DKMMA Zero 2 Hero MMA Training Camp

 Always wanted to LEARN MMA and test yourself in competition?

Here is your opportunity!

The Zero 2 Hero 6 Week MMA Training Camp is back!

Contenders will train in 4 sessions per week for 6 weeks learning the fundamental skills of Mixed Martial Arts.

Start Date is Monday 13th January!

They will then fight on our Bushido Amateur MMA event at the end of the program.

The matches are held under a modified ruleset which allows the participants to gain valuable experience while minimising the risk of injury.

This program is limited to 12 Participants.

We are now taking bookings for the next Contenders program.

This course is suitable for complete beginners of all fitness levels. Once you complete the course you will be given a opportunity to compete in our Bushido Amateur MMA competition.

WHAT DO YOU GET?

6 weeks of training 4 times a week!

High level coaching in BJJ & MMA from our highly experienced team!

MMA Training uniform!

Train alongside our current competition team!

Opportunity to Compete in Bushido Amateur MMA!

WHO CAN JOIN?

We are only taking 12 contenders!

It is open to people of any skill and fitness level. Ideal if you have done zero or very little training before.

=================================

What are you waiting for?

Book your Spot here :

https://dkmma.com.au/mma-zero-2-hero-course

MMA Training : FOCUS ON TECHNIQUE

FOCUS ON TECHNIQUE

One common theme that you will notice when you look at the top-level fighters in MMA, Boxing, Muay Thai or any other Combat Sport is that the best fighters always have perfect technique. Fitness, strength, and determination will get you far in the fight game but usually, it will get you to a point where you come up against someone with equal levels of Fitness, Strength and Determination but who has also put years of diligent practice into developing flawless technique.

If all the physical skills are roughly equal the person with the better technique will always win.

This is relevant for fighters and competitors but is equally applicable to non-competitors who are just looking to get the most out of their martial arts training

There are many different aspects of martial arts training. These include Physical training, Mental training and Technique Training.

The area from which you will get the most return on investment is in focusing on your technique.

Strength and fitness are very important. There is no excuse for a Martial Artist or Fighter to be unfit or out of shape.

However, You will reach a threshold for your physical attributes, a certain level of strength or fitness that it will be difficult to move beyond without requiring you to focus exclusively on strength or fitness training.

The good news is that that type of effort is usually not required. The most successful competitive fighters across all sports do not usually look like power-lifters, marathon runners or the world's strongest man.

The reality is that it won't really make much difference how strong or fit you are if your technique is breaking down under pressure or if you are making basic mistakes such as not keeping your guard up.

Another reason why I would put technical training above strength or fitness training is that with fitness training you will lose the benefits of it very quickly if you stop doing it. If you are running every day and then take a month off you will lose all the gains that you have made.

Compare that with technique training. When you learn a technique properly, understand every tiny detail of all the movements which make the technique work and then practice it thousands of times, it is very unlikely that you will forget how to do it.

TECHNICAL TRAINING VERSUS SPARRING

How much time should you spend on technique training compared to Sparring? What is the point of having perfect technique if you can't apply the technique under pressure?

This was a common problem with traditional martial arts training. There were many experts with perfect technique who never sparred or pressure tested their technique to find out if they were actually able to use it against resistance.

The opposite is commonly seen these days in the MMA era. Fighters who don't even understand the basics but spend all their time sparring instead of technical training which would actually improve their overall performance and results.

A lot of the sparring and training footage that I see from other gyms it is actually detrimental to their fighters development. The fighters are actually ingraining and hard wiring bad habits that will become even more difficult to correct.

Every fighter only has a finite number of sparring rounds in them. We need to weigh up a cost-benefit analysis of what are we actually gaining from these ten rounds of sparring.

Is the fighter preparing for a specific upcoming fight a few weeks away? are the rounds being used to develop a specific technique or game plan? are they sparring just to improve fitness or mental toughness or is there no clear purpose behind the Sparring at all?

