How can I improve if I have no money to train at a gym, and no trainer. I have a friend who’s a decent wrestler, but I’ve got his number once it goes to the ground. Ideas? Suggestions? Am I an idiot?
nope, you’re not an idiot. i’m kinda in the same boat…i have a gym, but no training partners (the classes are at night and i train in the morning when i get off work).
i think you can train on the qualities that make good fighters…endurance, strnegth etc. also, you can do some drills with your buddy. one thing that a guy i trained with does if he’s training with a new guy, is put himself in a bad spot to learn how to work out of it. if you put yourself at a disatvantage to your training partner, it’ll give ya both work
another thing that i’ve been doing, is doing a ciruit of muay thai drills. rope jumping for a minute at one station, walking clinch knees at another for a minute, knuckle pushups, moutnain climbers, shadow box, etc. just get a cheap kitchen timer, and it’ll be a snap.
good luck, and let me know of any drills you come up with…i’m running out of ideas!
The best thing about a gym are not the facilities, but the human resources and a big group of people with different skill sets, backgrounds, body types, and so forth.
man if you have a training partner, you guys could youtube the shit out of new moves and techniques and then practice on each other
I’ve done the whole youtube thing, but honestly it gets old after a while. If I had a eight guys it wouldn’t be as bad. But the guy i’m working with now only works with me because he’s got shit else to do. I do look up a lot of boxing/thai drills, techniques, and so forth but it’s hard to feel like I’m improving at any tangible level if I can’t test myself against guys with some skill.
What are you trying to get better at? You can work on striking a lot on your own, but grappling is hard without partners.
[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
What are you trying to get better at? You can work on striking a lot on your own, but grappling is hard without partners.[/quote]
So is striking, if you ask me. You can (probalby, if you understand what you’re doing) get faster, stronger and more technically sound on your own, sure. But nothing’s going to replace sparring, partner drills and … some more sparring. Timing and coordination are just as - if not more - important as speed and power. Hard to practice those alone.
[quote]FirestormWarrior wrote:
FightinIrish26 wrote:
What are you trying to get better at? You can work on striking a lot on your own, but grappling is hard without partners.
So is striking, if you ask me. You can (probalby, if you understand what you’re doing) get faster, stronger and more technically sound on your own, sure. But nothing’s going to replace sparring, partner drills and … some more sparring. Timing and coordination are just as - if not more - important as speed and power. Hard to practice those alone.[/quote]
I’m not saying that training with a partner isn’t optimal- it is. But plenty of work can be done on one’s own… double end bags, shadow boxing, etc. will teach speed and coordination… heavy bags for power, etc.
Timing and range are probably the two most difficult to teach without partners.
Totally not the same I know, but when your working with a heavy bag and you want to get your timing and range a little better… Every fifth punch or so throw a real choked up cross that more of a push. It’ll get the bag swingin’ back and forth a ton and then you move with the bag staying in punching range or pop it with a combo each time it comes back. What do you guys think of that?
I also like to stay well outside of range and throw a big step jab, cross, hook. Makes you transition between closing to jab, maintaining distance for the cross, and getting in effective range for the hook while readjusting for how much the bag moves.
I don’t think you really can train very well on your own unless you have a good background. Even most of the MMA gyms out there aren’t very good. You’ve only got a handful that you can really become a top level fighter at in the whole country. Then there are some others where you can become an good local fighter at.
On your own you might be able to pick up a couple of things, but you will only really be able to get bare basics and even then you are probably doing them wrong. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do, but I think training on your own is not really something that is easily done without a strong background, like if you were training hard and are pretty good and you have to move somewhere where there is no school and you basically teach people to be your training partners. Even then it is very very hard. If its just recreation, go for it, but remember that at best that’s what you are doing.
[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
FirestormWarrior wrote:
FightinIrish26 wrote:
What are you trying to get better at? You can work on striking a lot on your own, but grappling is hard without partners.
So is striking, if you ask me. You can (probalby, if you understand what you’re doing) get faster, stronger and more technically sound on your own, sure. But nothing’s going to replace sparring, partner drills and … some more sparring. Timing and coordination are just as - if not more - important as speed and power. Hard to practice those alone.
I’m not saying that training with a partner isn’t optimal- it is. But plenty of work can be done on one’s own… double end bags, shadow boxing, etc. will teach speed and coordination… heavy bags for power, etc.
Timing and range are probably the two most difficult to teach without partners.[/quote]
You’re right on that one. However, since he said he had no money for a gym, I didn’t suppose him to have access to any stuff.
Im in the same boat, lack of money to train. I am predominatley a striker though. You can make yourself alot more fluid training by yourself you have to be creative.
I have shadowboxed a whole lot more, focusing on head movement. I do situational rounds where im ali fighting off frazier type, keeping range and pivoting, then vice versa bobbing and weaving, setup overhand rights with a double jab etc. You cant shadowbox enough, plus its good to work your cardiac hypertrophy to get you in shape.
I have some bungees that I use for overspeed punch training on my bag. IE i start at the point of most resistance and it allows my hands to fly faster. I use them as resistance to train knees.
Bagwork for strength endurance and technique. The first two i do punchout, and kickout rounds. Your technique can always be better, so i start off with individual tech’s plus footwork and then add in combos. Most people stand in front of a bag and wail away, while it is not as good as a person to train distance, it can be quite good if you just allow it to swing and envision it as an opponent, train angles feints, pivots etc.
I also work rounds of just footwork too which i find really fluidizes my movement.
[quote]666Rich wrote:
Im in the same boat, lack of money to train. I am predominatley a striker though. You can make yourself alot more fluid training by yourself you have to be creative.
I have shadowboxed a whole lot more, focusing on head movement. I do situational rounds where im ali fighting off frazier type, keeping range and pivoting, then vice versa bobbing and weaving, setup overhand rights with a double jab etc. You cant shadowbox enough, plus its good to work your cardiac hypertrophy to get you in shape.
I have some bungees that I use for overspeed punch training on my bag. IE i start at the point of most resistance and it allows my hands to fly faster. I use them as resistance to train knees.
Bagwork for strength endurance and technique. The first two i do punchout, and kickout rounds. Your technique can always be better, so i start off with individual tech’s plus footwork and then add in combos. Most people stand in front of a bag and wail away, while it is not as good as a person to train distance, it can be quite good if you just allow it to swing and envision it as an opponent, train angles feints, pivots etc.
I also work rounds of just footwork too which i find really fluidizes my movement.[/quote]
Completely agree
hey guys same thing up where i live (barrow,Alaska!) - only difference is there is a gym but it is just down right abused…it’s the local community college gym but they really don’t take care of - which makes it perfect cuz me and my training partners get the ghetto gymnastic mats and do our mma training there …lil cave man style training and we gotta deal w/ what we have.
it’s like we have one dude who’s a hw, then me a mw, then a lightweight partner. So it’s not an even match when we do anything ya know in physical section anyway.
i agree w/ everyone on shadow boxing - we do that so much. We do a lot of body wgt exercises and sprints/jumprope kinda deal.
we really have to be ghetto about a lot things i mean we duct tape the mats that are available - use black gorilla duct tape on the floor for agility ladders, jumping over benches …you name it!
here’s one lil conditioning routine i created (probably made up already) but i felt good about it lol -
1-2-3 sprawl
jab - sprawl
(switch 90 degrees left / right)
jab - straight - sprawl
(switch 90 degrees left / right)
jab - straight - hook-sprawl
(switch 90 degrees left / right)
sprawl - jab - straight - hook
and of course switch up combos for whatever float your boat…