#119 - Functional Clinching with Cal Jones & Thomas La Cour

Hi everyone, just before we start episode 119, I just want to say thanks to Tomas Le Corne and to Cal Jones to absolute fantastic minds, but I'm always back to some ideas of them, they're always putting me right. So thanks to the guys who are coming on today. So today's subject is about the clinch. How do we make the clinch functional whilst considering the rules? Now sometimes with the amateur code as well, some of the things that we've discussed may not work because of the rules, but in general, in general is how we make a clinch functional, special and professional boxing, but it will apply to amateur boxing too, but also across lots of mixed martial arts and different combat sports. So yeah, again thanks to Cal and thanks to Tomas as we go into episode 119 and today as his episode goes out is Monday the 1st, it's September, this is our very final day for our promotion. So if you join today as a new premium and your member, then we will give you a pack of our famous box gathering, the Sparring Cards and Challenge Cards, which are worth 25 pounds free of charge. So we join today as the first, among the first, as September is our final day, get on board and we'll pop those in the poster. Anyway guys, here we go, episode 119, making the clinch functional, we're with Tomas Le Corne and we'll Cal Jones. Cheers guys. It was the first time that people just expected me to win. As a kid, I always had a dream of being a World Champion as a pro. Not touting the life, but again I've been in real-life still, I'm a chenko. I had a good journey with Dilly and I'm not a bit, so I'm not one bit. We turned out to be pure, everybody loved it. The way he was actually playing with it, he just went really deep into some philosophies. It became popular to turn pro-early, but Ricky Hatton, Jamie Moore, John Morris. My corner when I fighting now, that was there back then when I didn't have nothing, there's still the same people around me. My favourite combination was the jab, the throwaway left talking, then big right hand. I couldn't jump up and celebrate all four to my knees like I'd had planned them ahead for all of them years. Don't forget, he's got to pay it on as well, and not just talking my head. We had one a quarter of the medals that the whole country had won for the history of Olympic camps. The optimal time to teach something again is right when they're about to forget it. And at that point, we thought Roy's going to freeze here, we're going to be out being 10 minutes. People are going to be throwing astrasers at us and Roy just went into a speech, he went into this whole thing, he started throwing punches. This is the Box Gathering podcast. I'm going to talk about clinging and infighting in general. I'm not too familiar with boxing, like amateur boxing rules. A large part of this might be completely illegal, or best-case scenario in gradia areas. But this is the principles that I use both for my MMA athletes and for the defensive tactics work I do. So it's an analysis of how fighting in the clinch functions when you can tie up and you can also throw punches. And the different functions we can exploit there. And some invariance around structural alignments. I think there's some principles there. I might be using the term invariance wrong, sorry, Karl, if that's the case. But there's some basic physics principles that means that some tie-ups are going to be stronger at some functions than other tie-ups. So in general, clinging can be used to shut down opponents opportunities to punch. And we can use that both like active and reactive. So like active, if I fight against a strong combination puncher who's really dangerous like mid-range, a way to do that would be to try to fight on the lead and then tie up immediately after you land your own connection. So you don't get stuck in that mid-range. A more reactive way would be of course if you're being pushed, you can tie up like as a defensive reaction to shut down their opportunities to land combination punches. We do that mainly in boxing rules now by tying up the arms and disrupting structural alignment. We also use it to like strategically tie out the opponent by making it carry our weight. So think like Tyson Fury, the ones who wilder fight, that was the second one where he was pushing wilder back all the time like hanging on in flinch. We can use it to create advantageous ring positions by physically maneuvering the opponent into the ropes of the corners. I'm going to make some recommended watching afterwards. I wrote down a list of great historical infiders. And Durant, for instance, was amazing at this. Like tying the other guy up, spinning him around maybe like 90 degrees pushing him back a couple of steps, then the referee break them and the other guy would start out in the corner basically. And we can create attacking opportunities by off-balancing the opponent and punching from tie-ups or kind of near tie-ups on the break. So that's kind of like the main functions I would say that the clinch has and like grabbing onto the other guy, pushing the other guy in like striking context. Then there is quite a bit of terminology around different connections. So this is wrestling basically. And I don't know if you're familiar with any of that like terms like underhooks, overhooks, color size. I've heard of the movie in the movie, the movie in the MMA podcast, but I don't really particularly know what they mean often. I'll try to simplify it. So basically when two guys are facing each other, moving closer and closer together, our anatomy is going to kind of predispose us to stabilize in the different ranges. So usually that's going to be like hand line, like all the way all the way out. Middle pole line or shoulder line. So two guys are like grabbing each other. Usually it's going to be one of those ranges. Of course it's more fluid than that, but if you're wearing boxing gloves, it's usually going to look something like that. So I find that's a good kind of practical terminology to think of when you're designing different activities. You can work to maintain these different lines against punches and against people pushing forward or trying to move away. Or basically like soldiers keep saying, making and maintaining those connections in the five. So the hand line again pushing, stiff-arming, the elbow line would be things like color-tied, so like grabbing the other person around the head. So think like Muhammad Ali, when he was clinging, he was often like hanging on the other guy's head, grabbing the tricep with the other arm, and basically maintaining that space with the elbow. You can use what's called dyseptice as well, where you kind of see where exam and you connect them the other guys are. So you're kind of hanging from his arms like this. And you can cross face, so you kind of instead of grabbing around the neck here, you come across and you push the head away, fly maybe where there's amazing at that, and you can punch over that from the different clings breaks. And the last one would be the shoulder line, which would be under hooks, so basically swimming under the other guys arm. So you're almost like chest to chest. And that would give the other guy an overhook, so their arm would be coming over your arm. It's a bit artificial to show like this without having like anyone to grab, but like you can go under, you can go over the arm basically, and like around