Review of Dr. Rhadi Fergusons Free Grappling Teleseminar!!!

A couple of months ago, I attended Dr. Fergusons MMA Teleseminar and was completely blown away with the level of information he provided, so when I heard that he was doing another free Teleseminar, I signed up immediately because I knew it was going to be some good stuff.

As usual, Dr. Ferguson did not disappoint. The topic of the seminar was essentially the 5 things that every grappler needs to find excellence. Essentially a “best practices” of Grappling excellence. The content was excellent in itself, and one of the things that stood out to me immediately was the fact that this was geared towards Grapplers of all styles, and not any one specific Grappling style. He made a point to mention also that this is not Mixed martial arts (think UFC, Strikeforce, etc…), but rather the Grappling sports by themselves (wrestling, Judo, Brazilian or Gracie Jiujitsu, Sumo, Sambo, etc…) Dr. Ferguson explained the 5 things that he found all excellent grapplers had in common and that you will need to explore if you want to reach excellence in your own practice. The 5 things were simple things, on the surface. The kind of things that if you just saw the list of the 5 things you might say, “well, duh. That’s pretty obvious” however, when Dr. Ferguson digs deeper into the subjects it becomes clear that there’s more than meets the eye. He does a great job of explaining seemingly simple things well and revealing angles that you might not ever consider unless you are coming from his specific background, experience and perspective.

What I like about Dr. Fergusons Teleseminars and his products in general, is that he speaks a variety of languages when teaching. I don’t mean this in the “english, french, japanese” sense, but I mean that he is able to explain things in a variety of ways that speak to different aspects of peoples personalities and the end result is that his explanation is very very easy to remember. For example, he will explain using analogies that are both funny and easy to identify with, like a DJ at a club, for example but then he will tie this into some super technical information that would otherwise seem dry and difficult to remember. He is teaching complex subjects in a way that anyone can understand and this is the mark of a highly skilled educator, in my opinion.

Another job well done, Dr. Ferguson! I look forward to participating in more of your seminars in the future and enjoying more of your products (just got Judo Scouting reports last month and love it!)

Regards,

Josh Vogel

Quick review of 2011 Mundial live stream on Budovideos.com

I’m always super excited whenever it’s Mundials (The Brazilian Jiujitsu World Championships) time. There’s nothing like watching the best competitors in the world competing against each other in the event they have been preparing for all year.

I love the live stream that Budovideos puts out for their events. I’m not really much of a sports fan, so I’ve never ben bitten by the Superbowl bug or felt the excitement that many feel in watching the World series; but now I understand how those folks feel when Superbowl sunday comes around. The Mundial is my Superbowl and watching the live stream makes it so much more exciting than scanning twitter or the forums (Sherdog.com, MMA.tv, Nhbgear.com) for results in text. My face still hurts and my nails are all bitten off from getting all crazy watching sundays matches, haha.

Besides getting to see pretty good quality video of the matches, I enjoyed the live Chat feature tremendously. The folks on the chatboard were very helpful with keeping each other informed about prior results, names of competitors and other information. I don’t know if they (Budovideos.com) did any giveaways this time but in the past they have given away gift certificates for their store if the folks in the chat room answer certain trivia questions correctly. There are also some funny sons of bitches on the chat as well.

Please bear in mind that I’m no expert on camera equipment, camera angles, lighting, etc…but I thought that the streamed video looked good and I was able to see all the matches very well. Some people on the chat were saying that their stream kept on freezing but I had no significant problems.

All in all I have no complaints. I thought it was awesome. I did only watch on Sunday, so I cannot comment on Saturdays stream but since Saturday was free I can’t imagine having anything to complain about. Sunday was great and well worth the ten dollar price tage. I will certainly watch whatever events Budovideos.com hosts online in the future.

Thanks!

Josh Vogel

Mginaction website review!!!

When I first heard that Marcelo Garcia and Josh Waitzkin were putting together a website, I was pretty excited to see how it turned out. I’ve been a huge fan of Mr. Garcia for years, watching every scrap of footage I could find on Youtube and Dailymotion almost daily and studying it to see what I could implement into my grappling.

