Tape Study: Basics vs. Beginner (Patreon)

• LMA Curriculum

"Even when he's going fast. My shoulders turn. Boom. Look, look. Still turning. Look. Still turning. Still gotta turn. You can't do like this. You see all these fighters on the Internet just looking good, going like this. You cannot do that. You gotta get a turn. Even if it's going short, it still gotta turn."

The thing I want LMA participants to make a note of is Mayweather's feet. Lots of footwork does not mean better footwork. Mayweather is mobile, but when he punches, he doesn't move his feet all that much. If you look for it, you'll see this with many greats, not just in boxing but also in muay Thai.

Mayweather even mentions it at the start of the video, that the key is in the turn. You have to turn your shoulders and hips with every strike. This does not necessarily mean rotating your feet. Fighting is asymmetrical. When you take a fighting stance, one leg is in the lead, and the other stays behind. They now have different jobs.

For Mayweather, his left foot never turns during a strike, only when he's moving around, and even then, it's not all that much. He's also moving while striking, but only inches forward and back. The only foot you'll see turning is the rear foot. And not always the same way, sometimes just getting on the ball of the foot, depending on his read and what he wants to do next.

Most shots shouldn't be power shots. Don't just vary your shots; also, vary the speed, power, and rhythm of your shots. If every shot is with maximum power with your feet turning over, you'll not only tire, but you'll also be predictable and immobile.

How Mayweather generates power with his lead hand is through the elastic energy in his shoulder, driving off the rear foot, and turning his lead hip forward, as he pulls his rear hip back. This is the turn, like turning a steering wheel where the wheel is your hips. You'll even see him straighten his lead leg to push that lead hip even further forward for the jab. Much of the power in all your shots will come from the turn and your rear foot. 

As far as that elastic energy from his shoulder, it's the same as the hip swivel needed in your punches and kicks. It comes from relaxation and practice. It's a whip effect. Staying relaxed, creating tension, then quickly relaxing again. Only through practice and time will it look like your shoulders are popping out of their sockets with every punch, or that you have extra joints in your hips. But that elastic energy is what creates power in tight shots.

Why do fighters pull their fist back before punching? Because they need more runway to generate power. But that means they're too stiff and don't have enough flexibility to generate power in tight spaces. This makes your shots slower because a longer distance means more time to see the punch coming, and pulling also telegraphs your punches.

If you turn your lead foot with every lead punch, you're committing your weight in one direction. You run out of options. You want to primarily be non-committal until you find the right shot that you know will land and your opponent is not in a place to retaliate. You're going all-in on this shot because you're sure this is the best option.

Lead shots are also meant to be defensive shots. If you turn your lead foot, it limits your evasion and makes it that much harder to defend a kick or takedown.

Mayweather is always in control of his weight, and it's directly under his legs. He's not throwing his weight around because if he misses his shot, he'll go flying. He'll also lose accuracy, making it easier to miss his shot.

These are key concepts to learn as we move forward in LMA. Beginners are often taught to overcommit on every move, whether striking or grappling because they need to drill the full movement from the beginning so that every one of those movements is drilled into their muscle memory. It's easier to learn big movements before little movements. Learning little movements early often means sloppy movements. This doesn't mean big movements are the basics. It's because it's easier to take away than it is to add on. It's all about getting as many reps as you can.

In learning the full swing, reps of the half swing are included. If you learn only the half swing from the beginning, it'll be so much harder to learn the full swing because you've never repped it. Learning a big bridge in wrestling will mean your smaller bridge will be stronger. Learning the small bridge first means your bridging will be weak. So not everything you learn at the beginning is actually the basics. Often, what you learn at the beginning is early investments in more advanced techniques. Even some coaches forget why they teach things in the order they do, or they never thought out their pedagogy and mistook early investments for advanced techniques with the basics.

Basics aren't the things you learn at the beginning; the basics are the things you use the most often. Most learn to throw a jab or a lead hook with maximum power at the beginning, but those are not the ones you'll use often. The ones where you just touch your opponent will be.

I recently taught the full-power teep, but is that what you'll use most often? No. But you need to drill the full-power one early because it's the hardest one to learn and because it'll develop your power. The most efficient way to swim is not the best way to develop power and stamina for swimming, but efficiency is what you need to survive. Everything is exaggerated at the beginning for the sake of your development. But getting good is knowing what to strip away and how to make it your own. Stripping away is only breaking the rules if you think exaggeration is the rule. So that's why many adages like "learning the rules before you break them" aren't all that useful.

Learning the basics is a lifetime journey. You first want to invest early on all the hard stuff, the things that will condition you and teach you balance and coordination. Once you're conditioned and understand all the big movements, then you can strip away to find the techniques that don't require a lot of coordination, power, balance, or stamina. That's the basics, and that's the stuff you can do until you're an elder. It's no different from fitness training. You want to lift heavy when you're young so that the light weights feel even lighter when you're older. Or you want to run fast and long when you're young, so walks will be that much easier when you're older. But if you only do light weights, even the light weights will get heavy as you age. The same is true for your stamina. The point of training is to promote improvement by adding more load and difficulty than what is necessary. It forces you to adapt. The beginning is about getting you to adapt, not necessarily learning all the basics. You have to be very good to know the basics, rather than knowing the basics making you very good. The time you invest at the beginning makes everything that follows easier.

I think it's also important to know these things explicitly as pedagogy because not only will this make you better faster, but you can also experiment with variety early—hard shots, light shots, quick shots, short shots, slow shots, and so on. So you'll have more practice with decision-making, creativity, and defense.

Also, in our LMA fighting stance, that lead foot will stay pointing forward most of the time. This might not be how you've been taught before, but if you watch the greats who are known for their "basics," you'll notice this pattern.

Most of your attacks will come from the lead side. You'll mostly be attacked to your lead side. Again, fighting is not symmetrical, and most of the action will occur on the side of your body that is closest to your opponent. This is why we're investing in the basics early. And much of the basics are about what you do with your lead side and your foot positioning. This also means the curriculum has already stripped away inconsistent movements and only kept those things consistent with the pedagogy. Good martial arts isn't like a stock market chart; more does not automatically mean better. Good martial arts is about doing a few things well in various contexts.

One last note, many of the greats like Ali never hit pads. It's common now but it wasn't all that common until the modern era of boxing. Even in most martial arts, hitting pads is a fairly new tradition. Same with belts. What did people do before then? Road work, conditioning, hitting various bags, and something very underutilized today: shadowboxing. There was much more solo training and sparring against an imaginary partner in martial arts in the past. Martial arts training was mostly that. How else do you develop your imagination and your style if everything is fed to you? That's why for liberation martial arts, solo training and shadowboxing are the foundation. This makes sense in a time of pandemics, the high costs of training, and toxic gyms. But this also allows you to train more often because it only requires you. And learning to train by yourself creates more discipline and commitment because all your motivation has to come from within. Fighting is often a fight with yourself. That means spending enough time sitting, or sparring, with yourself. That's how you develop peace with yourself, your body, your movement, your breath, with doubt, with boredom. Then having others is a gift. Padwork is not basics. It's a bonus.

Develop all those long-term muscles, including mental muscles, early. This also preserves your body from too much sparring. Make use of this curriculum and tell other comrades about liberation martial arts.

– Sam