Ground conditioning

[Shogun Rutten]

I was just wondering if anyone has any good conditioning tips for on the ground, preferably ones that can be done by oneself.

 

[Matt Thornton]

I was just wondering if anyone has any good conditioning tips for on the ground, preferably ones that can be done by oneself.

Sure thing.

Shrimping, do that as fast as you can with perfect form. Do it forwards, backwards, side to side. You'll get tired after a while.

Want one that you'll get real tired from? Just do bridges. Like you're bucking someone off of you. Try to do 100 bridges. If you want one even harder, bridge with just one leg at a time. I guarantee you that will get tough.

Do you know how to stand up to your base? If not, look here: http://www.lockflow.com/article_view.php?id=606

That's the proper way to stand up from the ground. Just do that to both sides, repeatedly.

If you have a floor bag (a heavy bag that's laying on the floor), or a dummy, you can practice matador guard passes.

If you've ever wrestled, or learned takedowns, you can take shots and sprawl. Great workout.

Divebomber pushups are great conditioning for grappling.

Gymnastics are great for any sort of grappling, because they build your kinesthetic awareness (which is incredibly important for grappling). We warm up in wrestling with gymnastics every day. Try cartwheels, front handsprings, shoulder rolls, forward rolls, walk on your hands, and backwards rolls with a handstand pushup to get to your feet.

Try looking at some of these drills:

http://www.lockflow.com/article_view.php?id=761

http://www.lockflow.com/article_view.php?id=143

http://www.lockflow.com/article_view.php?id=261

That last one, the wall spin, is great for developing your guard. Try doing a wall spin, starting with your head pointing AWAY from the wall, and your feet touching it, doing a 360 on the wall. It's called a full wall spin, and it's killer for your abs, and it's great for developing your guard.


If you want a bunch more drills that will condition you for the ground, as well as drastically improve your grappling game, I recommend you buy "Grappling Drills" by Stephan Kesting. Probably the best $45 you can spend on improving your grappling if you're a beginner or intermediate grappler.

http://www.grapplearts.com/Grappling-Drills-Info.htm

http://www.budovideos.com/shop/customer/product.php?productid=20673&cat=447&page=1

 

[Matt Thornton]

Oh yeah, these aren't exactly specific to grappling, but will condition you for it nonetheless:

-Burpees

-Capoeira

-Yoga

-Weight training

-Bodyweight exercises

and in my opinion...

-Plyometrics.


I really believe, if there's something I've learned about grappling since I've started, the way to work a submission is to wait, and then EXPLODE. You can't muscle a submission onto a good submission fighter. It's all about how quick and cunning you are. So you either need to lie in wait, or you need to fake another submission, and then EXPLODE into the one you want to do.

Two things are good for that. The first one is endless drilling of a technique once you learn it. Don't do it 3 times and assume you "have it down." That's what I used to do. Instead, try drilling it 20 times perfectly with your partner, with no discussion about it, unless you need to correct how your partner is doing that. You'll drill the move into your muscle memory, and the more you drill it (to a certain point), the easier it'll be to recall it. As my wrestling coach says, "Simulate match conditions." So drill with a purpose, and visualize hitting the move in the match.

The other thing I think that will aid in this is plyometrics. They'll help you be more explosive in nature, which is important for getting a submission, reversing a position, etc. Good grapplers wait, plan their moves, and then explode into action.

Again, buy that grappling drills DVD. It's absolutely awesome.

 

[randomg1t]

thats some good advice, i'll do some of that too. great contribution man.

 

[Coach Couzo]

Thanks IceMan.

I've used many of those drills and never know they were on one tape.

 

[ironneck]

good stuff iceman!!

 

[Shogun Rutten]

Hey thanks a lot Iceman great tips.

 

[LCDforMe]

Nice posts brotha. I have been doing a lot of the burpees latley and those have helped my conditioning quite a bit.