Adam Haniver [00:00:33]:
Hi everyone. Really, really excited to invite on Straight Blast Gym SBG MMA coach Adam Singer, who is the head coach of SBG Athens in Georgia. SPG is a global phenomenon with gyms all over the world. And Adam I found to be a really highly intelligent, switched on and really charismatic guy with a passion for skill acquisition and motor learning. We discussed why MMA striking is different to boxing striking. And to be fair, we really got into the weeds and discussed it in some detail. So it was a real pleasure meeting with Adam and I'm sure we will stay in touch for the future so we can have these sort of critical conversations. But here's one conversation we'd like to bring to you now. So without any further ado, here we go. MMA coach Adam Singer.

Adam Singer [00:01:19]:
My straight past gym and I have run SBG Athens. We used to be the hardcore gym and SBG Athens. Now we're just SBG Athens. That changed many years ago. I've coached pretty much just MMA and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for the last 25 plus years. We started in MMA before there really was any MMA instruction or structure on how to train it and stuff. So I've been able to be a part of that just even from my own gym as sort of figuring out how to do that, how to coach MMA. I guess I was, I used to be known for being Forrest Griffin's coach and Brian Bowles's coach. Forrest, I was in the corner when Forrest won the Ultimate Fighter season one and then he won a world championship and Brian Bowles won a world championship. And so my little gym in Athens had two guys that went on to win world championships. We had a lot of fighters in all the big organisations and stuff. 

Then I took a break from coaching fighters for a few years. I didn't find it rewarding and so moved away from it. And I was just teaching Brazilian jiu jitsu grappling, which I really enjoy doing also. And then when COVID hit, I started studying. I had a lot of free time. So I started studying more about ecological psychology and movement and a lot of the offshoots and the connected pieces of that. And it sort of reacted invigorated me and I thought that it was a perfect method to work with a younger, a younger generation. A generation that doesn't have the same attention span but also learns in a different manner. 

And so as we started coming out of COVID I started working with people that were coming to the gym or coming back from COVID and started training them in almost 100% alive manner. We stopped with technical work, we stopped with a lot of stuff, and we rebuilt our program from the ground floor. And then all of a sudden some of these kids wanted to fight again. And so we went back on this journey and now we have some amateur champions again. We have some guys making pro debuts next year. And on a normal night, we have some classes specifically for fighters, people who are getting ready for fights. I don't want to call it a fight team because we don't have a fight team, but the more intense practices, but then we have some little lower intensity practices or practices that are open to everyone. More of the martial art of mixed martial arts. And I really enjoy teaching those classes. Like I taught one on Wednesday night, had like 30 people in it, from these aspiring pros to some housewives and teachers and normal people. And they all train the same way, 100% alive. And I've really enjoyed that. I've really gotten a spark back. 

I think this is a timely conversation for me as well, because over the last couple years is when I've started to think of MMA striking as separate from other combat sports strikings. And we talked last time. I'm a boxing fan from the get go. Like boxing is my favourite combat sport. That's the one I grew up watching. That's the one I enjoy the most. That's one I didn't participate in as a competitor because I don't really enjoy competition, but my brother did for a lot of years in the gym, our striking was boxing. I called us box kickers because we weren't kickboxers, because we put, we use the kicks, but it was as an adjunct to boxing. I really felt that a person could be a world champion with just very minimal kicking. And I think there are lots of examples of that. And so we structured everything around boxing.

The last couple years, and I think the ecological approach sort of helped me with this, but realising that everything needs to be done in context, that if the context changes, then there's a good chance everything changes. I started approaching the strike, realising that it's MMA, that it's not a boxing piece and a wrestling piece and a grappling piece, that it just has to be looked at as MMA. And I don't know if you snapshot anything that we do or any training or my guys throwing punches or things like that, it looks like boxing, for the same reason it may, because the basic principles are the same, right? I mean, the distance management is different. We can get into all that stuff, the gloves... but hit and don't get hit. And so once we start with that, I think that it looks the same regardless, but I think then the training changes and maybe that's the most important thing. In the last couple years especially, I'm not a stickler, and I've never been a stickler for the step by step or what people would call the technical components of anything. And so I sort of stripped a lot of that out many years ago.

Adam Haniver [00:06:33]:
And a couple of words that you said repeated a few times is aliveness. So SBG is famous for aliveness. What is aliveness?

Adam Singer [00:06:42]:
Right, so SBG was sort of born out of the Jeet kune do world. I think jeet kune do is still pretty popular in England, so Bruce Lee's martial art. On the 90s, I don't want to date myself, but sort of in the 90s, 2000, let's say. But jeet kune was pretty popular in America. It was sort of a way for regular people to touch MMA, but not do MMA. But also, you know, a normal Jeet kune do school would, would offer a lot of other cool classes and things like that. So it was pretty popular in America. SBG came out of that. And the biggest difference that SBG had with the, the Jeet kune do world was this idea that some training was done alive. You know, Bruce Lee talked about aliveness. Some training was done alive and some training was done dead. So I'll just make that distinction alive and dead, because the people we were talking to were jeet kune do people. Matt Thornton defined aliveness as timing, energy and motion. So that any drill, any training activity had to have timing, energy and motion. Now, I don't think that's a functional definition, but I don't think that that's what he wanted at that point. I think he was trying to talk to a specific group of people. 

We don't have to talk to a wrestling coach about aliveness. Right. They would make the distinction repetition and sparring or drilling and sparring, or a BJJ coach might call repetition and sparring or isolation sparring. There are all kinds of different terms. But when we were talking to Jeet Kune Do people, timing, energy and motion was sort of their lingo, and so it made sense functionally. I like some different definitions of aliveness, but I think the simplest one. And Matt also said this in his video series that he produced on aliveness. Uncooperative, unscripted. I think those are more functional definitions that Matt put out the original triangle for aliveness. Timing, energy in motion. I don't use those in my gym anymore because I don't want to explain what timing, energy and motion are when I can just say this is uncooperative. And then we can talk about competitiveness as a way to, you know, ramp intensity up or down.