This has to be weighed up against the ‘Costs’ of the sparring rounds. These include risk of injury, risk of fatigue, risk of developing bad habits or risk of wasting time on sparing that could be better spent on specific technical training which would lead to better results over the long term.

I think when we weigh up factors like this you will almost always come to the conclusion that you should be spending a lot more time on technical training than on sparring.

If you want to get the most long term benefit out of your training make sure you focus on your technique.

www.dkmma.com.au

Learn MMA in Melbourne

Kaizen - Constant daily improvement

One of the most important martial arts concepts which can also have a positive impact on your life away from the gym is the Japanese idea of Kaizen or continual daily improvement.

Constant gradual improvement even if only by 1% per day or week is much better than no improvement at all.

Two mistakes that newcomers to martial arts make are firstly believing that they do or don’t have any talent for martial arts or fighting. Secondly, the belief that if they go all out for a short period of time they will get a black belt or become a world champion within three years.

Firstly, there is no such thing as having a ‘talent’ for martial arts. Beginners often mistake having the ability to beat other untrained people as having a natural fighting ability. Being able to beat a trained opponent who is well prepared in a competition is much different from sparring with other beginners.

The skills and mentality to be able to compete and win against good opponents is not something that comes naturally to anyone. It must be developed gradually over months and years of training.

The second problem is with the idea of trying to do too much too soon.

I’ve been a full-time martial arts coach now for over ten years. I've had many students ask me what they need to do to get to the top level.

I explain to them that there are no short cuts. Come in and train every day, don’t take time off after fights, don’t go hard for a few weeks then slack off for two months only to repeat the cycle again and again.

If you stick to the plan you’ll be a top-level fighter competing and winning in the UFC in ten years.

Everyone who tries to take short cuts in their training, Looking for the martial arts equivalent of a get rich quick scheme always ends up quitting and never gets anywhere near their potential.

Forget about talent and shortcuts.

Focus on what you can do every day to make yourself 1% better. One year from now you will be 365% better than you are today. In ten years you will be a world champion.

 

Learn MMA in Melbourne

Annie Thatcher wins Amateur MMA World title in Singapore

Last week Annie Thatcher won the GAMMA amateur MMA world title in Singapore. Annie had two great fights in one day first defeating an opponent from Belarus by TKO and then after a few hours rest stepped up to defeat her Canadian opponent by TKO in the final.

This was an especially impressive achievement because Annie had her first MMA bout only 18 months ago. She is now 6 fights for 6 wins in amateur mma and has also had 3 wins in boxing and Muay Thai. Annie has trained almost every day since she first stepped foot in the gym and she has shown tremendous improvement.

Annie is a great example of the kind of work ethic and dedication that we look for in our athletes. 

Looking forward to see what the next year will bring for Annie’s fight career.

Check out our MMA Classes at DKMMA & BJJ Melbourne:

www.dkmma.com.au

The Importance of Amateur MMA - MMA Melbourne

The Importance of Amateur MMA - MMA Melbourne

One of the biggest problems I see with aspiring fighters is that they are in too much of a rush to fight Pro. If you intend to have a successful long term fight career it is essential to gain as much experience as possible as an amateur. Generally, you will only get one shot at a contract with a major promotion such as the UFC so it's important that you are close to being the finished product when you get there rather than hoping you'll improve once you get there.

If you look at the most dominant UFC champions of the modern era you will see that they were all championship level by the time they made their UFC debut. If any fighter has serious flaws or holes in their game they will quickly be exposed and will have their contract cancelled then its back to fighting the next batch of UFC hopefuls as a gatekeeper on the local shows.

I encourage all my fighters to gain experience in amateur MMA, amateur boxing, kickboxing, muay Thai, compete in BJJ and grappling events. The time and money you spend on these smaller competitions will pay off in the long term because you will have a more well-rounded skill set.

