Rousey Sparring

Sorry, I wasn't very clear. I don't mean from the double unders. I mean when you and your partner both have an underhook and an overhook. If you don't step but he does on the switch, you will have your underhook paired with the rear leg, while he will have an underhook paired with the lead leg. This means he can lift easier with his underhook than you can, or he can whip you over easier with his overhook because you are reaching with the under.

 

This is what I imagine a female athlete with very little competitive wrestling training would do in front of a bunch of cameras. Who knows what her real training is. I can tell by just watching the way she moves, wrestling is not her strong suit. When you have that much of a judo advantage and you are going against vastly inferior athletes for a profession, why the fuck would you change it anyway?

Vid of what normal high level wrestlers pumel like:

Its pumelling, not freaking ballroom dancing.

 

I've seen this video of yours and I appreciate how the high level wrestlers are doing it.

The people in the beginning who are just switching from side to side - isn't that just the standard drill taught to beginners? The gym I'm at, even the Muay Thai has a similar intensity to the advanced guys in your video, but we still start with that switching back and forth thing.

 

So pummeling as you do it is a noncompliant isolation drill, like "just grip fighting" in judo/sambo?

 

There's a pretty sick suplex you can do when your opponent has double unders.

 

Basically, yes. Grip fighting is a good analogy. However, you can vary the "compliance" level. Sometimes at the OTC, we would do 100% pummelling live for 90 minutes. That can be harder than a 90 min match. Most days we would do it to warm up for 15 minutes or so, both guys going about 40%.

I can tell you this: Never, not even once, have I seen at our Olympic center or any of the 35 countries I have wrestled in, not a single wrestler older than 10 years old do the kind of pummelling I see most Americans teach. If 2 guys started pummelling like Rousey in practice, they would legit get asked to either leave practice or start taking it seriously.

You know how you can just watch someone who doesnt understand the first thing about arm bars try drilling them and you immediately know that they have absolutely no fucking clue what is going on? Well, when real greco wrestlers watch someone pummell, they can see the same thing. The sad thing is that Honda is more advanced than a lot of people in MMA at pummelling. She at least moves her feet a little bit and circles.

 

Even from a Muay Thai standpoint that is a terrible technique. So much Muay Thai bullshido these days, it ain't even funny.

 

I just thought the pummeling drill that you call dancing is something done for like 3 mins to warmup like doing shrimps in BJJ.

If its actually the equivalent of grip fighting randori then i can see why you are mad at it.

 

Where I train, we start off with the pummeling you compare to ballroom dancing to warm up and then slowly build into what your example of real pummeling is. I really don't see the problem with doing it the first way if all you expect to get out of it is a warm up before the real training starts.

I've literally never trained with a decent fighter who didn't move their feet and circle during "active pummeling" similarly to the way it's being done in the video you shared. You're acting like it's some insanely difficult concept to grasp when it's very basic. Fighters obviously aren't going to look as good as guys who do nothing but wrestle but they certainly don't just stand there while pummeling back and forth when that isn't what the drill calls for.

 

Wrestlers always get enraged if you question how real what they're doing is.

 

I generally agree with you. The examples of bad pummeling that Holt posted are extreme examples, but pummeling that Rousey was doing I would consider a nice general warm up. The pummeling that Holt is talking about is a drill that I think should be implemented by instructors after a few months. Just long enough to where both guys know enough to use technique but not go full retard. It's a great warm up for experienced guys.

I just don't think that's the only way pummeling should be done. There is a line in between. You can pummel well, without being incorporating variations in grips, while still not being lazy or sloppy.

There is a balance that can be attained that can be introduced for the needs of the principles you want to pass on to your students for that particular day.

One thing though. I think non wrestling based grapplers are very shitty and introducing the concept of head placement into pummeling excercises. Really really shitty.

 

There is nothing wrong with it. The problem I have is when people teach that as pummeling, or even call that pummeling. Its the equivilent of someone doing stationary arm circles and putting up a youtube video labelled as a shadow boxing tutorial.