Adam Haniver [00:09:09]:
Okay, so uncooperative. The first thing that comes to my mind, and I'm thinking from a boxing context is uncooperative would be maybe something like an open spar where we're trying to outdo each other. I'm trying to make you miss. You're trying to make me miss. I'm trying to win in some ways. So what would you say cooperative practice would look like? If we're thinking a bit more, I suppose, a bit more linear.

Adam Singer [00:09:30]:
Right. Let me step back for one second. Aliveness is a term you see a lot in the ecological community. It's something that Bruce Lee spoke about. It's something that exists across probably all sports. You could look at any activity and say that this is alive or dead. And a big. So I don't want. I was going somewhere, but let me. Let me just make sure I get. So one thing that's important to understand because you said open spar. So I want to answer that. One thing that's important to understand or that allows us to do what we do is the culture. So the reason that a live training can be open sparring, but a live training can be just, I'm offence and you're defence. I'm offence and you're defence with the occasional counter punch. Right. So anything. So you ask what would dead. Dead would be I throw 1, 2, 3 at you and you go slip, slip, roll, and come back, hook, cross, hook. And then that's the pattern. Right. So anything that's patterned would be dead. Anything that doesn't have real consequences or real choices would be dead. Right, that's what I would consider, so it's not cooperative versus uncooperative, it's alive versus dead. And uncooperative is just every drill in my gym. That's sort of the underlying instruction. If I tell one side that your objective or your tasks are to control the other person's wrists and get an underhook, just as an example, then the other side knows that they don't want to let me grab their wrists and they want to protect the underhook. So just, that's how I sort of look at what uncooperative is.

Adam Haniver [00:11:26]:
Sure, absolutely.

Adam Singer [00:11:27]:
And then I know you're familiar, we can talk about sort of representative design that goes all the way to, you know, a full spar or even a full fight. On one end of the spectrum is a full fight in front of people with real consequences. Like, you know, consequences to health, consequences to finances, consequences to your standing in the community, the sport. And then we can go all the way to the other side where we get to non-rep, low representative. And. And that would probably be also, you know, not alive anymore.

Adam Haniver [00:12:03]:
Okay, so I'm with you. So can I ask you this question then? In your gym, so when you are coaching and you've talked about representative learning design, you want it to kind of look and feel like what's going to happen and sometimes you dial it up and you might dial it down. So would I be right in saying that a lot of what you do then is actually coupled you are with a partner often?

Adam Singer [00:12:24]:
Everything, everything. I am only talking about the practices and the practice design where we are together with a coach. So because I'm about to say something that people are going to just be like, that guy doesn't know what he's talking about. But we don't shadowbox. We don't shadowbox.

Adam Haniver [00:12:45]:
When you're together in the club.

Adam Singer [00:12:47]:
Together and we say, okay, class starts now. I never say, okay, shadowbox. Now do my guys shadowbox and move around before class starts to warm up to do things? Yes, I see them doing it. Jump rope, shadowbox. But we don't shadowbox as a class or when there's another body. Because everything I say now I could be wrong in a year. I could come on this show or this podcast and be like, man, I was wrong. But in this period of my life, if you have two people, two partners, there are much better uses of the time. And anything you tell me that shadowboxing gets you, I can do better with a partner. Now, I also think that shadowboxing, even in general, is only valuable for more advanced athletes. Even though I think the general dogma is shadowboxing is either good for everyone or it's, you know, that everyone should do it. I don't know if there's a value for beginners. I think more advanced fighters do get more out of shadow boxing because they're able to, even without a partner, they're able to contextualise it a little bit better.

Adam Haniver [00:14:06]:
The visualisation, that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah.

Adam Singer [00:14:09]:
As opposed to just punching the air. So if you're like, how do you develop the things that you develop in shadowboxing? Well, I would do that with a partner.

Adam Haniver [00:14:19]:
Okay. So, yeah. So with shadowboxing, I often say as well is proceed with caution, because feedback is feedback. When you throw a punch and you hit air, you don't know if that was successful or not. When you slip, you move your feet, you don't know if that defence was successful or not. So really we just repeating patterns of movement. We don't know there's feedback of the success. So, yeah, it is proceed with caution. And we often say in our gym as well, is that what's the most valuable thing in the gym? Another person. It's not a bag, a pair of pads that's cost you £300 or something like that. Another person. So the aliveness is always a priority in your gyms?

Adam Singer [00:14:59]:
Yeah, well, even just. And feedback, I like that as a metric, perception and action, which is something that, that I am a big believer in. And I don't know, I can't get into, I read a lot about the scientific backgrounds of those things, and I don't fully understand and I'm not ready to die on any hill about direct perception and those type of things. For me, I only care about the things that functionally help my practice. Right. I love the academic side. I might have a bookcase full of it and I'll read stuff that's above me and below me. And I'm happy to do it, I'm happy to learn. But I do believe that it's at the core level. You need a person to provide those. So you can couple perception and action, whether it's direct or not, whether there's a cognitive piece or memory or emotion, I don't think that that matters because every time I hear those discussions and those experts, when they finally get to practice design, it sounds like what I'm doing anyway. And so at some point, maybe I will know how those things work, why those things work, or that we're wrong or right. But shadowboxing removes that. And it's just action, which is what most traditional drilling is about. It's just action. Just throw this combo, do this thing without regard for when or why or what the opponent is. Is giving you or feeding you, even if you don't know it or, or see it or understand.

