The Danger of MMA Sparring

[SummerStriker]

I know a lot of people have strong feelings on MMA classes where the arts are not separated, or where they are separated for technique but the sparring is integrated.

Advantage in an MMA match often comes down to applying a technique or skill that the other man doesn't have. It makes sense to me because in the gym, often injuries sparring happen when they do exactly that - apply a technique that counters the technique from another art.

Ignoring the true Scotsmen who say that the proper way of using these moves will protect you from the counter, and that may be true, people doing multiple arts have a hard time getting to the level people claim to be proper: MMA fighters bend at the waist when taking shots, drop their hand to telegraph punches and kick with the wrong part of their foot while leaning when they don't mean to. Despite being good at fighting, sometimes any individual thing they do will be weaker than a dedicated artist.

So here are the main ways I think people get hurt in MMA classes:

Jumping, twisting or spinning to escape a hold or submission they don't understand.

Resisting a takedown they don't understand and taking the fall crooked or folding a part of their body under the wrong way because they expected the fall to be in the other direction.

Slipping a punch so that a body kick hits you in the face.

Shooting into an up knee.

Kicking without head movement or disrupting the opponent who is ready to throw a clean punch and getting caught in the teeth while standing on one foot.

_______________________

In my opinion the absolute worst of these is the fall. I think Judo is the most dangerous martial art and wrestling the hardest. People who are capable of obtaining skill in those arts almost always have something strong inside them. A major advantage when applying those arts in mma is that people often don't know what direction they will be thrown or what they need to do to protect themselves during a fall.

Worse, throws can be easier in mma, and easier against someone with limited grappling because of how tall they stand. The fact that they are standing tall means they have a long way to fall.

I have never seen people so hurt sparring MMA as I have from takedowns and falls.

The unfortunate things for dedicated MMA practitioners is that their takedown skill is even weaker than a BJJ man's. While wrestlers and Judoka may have dozens of take downs, a BJJ man will have fewer because of the additional demands of submission grappling and MMA men will have even fewer than that. Not only will they have fewer but all the time they spend on standup and ground fighting means that they will have even less time to spend learning them. One day a week on throws and takedowns is like absolutely the best most people ever get, and usually that one day a week includes a very limited set of takedowns: single and double leg, one or two throws, and maybe a few odd ball ones you aren't likely to see again to keep it spicey.

The result is that you have people suffering falls they don't understand from greater heights, applied with fear as a driver.

How do you believe that this risk should be mitigated?

My belief is that some throwing skill should be a pre-requisite for MMA sparring, that students should learn some throws and take downs that include leg grabs and going over the hip, to the left and right, including trips. That before MMA fighting they should compete in kick boxing and submission grappling first.

In addition to all that, something I am a firm believer in is clinch fighting with off balancing. When sparring in the clinch, throwing strikes like in MMA or Muay Thai, you can also try to roughly off balance the opponent or get into a position where a takedown could be finished, by lifting the opponent on your hip, grabbing his legs deeply or rocking him onto one leg. This motion can be as rough as you want, but once in the position you shouldn't complete the takedown unless you can control your partner's fall.

"Throwing him is my business - how he falls is his business," is a saying for fighters ready for full contact MMA competition who have completed many kick boxing and submission grappling matches, and that for MMA students care for the opponent is extremely important because they are still learning an art, not fighting.

I believe training in this way could give people a lot of skill and strength but mitigate a large degree of the risk involved in the activity. It would allow students to practice correct MMA decision making without wrecking people with throws they may not know or burying them in the floor.

I know I've written about this on here before.

Can you tell me how I'm wrong?

 

[exclamatio]

I really share your sentiments mate. I think fear and flinching can be reduced and risk mitigated by spending a lot more time learning to fall, and learning to be hit before going into all out sparring with too many options.

Worrying about being hit makes you get hit more, and take worse damage. Worrying about the takedowns and throws freezes you up and makes you easy to throw and stops you going with it, forcing you to be broken by it!