Mr. Waitzkin came to my attention through his excellent book, The Art of Learning. Having a similar background in Chinese martial arts and an interest in chess (an interest, but no skill haha) I picked the book up and thought it was brilliant, so I kept an eye open for new media, articles, etc…that he was putting out.

The website. Mginaction.com , as an educational resource, is amazing. Before I get on to the features of the site, one thing I want to point out is that this site is in constant evolution, which is an amazing thing in itself. The staff at Mginaction are always improving the site, adding new features (such as slow motion on the video) or updating the site (making it available for use on iPhones and other smart phones, for example); it’s clear that they are focused on creating the best resource possible.

The actual website is something that takes a while to digest. What I mean is that it takes time to understand exactly how much you can actually do with this site as there are so many features and ways of cross referencing things, bookmarking, etc…That being said, the site is very, very easy to use and is aesthetically pleasing to look at to boot. Features wise, the video stands out the most for me. At the point of this review, there are close to seven hundred videos of Marcelo Garcia sparring with students, drop ins and visiting Black belts from just about everywhere in the world. He rolls with white belts, he rolls with guys who have placed on the medals stand at Black belt in the Mundials and he rolls with everyone in between. There’s even footage of him rolling with one of his teachers, Fabio Gurgel on there. The footage of him rolling with all of these people alone is well worth the price of admission, in my opinion. Just off the top of my head, there’s footage of him rolling with Fabio Gurgel, Jimmy Pedro (Judo Olympian), Ben Askren (Wrestling Olympian), Jt Torres, Ryan Hall, Chris Moriarty, Paul Shreiner, and dozens of other amazing grapplers.

What can I do with this footage? Well, on Mginaction, I can slow the footage down to varying degrees of speed to break down exactly what is happening during the roll. I can see a list of the techniques that Garcia uses during the roll and click on any of those links to see dozens of other sparring sessions where he uses the same techniques, short clips of him sparring with these techniques and instructional clips of him actually teaching the techniques and sequences that he uses. So, for example, when I went to visit the school last July, they filmed our sparring session. I can look at the footage on Mginaction.com and see that Garcia guillotined me about eight times in a five minute roll. I can click on a link to the right of that video to see  more videos of Marcelo Guillotining people (which makes me feel a lot better that he makes it look so easy with everyone else too lol). I can click on another link to see hundreds of short clips of him guillotining people in sparring situations, which I can use to see how he sets up and transitions to the guillotine in different situations. Then, I can click on a variety of links to see Garcia actually teaching the guillotine and variations of it, different sets ups/transitions, etc…in an instructional format. So not only did I get to learn from my experience getting whupped on by Mr. Garcia at his actual school, but I can look at the footage and they have already broken down the footage for me.

This brings to another point and a brief interlude: When you sign up for a year on Mginaction, you get a free week of training at Mr. Garcias academy, or you get half price on the drop in fee should you only stop by for a day (I think it’s $40 usually, $20 if you have a membership to the site). His school is awesome. The students are all cool and there are a lot of really skilled people to train with and while I’ve only been to the school once, it seems very very easy to get a chance to roll with Marcelo himself, which is a great learning experience. You may luck out and have the footage put up on the site for you to study as well. In short, stop by the school. Awesome people, awesome training, awesome changing rooms and bathroom. Awesome mats.

Back to the features, so now you can break down whatever footage you like. There are also sections where you can see Beginner technique instructionals, Advanced technique instructionals, Individual technique sparring clips, Full sparring sessions, Drills that Garcia and the class perform and Discussions that Mr. Garcia has with his students and with visiting “Celebrity grapplers”. The discussions section is a nice addition because you can listen to Garcia discussing theory and his ideas about positions, techniques, strategy and grappling in general with a variety of people like Ryan Hall, Mark Bocek and others.