MMA is a young sport which is changing and evolving all the time. In the past, it was possible for fighters with limited experience to walk straight into the UFC and do well but I believe we are at the end of that era. If you look closely at the previous champions you'll see that they actually had 100's of matches in other combat sports such as wrestling or BJJ before ever stepping into the cage.

Professional boxing is the biggest and most established combat sport. It is unheard of for any Boxer who wishes to become successful to fight professionally without first having an extensive amateur career. Floyd Mayweather fought over 90 amateur matches before turning pro, Muhammed Ali fought over 100 matches including winning an Olympic Gold medal and Roy Jones Jr fought over 130 amateur bouts before turning pro.

If you want to be a successful professional MMA fighter make sure you get as much experience as possible as an amateur first.

Our next Bushido Contenders Novice MMA Event is coming up on Saturday 9th July & our next Bushido Fight Night takes place at Thornbury Theatre on Saturday 30th July. 

Check out our MMA Classes at DKMMA & BJJ Melbourne:

www.DKMMA.com.au

Why MMA Fighters must train in regular classes - MMA Melbourne

Why do some MMA fighters have successful careers while others start off well but then quickly go downhill?

I’ve seen fighters have a lot of success early in their career, then they stagnate, they stop improving and gradually get worse and worse results. How can we explain this deterioration of skill level and results?

There are several factors that can have a bad long term effect on a fighters career.

The Fight Camp Problem:

One common thing I see with many fighters is that once they have a little bit of success they stop attending regular classes and instead just want to do their own fight training, They just want to do their own padwork and sparring rather than attending classes like the regular students,

They see top professionals like Floyd Mayweather training like this so they assume that's what they should be doing too. They also think they’ve become too good to train with the regular students and that all the training should be focused around them and their competition goals,

The reality is that if you are already an elite world champion like mayweather then it makes sense not to do regular classes. There's a point of diminishing returns, time is better spent doing training that is solely focused on you. Also, if you are already a world champion you can afford to pay your trainers and sparring partners a full time salary so they can work around your schedule,

Why do fighters think they don’t have to come to regular classes?

They think that training in the regular classes with non fighters will hold them back. This is not true. I have seen many recreational students who have a much higher skill level in specific areas than the professional fighters. The fighter would actually benefit tremendously from training and sparring with these non fighters.

They believe training should be all just focused around them, This is completely unrealistic, Even if the fighter is paying his trainer 10-20% of the fight purse, it is very unlikely that any decent or suitably qualified trainer will be willing and able to devote all their time over the course of an 8 week training camp.

They think they already know everything that's being taught in class so there's no point wasting time practicing it again. This is usually never the case. There isalways more to learn and more skills to be refined and improved upon.

Disadvantages of only doing fight training:
There are several common patterns which I notice from fighters who only do ‘Fight Camps’ rather than regular training. These include stagnation and deterioration of ability.

Fighter is happy in the short term because he gets to train on his own terms. It's all about him, he feels like a professional and builds his ego but it's a disaster long term,

The fighter may be able to maintain their current level of skill, technique and fitness but is not improving and will not be capable of beating the next level of opponent.

The fighters coach who was probably responsible for the initial success doesn't want to work with the athletes who don't attend his classes regularly as this sets a bad example to the other students.

This often leads to the fighter finding other coaches who are willing to work them but usually the replacement coaches are inexperienced and just trying to make a name for themselves which will ultimately do more harm tahn good to the fighters career.

Why should fighters keep training in classes?
Its very important to continually keep improving and updating your skills. MMA fighting is a game of levels. If you beat a fighter of one level then you will have to move up to the next level to keep progressing your fight career. The level of skills and ability that was required to beat your previous opponent will not be enough to beat your next opponent.

This is especially the case in the sport of Mixed Martial Arts where the overall skill level rapidly increases from year to year. The level of skill required to win a state or national title even a few years ago would likely not be enough now.