 

[Grappleboxing]

That is the thing about MMA sparring is that there are so many dimensions of fighting, no one is going to be well-rounded in the beginning. Forcing people to learn important basics in each will teach stuff like basic striking, breakfalling, and proper submissions and their defense. With the newer generation growing up with mma instead of wrestling then bjj+striking, I feel the risk of injuries in mma sparring will decrease.

That being said, another major problem is the bonehead/ stupid sparring common in many gyms. Light sparring matches become gym wars and that wears down you faster than any fight as you take bumps day in and day out.

 

[SummerStriker]

With the newer generation growing up with mma instead of wrestling then bjj+striking, I feel the risk of injuries in mma sparring will decrease.

Can you elaborate on that?

 

[Grappleboxing]

Can you elaborate on that?

Sure. I feel the next generation, people like Rory and PVZ learned from the mistakes of the first generation and the second generation fighters.

The fighters are training smarter these days(generally), so they wouldn't have as many boneheaded injuries from training.

Also with integration of all aspects of mixed martial arts, they won't be as prone to falling back to bad habits acquired in other martial arts like wrestling or BJJ.

Knowledge of the MMA game as a whole with its transitions and the ins and outs of grappling to striking and vice versa is a whole lot better than having a base and trying to branch out from it, in my opinion.

 

[DoctorTaco]

Far and away the 2 largest "in house" threats to an Mma guy are sparring too hard and over training.

Last minute injuries from pros of the highest level are so common in the UFC it's become a running joke. I think sparring too hard and wearing down the body too far are far bigger culprits than improper technique

 

[ChachiKiller]

I know a lot of people have strong feelings on MMA classes where the arts are not separated, or where they are separated for technique but the sparring is integrated.

Advantage in an MMA match often comes down to applying a technique or skill that the other man doesn't have. It makes sense to me because in the gym, often injuries sparring happen when they do exactly that - apply a technique that counters the technique from another art.

Ignoring the true Scotsmen who say that the proper way of using these moves will protect you from the counter, and that may be true, people doing multiple arts have a hard time getting to the level people claim to be proper: MMA fighters bend at the waist when taking shots, drop their hand to telegraph punches and kick with the wrong part of their foot while leaning when they don't mean to. Despite being good at fighting, sometimes any individual thing they do will be weaker than a dedicated artist.

So here are the main ways I think people get hurt in MMA classes:

Jumping, twisting or spinning to escape a hold or submission they don't understand.

Resisting a takedown they don't understand and taking the fall crooked or folding a part of their body under the wrong way because they expected the fall to be in the other direction.

Slipping a punch so that a body kick hits you in the face.

Shooting into an up knee.

Kicking without head movement or disrupting the opponent who is ready to throw a clean punch and getting caught in the teeth while standing on one foot.

_______________________

In my opinion the absolute worst of these is the fall. I think Judo is the most dangerous martial art and wrestling the hardest. People who are capable of obtaining skill in those arts almost always have something strong inside them. A major advantage when applying those arts in mma is that people often don't know what direction they will be thrown or what they need to do to protect themselves during a fall.

Worse, throws can be easier in mma, and easier against someone with limited grappling because of how tall they stand. The fact that they are standing tall means they have a long way to fall.

I have never seen people so hurt sparring MMA as I have from takedowns and falls.

The unfortunate things for dedicated MMA practitioners is that their takedown skill is even weaker than a BJJ man's. While wrestlers and Judoka may have dozens of take downs, a BJJ man will have fewer because of the additional demands of submission grappling and MMA men will have even fewer than that. Not only will they have fewer but all the time they spend on standup and ground fighting means that they will have even less time to spend learning them. One day a week on throws and takedowns is like absolutely the best most people ever get, and usually that one day a week includes a very limited set of takedowns: single and double leg, one or two throws, and maybe a few odd ball ones you aren't likely to see again to keep it spicey.