There are other features, like bookmarking your favorite videos, etc…which are cool but that I won’t write about as I have not explored them yet. The forum is another aspect of the site that is very useful. Students who have questions about anything can get answers about training at the academy, how Mr. Garcia feels about certain topics or deals with certain situations, etc…The answers are usually from students close to Mr. Garcia so while I don’t know if Marcelo actually goes on the forums, he answers through these intermediaries. Lots of good knowledge on there.

On Sherdog forums, someone asked me how, in the year and a half/two years or so that I’ve been on this site my game has benefited from being on the site and how much I have improved. I feel like it’s silly to quote myself, but I’m going to do it any way because I think it’s the best way that I could explain what I’ve gotten from the site:

“when I take the time to drill and implement the things I have learned directly and observed from the website into my training systematically and regularly I notice that I improve at what I work on. I usually use instructionals to enhance things that I already do rather than learn completely new things, so while I have started doing new things like north south chokes and spiral armlocks , I feel the best improvements have come in my footlock guard (or one legged x guard), open guard passing and in practicing, avoiding and observing how one of the best deals with other high level guys in certain “niche” positions and transitions (avoiding 50/50, for example).

I feel like the website has influenced my training and improved it for sure. I don’t know if I could give a percentage or quantify exactly how much, but the benefits that I have received far exceed the sum of money that I’m paying.

The site helps if you just watch the content. The site, like any educational service, will benefit you more if you study and implement well. For me that means note taking, video breakdown and lots of drilling.”

Ok, the absolute BEST thing about this site is that it is updated almost every single day. New sparring videos, new instructionals, new everything. Always new footage to analyze, always new instructionals to learn from. To sum, the whole site is absolutely brilliant and the fact that it is always updated both boggles my mind because it probably takes so much work to do, but also impresses the hell out of me and is just one more thing that sets this website far far apart from any other Bjj educational resource around. My perspective as someone who has been using the site for a couple of years is that it’s amazing how much the site has improved and I’m excited to see it’s evolution over the next few years.

One last point about the site that I want to mention is that there is a referral program, so if this review helped you and you want to check the site out for free for a week, please use my username “Sloth” as your promo code. You will get a free week and I’ll get $25 if you decide to sign up. You can then do the same thing and have other folks use your username as a promo code. This is legit, by the way, I just got a check from them the other day and was pleasantly surprised. Thanks Mginaction!

Movnat Seminar with Clifton Harski review!!!

On Saturday I had the pleasure of attending a Movnat seminar (movnat.com) with one Mr. Clifton Harski. I’ve been interested in Movnat for a little over a year and a half when my buddy James showed me some articles about Movnat founder Erwan Lecorre. James ended up attending one of Mr. Lecorres seminars in NYC last year and gave rave reviews so I resolved to go to the next one that I could attend.

In the mean time, I read every article I could find on the system and other systems of natural movement. Most of what I read about the Philosophy of Movnat made perfect sense, so when I found out that there was one here in Philly on April 30th I signed up immediately. When that saturday came, I arrived at Fairmount park with some Vibrams (those peculiar looking, but highly comfortable/functional “toe shoes”), some shorts and a bagged lunch packed.  I met some of the other attendees and they all seemed like pretty cool people, friendly and from a variety of backgrounds they all shared an interest in Natural movement. Some came from Triathalon background, some from a Crossfit background, some from no athletic background at all. A good mix of folks from all walks of life. Some of the people mentioned being into the Paleo diet, which I know very little about, but sounds interesting as well. I liked that everyone came from different backgrounds and “scenes” , but no one was irritating or obnoxious about it.

We started off with some basic awareness and posture drills which flowed into some technical movement drills and technical modifications to the way we walk. Everything covered in the seminar was technique oriented, but not overly so. We came away with more efficient ways to walk, run, jump, climb and lift as well as some play time using our imagination to create obstacles and using our training partners to help us develop agility, strength or a number of other skill sets. It was technical, but technical in favor of simplicity and function rather than being overly detailed to the point of being frustrating.