the body. So I think of it in terms of those like three like structural lines of my arm. And the last piece I would say is head position. So like where is my head at? It's connection to the point if we're pushing into each other. So a really, really advantageous position is to get your forehead on the other guy's chin, because it brings him out of structural alignment. So he can't really generate a lot of power, and you can push him back very effectively. So if you think of like two like opposing forces pushing into each other here at the same similar angle, then it's going to take like similar force to push the other guy back. If we do it like this instead, then this suddenly becomes a lot stronger at pushing the other guy back. And that's basically what's going on. If you can put your forehead on the chin of the other guy, you can push much larger people in the direction you want, basically just by pushing your head forward. So I think that's like my general like conceptual framework. Those are the parameters we're trying to manipulate. And then I would say in general, if we can get to an inside tire, we are stronger than an outside tire. So this is again, this is a bit too show, but think of like if I'm trying to like grab around you and you come on the inside and you connect with like my bicep here. Then you have the inside position. I'm on the outside. I have poor leverage, and it's hard for me to punch you because you're controlling both my arms. So that principle of like controlling the inside applies to most of the tire ups, I would say. You can also exaggerate the outside so you spin around the guy. So you could think of like Mike Tyson back in the day. He was really good because he was short, so he was good grabbing the other guy around the waist, kind of pivoting out and throwing hooks like right off of that off balancing. So that would be like a way to use the outside position, but it's usually all inside outside position. Does that make sense? I'm just rambling. So both inside and outside positions still both have defensive and offensive differences to them. Yeah, but so generally more more benefit for the offensive side. It's one of those things where it depends, but I would say the inside position gives you a stronger structural alignment. So because of that it's usually the beneficial place to be. If you're fighting someone who's really good at like rabbit punching your neck and you go really close to the inside, they're going to start fouling you like crazy. If you're fighting someone who's very, very tall and who's good at like pushing you down, then it might be problematic. But in general, I would say a lot of the in fighters that have done really well historically have used the inside position mostly. So like to rain for instance, or Jack Johnson, like I know that's like more than a hundred years ago, but he was he's fun to watch because he was really, really good at clinging. He was like wrestling was like his main thing. From the end of the street, five, and he's learned there as well, which is like you know, like the spot on the streets of all the time, didn't they? Oh yeah, yeah, for sure. There's a trade-off as well by the way, from inside and outside position, inside position we reduce our mobility, outside position we increase our mobility. So if somebody has inside ties on me, I can step off a lot more easily if I want to do the ties and step off and hook the both side of the in the face. It's a lot easier if you have an outside tie. If you're inside tight, it's a lot easier to maneuver opponent. So I can create instability because if you look at just our alignment, if I'm inside, I'm in a chest strong position, if I'm outside, it's like an adapter. He's using a weak or action, whereas if I'm inside, it's more like a bench pressy pushy thing. So I can change my foot orientation to just bench press them in the direction I want or like high pull drag them in. So I can start to manipulate them forward and backward from that inside tie. It's a lot stronger than an outside tie. Just I think more more fun logically. That sounds like a word where stronger others in the mouth those out. So if I'm here, I have a bit more mobility and ability to strike it. If I'm here and you're right, but if I'm here, I'm a stronger base and so it's a bit more like I can generate more force through the connecting chain. Yeah, it's as you do for some stable. I'd say that it's not that you've got more ability to strike outside. You've got more ability to step off and strike. So to disengage from a clinch and land shots. If I'm in like an inside tie and I've got a collar tie on you and I'm bearing making you bear my weight. This is just uppercut city, isn't it? And if I can get offset, I've got my chin in. I have a collar tie. I've got an inside bicep and I can get your head low, low enough that I can stack onto it. At this point, uppercuts are just going to rain fury on them. Whereas we have the inverse. If I'm the outside player, so if somebody has like double biceps on me and I'm outside that line, for me to step off is a lot, a lot, lot easier. They're not able to stop that outside step. So we can, we can constrain that. My arms are outside you and you try to step sideways. My arms follow you. They keep keep you within the box, right? Yeah. When you say if I was to look into this, so a good place to actually start is about, as you say, towards like structural alignment. I would, I would start looking at fighters that were really, really effective from there. I think that's the best place to start and try to understand like what's making them effective. So like, I like to watch a lot of the really old school boxes because the rules were a lot more lenient back than with regards to clenching. So I think some of them were really, really good at clenching. There's also some modern guys that are like Floyd Mayweather is, I would say, amazing at infighting. He doesn't do it very much, but he's he's masterful at controlling that. He's fight with the Ricky Hattern. It's fun to watch from that from that perspective. Yeah. Yeah. I would get a lot of this sweet. Yeah. Let's pull you pick out. So I turn in the body, give the ridge. This is kind of patched denial, isn't it? He's a patched denial rather than a clenching. So his inside fighting is all predicated on not letting you tie him up. So this cross face connection that we can use to drag our partner and step off at the same time, we're basically two on one at night. We've got all of our weapons on one side and I'm creating angle to then land shots off that. But that was all literally creating frames. So when Hattern tried to come close, there was a frame preventing it and then he could step off and cut the angle and throw shots behind it. There's also been some of his fights where he's been really good at actually closing the clinch himself, like using that, like popping guys with like one heart shot, immediate clinching. And then when they try to clinch back, then he starts denying the clinch and punching them on the break. So just basically being able to like navigate that space is like so useful, I would say. My lot don't know how to do it. And all I said to the priest is sort of extent to my advice has been that you either sit on the other kind of you got three options. You have a certain ropes and get here. You move your feet and get out of there, but a lot of the time you go out against the ropes and you move