The result is that you have people suffering falls they don't understand from greater heights, applied with fear as a driver.

How do you believe that this risk should be mitigated?

My belief is that some throwing skill should be a pre-requisite for MMA sparring, that students should learn some throws and take downs that include leg grabs and going over the hip, to the left and right, including trips. That before MMA fighting they should compete in kick boxing and submission grappling first.

In addition to all that, something I am a firm believer in is clinch fighting with off balancing. When sparring in the clinch, throwing strikes like in MMA or Muay Thai, you can also try to roughly off balance the opponent or get into a position where a takedown could be finished, by lifting the opponent on your hip, grabbing his legs deeply or rocking him onto one leg. This motion can be as rough as you want, but once in the position you shouldn't complete the takedown unless you can control your partner's fall.

"Throwing him is my business - how he falls is his business," is a saying for fighters ready for full contact MMA competition who have completed many kick boxing and submission grappling matches, and that for MMA students care for the opponent is extremely important because they are still learning an art, not fighting.

I believe training in this way could give people a lot of skill and strength but mitigate a large degree of the risk involved in the activity. It would allow students to practice correct MMA decision making without wrecking people with throws they may not know or burying them in the floor.

I know I've written about this on here before.

Can you tell me how I'm wrong?

Not sure it is a right or wrong issue. There are so many things in training that could be overhauled because rather than coming from one background, MMA requires exposure to all aspects. Take a judo class and the first thing you learn is to fall. Take a BJJ class and it is shrimping or something.

Landing correctly takes a bunch of practice. Try teaching an overly offensive minded MMA community how to land for a few lessons. Also, try to find people with enough knowledge to teach all that material in one human. In addition, in a judo class the safest people to play with are the more advanced people because they know how to throw you in a controlled way. Take an MMA class and you have more inexperienced people who see an opportunity to pick someone up and throw without helping them to land. In every throw there is a class way and a more aggressive way. Unless you get seriously into training that, people will not be able to reach levels of a controlled throw and good landing, so you will never be rid of it.

MMA standup is good until you look at sport specific fighting like boxing or kickboxing. There are serious fundamentals missing at the UFC level because these guys have to cover so much ground. With throwing inexperience or landing inexperience, you will probably never be rid of this because they require as much practice and are less innate that punching and kicking. You will be missing the fundamentals because it is such a small part of an MMA match (albeit a brutal one) that to train it to an accomplished level would diminish other aspects.

My guess is to really find the things (like you did) that cause injury and stress absolute control because they cannot be taught in a flyover manner. Dabbling in proper class throwing or landing will not eliminate the prob. Perhaps stress policy AND teach it.

 

[biscuitsbrah]

Takedowns in small confined areas with no control or regard for others have caused a ton of injuries from what ive seen.

 

[SummerStriker]

There are serious fundamentals missing at the UFC level because these guys have to cover so much ground.

My guess is to really find the things (like you did) that cause injury and stress absolute control because they cannot be taught in a flyover manner. Dabbling in proper class throwing or landing will not eliminate the prob. Perhaps stress policy AND teach it.

Safety policy is really important, and I think that must be hard to teach because of the kind of person that wants to learn how to fight and who can get good enough to become advanced. I was out of town at a gym a while back where I had a buddy. He warned me not to spar with another out of town guy who happened to be there and who had a lot of color and stripes on his BJJ belt.

So I don't like backing down from color belts but I don't want to get hurt and have my buddy be offended because I didn't listen to him so I go watch the guy roll, and he just fucking spinning armbars the shit out of this white belt and hyper-extended his arm. The armbar looked good for a street fight, and they guy starts talking shit about how he scored the armbar because of a technical deficiency. The head instructor of the gym apparently didn't care and thought that this was fine behavior. I think it is dangerous, unacceptable spaz.