Adam Haniver [00:16:38]:
And you said earlier that aliveness one. I know you said you don't use those terms all the time, but timing is one of the aspects of aliveness. How do we teach alive? How do we teach timing if we're uncoupled with another person and then you see a coach screaming and shouting, time the shot. Time the shot. But 90% of what they've been doing is bag work, shadowboxing. How can I time something if I strip away the perception piece, the ability to actually read the depth, read the cues of someone about to come in to. How do I time a shot if I've never been in that scenario where I've been timing it? Never had to time it before. So, yeah, I think, I think perception, action, I often say, is like. It can be like one of the mother learning processes that we need to instill, and that only really comes from coupling people up, different people couple. I'm going to pair up with Adam. I'm going to pair up with this guy. With this guy, as long as it's safe. But I want to get as many tells as possible with that. And I think, I think the shadowbox and the bag work is a bit of an issue there. Without being too sort of dogmatic about it, you know?

Adam Singer [00:17:42]:
Yeah. And I have bags in the gym. And I think there is a value to just feel what it's like to hit something full power, because I don't want you hitting your partner full power. I don't. We don't. We never spar at that level. I know some boxing gyms do. I am a stickler for low head contact and no head trauma, which handcuffs me when it comes to drill creation and things like that. But it's something that is a hill I will die on. 

We've both seen too many guys that leave their fight in the gym. But we've also seen a lot of guys damaged by too much head contact, too much head trauma. And I don't think that there's...  You'll have to prove to me that there's a value to guys taking that kind of abuse. So we have bags and guys before class, after class, in the morning, you want to come in and hit the bag and why you're hitting the bag, go ahead, you know, feel what it's like to lay into something. Feel what it's like to have to maintain your balance when you lay into something, feel what it. But if you have a partner, train a lot, and timing is an interesting thing because I'm not sure how I feel about. Like you just said, I don't know where timing comes from. I think it is just an emergent quality, the two people moving around.

Adam Haniver [00:19:06]:
Yeah, 100% agree to that.

Adam Singer [00:19:08]:
So I don't think drilling necessarily brings out timing as much as it just. It's just an emerging quality of two people doing something together.

Adam Haniver [00:19:18]:
Which wouldn't happen without that second person.

Adam Singer [00:19:20]:
No. I have some friends. I've been in this for a long time, so I have some very experienced friends who are coaches, and we've been together for a long time, and we've journeyed together. That love hand pads, you know. They will die on that hill. That hand pads are necessary. I was just talking to one. I'm not going to name him, but he just had a fighter in the UFC last week who won. He's a great coach. And we were talking about hand pads, and he said that he can create nearly in a live situation, holding hand pads for his fighters. And because he can do that, he gets a chance to help his fighters really lay into things and work whatever. Things, speed and accuracy, precision, whatever he wants to say. And I said, okay, let's say that that's true. Let's say you can create a nearly alive environment and it's safe. How many people can do that? Right? How many good pad holders are there that can do what you're claiming to do? And he had to admit, and partly his own ego, he had to admit that there aren't a lot of them. So I know that I can't hold hand pads worth of shit because I've never done it, I've never liked it, I never understood it. I have no problem picking up a pair of hand pads for a newer student to help them throw a combo because. But again, if we have partners, why use hand pads?

Adam Haniver [00:20:42]:
Cooperative and uncooperative.

Adam Singer [00:20:44]:
Right. If I go in the back tonight and two of my guys are hitting hand pads with each other outside of class on their own, I'm not going to yank the hand pads off them because I know they're just trying to get more training. But what has occurred in my gym over the last year is that my guys just spar every day, small gloves, shin pads every day. If I go into that room in the back room, because I have like a main training area and a secondary floor, they're sparring. They're touching, they're trying to keep the speed as high as possible. They're trying to make almost no contact. They're not trying to kill each other, obviously. They're not even trying to make contact, if you will. But I've seen that make a huge difference in their abilities and their skill levels.

Adam Haniver [00:21:31]:
So everything. Everything's there, isn't it, Everything's that environment's in that interaction that you need, it's not stripped away. And they're trying to be uncooperative to a level, are they?

Adam Singer [00:21:41]:
Again, there's no levels of uncooperative. Right? As just. As there's no levels of alive. So you're either alive or dead. Cooperative on cooperative, there's levels of representativeness. And I just want to make sure that we have those, because I've seen a lot of coaches, because I actually, I will do things in the gym that have a piece that's dead. So I'll give you an example. The number one area of injury in MMA is falling. It's finishing a takedown. Right. So I will do some drills where everything up to the takedown is alive. The takedown will be dead. Let's say we're doing a shoot boxing, and so we're working into our shot. That's all live, all the striking is alive. The level changes the shot, all that is alive. But in these repetitions, once your partner has gotten complete hold of you, I don't want the shot. I don't want the takedown defended. I want you to fall comfortably. I want you to fall on your own, and as soon as your butt hits the ground, it's live again. So I have to make sure that we have these very strict definitions of alive and dead, but they are not being fully representative of a fight when they are just, you know, playing touch, where their hands. Their hands are sort of loose. And no one's laying in and no one's sitting down and not really trying to pop each other. And they do a lot of that. I'm sure there are other gyms where that's all replica. That the margin between that and hand pads is minimal. But why not get the real cues and the real actions and perceptions from another person?

Adam Haniver [00:23:34]:
Yeah, completely agree. And one thing that I've spoken to American coaches quite a lot, boxing coaches over the years, and one thing that seems to be a badge of honour is if you are a technical coach. This guy over here is a technical coach, or this gym is very, very technical. And I know that sometimes can be a, depends what you mean by technical. It's a massive badge of honour. You are highly, highly technical coach. And don't get me wrong, you need to know your stuff. Yeah, you need to know. So I don't want it to say that it doesn't matter about technique because it should be all ecological. That's nonsense. So you need to know your stuff. But when you get a coach who said it must look like this, like a cross must look like this, how does that sit with you? When a certain technique must be executed in that way? How does that sit?