In this way I thought that on a technical and in some ways philosophical level, Movnat seemed almost like the Gracie Jiujitsu (Brazilian Jiujitsu) that I practice, only instead of applying technique to a person you are applying it to your environment in as technical and efficient a way as possible to accomplish your goal. A technical way to climb a tree or jump off of a log, or as in the case of Bjj a technical way to break an arm or apply a choke. Technical drills to improve efficiency and skill in doing things that are natural to human movement. Jiujitsu is in a lot of ways the application of a certain Philosophy and the corresponding technique to the human skill of fighting and Movnat seems to be the application of a certain Philosophy and it’s corresponding technique to other human skill sets (running, jumping, climbing, etc…). Some of the drills that we did at the Movnat seminar are things that we do regularly in Jiujitsu (standing up in base, shrimping) and what I found interesting is that these are done in Bjj with the intent of escaping a partners attack, but in Movnat these same movements might be used to accomplish something completely different, like using standing up in base to get up on a beam to balance, or shrimping to scoot underneath a low ceiling or under a wall. Very interesting an eye opening.

On a work out level, I was sore as hell for about a week afterwards. All of the movements we performed were of a whole body movement variety. Very few things were done with isolated sections of the body only (and if they were, they were a supplementary drill as part of a larger movement). I’m young and in fairly good shape, so I was able to perform all of the activities without too much difficulty and the ones I had trouble with I felt that I would be able to improve systematically with the training methods provided during the seminar. This is stuff that anyone can begin to work on and with practice will be able to develop the requisite skills to do what was covered in the seminar. It’s also easy to see that there are higher level skills that are reserved for more experienced practitioners, as is true in any system; but I can also easily see that you can modify your workout yourself to challenge yourself past your limits simply with the things provided in the seminar. You learn how to jump off of a log. Once you get good at that then you learn to jump off of a log onto a precise target, or jumping a longer distance or over something, etc…

I won’t attempt to describe the Philosophy of Movnat as their website and related articles does more justice to the system than I would be able to with more eloquence than I possess, but one thing that impressed me the most about it was that I came away with a perspective towards movement that felt much much more “useful” than other work out systems I have been exposed to. Useful, efficient, fun, technical are all words that I would use to describe the experience.

The instructor, Clifton Harski, did an excellent job. He comes from a pretty extensive background in fitness and movement and shows a genuine passion when speaking about the Movnat system. He explained the techniques and philosophy well and was very open to questions and concerns during the seminar. As someone who has been to and been involved in orchestrating a number of Bjj seminars and teaching one or two myself, I appreciated that he was skillful in his presentation. He spoke clearly and well, was friendly and energetic and provided enough information without overloading the participants. That’s my long winded way of saying that Clifton does a damn good seminar and I will definitely be participating in future events.

To sum, if you get the chance to do a Movnat event, do it. I felt like it was worth every penny and as with the memorable seminars that I’ve been to in the past I came away with technique/skills to work on as well as Philosophical insight that changed my perspective on how I work out.

Regards,

Josh Vogel

Dr. Rhadi Ferguson coaching call and Teleseminar review!!!

Dr. Rhadi Ferguson coaching call review.

Being on Dr. Fergusons email list, (Rhadi Ferguson, Ph.D., CSCS | strength and conditioning | mixed martial arts | judo) I receive notice of new products, seminars and training tips pretty regularly. Last week I received an email that he was doing a free teleseminar on mixed martial arts and was pretty excited to check it out.

I own a number of Dr. Fergusons products as well and was always amazed at how thorough and well put together the information was, so A free teleseminar sounded pretty awesome to me, so I made a note to call in on Wednesday evening.

As I listened to the information that Dr. Ferguson shared in that seminar, I was struck by how little I really know about the business and training ends of professional MMA. Dr. Ferguson talked about a number of things ranging from coaching, to planning to marketing to the Bjj belt system and different types of “teams” in MMA and it was all extremely fascinating. What struck me the most was how insightful, intelligent and simple he made these subjects seem. Excellent information, excellent explanations.

At the end of the teleseminar, he provided the attendees with an opportunity to win a free half hour one on one telephone coaching session with him. Impressed with the teleseminar, I applied and won one of the spots for coaching. Awesome!