your feet, you're still there to be hit. You know, we're going to come in with this and they're going to come in with that. Or you step in and take this space away. They don't want to come in and give the hug, you know, the smelly grandad sort of thing. They don't want to come in with that. I've not set these scenarios in when I do it. So I'm just kind of like almost throwing the advice at them in an open spiral. Or stop. What could we do here? I've not been nearly skillful or probably because I don't feel like I've got the knowledge around it to be comfortable with it. If I had this kind of conceptual framework, then I would feel more comfortable about, okay, what's happening here? Why are you getting here? Okay, with this space between you, when would it be a good opportunity to actually negate this space? Stop this space, but then when that space has gone, what's next? What's next? So I suppose it's like slices of the game type approach, isn't it? So do I slice up that game and create games? That would help them identify those important to the sector. Yeah, like a like a like a do-do session, I suppose. Yeah, I'd probably play Flora's Lava type games with him. So I'd put an area that's out of bounds and have one person with their back to the outbound position, other person's in front. If I can throw shots and you run away and step out of bounds, I win. Your job as the person with your back to the out of bounds zone is to clinch and try and reverse the position. So if you can get me to step into the lava, you win. But if I can get you into the lava, I win. So essentially, you're creating the affording structure for this player to understand the utilization of clinching to deny people those looping shots. I can't just circle because you'll just hook me in the head. So I need to engage and utilize these off-balance in moments to actually create break-balance, destroy a structural alignment, and reverse the position. So yeah, I'd play a bunch of that, have a hard boundary behind them. It might even be the ropes put them literally in a corner and say, if you touch the corner, you lose. Like, I can't touch the ropes, but I have to reverse the position so that my opponent has their back to the ropes. And if we reverse the position, the game could continue. You could play the same game, but now our task always change, right? I'm trying to punch you so that I can land shots or get you into the ropes and you're working to clinch and reverse the position. And then that'd be quite useful way of doing that. And then probably playing a play game with mine that's all based on trying to learn the control criteria for moving our opponents' feet where we want them. I call it landmines because I'm a child. I just check rubber spots on the floor and you have to clinch with your opponent and move them so that their feet step on it in a spot. So your physically manipulating your opponent around the area and trying to place their feet where you want their feet to land. The advantage we have in that is your opponent will end up taking longer steps to avoid the spots which creates a - we can start to explore the link between my opponent being out of alignment and me being able to land shots when they can't throw back and with more force. Like if my opponent stood tall, it's a lot easier for them to evade. Whereas I can get them so that they are quasi-modo style. They're all hunched over. Landing shots becomes exponentially easier. I would imagine it's definitely the case that throwing them to the floor is infinitely easy when they don't have good structure to be able to move off. Yeah, it must be too like it is anyway. I use something similar but we use the padded wall because we work the Mave stuff but very similar to that. Usually the conditions I will set up is - so if you have one player with a back to the wall, maybe like a meter away, maybe a little further, I will tell that person to focus on not getting hit of course. And then to imagine there's a line running like just draw here. There's a line running parallel to the wall through the other guy. And if that line, like a imaginary line, you win the game. So like this, so like the wall is here, play a one is here. Play a one is trying to cross this imaginary line, which essentially brings him off the barrier. Because then he's mobile again. Because like the wall reduces his options basically because it creates immobility. But if you can move relative to the other player, then he wins. And then I'll tell the other player too, as Kal was saying, like try to make him touch the barrier. And we'll usually start that from different connections. So maybe like start from the elbow line or start from like an underhook, an overhook exploring all the different kind of tie-ups. And to get to the right in the game. So if there's the wall, probably there better for you, there's the wall. The guy is trying to push the guy back against the wall, reduces space. Obviously that guy is trying to come round and not get him pushed back. So he's got to try and push him against the wall. So basically it's a bit like space invaders and two, but from two sides, they're trying to push and get closer to here. But they're trying to do the same. Yeah, well, I would say you're more like trying to teach people to circle away from the force. Of course, some guys are going to be strong enough that they can just push back. But like, what I want my guys to do is to circle around. So basically bringing the other player closer to the barrier. Because that would be the most beneficial, like, statistical behavior, I would say. Strong guys are going to be able to just like push straight back. I would set it up. So it's like the point here again. So it's like one barrier here. Yeah. And player one starts here. Player two starts here. If player one crosses this, player one wins the game. If player two makes player one such with a bumblebee, this barrier, then they win. Do you have players in our position as well? Or they can only win by pushing their opponent away. Sorry. That version, you said player one can only win from pushing their opponent away. Or can they reverse the position as well? No, they win by reversing. Okay. That's what I'm talking about with this. So they have to, like, they're not pushing the other guy back. They have to move themselves across this invisible barrier. So like this dotted line is trying to illustrate like a line that's running that's moving along with this person. So this person is like further down here than the line is there. Because the the tactical problem that arises from being against the barrier is relative to the other person's position. That's what I want them to focus on, basically. And again, you get resistance. You're getting that sort of fidelity because the resistance from the other guy is not letting you pass. Yeah. He's there. He's there. He's stepping across, stepping across, stepping across here. I look like one of the muckets like this. So he's also practicing how to cut someone off. Yes. If you were finding a really good outfired, that would be very beneficial. Yeah, I was just confused why there was a Friday egg fight in half an avocado in your picture. Just throwing them. It's very healthy, mate. It's very healthy. The protein-based, protein-based, you know, as you get the con-nutrition or an holistic approach. