Loftearmen's MMA Log

[quote]Sentoguy wrote:

[quote]Loftearmen wrote:
Awesome, thanks for that video Sento[/quote]

My pleasure. :slight_smile:

Also, I know you said you’ve got the Americana a number of times, but if you want any pointers on executing that lock, extensions or combinations off of it, or set ups let me know. That is one lock that IMO we LSM guys do as well if not better than anyone else out there and a lock that I can confidently say I have to the point of “unconscious competence” (where it’s so natural to me at this point that I no longer have to consciously think about it but instead can just “flow”).[/quote]

That would be awesome! I really appreciate it. Right now I set it up by getting a side mount, pretending to fight for an underhook and then sitting out into a scarf hold. They stick their hand in your face every single time. Then I grab their palm and twist it out Aikido-style as I tuck my right hand under their arm to establish the lock. I put my head against the back of my right hand and use my weight to press it down as I pull their elbow into their side. It is very effective but I would love to learn better ways to throw it on people.

Tonight we drilled escapes from the side mount by elbow push, rolls, reversals and spinning out with the underhook.

This is the one I liked the best:

Tonight:

Block Pulls
315x5
405x2
495x2
585x2
675x2

Super Strict Barbell Rows
225x10
225x10
225x10

T-Bar Row Drop Set
5 PlatesxFailure
4 PlatesxFailure
3 PlatesxFailure
2 PlatesxFailure
1 PlatexFailure

Pull Up/Barbell Shrugs/Hammer Curls Superset
x3-315x20-50’sx10
x3-315x20-50’sx10
x3-315x20-50’sx10

Well, first there are basically 3 categories of ways you can set-up any submission, including an Americana:

  1. Forced-you just grab the arm and go straight into it via sheer superior power, speed, misdirection, or broken rhythm

  2. Donated-your opponent places themselves into an Americana position (like they are making a “right turn” hand signal while driving) and you seize the opportunity

  3. Strategic-you trick/bait your opponent into exposing their arm and thus allowing you to set up the technique

The third option is the one that usually gets the most praise/attention, but in reality they are all equally valid methods depending on situational factors.

I’ll give you an example of a forced set-up (as it requires the least amount of cooperation from your opponent) for starters and describe in detail the steps to getting and finishing the lock

Forced-First, if you are setting it up from side control/side mount you will need to separate and/or control the near arm from the opponent’s body or a good opponent will roll with the attempted Americana push onto their side to hide their elbow or even more effective connect their hands and roll. There are numerous ways to do this depending on positional factors but one of my favorites is:

-opponent has their right forearm framing your hips, you reach back from underneath their neck with your left hand (sliding your hand and “tracing” their shoulder down to just above the elbow) as you simultaneously sprawl your left leg back to take away their leverage to push on

-a less experienced opponent will allow you to scoop the elbow and switch your hips to Kazure Kesa Gatame (scarf hold with an underhook or biceps control on the far arm) at which point (if they don’t reach for your face, which a more experienced grappler may not) you can just switch your hips back to double knee base side control but you should now seek to connect your left elbow and left knee so their near arm is isolated and cannot reframe

-a more experienced opponent will fight their elbow down to attempt to prevent you from scooping it and/or place themselves in a better position to escape Kesa should you go to it anyway. In this case you can slide your left knee/shin over the opponent’s bicep/elbow crook while allowing your left hand to slide up to the opponent’s right wrist. We call this variation of side control “Crusher Side Control” as you can put a lot of pressure on the Radial Nerve and make it quite uncomfortable if you know what you are doing (especially a big strong guy like yourself). Now you should be able to maintain control of the arm with just your leg so you can use both hands to attack the Americana. Sometimes this is called a “Mounted Crucifix” position as well.

-now that you have the near arm out of the picture and your opponent cannot roll with the Americana attempt in order to keep the arm connected to their body you should be able to separate the far arm from the body to start positioning for the lock. We’re going to assume though that they are smart and know their far arm is now in danger and so are’t going to voluntarily reach it out towards you to make your life easier by separating it from themself and instead will remain in “T Rex Arm” position/survival position to make it as difficult as possible to catch them.