Check out our BJJ & MMA Classes at DKMMA:

www.DKMMA.com.au

Learn MMA in Melbourne

Becoming a Fighter

Long Term Athlete Development in Combat Sports

Since the beginning of our fight team we have consistently followed a long-term development program for our fighters. The Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD) Program is commonly found in elite level sports but is often ignored in the world of Fight Sports.

Stages in Fighter Development

The first stage in our system is to make sure the students have a solid foundation in the fundamental skills before progressing onto sparring in the gym. If they train consistently they can then progress to local inter-club/novice sparring events. After that they can move on to amateur fights and then finally onto Professional fights. 

Why do we follow this structure? 

We want to produce world-class competitors not just fighters who can win at local level events. Some coaches don't believe its necessary to follow a long term system like this. They believe their fighters are already good enough to go straight to Professional fights. In my opinion taking short-cuts in this area may seem like a good idea in the short term but can seriously damage the long term prospects and growth of a fighter.

Learning about your fighters

One of the reasons we follow this Fighter Development Program is because we learn just as much from the novice level events as the fighters do. Coaches can learn the strengths and weaknesses of their fighter, how they perform under pressure, how they respond to coaching and instructions during the fight and what areas they need to work on and improve upon as a team before the next event.

Improving your coaching

Becoming an effective coach takes constant learning, practice and evolution. Novice fights are a great opportunity for the coach learn how to best warm up the fighters, what instructions to give before and during the fight, how to adjust strategy during the fight and learning about how the fighter copes with and responds to the stress and pressure of competition.

Development of the Fighter

Becoming a great fighter is a long process. Novice fighters need to make mistakes and learn from them. They need to try new things in an arena where there is less risk if it goes wrong. Mistakes in Novice fights are no big deal. They are actually beneficial because they highlight areas of you game that will need improvement before you step up to professional fighting.

The Cost of Making Mistakes

If you make those same mistakes in professional fights there is usually an additional risk of serious injury as you will be up against much better opponents. There's also a risk to your career as a professional fighter of losing your fight contract, losing your motivation and confidence and ultimately derailing your career before its even started.

Taking time to develop as a fighter

Novices are not ready to jump into Professional fights straightaway. Not everyone is cut out to be a fighter. Novices need the opportunity to figure out if the sport is actually for them. They need to gradually experience the fear, stress and adrenaline dump in a safer environment. The fighter can then begin to figure out how to deal with the pressure of competing, managing the stress, fatigue and fear and learn to not let these factors affect his performance in the fight.

Better for the sport

I believe it's detrimental to combat sports to have first timers fighting on professional events. The public shouldn't have to pay to watch fighters who haven't yet mastered the basics skills of the sport. Seeing first timers with no amateur experience fighting on professional fight shows makes fighting sports look amateurish. Fighters should have a minimum of 10 matches away from the public eye before stepping into the ring in front of paying spectators. 

No shortcuts

I believe taking short-cuts may seem like a good idea to some young up and coming fighters who want to make a name for themselves but will ultimately cost them a lot in terms of their long term development and future prospects in the sport.

Here's another Article I wrote on how to Prepare for your first MMA Fight:

http://deniskellymmacoaching.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/getting-ready-for-your-first-mma-fight.html

'I've found that taking shortcuts will get you to the place you don't want to be much quicker than they get you to the place you want to be.'

Lennox Lewis

Learn MMA in Melbourne

Tough on your Team.

Popularity Versus Performance

One of the great lessons we learned from sports coaching expert Wayne Goldsmith earlier this year was that 'popularity is the enemy of performance'. 

Popularity is easy; performance requires honesty. If you want your teammates to perform at their best you need to be honest with them even if this will make you less popular. You need to be tougher on your team than their opponents will be.

This does'nt mean trying to knock them out or cranking on arm locks in every sparring session. That would actually be counterproductive, it will not allow them to improve and may lead to injuries, which could derail their progress. 

