Got No Flow

“	I have worked the Muay Thai plum a good bit empty handed. Sounds like good stuff, never thought of developing a cooperative "flow" drill with these techniques but I am deffinitely gonna start working on it	”

Well with the underhook, you have one of your hands already in the Plum position and another controlling the arm with the underhook. So, technically you are already halfway there. What I like to do is stuff like:
As we are exchanging blows I make one of my strikes for the open space under his arm so that he thinks I am missing a punch but I use it to quickly get the underhook ( although sometimes as a warmup we just start in the clinch and go from there ).
Then I try pulling and pushing his body around ( making him forced to step his feet is a good strategy for getting in a takedown because you are creating the conditions for his balance to be off, thus your opponent becomes predictable ) , so as he punches I might pull him into my body and push him away depending how it feels so that even if he hits me it will never actually do any damage. When your balance is gone you just can't hit very hard at all.
I am sure you have experienced the same principle doing the Plum clinch. You are then in a great position to either switch to the plum ( but the underhook is also a good kneeing position, like a knee to the nerves on the opponent's thigh ) or to switch from the hand on the neck to putting it on his bicep so that he can't generate any power to hit you ( still pushing and pulling him around ) .
Once you have his bicep under control you are in a good position to do a duck under ( or to pull him in for a foot sweep ). So as he throws a punch at your head you let it come, but you use your hand to slip his arm over your head as you duck under him. This is a good position to lift and drop your opponent, though we usually try flow to more positions from there, and do the takedowns in their own flow afterwards.

Also important is to occupy his Danger Zone which is basically to have a foot placed in the area between his two feet. This allows for your hips to come into play and you can really knock him off balance.

When I say co-operative I don't mean completely letting the opponent manipulate you ( Disecting The Corpse ). You try to block/dodge/avoid his shots and counter strike to point out his openings, but when we start off we don't put on too much pressure and aggression. This kind of flow we normally treat like a warmup. And we don't sit for weeks doing the soft flow. We do the soft flow for a few minutes, then we go straight into pressure testing and then free sparring with full force and gloves in the same session.

“	but i am gonna try working some of my CMA stuff in as well.	”

My other training partner is still a Shaolinquan purist. So being able to blend any technique from any MA into flows like Hubad has been very usefull for us to keep our training together functional. He feels better doing stuff outside his Art because he can incoroprate his TCMA into what we are doing. I am sure this helps him to understand the applications of his art a lot better than before.

Doughboy I apologize, forgive a confused old man. Thanks for the clinch flow idea I am going to work on that stuff this weekend with some students, I might have some questions for you after if you don't mind.

You're welcome to ask me any questions you want, and I will answer to the best of my ablility. Please just keep in mind I don't consider myself any kind of expert on combat. I consider myself a child in Martial Arts and maybe I always will feel that way. So I want to learn as much, if not more from you too man .After you try that flow out I am sure I can learn from reading your account of the experience.

I am probably doing a sparring session this morning so I will post any new thoughts or ideas on the Flow drills up here afterwards ( if my fingers aren't too sore from being hit with sticks ) .

Willow, how'd those drills work out?

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"If i'm fighting you ,then your intentions or actions led to it ,not mine." -- Jeff C.

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Well, we tried to work standing grappling flow drills this weekend. We work "pummelling" (greco-roman exercisize) and tried add arm drags and duck unders. We work these techniques in drills and give and take technique application drills, but never tried to continue a flow. Our problem is that if we got a good drag or duck under or take down the action stopped as one partner got and advantage. I have worked throw/counter throw drills (derived from judo) and jujitsu guard/mount and the side mount/escape drills on the ground in a continous flow before but not the plum and pummeling drills. Like the idea, but i need some pointers.

hi Willow,

Sounds like you had a fun weekend.

“	Our problem is that if we got a good drag or duck under or take down the action stopped as one partner got and advantage.	”

What we generally do in a situation where somebody has taken a big advantage is either;
1) Try all your options before conceeding or tapping out.
2) Use this disadvantage as good training for dealing with such situations. Helpful when things don't go your way in a real fight ( almost sure to happen ).
3) If you are truly defeated and stuck, then you both break away. However as soon as you break contact you resume immediately.

For example, I caught my sparring partner in a really deep underhook and rested my other arm on top of his neck with my forearm. It put him in a position where he was not balanced enough to give hard knee strikes. He could still punch me with his free arm but all I had to do was push or pull his body and the punch loses power. However, I could pretty much put in as many knee strikes as I wanted. So, instead of sitting there all day kneeing the guy ( he always gets me back, so not a good idea ), I will give a few knees, then either try to move to a new position, or push him away and resume immediately. For the person who has advantage, you get to practice safety, because as you let your opponent go he can really nail you. One of the many ways my sparring partner has worked a good defense against this technique ( I find I can only catch him with something specific once or twice, then I have to change it up or get hurt ) is to simply strike the bicep of my arm as I reach in for his neck. Very painful ! I have a whole collection of little knuckle marks from our last session.

Also, once he let me get him into position and then using his free arm he pulled the rubber knife out of his pocket and plugged me in the liver ( these sort of unexpected attacks can be a bad idea with students and a classroom situation, but with a trusted friend it is great, and I saw the attack coming as I realised that my awesome Clinch had become a trap to hold me in place ). Then he tried that again another time, but I managed to stop him.

I think the trick is that if you want to get into a continuous flow then you cannot fight exactly as it would be in a real fight. Many people then fall into the trap of the co-operative sparring partner and we all know that situation. So in some ways your partner co-operates ( as in he understands what you are both trying to gain from the flow, so he allows for things like breaking away to continue the flow ), but at the same time he must do everything he can to stop you from applying your techniques. I mean to put a good Plum clinch on my sparring partner has become very hard now, because he has learned better ways to avoid it. So you find that you are both continually upping your game.

I think also it depends on the individual. I like it when my opponent really puts on the pressure and doesn't give me an inch. Some people shut down when they train like this and their partner has to have an intuitive understanding of what their opponent can and cannot handle. If I was trying this drill with my other friend ( he likes to do these drills and sessions every now and then but he does not train regularily in any way ) I would not be as unforgiving as I am with my regular dude.

We also do clinch and grappling flows using the sticks. This is a whole other game, and things that work barehand have to be modified to make them safe to use.

In our last session we did a flow in kicking and punching range where the goal was to get your opponent to raise his elbows enough so you could kick him in the ribs. Defensively you have to avoid your opponent purposely lifting his elbow so he can drop it on your leg. We also do the toe point kick that can go around your arm and still hit the ribs. I think that kick is quite popular in Savate if I'm not mistaken. I've got bruises on my shins from all the stop kicks I got hit with in that one.


I don't know if this helps at all. It is a learning experience for me too. Maybe in a month I will have a completely different approach. For now, this is working well for me.

this thread has incited alot of thought for me

(thx GLU)

last nite whilst traing

we were going through a flow drill that was going through wrist/arm locks

which is something i am becoming increasingly interested in

anyhoo for the last 30 min of the class we did some sparring

and i found that flowing came into its own

cos when one tech messed up i found i was flowing into the next

this is the first time this has happened for me using locks

and dont think i could have done it without the flow aspect

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"....if you're ever attacked by someone armed with a banana, your first thought has got to be to eat that banana. Thus leaving him unarmed and defenseless." - ace