-so, grab their left wrist or left pinky side of their hand (you should control both the ulna/carpals and pinky metacarpal area, not just the pinky metacarpal area as the wrist can articulate allowing someone to squirm out of the hold) with your right hand (no thumb, imagine you are going to do a OHP), line your right forearm behind your wrist (again like a OHP) and use those big powerful pressing muscles (you can and should also connect your right ball of your foot to the ground to help generate drive and press their wrist towards your left hand (which should be behind the opponent’s head) and transfer the opponent’s wrist to your left hand (again no thumb).

-now that the opponent’s wrist is firmly in your left hand slide your right hand down to control the opponent’s inside elbow and while framing your right forearm against the side of their body press their elbow to the ground and push it towards their head (like you are trying to make them do an overhead triceps stretch). This is a super powerful controlling position and should give you plenty of time to transition to a full controlling position/figure

-now that the arm is controlled, slight lift up the elbow and then slide your right hand underneath it (palm down) and grab your left wrist with your right hand (again no thumb). You want to try to take up as much space as possible when you lock up the figure 4, which will make the lock as tight as possible, so try to get your right bicep to the back of their left tricep, and grip your left wrist with your right Palm as close to their arm as possible. You can further take out the slack by flexing both wrists (like you are “slowing down a motorcycle”) which will also keep the back of their left hand flat on the floor as well as giving you a more advantageous leverage position and lift their left elbow up higher off the ground to begin with. If you do all of this right you should feel like you are hugging/crushing their arm and head together as well (though shouldn’t be using much effort to do so, just take up the slack/space).

-now you are ready to shift to your actual submission position. To do so imagine drawing a semi circle around the top of their head with your left elbow until the back of your left tricep/elbow is against the far side of their head/face. Beware, if you have really locked up the Americana correctly a lot of people will be tapping as or even before you reach your destination. You should now be in a very solid “submission position” and your opponent should already be starting to (or fully if they have tight shoulders) feel the effects of the lock.

-finally to complete the submission just slide the back of their hand on the floor towards their feet while pulling their elbow back towards their body and letting up slightly on their left elbow. Again, if you set it up right this should require inches to a fraction of an inch of movement before they are tapping (if they even made it this far) unless they are extremely flexible (in which case you would need to switch to a submission extension, combination, or control and striking (if doing MMA).

Ok, that’s a wall of text I know, I just hope it’s clear enough to understand. I could show it to you in person or teach you in person very easily, but sometimes it’s harder to covey detailed physical movements via purely text. If it wasn’t let me know. Hope this helps.

[quote]Loftearmen wrote:

[quote]Sentoguy wrote:

[quote]Loftearmen wrote:
Awesome, thanks for that video Sento[/quote]

My pleasure. :slight_smile:

Also, I know you said you’ve got the Americana a number of times, but if you want any pointers on executing that lock, extensions or combinations off of it, or set ups let me know. That is one lock that IMO we LSM guys do as well if not better than anyone else out there and a lock that I can confidently say I have to the point of “unconscious competence” (where it’s so natural to me at this point that I no longer have to consciously think about it but instead can just “flow”).[/quote]

That would be awesome! I really appreciate it. Right now I set it up by getting a side mount, pretending to fight for an underhook and then sitting out into a scarf hold. They stick their hand in your face every single time. Then I grab their palm and twist it out Aikido-style as I tuck my right hand under their arm to establish the lock. I put my head against the back of my right hand and use my weight to press it down as I pull their elbow into their side. It is very effective but I would love to learn better ways to throw it on people.

Tonight we drilled escapes from the side mount by elbow push, rolls, reversals and spinning out with the underhook.

This is the one I liked the best:

[/quote]

That’s a nice reversal, I’ve done and taught that one to my guys. You can also use the same mechanics to roll someone no Gi with a kimura from half guard or the bottom or even if they have a kimura on you from side control (though that variation is more intricate).