Adam Singer [00:24:22]:
Yeah, so I think that's a great question. So there's this false dichotomy sometimes between ecological coaches and just say traditional coaches. And I teach technique. I teach everything that a traditional coach teaches. The question is, how do I do it? How do I approach it? How versus the traditional? If we see something developing, like, let's say a fighter is, I don't have a great example, Yo, let me answer. Let me circle back for a second. There is no right way to do anything right. There are components that are usually at the start and the finish that look the same for everybody. And this is sort of like a hobby of mine is clipping, taking clips of knockout hooks and sending them to my guys or sending the coaches and be like, where did this hook come from? Like, where did this. What was the path of this hook? Like, did it. Was it hot? Did it just turn over? Or did it come all the way around to the hip? And nine out of ten times, that's what the hook looks like. Especially a knockout hook. It comes, it drops and comes from the hip and comes or overhands. Like, I have never seen an MMA, and not never, that's not fair, but it's a rare rear hand that comes straight out and turns over and the shoulder comes up. Most rear hand knockouts in MMA come off, they travel all kinds of different paths. And so I don't know, like there is no cross hook jab. So when, when we say technical. Yes. I think that at the end of the punch it probably looks similar for everyone. At the beginning of the punch it probably looks similar. Just like pitching a baseball. 

One of the, one of the best things in Rob Gray's new book was just looking at pitching a baseball and realising that the piece that everyone does the same is the hand at the release. So yeah, I don't want my fighters to land punches with their hands all weird and their wrists all bent and break their hands and stuff. So that's the component that I will take time to make sure they're doing properly. But everything in between, I think that, that just there that develops through the training done properly.

Adam Haniver [00:27:07]:
So the start and the end. So that's interesting. So like invariant stuffs and things, like things that shouldn't change whether it's MMA, whether it's boxing, when we're striking. So you're saying the start of the punch, how you drive and then the finishing position. Obviously it depends on what the target area is, but the bottom line is we've got to get force on the target area. You got to hit with the knuckle part of the glove, that kind of thing. But anything in between, how you choose that journey varies and sometimes it doesn't matter because that was interesting what you said about you're clipping these pieces together. What journey did this hook come on? What journey did this backhand come on? In our gym, I've got pictures of Lomachenko, I've got pictures of all the top boxes, Roy Jones all the way on our gym just around the corner. And every single one of them, when they're throwing a punch, their non punching hand is a million miles away from the on guard position. And these are the best boxers that have ever lived. And I think nine times out of ten you took a photograph of them punching. It would look technically poor if you want a template. But these are the best guys in the business, so go figure.

Adam Singer [00:28:14]:
Yeah. So like I think part of it is even if we agree that to throw up with power we have to, there's a chain, there's a kinetic chain that comes off the floor, right. That's physics. So that's invariants. The only way we're going to develop, we're going to land with power is either to throw ourselves off balance and get all our bodyweight into it, which is the way a lot of MMA fighters throw power, or to drive off the ground, same as a pitcher, same as a hitter, same as a thrower. And. But when do we teach that to the fighter? Like, when does that become important to the fighter? When is the fighter able to understand that? it's not day one? Because if you break all those components down and show all those pieces day one, it's an overload. It's out of context, and it's separated from perception and action. So when I teach coaches, I make this distinction between teaching someone how to throw a ball versus teaching someone how to pitch. I'm sorry if your English fans don't know what the hell pitching is, but...

Adam Haniver [00:29:28]:
I think we get it.

Adam Singer [00:29:29]:
Yeah, okay, good. Or, you know, catching a ball and fielding a ball, throwing punches and being a high level striker. And I think coaches start off with this menu of things that a high level striker does, and I just threw that away until they need it or I see that it's valuable to them, and if I don't ever see that they need it or it's valuable to them, I don't ever interfere with it. But if my guys have spent hundreds of hours just moving around, playing face tag and all the components of MMA, and now I see, okay, they're landing a cross, but they need a little extra distance, or they're short a little bit, or they need a little power or they're falling forward or something like that. That's when I come in as a coach. So one of the things that SBG did which allowed me to make a very smooth transition was Matt created something called the I method. And I think you'll recognize this is the way that every combat sport changes. So it's not that he created it. It said, he sort of said, hey, this is what other coaches are doing. This is what we should be doing in martial arts. And it's introduction, isolation integration. So in a traditional gym, or no traditional gym would do this, but in SBG in the early days or in my early coaching, you would introduce, let's say, a combination jab cross hook rollout, and I would do 10 reps with you holding hand pads or just your gloves. You would do 10 reps holding your gloves. All right, we all got it. Now, you would find a way to put that into a drill, add it to a drill, which is difficult to do in this manner, but this is the this is the example I'm going to use. And then you'd put it into a drill that was alive after that. Now you'd finish your practice with your sparring, where you had an opportunity to see if that new technique could be used in a more representative situation. So the first thing I did was just really ask, does the introduction phase need to be at the beginning? How much introduction phase is there and what does it look like? What I really realised is a lot of times that component, the technical component, those things that maybe we agree are important, they're better suited for later. They're better suited for when the student understands the context of what they're doing.

Adam Haniver [00:32:11]:
So you kind of saying what you're doing is the old proverb of you're giving them solutions to a problem. They have no idea what the problem is yet.

Adam Singer [00:32:19]:
Yeah, or sometimes I think the joke I make with my brother is these are solutions looking for problems.

Adam Haniver [00:32:25]:
Solutions looking for problems. Yeah, that does make sense.

Adam Singer [00:32:29]:
And so I just want them to repeat the problems over and over and over and then see what stabilises, See what solutions stabilise. And then I'm happy to interject. And it's the joke I think we talked about last time. I'll say to a coach, this is the way I sort of, I get this conversation going. I say to a coach, all right, you have two guys, they're sparring, and one of them keeps their chin up. Either their chin is up the whole time, or when they punch, their chin comes up. But as a coach, we don't like that. Chin down, hands up, chin down.