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I like that. So that would help with my boxes who don't, they're either, you know, they won't come close and do this or time spin people. They just either get hit or they run and get hit as they run, you know what I mean? They're getting caught by the CCTV cameras. They break the window, basically. They sort of, they walk into a hook. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. We'll discuss that. What are the rules on disengaging? Like, is it after a amount of time? Is it after someone has done a thing? What forces the referee to call break? And it's basically when there seems to have come to, there's no benefit for the evil boxer. So if we're there and we're sort of, we're grabbed and we reach out a little bit and some are still trying to punch and there seems they're trying to work their way out of the situation. Although physically, there can't be any scoring of a body part touches an amateur boxing. So if I'm, a lot of people don't know that. So if my foot is on top of your foot, officially, that's not scoring. If I'm chest to chest and like that, and still a body part is touching, officially, it's not scoring. But then you've got five judges around the ring anyway, and they might see the shot land and they might give it anyway. So it's very, you know, it's human error. But of course, it's a means to an end as well, isn't it? If I'm sort of there and I sort of go there and him looks back a little bit, then I create that opportunity. Now I can come back with that. Yeah, yeah. So it's up, but the scoring, so in terms of scoring, there shouldn't be much in it. But the three score and criteria is landed blows, technical and tactical superiority, which you both got to love that on it. The word technical, technical is a great one. Technical superiority. Close my mind and I'm not taking this, which is basically the way to say who's trying to do it. So if I'm in hearing on soccer and the other guy's a wreath, wreath was going on here. The guy who's trying to work kind of gets the nod over that. If we want to call that an exchange, he's winning that exchange, you know, adding exchanges up, blah, blah, blah. So that to my question, you know, would I only call it if somewhat, if it's kind of you tied up, you two octopuses tied up and then nothing's happening, the ref will go, okay, break. That would do the only point. But we, I think a lot of boxes are still waiting for the referee to come to that conclusion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm starting to really know how to get this in position, the stability parts. This is what I'm looking for from this conversation essentially. How do I coach my boxes? How do I create scenarios for them to explore this? But I can't create those scenarios in this, I've kind of got the concept for part about alignment, balance, structure, myself. Yeah. But how important is it to be able to work from a tie up? There's so many amateur rounds, because we have 10, 9, 10, 8, 10, 7, they're like the pros. So many amateur rounds, a 10, 9, which is close around it, basically means close around. Red may be shaved it. So often, we're landing similar amount of blows. So it does go then to this criteria of technical, and competitiveness. So actually, it offers a lot more sway. So I know a lot on my speak to the judges, and they say, well, he was trying to win. He was trying to get his hands free. He was trying to work on the inside. He was being more dominant in his behaviour. So it does sway and they're like, oh, Carl, give it to Red. So having that little bit in the inside just ticks these other two boxes when it's tight. Obviously, of cow, it's me 10 times, 9 and 5. Cow's going to win the round. But even if cow's me 10 times and I hit him eight times, but I'm kind of working, it can still sway in my way. That's how ambiguous and subjective the score on criteria is. But I can't like it in a way, because it makes boxing also a fight. I don't think it should just be this perfect contest. I still think it should be a fight, a bit above. The purish and the fact that it's still a fight. You can't tickle my nose and run for three minutes and expect to have one fight. I don't believe that either. So that's going to work. So twice that question yet, the breath would basically block step in when there is no progress or benefit to either side of that. So I suppose it's trying to find that benefit early on to win that exchange even in those mid to short ranges. So I think if you want to have fighters that are really good at disengaging from the clinch and exploiting those affordances on the break, you need good clinces in your gym as well for them to work against. So I think it kind of goes like both ways. You need to train people to tie up really well and that's automatically going to teach them what they need to know to not get tied up. Because there's the A/B box or A/B box at B/B box or A/B box at B or a job is to just be messy. Jab in hold. What I do a lot is kind of this endpoint idea. So a lot of the police officers I train. One of the major tactics there is if they get attacked and then they don't expect it, they need to just cover up and like crash into the person attacking them, like close that space immediately. So they don't get overwhelmed with the combination punching. So we do a lot of work with crashing into clinch basically. And what I find is that the most effective way of teaching that is to start at the clinch connection you want and then work back from there. So I'll often do games at the other line working with biceps size. So basically you can do a biceps tie like up like this or you can do it down like this. So like if if you're tied around my arm here I can kind of swim to the inside. So it's kind of this weird reverse position. And if I continue that I'm going to go under your arm. So like this weird like swimming stroke. Yeah. To say that. So you kind of end up hanging out in this elbow like very unstable tie ups. But if you get good at controlling those they're going to give you access to the body very easily because you're on the inside. You can grab the head. You can grab the body. And the cool thing is if you get good at controlling those they're going to negate the other person's connections. So if you look at a lot of the really effective boxing infarters they work from there from that range. Like Roberto the Ran like Jack Johnson even though it's very old. A lot of those guys Rocky Masiano were excellent at getting to those like elbow line connections and then basically breaking off from there with punches because there's enough space that you can start punching. So I often use that as like a key position even though it's very unstable and it doesn't look like it's not a place you hang around for a lot of time in a fight. But I'll basically tell guys like I want you on the elbow line here. Try to keep your head closed. Watch out for hip-pots. And the other person gets the job of just trying to land punches from there. So one person is just punching the other guys just trying to work the head position and control those arms at the elbow line. Maintaining the inside space basically. And then from there I'll give them additional tasks of maybe going to a body lock. So like going under the arms or maybe trying to break the connection so they move themselves to the to the side in a position where they can land a hook to the chest or like start looking for different different actions from there. But I found that very very useful. And it also if they