There’s a lot of combat sports information online and it’s hard to know what is relevant for MMA. In this article I want to give a broad overview of the specific strategies that can hinder your transition to MMA.
MMA started to see which martial art was best with minimal rules. Before MMA martial artist would spar to test their effectiveness. Often sparring would lead to competing. These competitions would develop into a combat sport. All combat sports have a specific rule set. And theses rule sets determine which techniques and strategies work best in their given sport. The longer a sport is around the more techniques and strategies change to take advantage of the sports specific rule sets. Thus making the martial art less effective in MMA.
Wrestling, Ju-Jitsu, Boxing, and Kickboxing are all considered hard combat sports because of there effectiveness in self defense and their reliance on live sparring. But as I said above these all have different rule sets that can give us bad habits in MMA.
Like I’ve said before everything works sometimes and a lot of the things from these disciplines do transfer to MMA. But I want to talk about a few of the ones that don’t.
Because of the rule set in wrestling the athlete is encouraged to stand narrow, bent over at the waist.
This stance is ineffective in MMA because you can’t check kicks and your face is out to be hit. Striking requires you to start out at a longer range to avoid these strikes and you have to work your way in intelligently in order to put your self in position to start wrestling.
Because the wrestlers stance is so low this requires you to shoot down on one knee to get beneath your opponents hands.
In MMA you stand your opponent up with punches and kicks and bend at the waist for the takedown.
This works better in MMA because you don’t get stuck as much under your opponent when he sprawls and often you can easily take your opponent down because they are off balance.
Wrestler spend a tremendous amount of time in the front head lock and collar ties. While these are effective in MMA punches and kicks again change the way you do it. Also wrestler develop entire strategies to hold down their opponents because the rule set doesn’t allow you to clasp your hands together. In MMA you can clasp your hands together making body locks much easier.
Even when your opponent is the better wrestler on paper you can still win the scramble with clasped hands (aka body lock). It is that dominant of a control and wrestler can’t use it because of their rule set.
When ever I think of a rule set making a fighter jump through hoops to accomplish something you can simply do in a no rules fight I think of this.
Wrestler’s also ware shoes. This is important because it requires you to use specific techniques to get your leg out when you are caught in a single leg. In MMA it’s easy to turn your hips away from your opponent and limp leg out of their grip.
MMA takes place in a cage. You can use the cage to stop your opponent from double legging you by using it as a barrier to put your back against. Below is a good example of punching into a double leg and the other fighter using the wall to stay up.
It’s also used to stand up by wall walking if you are taking down. This makes it easier to stand up against someone who is a much better wrestler unless he understands the specific strategies involved in cage wrestling. It also makes getting up from turtle easier because you can crawl or but scoot to the cage and use it to get up.
In MMA I prefer to start out trying to ankle pick my opponent because it’s non committal. I start out by establishing a jab and then I use a jab to their shoulder and push with it while reaching down with my rear hand and picking their ankle.
If I fail in my attempt I can just let go and restart striking. I don’t get caught underneath my opponent and I don’t have to worry about getting guillotined.
And if you do Ju-Jitsu you might think that being on the bottom in guard is a neutral position but it’s not. Your opponent is wining on the score cards for being on top plus he can use gravity to strike down on you and keep you pinned to the floor.
And in Ju-Jitsu you are rewarded points every time you pass to side control and then you get more points going to mount. But in MMA the only thing that matters points wise is staying on top. So Ju-Jitsu athletes try to go to mount from side control and end up getting their legs caught and getting put right back into half guard.
Then they will try to pass to side control again and end up just repeating the cycle over and over again wasting energy when they could just stay in half guard and strike.
Or you’ll be in side control and your opponent will turtle and you’ll jump on the back and try to put your hooks in only to be shaken off the top, letting your opponent stand up and giving up dominant position.
Maybe you’ll be the one in bottom side control and you will have been taught to never give up your back so you spend time and energy trying to get back to half guard when you could just turn and turtle and build a base to stand up. Remember time spent with your back against anything is time you are losing the fight.
Or you will fall in love with boxing and think you can stand bladed until someone kicks your leg off.
These are just some examples of other sports making your transition to MMA harder and things you should watch out for.