We were actually practicing it with no gi. I saw in the video that he grabbed the guy’s belt to roll him over, we were reaching over the shoulder and grabbing the guys armpit/lat which seemed to work pretty easily. If you can reach your other arm under their arm and make a gable grip behind them it gets REALLY easy to toss them over the top but that’s hard to set up so I imagine I’d just have to get lucky. Thanks for the breakdown of the Americana. I don’t have time to look over it now but I will read it in detail tonight.

16" Deadlift
135x10
225x5
315x3
405x2
495x2
585x2
675x2

Barbell Row
225x10
225x10
225x10

T Bar Row Dropset
5 platesx5
4 platesx8
3 platesx10
2 platesx10

Pull up-barbell shrug-rear delt raises-hammer curls
X3-315x10-25’sx10-50’sx10

Heavy Bag
1 min/1 min restx20 min

I focused on my jab, speed and footwork. No kicks today because of the scabs on my feet. My jabs felt very quivk and snappy but my elbow was flaring more than it should have.

BJJ class was pretty good. We went over some crazy ass gi choke that I will likely never use. I tols coach it didn’t feel natural so we drilled the same stuff from Tuesday which was more important imo. Then we rolled for about 20 min until he tried to jump guard and pulled my knee directly into his balls.

My coach is competing at the Europa in June and needs to work on his s&c so I will be working that with him.

Yeah, there are some really fancy exotic Gi chokes that are rare for even the best players to catch live. They’re like a Gogoplata, they can be fun to train every once in a blue moon, but unless you are naturally incline to pulling off that skill you will likely only ever catch it if your opponent literally puts themselves into the move and even then, it’s not going to be a skill that is one of your “go to’s”.

AM
Squats
135x5
225x5
315x2
405x2
455x2
495x2
315x5
315x5

Leg Press
14 platesx3x8

Shitty workout. The rack and bar were really low quality which made squatting difficult. Also, there was a mirror in front of the squat rack which really messed me up.

PM
Heavy Bag work
2 min/1min restx30 min

Awesome bag session. Worked my jab primarily and turning my shoulder into the cross without leaning sideways.

BJJ open mat

Rolled for around 20 min, drilled some reversals from the guard with a new guy.

DB Clean and Press Burpees
60lb DB’s

1 min/1 min restx3 rounds

DB alligator walks w/ 60lb db’sx1 min

30 sec alternating db rows (60lb db’s)/30 seconds bear crawl to front rolls x 4 rounds

Rolling was good. My defense is getting better. I could identify when coach was going for subs much faster which helped me get out of them before he locked them down. Conditioning work was brutal.

Nice conditioning circuit. How do you feel your conditioning is coming on?

I have pretty good conditioning for my size. I can keep up with the guys over 200lbs but I do gas faster than some of the little guys. I am working on that though. My conditioning is improving quickly and my weight is slowly dropping as well at rate of approx a lb a week. I was 300lbs even this morning.

AM
Bench Press with 65lbs of chains
135+chainsx5
185+chainsx2
225+chainsx2
275+chainsx2 (I heard a !pop! and felt a sharp pain in my neck/shoulder. Exactly like last time I hurt it. DAMMIT!)

225+chainsx5
245+chainsx5

It was only getting worse so I quit. How frustrating…

[quote]Loftearmen wrote:
I have pretty good conditioning for my size. I can keep up with the guys over 200lbs but I do gas faster than some of the little guys. I am working on that though. My conditioning is improving quickly and my weight is slowly dropping as well at rate of approx a lb a week. I was 300lbs even this morning.[/quote]

I don’t doubt it mate. I don’t know if you saw it, but Alpha had a pretty awesome post on big guys in combat sports the other day - he absolutely nailed it.

300lbs and falling eh? You are well on your way to toothpick territory.

Do you have a link? I’d love to hear Alpha’s thoughts on this. He’s one of the few lifters on here who really seems to know his stuff. I’ll bet he was a beast in the ring.

[quote]Loftearmen wrote:
Do you have a link? I’d love to hear Alpha’s thoughts on this. He’s one of the few lifters on here who really seems to know his stuff. I’ll bet he was a beast in the ring.[/quote]

The guy is definitely legit. I’m getting to the end of this cycle on 5/3/1, and I’m seriously considering adjusting my programming to be more like Alpha’s. 5/3/1 is great, and I am making progress, so I don’t want to go too far away from it, but I think for my goals, my training could be better optimised.