get comfortable there it removes a lot of the danger of hip-pots because they kind of know where to position the your head. Then you can move them out and you can tell them one guy is punching the other guy trying to close space and get to a tie up. Whereas if you do it like a more linear like we start from out here now I need you to close in. A lot of guys people will be a lot of people will class the hits or they will be afraid to class the hits. So they're kind of hesitant to make that like collision be as again. That's been my experience. So I'll talk about entrance. It's a very simple one. Entrance, execution and exit. So that would change slightly. So how you enter into this. How you with the execution then become more like a negation I suppose. Or let's not negation is it? Can you still got negate them and create affordances for yourself. And then once you have that then your exit. I can change the wording to exit to be a lover kind of a fordance to strike and score. Because yes I'm in here right great now I control their body their alignment balance. Now I shift you know all this kind of stuff. So I was almost thinking of like a boxing simplified model which still keeps all those all the information relative but it's something I can use with boxing without breaking the rules with the holding stuff. You know what I mean? I'm sort of thinking how how do I take this to the to the to the gym floor. That's a model I'm a very much model guy. I need an acronym that's for a bloody acronym. Give me a new morning for Christ. I would say you're still you're still exiting the exchange. Yeah. Did you're trying to get away from that like 50 50 like just exchange of punches. You're just doing it by like closing up the space and tying up instead of moving sideways or backwards. Yeah I guess the interesting thing is the utility of a clinch right that's why we do it. One is exactly as Thomas said it's shirt down ranges so we can't get landed on in mid range. We can get in close if you're opponents really good there. The main utility I think from my understanding not a boxer is we can really manipulate our opponent into less favorable positions in the ring. So I can tie you up against ropes. I can put you back into awful positions. That is very advantageous for me as the person clinching. The other is like and destroy your structural alignment which I can't emphasize enough leads to so many affordances for this and reduces their capacity to strike. So if in clinching I can set my opponent's head past the space their feet occupies. They will be out of posture. They cannot land. You can't generate power in a punch once your head has gone off the center line. It's not impossible to land with any power. So we can create practice tasks where we're looking to get head outside of the line of the feet. You can then disengage with very little fear of them landing anything with any impetus. The other addition is it will reduce their mobility. They'll be off balance by the fact that their head has gone outside the space their feet occupies. So for them to a vague shot becomes much more difficult than not head central above belly button above center of feet ready to move. They'll be off balance. So any shots that are landed at this point they can't do the bobby weevee headie stuff technical term or use footwork to evade their off balance already. So we're increasing our capacity to land strikes on an opponent because they're out of balance and can't evade. We're reducing their capacity to land shots on us as we disengage because we've hopefully off balance them and we get to dominate where the fight takes place. I think if we concentrate on those three areas you'll find masses of utility in there regardless of like what punches you're throwing like the utility of the position I think is mega important. I don't care if I've got a collar tie and I'll land an uppercut like it would be lovely but it's not going to win me 50 fights but if I can get somebody said their heads off balance and they're out of alignment so I can land shots within punity that'll probably lead to me being a bad fighter I think. This is I suppose it's a bit above if I'm picking almost from a kind of external focus or control type thing. Is there places they could look so you talk about the head being outside of the foot. So are they looking to spot certain parts of their their alignment? Okay you've got it now get into this but we want to get into this point to see what I mean all these sort of reference points. Yeah so you mentioned one there about the head over the foot for example. Yeah I I refer to it as banana ring so the second you can get the head off a center line then spinens up in this sort of banana-y shape which robs them of robs them of power and mobility. So if you can banana your opponent at that point you are much more ease to disengage without any threat coming in and it's also a lot easier for you to strike. So if you can use your clinch to banana your opponent get them into this head off center position that is a win in of itself. You can use that the utility of that is massive. So yeah play a bunch of bananas as well get their heads off over their feet. There's also a general principle when you're standing on two legs if you draw a line like between your your points of support 90 degrees on that your balance is always going to be shit. So like that I had some people call it the dead angle. There's probably a lot of judo terminology around it but if I'm standing like on two feet like this if someone pulls me forward I'm going to need to take a step to not fall over. If someone pushes me back I'm going to need to take a step to not fall over and you can exploit that greatly on clinch exits on entries as well but like in general if you connect with something from those angles people are going to be off balance. Okay so if I'm an orthodox stance my feet are finished here stop pretending 3d I get it so I'm sound poor and I move this way that foot has to come out you know that foot has to come out so breaks out a line so it depends on the stance isn't it which way so essentially if you imagine if you're an orthodox stance and I've clinch with you and I'm disengaging and I just move backwards when I try and break your head off posture and I pull it if I pull it will go into your front foot. So getting your head past that foot will be really difficult because you have a structure in the way. If I step and circle as I pull so you have to take this step now that's let's not draw it from there now from here where your feet are at that 90 degree I can step off. So if I'm stepping to that 90 degrees as I pull and disengaging I can get your head off that central line because I'm not pulling you into way of structural support. I'm pulling you belly button forward like yeah you'll see where your belly button is it goes at 90 degrees. Yeah we this is it seems to me that all of the forward patterns and entanglements that we're looking to try and utilize are the exact same things that we use for foot sweeps. It's it's a lot of foot sweep practice but with no whacking their foot at the end of it we can then punch them in the head only we could do that in judo. So I almost like if you could sweep in boxing it's like trying to find the same idea of how to disengage for example their front foot that their balance does come across and that makes it yeah so then so their func is that for them to attack and defend are