We scheduled the call for sunday evening and when Sunday came I had a list of questions layed out I my notebook as I was unsure of how a coaching call might work. When we spoke on the phone, Dr ferguson was very professional and organized while still being a cool guy to talk to. He had a list of my questions and concerns about MMA and training on hand and we jumped right into the material. He took time to answer those questions thoughtfully and in an easy to understand way as well as answering a number of questions and issues that came up on the fly in our discussion. To sum, I feel like I came away from our talk with a deeper understanding of MMA coaching, training as well as understanding some concepts that could easily be applied to other areas like Bjj and Judo. More than anything I think I see how little I know, but now I have a few little kernels to dig into that I think can lead me in a direction that I can learn from.

If you are involved in MMA or grappling in any capacity, I would highly recommend seeking out Dr. Fergusons coaching services. Sometimes you think you know something about something and then you talk to someone who has a higher level of expertise and it opens up your eyes and changes the way you think. That experience is more valuable than all the armbars, sweep combinations or throws in the world. That’s good coaching and Dr. Ferguson is that guy. Definitely seek out his services, it’s well worth it!

Another bonus that Dr. Ferguson shared with me was a free copy of his “Gold mettle plan” which turns out to contain a lot of the answers to the questions I discussed with him yesterday. Here’s the site if you want to check it out for free:
Gold Mettle Plan Super FREE Gift

To sum, check out Dr. Fergusons products and services, he’s a super smart guy, knows a hell of a lot about grappling and mma and is a cool guy to talk to. You will come away better from it.

Josh Vogel

How to use video footage and note taking to improve your grappling

 

There are a ton of resources available for study when looking for competition footage. There are youtube.com and dailymotion.com, of course. These are the most easily accessible  sources of footage. There are also videos of tournaments available for purchase from various websites. Big name tournaments such as the Mundials (World chamionships), the Pan ams, Adcc, etc…are all available in prettty much every year of these tournaments existence and the quality of footage, camera angles and organization of these dvds gets better and better with each release. These are all available on a number of websites like Budovideos.com for purchase and are the best quality source of tournament footage to analyze, in my opinion. Mainly because when you watch a dvd, you can easily control the speed of the dvd (slow motion), pause and jump back and forth between matches easily. Plus the excellent video quality and camera angles is generally much better than you will find on Youtube or Dailymotion as those are mostly user uploaded videos taken from the bleachers (this is, of course, not always the case. There is plenty of great footage available on those sites), so what I’m saying is that if you can get your hands on actual tournament dvds, it’s worth it, but if not then youtube and dailymotion are excellent sources as well.

In this article, I am working from the idea that I have a technique that I already do that I want to improve on (as opposed to learning new techniques or new ways to solve problems). So the first thing to do is to decide what it is that you want to improve. For the purposes of this article I will say that I want to improve my mount position maintenance and apply a choke.

The second step would then be to find out who is using the mount successfully at the highest level of competition in the last few years. Off the top of my head, Roger Gracie and  Xande Ribeiro would be good examples for study.

Step three would be to get my hands on as much footage as possible of them using the mount position in high level competition in recent years. Again, youtube, dailymotion and individual competition dvds are excellent places to find footage.

Now you have some study materials. The next step would be to analyze your own performance. Write down what you do well from the mount, what you try but are unsuccessful with and what you get close to accomplishing, but can’t quite get. The “almost” moves are important because you are, often times, only a detail or two away from being successful. Write down how people are escaping your mount, which side they are escaping to that gives you trouble, and how you usually react to these things. You want to have as detailed an idea in your head as possible what you do from the mount. You cannot correct your problems if you do not know what they are, or exactly what you are doing. Feedback from training partners and instructors is especially valuable for this process.

Now, you have a rough outline of your game, your strong and weak points, you can begin to analyze footage of grapplers. You want to start off by analyzing grapplers that are as similar to you in body type, training style and techniques used. You are looking for someone who is like you and doing what you do, just doing it much much better against high level opponents.

