your target with your foot. You want to connect with your shin. Not only will this cause your opponent more damage, but it will also reduce the damage you suffer should your opponent check your kick. It’s best to land with the inside portion of your shin where the bone is the thickest. If you land with the outside, you risk damaging the muscle tissue that runs down the side of your leg.
BALL OF FOOT
When you throw a straight front kick, you can strike your target using either the ball or heel of your foot. Striking with the ball allows you to cover more distance, but it won’t produce as great an impact.
HEEL
The heel is used as a weapon when you throw front kicks, side kicks, back kicks, or stomp on a grounded opponent. To cause the most damage, flex your foot upward. This limits the surface area of your weapon and makes your heel as sharp as possible.
here, let me spit on my TIP #17: SENSE OF TIMING
“Sense of timing” is your ability to anticipate or predict your opponent’s movements. It is referred to as a sense because it is not something you think about—it is more of a reaction. If your opponent moves, you do not think about that movement, you react to it either offensively or defensively. While sparring frequently will help your sense of timing for striking on your feet, it is also very important to develop this sense for ground fighting. Unless you have superhuman strength, you can’t force techniques. To be effective, you have to use your opponent’s movements and reactions to your movements to your advantage, and the only way you can accomplish this is with timing. I don’t care if you only know a handful of techniques—if you have a good sense of timing, you’ll submit your opponents more often than someone who knows every technique in the book but has awful timing. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t focus on technique; all I’m saying is that you shouldn’t ignore the importance of timing. To help improve in this area, you should spar and conduct timing drills on the ground as often as possible. (Note: Siblings, significant others, and spouses can make worthy sparring partners—chances are your little bro or lady friend have a few scores they’d like to settle, so you may not have to look too far for an opponent. Why go across the street when you can go across the hall? Or the bed…)
caress my TIP #18 COMBINATIONS
If your opponent is an experienced fighter, throwing single-strike attacks usually won’t get you very far. In order to be effective, you have to string your strikes together to form fluid combinations. The goal is to make each strike set up the one to follow. For example, you throw a jab to your opponent’s face to momentarily blind him and force him to raise his arms in defense. This sets you up to throw a powerful cross to his body. Upon impact, the cross knocks the air out of your opponent and causes him to bend forward, which in turn sets you up to throw a knee to his face. Landing the knee with power will discombobulate your opponent and knock him off balance, which allows you to finish the combination with a takedown. Unleashing a series of strikes like this is the best way to keep your opponent on the defensive. The same principle applies when fighting on the ground. If you latch onto your opponent’s arm and try to apply a kimura submission, chances are he will defend against it. However, his defense makes him vulnerable to an armbar on the opposite side. If he defends against the armbar, you can immediately transition back to the kimura. But I get ahead of myself. Simply put, when you string submissions or strikes together, it’s just a matter of time until you get one step ahead of your opponent.
I think you just kicked my TIP #19 FEINTS (FOR THE VOCABULARILY CHALLENGED…THESE ARE “FAKES.”)
The goal of a feint is to trick your opponent into thinking you’re attacking with a specific technique in order to generate a reaction. For example, you drop your elevation as though you are shooting in for a takedown, causing your opponent to drop his hands low to defend against your shot. However, instead of following through with the takedown, you quickly increase your elevation and capitalize on your opponent’s unprotected head by throwing an overhand right. Another example is to throw a fake cross to get your opponent to react to that specific pu
nch, and then quickly throw a lead hook. The goal is to commit enough to the feint to get your opponent to react to it, but not commit so much that it jeopardizes your follow-up attack.
under all that foreskin you’ll find the TIP #20 LOW-HIGH PRINCIPLE
The low-high or high-low principle of attack is another excellent way to increase the effectiveness of your strikes. For example, you throw a kick aimed at your opponent’s body to pull his focus downward, and then immediately follow up by throwing a punch aimed at his head. It works just as well the other way around—throw a punch at your opponent’s head to pull his focus upward, and then follow up with a kick to his lower body. There are literally thousands of different low-high and high-low combinations that you can string together, and I strongly suggest finding the ones that work best for you. If you’re like most fighters, you will find that it dramatically increases the percentage of strikes you land clean.
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Got Fight? Page 16