massively diminished. Yeah for quite a big period of time. Oh absolutely yeah before before for me. Even if it's not throwing shots if it is just there is threat I need to disengage I am up against the ropes this is really bad for me move their head off center line they can't really land they can't throw those people looping hooks that are very annoying to deal with. Step in clench step and pull disengage so even without any like thought of landing your own offense you then ring craft wise have dominated where the fight takes place you know how the line up against the ropes so without having to land shots there's still masses of utility in in execute and that step and pull and disengage right. Yeah so that will come under tactical well maybe technical as well with tactical superiority. Oh well yeah I imagine that where the fight is taking place has a massive bearing on that right. It's the whole fight I have some poor sort of inner corner they're probably not going to win on that score yeah. Even if I'm not even if they're like this and nothing's really landing when I throw I'm still dominating them. Tactic care. Yeah even if it's not landing so I would win that quite clearly actually I could probably even not land a shot just and then still win that clearly actually if you're negative in boxing if you just just defend and don't throw the rest does pull you anyway so stop and it does that if you need to do this or I'm going to take a point off yet you have you have to engage you can't just run away. Is alignment and structure are the same thing. So alignment is what my spain is so if it's straight and upright that is my alignment. Structure is where my center of mass is in relation to the bits of me that are keeping me upright. So if I have a foot here and you're pulling me into it I have a structural advantage my leg is here whereas there's no structural advantage if you pull me at that 90 degree if I'm stood on a tight rope and you pull me onto the tight rope I'm strong if you pull me off the tight rope I'm I've fucked. So that's our structural advantage is can we create those things it's the same with the ranges of clinches as well right arm's length there's this structure in the way there's this structure in the way or there's this structure in the way so we can gain these structural advantages alignment advantages all about getting their spine not straight. It's really common across all combat support you know if I'm trying to sweep somebody from guard I need to break their their alignment they can't have their back straight otherwise they can start to apply force to me I need to get rid of their structures if they put the ham down we're probably not going to fall make them fall over so yeah these things are the same standing on your back killed up in a ball crying you still have to attend to these things. One thing I would definitely think about is what intent creates that like made a stable state in the first place so like if if you want to explore like infighting and using tie-ups to not get hit by an aggressive like infighting combination puncture for instance the moment you take away the infight is intent to land a lot of punches from a close range everything changes so I would make sure to always keep that basic intent there so like for the intensity for that'll see I guess you could call it because otherwise I don't think it's going to transfer it well then then it often turns into weird stuff in my experience. Yeah potentially dangerous as well yeah it's a really common problem we it's the there's a tradeoff that we make right in the constraints that approach the more we can strain the less representative atascus just by its very nature so I'm forfitting action for deli and functionality for more repetitions that's the tradeoff we choose the major at times the cutoff point is where there's no more specified information for us to coordinate our actions too but the specified information that we are coordinate our actions too is compromised so it might be the case that I'd play a one minute round where I'm just manipulating my opponent I'm just making them step they're not landing punches from the moment but the slice that we've looked at has to then add in a more representative slice where your opponent is landing those shots so if I'm if the first round I play has my opponent try to punch me repeatedly it might be too much for me to be able to even explore how do I make this guy step how do I control his shoulders how do I make those feet move how do I have a puppet on a string and make him step on things just with my connections because I'm going ah I keep getting punched in that head so I might play a game where they're not allowed to punch me in the head but very very quickly I want him to explore the solutions that they've been finding in a more representative environment so also you've had your partner step in you've been able to control the threshold line you've been able to get those feet where you want them now we're going to add a more representative version of this slice we're adding back in the information from the actual sport so now I'm coming into that task where you can punch and land shots on me with hard infighting with some understanding of the position some understanding of how I can create action and movement and control your feet but now I'm attending to more information there's like this you start off listening to you're listening to steroids of heaven but you've turned the volume down on everything but the lyrics so you can still hear the song so I can hear how the lyrics relate to the bass and the drums and all the rest of it but I can really concentrate on just the lyrics that's not that's not steroids of heaven yet we want to turn all the other dials up gradually so that we start to see can we calibrate this skill that we've been exploring and does it transfer across these slices until the skill set we've explored in this reduced system is still working this transferring retention into the sport itself so absolutely I'd say you want them punishing really quickly and really frequently in those tasks but if you utilize a task whether it isn't punishing it has to have enough specifying information that they can still explore that space if I played it with punishing and they were going but I can't do it we just keep hitting me then I might reduce the task difficulty as long as we don't go past that line that's best for information isn't present I think there will always be punching as a resistance right there so is it reducing the times of punching or how often the punches could come you know we often say jab only for certain things I think we get that wrong a lot of time but it can be there's that line of resistance where I have to get passed before I make that connection and shut you down um I suppose then again the whole point of time people up is because I'm getting a lot of shots coming at me and that is the actual purpose the intention isn't it to stop lots of punches coming at me so there's that as well um I'll tell you how to use the clinch while people are still throwing shots right so if I do I've got some sort of tie on you and I'm looking to manipulate you and make you step so I can miss a line you or gain advantage but whilst I'm trying to do that I'm trying to manipulate you can just rain thunder on me but I need to have some solutions in place I need to calibrate that skill set to be able to deal with the fact that