The unfortunate thing is that this is what some community leaders just happen to be like. I was at a karate sparring night a few months ago where two people got concussions and the head instructor thought it was normal.

It is my opinion that if someone has a good way of going about all this stuff, they are really lucky to have inherited it or put a lot of work into it.

On fundamentals - I think we need a new way of talking about fundamentals for MMA because the way that we talk about them is a problem by itself. This would go double for JKD as well, where you are training MMA for self defense which usually means you are trying to learn kung fu and kali on top of MMA.

If the best in the world have fundamental flaws, are those flaws actually in fundamental areas or have those fundamental areas been demoted to actual curiosities? For example, the most difficult etude for violin might be necessary for learning a difficult concerto and it would be a fundamental for a classical violinist, but for someone like Lindsey Sterling who has to dance, sing, song write and play violin, those difficult etudes are NOT fundamentals, they are curiosities. She's like the MMA of music. Violinists scoff at her technique, but there are fundamentals of song writing, dance, stage presence and singing she has to get down that are just curiosities for other performance artists.

When we call everything a fundamental when talking about MMA, we are hampering the ability of individuals to prioritize. What if someone can't breakfall because they are trying to learn "fundamentals" like transitioning to the truck from a back take to get a twister submission? If everything is a fundamental it is hard to know where you are spending your time on an advanced etude you don't need to play.

I don't think safe falling, locking, choking and striking is beyond the scope of even the average weekend warrior, but there are some problems with how time is allocated and I think a part of that comes from too many things being called fundamentals, with safety instruction and care for partners taking a back seat to some of it. I mean, it is probably boring.

Imagine all the time spent learning to slip right without eating a kick, and shrimping, and break falling, and how to escape heel hooks, and how to apply a spinning armbar safely and blah blah blah. I think there is friction there.

So then, for the MMA coach, having a better grasp of what is a fundamental in a single combat sport but just a curiosity for MMA, and what the fundamentals are of each sport in mma that are needed to insure safety.

Then you have new MMA fundamentals that are necessary for safety, including white belts defending heel hooks, using your legs to bend so that you can change levels and slip without eating kicks, and striking during range changes are all the new bread and butter you might not have to worry about in those other sports.

 

[ddjkd]

I think the main point of what your saying is fundamentaly sound.

I don't come from a sport/mma background (I do self-defense stuff) so there are things I'm concerned about more in terms of causing injury while training than bad falls. But not knowing how to mitigate damage when falling as well as throwing can cause all kinds of problems regardless. It matters on both ends.

In a more general sense, sparring to me is just one of many different kinds of pressure testing. I just don't think it's a good idea to pressure test something until it starts becoming second nature. I see a lot of people doing that at a competitive level and in the self-defense realm of things and it can really lead to serious injuries.

I'm not sure how well this would work in an MMA gym, but there are similarities between what I do and MMA, so I think this would help at least some degree.

I work on introducing different tools to use at different ranges/angles/elevations one or two at a time. I won't move on to new material until or unless a student first demonstrates at least basic competency with those tools, which includes going through pressure testing that progresses in intensity as they are able to handle it.

Once they do that, then I introduce more tools for each range/elevation/etc. The end result of this is that students are spending all of their time integrating ranges, without getting lost in an ocean of tools/techniques. I find this helps people control their movements in ways that prevents injury.

An example. The bigger guy in this video is one of two people I am teaching currently. He's not quite ready for sparring yet, but he's very close. This was a drill we did to see how well he used his offensive/defensive tools with someone crowding him a bunch.

With how well he did here, I'm going to bring down the pressure and start hitting back so we can get started with actual sparring soon, then ramp the pressure up again as he gets more comfortable doing that with more tools.

As a note, I would NEVER do this drill with a new student. Both for their safety as well as my own. I've put a lot of time into learning how to take hits and minimize the impact on my joints etc. It really pays off at the end of the video as you will see. I didn't get any thing more than a little soreness in the knee the next day.