Adam Haniver [00:33:07]:
Right?

Adam Singer [00:33:07]:
That's like a mantra. So you say, hey, Joe, keep your chin down when you're punching. Okay, coach, I'll do it. So for about three seconds, their chin is down. And next time they get pressured, they react by putting their chin up. What do you do now? Do you just keep saying, Joe, chin down, chin down, chin down. Or do you coach them and if you coach them, what does that look like? And that is the problem that most coaches don't know what happens after you tell them? Right? Coaching is not telling. To me coaching: STell me what the problem is. And let's figure out a drill for that problem. Let's figure out a drill to find the solution. Not I just tell you the solution because I don't think people can apply that solution anyway. And I don't. I haven't found a great solution for chin down. I don't think anyone has, or we'd stop seeing every fighter in every event have their chin down or, like you said, their hands at their waist or watch Floyd is a good example of what you're talking about, where he does a pole counter, and every time he does a pole counter, his hands sort of both come out a little bit.

Adam Haniver [00:34:22]:
Yeah, I know the one.

Adam Singer [00:34:23]:
Yeah, yeah. It's just like. It's like. Like, whoo. Like that with his hands. Like you can imagine he's like that, but he does that. And they do that because they've trained alive so long that maybe the hand down, maybe the hands coming away from your face, for them is not a problem. And it's part of their solution set, because then they could punch from different angles, they could punch looser, whatever it is, however it develops. 

I used to be a stickler up until three or four years ago for hands up, one stance, right? So not just one side, but I was like, here is a perfect stance. Hands up, chin down, 45 degrees. What? They don't blade that much in MMA, but some guys blade a lot in MMA, and some guys change stances, and some guys fight with their hands up and down. And now you see shoulder rolls at MMA. Ten years ago, if you taught a shoulder roll as your MMA defence, people be like, why are you doing that? Now we see shoulder roll. Now we see Philly shell. Now we see whatever you want to call it. And so I just let those things develop.

Adam Haniver [00:35:34]:
Okay, so day one, if I walk into your gym and I've never even seen a boxing glove, an MMA ring, what might that look like for. For that, probably versus what? What? So what an American guy or lady expects walking into a gym to what is delivered in SBG patterns.

Adam Singer [00:35:55]:
Remember this. I do not have a striking program in my gym. We teach MMA from day one. So your first class might start off with shoulder tag. Just first you partner, front hand, front shoulder. And I might or might not come over and help you organise yourself a little bit, but I probably won't, because I think people organise if it's only front hand touching, only the front shoulder. I think people organise themselves. But I might. If you're tripping over your feet or something like that, I might interject or I might not. We might do body belly. We'll call it belly touch. But it's tagged. But now it's anywhere from the chest to the hips, and we introduce that really quickly because we do a lot of our work from chest to hips. 

Even in my most advanced classes, like with professional fighters, if we're doing, like, an offence, defence, counter drill. And we have some different ones, like sniper is one, but the name's not necessary. Any offence, defence, counter work. The counters are generally targeted at the chest or shoulders because if not people are going to get killed, or they will tighten up so much during the drill that we won't be able to get out of it what we want. So that's that. That's that culture piece, that trust. We have to trust each other. I have to trust that if I'm the offence and you're defending counter, that I can throw my offence. And if I make a mistake, I'll pay for it. But it'll be down here. So we'll do some tag, we'll do some, some belly work, and then we'll do some clinch games. We might go on the cage. We'll do a grounded game like we play. Part of the way we interpret the representative design is that every practice has every piece. Every drill can't have every piece because it just gets chaotic. It's too much variation, and obviously beginners could never handle that. But every practice has every piece.

Adam Haniver [00:38:00]:
But do every gyms do that, though, Adam? No, I heard that.

Adam Singer [00:38:03]:
No, no, no.

Adam Haniver [00:38:03]:
Boxing's Monday night. Tuesday night is BJJ.

Adam Singer [00:38:06]:
You were asking what a regular gym does. What a regular.

Adam Haniver [00:38:09]:
No, no, no, I'm asking what. No, I was asking what you were doing. And. And so that's great. But it's. But a lot of others do segregate. Don't they say, Right. Boxing Monday night? Or, you know, that kind of.

Adam Singer [00:38:20]:
Yeah, we used to do that. Every MMA gym has a striking program that is separate from MMA. Now, some of that is because some gyms compete in striking and Brazilian Jiu jitsu and MMA. But I made a decision that I think that my MMA fighters could compete in striking matches. We spar a lot of other people and stuff, and some of my guys want to do. Start doing some kickboxing, some boxing and things like that. I think because they train in an environment that they have to perceive all the components of MMA, I think it'll be easier. I'm not saying we won't have to do some specific training for those events leading up to them, but it'll be easier for them than obviously going the other direction. Like, if you could be a great boxer, come into an MMA class, and as soon as they realise you're a great boxer, they're just going to put you on your ass or grab you the whole time, and now you have no chance. Whereas if you're an MMA fighter and now all of a sudden people can't grab you, people can't shoot on you, people can't kick you, Life is easier. That's our foundations program is definitely based on playing all of MMA. Do some shoot boxing. And even if it's your first day.

Adam Haniver [00:39:36]:
So what's shoot what? Shoot boxing.

Adam Singer [00:39:39]:
Okay, so one thing is I just like to play the same drills over and over and over and in every class with, with variations. We'll change the tasks, will change the objectives, we'll change the constraints, but the core of the drill. So the core of the drill of shootboxing is hands and shot. I do that because if you allow people to kickbox and shoot, you run into more accidents. And what I found is in drilling, lower intensity drilling, the safest way to work our shots in the striking realm is just keep it hands and shooting. However, when we do full MMA rounds, obviously they're kicking and punching and shooting, but I found that in MMA rounds because the intensity is a little bit higher, then there's less accidents. Sometimes as coaches, we think that lower intensity is less risk of injury, but I have not found that to be the case. When two guys are evenly matched going 100%, let's call it 100%, not 100% power, but just 100% ability, it's safer.