you can do like these little short inside uppercut so you can do the little pack round the back of my arm and hit me um so yeah bacon that stuff back in is super super valuable really well essential so I do a lot of of games that are just touching so so if we work from different tie-ups we try to just basically touch each other okay um it will tell that like not a line connecting yeah yeah that makes sense to me play like you're still giving a task focus to the resisting guy you're still trying to get to this point um but when you come in entire you're trying to get to this point so you can have some different all those outcomes for each and try and get to this outcome in as much as possible so one thing could be um one person is told to just maintain the elbow line the other person is told to try to get to a body lock so to get to that like torso connection yeah um in front or in back of the body while touching the jaw line as many times as possible and the guy controlling the elbow line has to not get his head touched and then we just kind of play that continuously and it can be very very difficult for the other person to go to the uh to go to the body lock but that's not the point I just want that in there to have that forward pressure all the time um and then I'll run a timer and just tell them to switch and then I do a lot of rounds like that often as part of of the warm-up um so people get to experience different body types and get that repetition without repetition I love that really nice so see I'm compliance up isn't it is both of them have got two different task goals which actually offset each other um yes the whole uncompliant I'm also thinking about the whole you know you keep your little brother and baby and he's trying to swim punches that you have to just got your hand on their forehead it's still that kind of thing isn't it the range is just slightly different he's trying to get very close to type we're trying to keep it elbow range so that the range is destabilising each other don't know that's what happens with a lot of striking clinch like if you look at multi clinch that's a lot of what's going on as well one person is trying to slip arm the other person away the other person is trying to maybe close up really close and they're trying to set traps with each other so like if you have a slip arm you make the other guy fall into the elbow line and connect under jaw or like stuff like that so it's yeah it's kind of if that is the word to use the kind of feel the feel part of what's going on which is so much of the technique you check out yeah yeah but you can only let's experience or isn't it i think it comes with a lot of play in these going to get that from there yeah i mean it's a bit like things like fainting and deception it can't be a it's it can't be really an explicit conversation it has to be experiential these things always find that things like that can only come from the you know actually experiencing it in in context yeah unless that i think you might encounter is if you try to make people close to tie-ups the regular like outside boxing gods doesn't work very well it feels very vulnerable when when you're moving forward because your head needs to come in yeah so what i found is that the gods that work well for crashing into clinch are usually the more kind of old school like phyllis shell um sometimes like uh uh uh what do you call it the the crab like the cross guard stuff like that where where you're basically putting on a helmet with like your shoulders and your arms to be able to crash into the other person without like running in face first yeah yeah i see a lot of pros you get to that and then i do this i do the stuff thing here yeah i actually do like one of the games i do is is to have um to have one person with like a big kicking shield and put that in front of the chest then i'll put people put people inside a small square or circle so like three by three meters and the other person has to try to ram them out using their shoulder or their forearms and they just basically practice that collision trying to knock the other person out and that gets people very comfortable with like being stable and not like using their face to to connect i use that combined with the endpoint stuff i talked about from the elbow line and and that seems to make people like pick up on like what they're trying to coordinate into like what state they're trying to coordinate into a lot faster than when i used to start people like from the outside and they had to try to find their way in because this is really scary middle distance where the sponge is coming at you and you might be hit butting elbows and foreheads and yeah so that's been useful for me i'm thinking also along the lines of flight so the constraints that we put in place how much and when so it's when is about a question do we make them cover so for example if you two about the box gets sparring against each other and you've both got different task holes to work on you know like you're talking about elbow elbow line and you're trying to get in close and get hold of the neck and all that kind of stuff when do we actually i don't really want Thomas to know that that cow is trying to do a do you know what i mean the cut because often i see it with a time of boxing it's like okay here's your condition or your constraint and here's yours but actually the information you've passed across is already half sold already because it's no longer because you know what you're trying to do so we lose that fidelity part then we know what's actually going to happen so i wonder how much of this is actually when you set those constraints is covert for each pen lesson or jane cow i mean do you often do that kind of you work out what they're trying to do type things yeah points for that and yeah we call it secret missions so you can say that's what you call mission but you can kind of negate a bit with point systems as well so you can still score for other things so they've got more than one task goal but the main task goal gets them a bottle of whiskey and a date with anadamas you know if you can get into the holiday you get the big prize but any other clinch you can establish is worth a point so you're still rewarding behaviors but there's a total complete end goal that we're looking for that's a really useful way of keeping fidelity they're not just doing one thing they're not just spamming x on their playstation they're still doing stuff but their intention and attention is drawn towards a specific goal outcome so that that can really really help but yeah secret missions is useful as well and only problem with it being a single defined thing they are trying to do is their behaviors can be compromised for it like if the only thing I'm trying to do is get into a clinch I'm not actually coupling my action to the information from the environment I'm just forcing a clinch I'm not looking for when the right time is how I can create the opportunities to get to those positions how nested a field nested affordances work how me landing shots to your body might bring your hands down which gains access to your neck I might just go in with my brain turned off and go wow I skipped third thing so yeah I'm a big fan of points like modifying what where we are more heavily rewarded so that everything is still open all of the things they can choose to do are still open and accessible for them but their intention and attention