Being Honest with your Team-Mates

If you care about your teammate’s progress and success then you need to be honest with them about their training. If your training partner is on a losing streak and you don’t want to see them get knocked out in their next fight you need to be honest with them and tell them that training two hours a week then going for a run on Saturday isn’t going to get the job done.

Wayne’s point was that most people would not be honest. They don't want to offend their training partner so instead they just say ‘good job bro’, give them a high five and tell them we'll get them next time. 

The Reality 

The reality is that your next opponent doesn't care whether you are a nice person and doesn't worry about offending you. He is going to be brutally honest with you over the course of three five-minute rounds and will highlight the areas of your training where you took shortcuts

Popularity is easy; Performance requires honesty. The more you care about each other the harder you will be on each other.

Tough Coaching

The same is also true when it comes to coaching. Most fighters early in their career are open to advice and constructive criticism. They want to be told where they are going wrong and what they need to improve on. They realise that there will be a huge price to pay if they don't fix up the holes in their game. The job of the coach is to identify these holes and fix them before they can be exploited by a future opponent.

Coaches Versus 'Yes-Men'

If the fighter follows the advice of the coach he will usually experience initial success early on in his career. But this is when something interesting starts to happen. Often the fighters early success will cause him to develop an overblown ego, he decides he no longer needs to be told what he's doing wrong and instead surrounds himself with people who will constantly feed his ego by telling him what he's doing right and how great he is.

This is always a recipe for disaster. The new 'coach' will either not be knowledgeable and experienced enough to highlight the mistakes of the fighter or will just refuse to criticise him for fear of losing his meal ticket. Either way, it will lead to fighter going on a downward spiral of worse and worse results.

“A coach is someone who tells you what you don't want to hear, who has you see what you don't want to see, so you can be who you have always known you could be.”

― Tom Landry

Learn MMA in Melbourne

Strength in Depth

The best part of coaching is witnessing the improvement and development of the students who can't train full time due to family, work, school and life commitments but who still make the effort to turn up and train hard two or three sessions a week every week.

I never wanted a team where there are just a few star athletes and everyone else is there to pay the bills and make up the numbers. I pride myself on the fact that everyone who commits to training regularly at my classes will learn to fight and grapple well. This in turn will be a huge benefit to the full time competitors as they have more quality partners to train with.

Learn MMA & BJJ in Melbourne

Fight Ready - 2

This article was written with the help of Wayne Goldsmith who I have been working with for the past few months. Wayne is a sports coaching expert who has worked extensively with sports teams and organisations all over the world including Swimming Australia, the US Olympic Committee and numerous Football and Rugby clubs.

http://www.wgcoaching.com/category/sports-coaching/

Why you need to Train Year Round and Keep Getting Better

I believe staying fight ready year round while constantly improving and upgrading skills is the key to success for any aspiring fighter. The fighter must focus on improving and adding new skills between bouts simply because as he progresses through his career he will come up against better and better opponents.

A successful fighter with a winning record will inevitably face opponents who have a much higher level of striking. grappling and experience than his previous opponents. The level of technique and fitness which was enough to beat the local level fighters he previously faced will usually not be enough to beat an international level opponent.

Stages of Fight Readiness

The first step in staying ‘Fight Ready’ is understanding the various stages of Preparation and Fight readiness. Wayne Goldsmith breaks the various stages down as follows:

·        BASELINE - (LEARNING AND EARNING PHASE)  In the "BASELINE" phase of training, athletes are focused on general fitness, flexibility, power, balance, co-ordination and the fundamental movements and skills of the sport. This phase of training includes exposure to a broad range of tactics, skills and techniques. Training sessions during the "baseline" phase may be relatively long in duration as athletes focus on learning new skills, building strength and endurance and laying down the foundations - the platform for long term success.