Adam Haniver [00:41:02]:
There's more control and understanding of the range. And the culture also brings that out as well, isn't it?

Adam Singer [00:41:07]:
Yeah, but I think I want to be clear just in this little point I'm making. So we shoot box, because I have found that in a drilling sense, if they're punching, kicking and shooting, people get kicked in the head or run into knees or get taken down awkwardly. When we do full MMA rounds, when people are moving at a faster speed, they're going a little bit more intense, then those accidents don't happen. And I think it's just a function of both people. Just because they're not constrained by the intensity, by the pace, by whatever it is, I think it becomes a little bit safer, if that makes sense. 

So shoot boxing is just a group of drills that we do that are only hands and takedowns. So once they've done some rounds of shoulder tag or belly boxing or whatever you want to call it now, the coach might, for the new person, might show them what a shot might look like, not how to do it. Not here's the step by step by step, it will just show you get your shoulder from here into their stomach and pick and grab their leg. As simple as that. As long as they're not going to hurt themselves, that's all the instruction that they'll get. And then they'll play some rounds of shoot boxing, catch and release in the foundations class. They almost never fall to the ground.

Adam Haniver [00:42:35]:
Okay, so one thing I'd like to speak to you about is you've got MMA striking and you got boxing, punching, striking, whatever you want to call it. Now, we spoke last week, in fact, about boxing coaches will say that MMA fighters can't punch properly. They can't strike properly. Often will say that. Okay, so I'll put that question to you. Why are boxing coaches saying that?

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Adam Singer [00:43:43]:
Because they are looking at in the context of boxing. So my boxing coach, when we trained boxing a long time ago, before there was MMA as a specific training, we had, we had a boxing coach and an MMA coach, and he always used to rag on Chuck Liddell. I don't know if all your fans will know Chuck Liddell.

Adam Haniver [00:44:05]:
Yeah. Crazy haircut by Skinhead. Yeah.

Adam Singer [00:44:07]:
With a very high knockout percentage like he had. He had a overhand right that was just like a kiss of death. And he would hunt for that. And if you put him in a boxing ring or in a boxing gym, he looked wrong or he looked like shit. Or whatever a boxing coach might say. But a boxing coach is looking at the MMA through their lens, through their context. And I would ask a boxing coach, okay, let's say you're a boxing coach who's a stickler for taking like a half step on the jab. A lot of boxing coaches are very heavy on stepping with the jab. So I'm in orthodox stance. And you're a boxing coach who wants me to step with my left foot when I jab and bring it back. Because power, distance, whatever argument you have for it. And I say, okay, that's perfect. What if the other guy kicks you in the calf every time you take a step? So that's the context. Or you're a boxing coach who looks at an MMA fighter and says, how come that guy doesn't turn his crossover, sit down and pivot. And I say, okay, what happens when you do that? And the other guy just changes levels and hits your hips and puts you on the ground. Because when you turn it over, sit down and pivot, you are now open for a double leg. So the boxing coach is looking at it in a context of boxing. Now. I'm not saying that MMA strikers couldn't improve their striking. Everyone could improve everything. However, improving striking doesn't necessarily mean improving downloading all of the technical components that a boxing coach believes exists in striking. Because, and this is why, coming back full circle, why I teach MMA kicks, punch kicks, the range is different in MMA, right? That's like I could spend all my time teaching guys how to throw a really super technical hook, a left hook where it's short and it turns over and we pivot and we transfer our weight and all those technical things that a boxing coach would do. MMA fighters don't fight at that range. If an MMA fighter gets that close, they just grab you. So now boxing MMA looks a lot more like pre-Queensbury rules than it does modern boxing. A soft padded glove is different than a 4 or 6 ounce MMA glove. You don't have to invest as much effort into hitting hard if you. Because a light glove lands, usually it's good enough to, to do the damage that's needed.

Adam Haniver [00:46:49]:
Sorry, how heavy are those gloves again?

Adam Singer [00:46:51]:
The pro gloves are four ounce gloves.

Adam Haniver [00:46:54]:
Four ounce gloves and I think, are they open palms as well?

Adam Singer [00:46:57]:
So yeah, they're open. So once you take all the components of MMA into account, it answers a lot of the reasons that its striking looks different than what about into a lot of Muay Thai gyms? There are a lot of Muay Thai gyms around the world with the highest level of fighters who throw hands in a very rudimentary, quote unquote, untechnical manner. Because most Thai Boxing, hands don't score. Hands get you in trouble and it's clinch heavy kick heavy, knee heavy. And so it just becomes this false, you know, criticism.

Adam Haniver [00:47:36]:
Sure. What about hand injuries? How does the threat of hand. So if I hit you square on your crown, if I hit you right there of an overhand right. How do you think that the threat of injuries to your hands, to your fingers, changes how an MMA boxer might punch?

Adam Singer [00:47:55]:
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a great question. I don't know if they like explicitly consider that, but I know that they must consider that as they train and learn and figure out how to punch and where to punch. Hand injuries happen in boxing just as much as MMA, maybe even more so. I don't know if it's something that I'm trying to think, you know, I don't know. Hand injuries seem to have gone down a little bit over the years in MMA. Maybe it's due to the wrapping, maybe it's due to more of sophistication in punching. I certainly wouldn't want to watch one of my fighters continuously throw overhands that land on the skull. We would probably have a talk about targets and things like that, or overhands that land sort of thumbed down. Like Fedor, you know, he knocked out a lot of guys with that and broke his thumb a lot of times, so we might talk about that. But that's something I like to see beforehand before I interfere with that. I think there's a risk certainly of hand injuries. With the prevalence of what they call bare knuckle boxing now, I'm surprised there aren't a lot more hand injuries.