Here’s the quote:

[quote]Alpha wrote:

It is true that the more mass you carry, the more oxygen it takes to move all of that muscle and I would agree that it is inefficient, but having the strength to fall back on when the other guy’s technique is better than you is always a good thing…

but I’m gonna have to disagree with you when you said that heavyweights don?t have the same fight in them as smaller fighters. You have to look at it from a different perspective. A heavyweight has to manipulate as well as get hit by much bigger, heaver opponents. Consider doing barbell complexes with 265lbs as opposed to 135lbs. same movements, but when you have manipulate a much heavy weight (your opponent) then the energy expenditure is higher so they tend to get tired faster. Also every shot you take from a pro heavyweight fighter is like doing 20 burpees. It exhausts you, most people don’t know that.

At my fight gym, I see heavyweight guys train with smaller guys all of the time and the bigger guys don?t really get smoked or out worked, but the smaller guys do. However, if you stick a heavyweight with another heavyweight and both guys have trouble lasting into deep rounds. Consider every punch that you have to absorb from another heavyweight is like getting hit with a 20-40lb baseball bat. Then 265lbs gets slammed down on top of your sternum tot he point you can’t breathe and you are trying to bench press it off while it is moving all around. If you are lucky enough to stand back up it is either max effort power clean (fighting for take down) or getting hit in the head with that 20-40lb baseball bat again. A human body can only handle that for so long before it gets tired. Little guys are fun to watch because it seems like they are really going at it, but in reality they are grappling with and getting hit by half of the weight. This is why knockouts are pretty rare in lightweight while heavyweight fights can end at any second.

A normal person would tapout if they just got put in side-mount by a heavyweight who knew what he was doing. I don?t think you are giving those guys enough credit. They are just as mentally tough as the smaller guys. Just my opinion and i totally respect yours but? Compare house cats and tigers. both are cats, both attack in similar ways. House cats will fight longer than tigers. Did the tigers quit sooner because they were mentally weak and physically tired or because of the brutality and significance of the blows. i can’t say for sure because I am personally not a tiger, but I digress…

As far as saying that pro fighters don’t do anything but train because that is their job: No disrespect, but You are very wrong here my friend. The MAJORITY of fighters still have to hold full-time jobs because they don’t make any money on fights. Even a lot of guys in the UFC still have to have part-time gigs to pay their bills. Fighting as a full time job, in reality, probably only makes up about 20% of the top pros. That is like saying professional bodybuilders, powerlifters and strongmen don’t need regular jobs. There is just not much money in these fringe sports.

NOT DIRECTED AT YOU OR YOUR POST:
I hate when people say things like, “well of course they are that good, they are a professional, training is all they have to do all day.” It is not a true statement and it sounds an awful lot like an excuse for not putting in the work. If the majority of professional fighters, powerlifters and strongmen are all still holding down full-time jobs, why do we feel like it is impossible? Not to mention the fact that they have been a professional for a very short period of their careers. So how did they reach that level? Not too many had the luxury of just quitting their jobs and going for it.

This is something I cannot seem to comprehend. Most people spend more than 20 hours a week in front of the television or on the internet. Maybe if they took some of that time and applied it to training rather than wasting it then maybe they could be a professional as well. But people would rather rip down a professional athlete?s work ethic like it is easy for them. If you even want to get to the crossfit games you will be training 6+ hours a day. Go on youtube and check out “a day in the life” of some of the the top crossfit competitors and you will see them waking up at 0400, working out, training clients, working out, running classes, working out, eating in the gym because they don’t have time to stop by home… And that is for a $250,000 prize or something lame like that. I am not a huge crossfit fan, this is just an easy way to illustrate my point.

Most people could be so much further along if they actually invested the time and effort into their passion rather than worrying about overtraining or what their macros are. Don’t look at what the top athletes are doing right now, look at how they got there. Most of the time the regimens are insane.