I have no idea how to embed videos on this site, so here's the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEAAaQTXvBE

 

[ChachiKiller]

I think the main point of what your saying is fundamentaly sound.

"I didn't get any thing more than a little soreness in the knee the next day."

Man, that thing really seemed to buckle you. I hope you are okay.

 

[MuayThaiDude]

I think the main point of what your saying is fundamentaly sound.

I don't come from a sport/mma background (I do self-defense stuff) so there are things I'm concerned about more in terms of causing injury while training than bad falls. But not knowing how to mitigate damage when falling as well as throwing can cause all kinds of problems regardless. It matters on both ends.

In a more general sense, sparring to me is just one of many different kinds of pressure testing. I just don't think it's a good idea to pressure test something until it starts becoming second nature. I see a lot of people doing that at a competitive level and in the self-defense realm of things and it can really lead to serious injuries.

I'm not sure how well this would work in an MMA gym, but there are similarities between what I do and MMA, so I think this would help at least some degree.

I work on introducing different tools to use at different ranges/angles/elevations one or two at a time. I won't move on to new material until or unless a student first demonstrates at least basic competency with those tools, which includes going through pressure testing that progresses in intensity as they are able to handle it.

Once they do that, then I introduce more tools for each range/elevation/etc. The end result of this is that students are spending all of their time integrating ranges, without getting lost in an ocean of tools/techniques. I find this helps people control their movements in ways that prevents injury.

An example. The bigger guy in this video is one of two people I am teaching currently. He's not quite ready for sparring yet, but he's very close. This was a drill we did to see how well he used his offensive/defensive tools with someone crowding him a bunch.

With how well he did here, I'm going to bring down the pressure and start hitting back so we can get started with actual sparring soon, then ramp the pressure up again as he gets more comfortable doing that with more tools.

As a note, I would NEVER do this drill with a new student. Both for their safety as well as my own. I've put a lot of time into learning how to take hits and minimize the impact on my joints etc. It really pays off at the end of the video as you will see. I didn't get any thing more than a little soreness in the knee the next day.

I have no idea how to embed videos on this site, so here's the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEAAaQTXvBE

I really like JKD and consider it, in a way, the precursor to MMA. I try incorporate the intercepting fist into MT. I wish they had a JKD school in the DC area.

 

[ddjkd]

I think the main point of what your saying is fundamentaly sound.

"I didn't get any thing more than a little soreness in the knee the next day."

Man, that thing really seemed to buckle you. I hope you are okay.

Thanks for the concern

The redman suit/hockey shin guards help a LOT. Also, over the last six years of training in this I've eaten a lot of those kicks. As long as my front foot isn't completely flat on the ground and my knee straight, I'm able to sort of "crumple" with the hit, sort of like how a car bumper works to cushion the impact to avoid injury.

Learning to do that sort of thing is actually one of the main warnings given in the papers they send you if you buy one of those redmain suits. The gear does a lot to protect against surface and subdural impact damage, but it does very little to protect against hyperextention or other range of motion related injuries.

That said, there's always a physical limit to what anyone can handle. That same student managed to bruise my ribs THROUGH that same chestguard I'm wearing in the video last year because I decided to be an idiot for a day.

Long story short... Work boots (he didn't have time to get home after work) + me being too lazy to put on better chest protector/use other equipment/work on different things = don't try this at home, which is exactly what I did.

 

[ddjkd]

I really like JKD and consider it, in a way, the precursor to MMA. I try incorporate the intercepting fist into MT. I wish they had a JKD school in the DC area.

I'm not affiliated with this JKD organization in any way, but I've seen them put out some good quality stuff and it appears they have an affiliated instructor in the DC area.

It's worth taking a look at I think, the guys who run the organization know what they're doing and I have a hard time imagining them affiliating with an instructor who can't to a good job passing along the material.

http://www.jkdwednite.com/official.htm