Adam Haniver [00:49:11]:
So I'm thinking now if I've got a guy with. Sorry. With four ounce gloves.

Adam Singer [00:49:16]:
Yeah, well, we train with heavier gloves, but the pros fighting the fours, amateurs fighting the sixes, I believe.

Adam Haniver [00:49:24]:
Okay, so that's really small, so getting through to the target must be a lot easier. Obviously in boxing, depending if you're amateur, you're wearing 10 or 12. It's even smaller with pros. Eight, six or eight, can't remember.

Adam Singer [00:49:37]:
Yeah, I think it's eight.

Adam Haniver [00:49:38]:
So that's, that's really, it's a lot easier to get through to the target. When I'm looking at your head now and I'm thinking, if I've just got my glove, there's a lot of places I can catch you with, you know, and the glove on top is not much more. So how defensively, how do you teach defending  striking as well? So if someone's coming up and I'm throwing combinations at you, that's, I'm not just going to go like block, parry a lot because if I'm throwing three or four punches at you, that's really difficult to do single hand defences, isn't it? So I know that they tuck up a lot, don't they? But it's a lot of target area to protect for something very small and hard coming through. How do you defend them sort of shots?

Adam Singer [00:50:17]:
Well, so one thing, textually, MMA fights at a little bit of a longer range.

Adam Haniver [00:50:22]:
Sure. So they don't want to be there for a start.

Adam Singer [00:50:26]:
Right. And so you'll see that MMA fighters will use their feet to defend and the distance to defend more than they will rely on their hands to defend. So there's a little bit more of a tennis or type of give and take in MMA than I think you see in boxing. In boxing, I think you see a lot more where guys are willing to plant their feet, take punches off their gloves, you know, slight head movements to land their counters. And so you see more of these exchanges. In MMA, you see less exchanges because the risk is greater and guys will yield that space more readily or grab the other person.

Adam Haniver [00:51:11]:
Okay.

Adam Singer [00:51:11]:
And there is more of a risk of an exchange, not just landing people level changing under an exchange and taking you down.

Adam Haniver [00:51:21]:
Going to the hips. Going down to my legs and hips. Right, okay.

Adam Singer [00:51:24]:
Yeah. Level change. Ducking, we should call it, which we also still have to be careful of because there are knees and things. I don't have the numbers to back this up, but I would guarantee, I would almost guarantee that the average punch combo in boxing is at least 1 higher than the average punch combo in MMA. So maybe the strike, maybe. So I would say the average combo in MMA is probably like one and a half. So it's singles or doubles, whereas in boxing it's probably two and a half. Now, maybe it's a little bit higher for a guy who's an avid kicker, but then that's still generally a punch and a kick or a kick on its own. So defending becomes a little bit different. We're not defending a flurry, usually, especially when the fighters are fresher or no one's injured. We're usually not defending a flurry, and we're not throwing a lot of punches for the same reason you talked about. So when you look at those pictures of guys with their hands down, usually that's two or three punches into the combo. And I think that's every fighter in every striking sport has a tendency that as the combo goes, their hands start to drop.

Adam Haniver [00:52:43]:
Absolutely, yeah.

Adam Singer [00:52:44]:
And so in MMA, because that's even a little bit riskier. I think that that's. I don't know if it's Chicken or egg. But because of the risk, you see a lower volume of punches. Now there are some guys who are high volume strikers for sure. They're always outliers in this. But I think that those are considerations we have to take into account with defence. And so the best way for me to build my fighters defence is we do a lot of offence-defence work and we do it in the different areas of the cage because you can't always retreat. So we might do some rounds of defence where your back foot is up against the cage. Now the person on the outside can, they can manage distance. And so you might be parrying and catching but if your foot's on the cage, if you can't move backwards now you're more tucked in, you're more sure, you know. Now we'll do offence-defence rounds in the middle where we, we prioritise footwork, offence-defence rounds in the middle where we'll, we'll mix it up where we are parrying but we're moving backwards, we're yielding space, different things like that. And in most of, most all of our offence defence work, grabbing someone is allowed as a defensive measure. Shooting is allowed as a defensive measure. Sometimes kicking is allowed as a defensive measure. Because if you're killing me with a jab, you know,  you got that half step, you have all that length, you're just killing me. Maybe I start kicking you in the calf now you have to shorten your stance. And now how I defend changes. Everything is done contextually and we just, again, my experience and my knowledge and us watching the sport, we just try and constrain the drills and the tasks to bring out those solutions. And with that being said, there are guys who play their defence just like this. I mean, they're both hands up and tight. And Oliveira is a good example of that. Charles Oliveira, who's a champion, one of the greatest fighters of all time. He plays his defence very high guard. He eats some straight punches like you said, like you felt would happen. He eats jabs down the middle. But overall he doesn't get hit with anything hard. Peter Yan plays with one hand. Let's see. Peter Yan plays with one hand glued to his head almost. It's like this. It's like his religion. No matter what he's doing, no matter what he's doing, he comes back to one hand on his head. Let's say I see one of my fighters that is having a hard time picking up a left hook right they're just having a hard time picking up a left hook. Then I might encourage them to explore just keeping this hand here, for the next rounds or the next day or the next sparring or the next, whatever. I want you to glue this hand here, do everything you normally do, but then I want this hand glued here and we'll play with it. We'll see what, what solutions emerge.

Adam Haniver [00:55:50]:
Do you happen to have any punches with MMA? Because like you said, context is king, right? In terms of what, what you choose and what defences you choose and what offence you're choosing. Do you have there a certain rule that maybe you have or the sport has? This is a high risk punch. We wouldn't do that because of the potential of being countered with kicks, knees, elbows, other takedowns, whatever. It might be always that over restrictive in your point of view, saying don't throw this because you're limiting the options, you know, the affordances that they see.