·         COMPETITIVE - (MASTERY AND SPECIFICITY PHASE) In the competitive phase athletes become focused on narrowing their skills and honing their "weapons" with an aim to developing a specific set of skills that are conducive of them fighting to the best of their ability. For example, in this phase of training, athletes may spend more time on kicking and grappling if these are considered to be the "weapons" that will help them win their upcoming fight. In this phase, the mental aspects of fighting become more important and athletes should be working with their coaches and training partners to identify areas of mental skill, mental toughness, concentration and focus that they can work on during physical training sessions.

·         WINNING - (PEAK PERFORMANCE PHASE) in the winning phase the emphasis becomes speed, power and explosiveness and on being able to execute excellence in technique and skill at fight intensity. Training may be a little shorter than in the Baseline and Competitive Phases but the speed and intensity of activity will be much higher as the athletes prepares specifically to win. There is a clear focus on mental skills in this phase of training. MMA athletes and their coaches should create training situations which "expose" mental weaknesses and provide opportunities to build and strengthen mental skills under simulated fight conditions.

Post Fight Period

An important consideration here is the post-fight recovery period. Experience suggests that the longer the time the athlete takes away from "baseline" training following a fight the more challenging and difficult it is to get back to Competitive and Winning shape.

Where possible, MMA athletes are encouraged to do something the day immediately following their fight, e.g. walking, easy bike riding, swimming, slow-easy yoga type stretching so that the recovery process can be accelerated and the transition back into "baseline" fitness can be smooth and relatively short.  

Recovery Block

Wayne Goldsmith recommends what he calls a ‘Recovery block’ of slightly easier training working on a new skill or weak area immediately following a fight.  I think this is a great idea because it gets the athlete back in the habit of consistent training rather than getting lazy or falling into bad habits.

This post fight period is perfect for working on a new skill (perhaps improving your boxing offense if you are mainly a grappler). This is the time to do it because there is no pressure from an upcoming fight. Also, you may have learned valuable lessons from your last fight regardless of whether you won or lost. This is the time to learn from the mistakes while it is still fresh in your memory.

Stay in Competitive Shape so you can easily get back to Winning Shape

The aim of this system of fight readiness is to keep yourself in the ‘Competitive’ stage so that when a fight comes along you're only a few weeks off ‘Winning’ shape. As previously stated, up and coming fighters need to be ready to take fights and make the most of opportunities when they come along.  There is only a small window of opportunity in the sport of MMA and there are a lot of talented athletes all fighting for the top spots.

Continual Improvement Instead of 'Fight Camps'

Obviously this continual training protocol is the opposite to doing ‘Fight Camps’. I always discourage fighters from doing fight training camps. Training hard for six weeks before a fight may help you to perform better on fight night but will not lead to consistent improvement. To be a great fighter you need to train consistently week after week for many years.

Six weeks can be enough to develop general fitness and some strength and power but real fighting techniques are complicated motor skills requiring hours and hours of practice and repetition over many years, you need to be practicing them all the time to develop flawless technique and acquire the perfect timing so that you can use them under pressure against a resisting opponent.

Stages in Skill Development

As skills develop, your capacity to perform the skill progressively changes. At first, you learn how to do the skill slowly as your brain and body try to master the fundamental movements of the new skill. Then, you repeat the skill with precision and through the repetition your brain and body learn how to perform the skill to a high level of accuracy.

These first two stages of skills learning can take as little as a few sessions or a few weeks. However, it is important that you learn to execute the skill at high speed, under fatigue and under physical and emotional pressure, i.e. the conditions you will experience in a fight.

Simply practicing a skill and learning how to perform the movements of the skill is not enough for a MMA athlete! The critical issue is "can you perform the skill accurately at high speed, when you're fatigued and when you're under pressure?"

Obviously this is something which cannot be achieved in just a few weeks leading up to a fight and requires long term commitment.

It is worth remembering that usually you won’t see immediate results from your training. You will only feel the benefit from it in months to come. When a fighter performs impressively in a match it usually has less to do with their training in the last two months and more likely a result of their training over the previous five to ten years

Learn MMA in Melbourne