Use slow motion features to slow down footage and really observe what is going on as much as you can. Pay attention to the order that they are doing things in, how they deal with problems that you struggle with and try to understand why they are successful with things that you are having trouble with. Sometimes it’s simply a matter of experience, muscle memory and time spent training. Sometimes it is a matter of technical detail. You might just be missing one thing, or reacting in a way that is not as efficient as possible, or zigging when you should have zagged. It might be a matter of timing, or something else. Write down everything that you think of, you can always sift through and organize the details later.

Once you work your way through the grapplers most similar to you, try to seek out footage of other grapplers using the Mount position (or whatever you are working on). These grapplers may be physically, mentally and technically completely different than you. It doesn’t matter, you are looking to see how different people approach the same position. Broadening your horizons and expanding your knowledge of the position. You may find a detail where you least expect it that makes all the difference in your training. Again, write down everything that pops into your head, organize later.

You should have a pretty good chunk of notes by now and a bunch of new material to try out. This is when the process of experimentation, sifting through what works and discarding what doesn’t, and training the things that you feel suit you best begins. This kind of thing is best saved for another article later on, but this should be a good start. I think the most important thing to remember is that you are doing all of this to supplement your training, not as a substitute for training (unless you are sick or taking time off or something). Use the fruits of your note taking to improve your grappling skill, it’s easy to get to caught up in the thinking, but ultimately it’s the doing of the thing that is going to help you improve.

Sao Paulo Guard pass dvd review!

I recently received a copy of Tony Pacenskis new Guard passing dvd, the Sao Paulo approach to passing the guard and was pleasantly surprised by the content on this set. The dvd is broken down into a brief introduction, explaining a bit about the content and parts 1 and 2 of the instruction.

Part 1 is footage that was shot during a seminar in July 2010 in Pennsylvania. The topic of the seminar was guard passing, specifically what Pacenski calls “The Sao Paulo approach” to passing the guard. He begins with a pretty thorough explanation of a traditional standing guard break to put context to the later material. After explaining the traditional standing break, he goes into passing De la riva guard, the sitting guard, Reverse De la riva guard and approaching the open guard if there is no physical contact made between yourself and your opponent. The techniques that he teaches are well explained and form a pretty logical sequence as they progress through the various sections. The techniques are broken down into groups of two or three techniques/concepts followed by a quick recap at the end of each section. What I liked about this particular set is that the camera man films from good, clear angles and Pacenskis voice is clear and audible at all times during the set. That’s one of the things that sometimes turned me off to seminar dvds in the past; that the audio was generally spotty and the angles are not always the most clear. Good job done here.

Technique wise, part 1 sets a good foundation for a clear system of passing some of the more commone types of open guard games that people are playing now. Part 2 goes deeper into more advanced problems that one may come across when using this system of passing against higher level opponents.

Part 2 is filmed as a classic Bjj instructional format in that there is an explanation of technique and the conditions that it is meant for and then there is a demonstration of the technique. Like I said above, this part troubleshoots the system laid out in part 1 and goes deeper into passing more complex guard games using the same concepts laid out in part 1. He also goes briefly into the Sao paulo/Tozi/Wilson Reis pass system at the end of part 2 which I liked a lot.

What I like about this dvd is that I’ve seen in competition and have been taught all of these passes from different people in the last two or three years, but I’ve never seen them all tied together into one coherent system as they are on this dvd. It is a good introduction to a style of guard passing that the highest level of competitors have been using lately and touches upon some more advanced ideas in part 2 without going overboard and getting too complicated.

Without revealing too much,the whole dvd revolves around two central concepts/themes. One that deals with a specific passing concept and one that involves what happens immediately after the pass in side mount. Everything stems off of those two ideas if you watch this dvd, and then watch 2009/2010 Pan ams and Mundials footage, you will start to recognize these two themes immediately.

In short, I would definitely recommend this dvd to my friends and students and think that it would be suitable for all belt levels, but especially for Blue and Purple belt level students. Well worth the price, check it out in the store section of Soulfight.net

This dvd gets Two snaps and a twist

Josh Vogel