is placed on achieving a goal and what conditions lead to that goal yeah I was actually having this conversation with Danny Hatcher a while ago and he was I think I'll come in it was in your personal comment on the count I think so yeah yeah yeah around this and I mean that is a mistake I've been making it was like you're almost forcing the intention and attention to be on one so outcome where it's actually you're missing out this the affordance landscape of you could have done this and you could have done this yeah yeah so actually it's not that functional really because you've actually took away all these other affordances to act so yeah I'm almost thinking how how did the clinch is part coming to that affordance landscape for us it's not there it's not there the outcome the outcome is purely move your feet and start punching again not denying them their balance you know compromise their spine alignment their structures and things like that so so yeah okay so so as long as the secret mission the covert mission isn't purely you you must take the bridge and that's it the room required this other element said to get there so but it might still be that I call that five points three points but the other ones are still points and they can still win the game yeah absolutely no matter what we talk about we were talking about the other doubt and I'd made the distinction between a harder fordance and a softer fordance right so a hard constraint a soft constraint in the putting a physical barrier in a room is a hard constraint I have to physically move in relation to a wall being behind me that is directly changing and altering my behaviors a soft constraint could be so much looser so something like points is a really really soft constraint you're dancing with velvet shoes on right I can basically plug back in a version of sparring with a point system that weights certain outcomes and all that ends up doing is highlighting the affordances that we want them to explore so if you just played normal normal boxing but said any clinch you managed to get scores you 50 points any punchy land scores you want but if you can get into a body lock you win instantly well I could play that game and I am going to explore the living shit out of clinches and trying to get to body lock right I'm just not going to do it with my brain turned off where I'm not seeing how all of those skills fit in the sport of boxing I'm still going to try and jab and cross it use footwork to get access and create angles but the affordance I want you to explore gaining clinch its utility when and how do I gain clinch and a specific one clinch is a great this is the clinch that we want to see all of the utility of today just to put system change them and I'm giving points with an end goal of scoring more points than your opponent yes I mean yeah the points don't mean anything to the kids I'll well down you one alright boxing right yeah yeah I think it's up like a more of a psychological sort of loading on me is that okay if you lose you're hovering the gym afterwards yeah you can create consequences which is superuse especially for guys that compete adding that pressure on is something that can start to replicate the sheer terror of stepping out in front of people watching you do things it's a useful a useful way needle to prompt people with but I've found with kids points is probably enough a lot of the time because they like winning with adults just an open and frank discussion solves the problem if you say I appreciate we have a father of three who's an accountant with a mortgage he doesn't give a shit about getting more points than his partner in a game in training it's not going to he's not going to go home and say to his wife oh guess what I call more points but if we enter into a make believe world where we pretend that points mean something to us they'll start to shape your behaviors and you'll get better what I don't want is you driving on the motorway for 30 years with your brain off during this you're not going to be a formula one driver what I want is for you to break late into corners and figure out at what point you should be accelerating in good how you can change the angle of your rear end I'm not a good driver either I want you to explore the skill set so we can add skills rather than just doing the shit you always do pretending to get care about points is a really good way of manipulating behaviors and I've never had an other that goes that doesn't make sense I'm not going to do that they just they pretend to care about the game yeah it works yeah we did something that's not popped into my head about what we're doing we had four sparring the other day so you're boxing ring and then two you know spittering and half two there and two basically and they're sparring and it was I was thinking about this because I've always done the kind of if you get to this outcome you win the point you win but I forgot more about when you're missing your phone say the other ways to score you know the repetition about repetition different ways to get there but if you did so if you did win then there was more weight on a certain punch or target then you go into the final and the other two go into the third and a fourth playoffs this year it would have been yeah it's like well you so you've got a point now because your champion you came second you know get no points you know that kind of thing and actually it was like a mini tournament you know they they really wanted to win and so you've got one championship point and you've got any moment and it was like they're seniors so they kind of got it but it was also like this is you've got no points you're out of this championship you're you're down you know I'm not going to dress it up for you you're losing what you're going to you know what you're going to so that but it was it was purely the open room for me because we had this conversation every time I spent the other guys would tell and all the others about yeah you still got to give points for other things even if they're solving the problem still with just not the way that we're trying to it's not just the method that we're trying to use but the methods are still open the importance for landscape is still there for them that was a big wake up call for me or something I've been doing wrong um quite a lot recently so yeah that that was uh that was quite an interesting one so okay so I can almost use that framework I mentioned about the the final semi final thing but with the intent about the holding um the alignment of centering they think about how I can use those games but then the winner then goes into that kind of semi final final type of votes as well so I've always been a fan of the point scoring and I do think it's uh I do think it's it's a massive constraint because you know anything is it's still up to strength it's information isn't it? it's information changes the behaviour so I don't believe it's not a constraint but it's the most common constraint in all of sport points as a task on like steps thanks very much I really appreciate it if I can touch pace to get in very soon about this because I've got them in loads so that I just have to I'll I'll go away and try some things and then bounce it off yeah if I could yeah absolutely cross and let's catch up let's see you both yeah I can see again Cal see you guys next time I'll see you soon yeah bye guys 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