A lot of people will look at the amount of work I do and the weights I do and think it is extraordinary, but in reality it isn’t that impressive. It is all relative. To me, when I look at the guys who are performing how I want to perform, I am a little above average in strength/skill and work sorta hard by comparison. The only reason why i made the jump from where a lot of guys in this forum currently are and where I am now is because i refused to believe that next level guys were more genetically gifted or on roids, or whatever other excuse I could come up with for why I wasn’t there. But the truth was that I just wasn’t working hard enough/pushing my self far enough and wasn’t putting in the amount of time needed. When i made the change in my mentality and my workouts, I entered a different level. Right now I am just trying to figure out what i need to do to get to the next one. But one thing I know for sure is that I am not going to get there by doing less, working less hard/smart and giving into all of the reasons why I cannot achieve that level. [/quote]

"A lot of people will look at the amount of work I do and the weights I do and think it is extraordinary, but in reality it isn’t that impressive. It is all relative. To me, when I look at the guys who are performing how I want to perform, I am a little above average in strength/skill and work sorta hard by comparison. The only reason why i made the jump from where a lot of guys in this forum currently are and where I am now is because i refused to believe that next level guys were more genetically gifted or on roids, or whatever other excuse I could come up with for why I wasn’t there. But the truth was that I just wasn’t working hard enough/pushing my self far enough and wasn’t putting in the amount of time needed. When i made the change in my mentality and my workouts, I entered a different level. Right now I am just trying to figure out what i need to do to get to the next one. But one thing I know for sure is that I am not going to get there by doing less, working less hard/smart and giving into all of the reasons why I cannot achieve that level. "

^This. There are times when I feel like I could do more. More often though, there are times when I feel like I need to stop training so much and spend more time with my family. I came up with an easy solution though, now I just train with my family and kill two birds with one stone lol.

The kids enjoy going to Jiu Jitsu and I think it’s a good way for them to learn a useful and important skill, get a little exercise, make some friends and spend some quality time with Dad.

My neck is already feeling a lot better. I think the muscles just spazzed out for a while and needed some time to calm down. I’ll try to train some more tonight when I go home.

Shadow box 2 min
DB OHP 50’sx10
Shadow box 2 min
DB OHP 50’sx10
Shadow box 2 min
DB Press 50’sx10
Shadow box 2 min
DB Press 50’sx10
Shadow box 2 min
DB Press 50’sx10
Shadow box 2 min
DB Press 50’sx10
Heavy Bag 3 min
1 min rest
Heavy bag 3 min
1 min rest
Heavy bag 3 min
1 min rest
Heavy bag 3 min
1 min rest
Heavy bag 3 min
1 min rest
Heavy bag 3 min
1 min rest

I wish I had some footage from tonight to share with yall. I finally realized what Irish meant by “sitting down on your punches” and I was throwing punches that would go straight through someone without any tension at all. It didn’t happen until I got tired and started trying to conserve energy and then out of nowhere I started hitting the bag devastatingly hard without even trying to. It was crazy how I could use so little energy yet transfer so much energy theough my hands. I still have a lot of improving to do but this was a bit of a breakthrough for me.

Using 50’s for the DB Overhead presses was a bad idea. They weren’t challenging at all, I should have gone with at least 70’s but I thought that I’d be too fatigued from the shadow boxing. I guess my conditioning is a little better than I thought it was.

Conditioning (20 seconds work/10 seconds rest)

  1. Alternating Jump Lunges/Push Upsx5 rounds

  2. Squat Jump High Knees/Push Up Position DB Rows (55lb DB’s)x5 rounds

  3. DB Goblet Squats (55lb DB’s)/Gorilla Runsx5 rounds

Went over some simple, easy gi chokes and did some light rolling. I was wiped from the conditioning work. It was pretty brutal.

AM
Barbell Row
135x10
225x5
275x5
315x3
335x3

DB Row
110x10
130x10
110x10

Band Assisted Pull Ups
X5
X5
X5

Barbell Curls
45x20
65x15
85x10

I killed it this morning. I could have done more on the pull ups but I still got some really good work in. I AM OFFICIALLY UNDER 300LBS AS IF TODAY! Hell yea!! 299.4lbs

PM
Shadow Boxing
5x3

Heavy Bag
5x3

1 min rest between sets