Adam Singer [00:56:24]:
Right. What I would say is I think there are ways to throw any punch that is more or less risky. And that would be contextuals. Remember, we have to expand our definition of risk now.

Adam Haniver [00:56:38]:
Yeah, sure, right.

Adam Singer [00:56:40]:
Because where a boxer risk is getting hit, for an MMA fighter, risk might be getting taken down. So I focus more on making sure that they're not. So I'll give an example. In MMA, you see a lot of shifting on a rear hand. Shifting.

Adam Haniver [00:56:58]:
You change the stance as you punch.

Adam Singer [00:56:59]:
Yeah, yeah. Which I know used to be more prevalent in boxing, old school, and it's less prevalent now, but we see a lot of an MMA and that's because of the distances we're playing with. It's hard to land straight punches, just throwing straight punches, unless you're, you know, unless you're longer or really good at it. So you see a lot more shifting with the rear hand. However, as a coach, I have to make sure that my fighters are shifting on purpose versus falling forward because they're overextending their right hand. Right. I have to make sure that my fighters are dropping their hands or moving their hands around because they want to, not because they're dropping it.

Adam Haniver [00:57:43]:
Yes. I know exactly what you mean.

Adam Singer [00:57:46]:
And I have to make sure that they understand. And again, this is done through drilling, but they how to understand how to mitigate certain threats. So maybe, maybe you come out, maybe you have a nice long striking stance, you're more bladed, you like, you know, you look like an amateur boxer and you come out and you throw your first combos and you eat a leg kick. And again, you eat a leg kick. I have to make sure my fighters know how to mitigate that. And once they mitigate that, still be effective strikers. So they have to know if I say to my strikers, how do we deal with the heavy leg kicks there? And they say, shorten our stance. Okay, shorten your stance. How do we deal with the threat of the level change the takedown, lower our stance, fight off the back foot, fight off the front foot. You know, chains open. If you're killing me with a jab, and I'm not a great leg kicker, because everyone's not a great leg kicker, what else can I do? I could open my stance to make your jab less of an effective tool. And so we do all these things through drilling.

Adam Haniver [00:58:58]:
Okay. So the fact that there are so many different potential outcomes when there's an exchange does dictate the sort of behaviours and how you adapt. So the word I'm thinking about is adapt, adapt, adapt. Adapt to the situation in front of you. Whereas a prescriptive, technical model may not achieve that.

Adam Singer [00:59:19]:
Well. And because what I've noticed is most prescriptive models are action based.

Adam Haniver [00:59:25]:
Yes.

Adam Singer [00:59:26]:
Right. And so once you can do those actions, how. And adaptation, I think, in the ecological world is just called skill. Right. Skill is that ability. Whereas traditionally we look at skill as something that we see that looks the way we think it should look. So say that guy's skilled. We watch him on the hand pads and he's smooth and he looks right. We're like, that guy's skilled, and then he gets into the fight and those actions are not working. And the other guy is just doing a totally different thing. Now he doesn't look that skilled anymore.

Adam Haniver [01:00:05]:
Sure.

Adam Singer [01:00:07]:
I do think there's an aesthetic quality to combat sports. I think there's an aesthetic quality to striking, But I don't think that we should try and strive for that on day one when we upload all this information. I think as they practice, as they get better, efficiency comes, economy comes, and those always look better. Those look more. But we've seen strikers who. Did you watch Navarrete fight?

Adam Haniver [01:00:35]:
No.

Adam Singer [01:00:35]:
Are you a fan? Navarrete is. He's. He's a former champion. He just. He lost his belt and then he just won his fight again. I think he's like 40 and one, lots of wins that every time he fights. And it's usually like Tim Bradley is the announcer or the color guy, or Roy is the color Guy, they go out of their way to point out how bad his technical boxing is. And it just annoys the shit out of me because they're looking at it backwards. They should be saying, oh, there's more than one way. But they came up in a world where there's one right way. Now, Roy doesn't do that, because Roy knows more than anybody else in the world that had he not been that physically gifted, he would never have lasted in boxing, because technically, he was doing everything wrong. But he should understand that there is no wrong or right.

Adam Haniver [01:01:29]:
There's only hitting this and not getting hit.

Adam Singer [01:01:32]:
Hit, not get hit. And in MMA, we just extend that. We have hit and don't get hit. Don't get taken down, don't get grabbed, don't get pinned on the cage, don't get pinned on the floor, and vice versa. Pin them on the cage, take them down to the floor.

Adam Haniver [01:01:47]:
So rules dictate behaviours. Rules dictate the skills as to what's happening, as opposed to, yeah, so context, which comes from the rules in some way. Right, Dictates how you move. But we're taking a technical model when we're trying to apply it to something, and we're trying to make it look perfect and pretty, you know, I'm going to teach you the tango or the foxtrot, and you better get those. Those steps. Right. But as you mentioned, that's. That's not gonna happen. It's not going to transfer.

Adam Singer [01:02:14]:
I had a whole menu of footwork drills. See, I'm using the word drills now wrong. In my own context, I use the word drills. Hopefully you realise as a lie.

Adam Haniver [01:02:23]:
Yeah, yeah, I do. Yeah.

Adam Singer [01:02:24]:
I don't. Because we don't have anything dead, but I used to have a whole bunch of footwork patterns that I'd have them repeat and mix together. And we dance and we put the music on. I'd play ballroom dancing sometimes, and it just didn't translate to the guys the same way moving with a partner does. Different sports, different sports. Now, don't get me wrong, I am not against watching guys move around and see something and saying. Or they'll come to me and they'll be like, hey, I watched Lomachenko fight. How do I do this? And I'll say, well, can you use it. Do you get that? Do you get the footwork component? Do you see where he's moving, how he's moving? They're like, yeah. And tso I'll say, okay, well, let's. Let's run a drill that puts us in the situation that allows Lomachenko to do that. Right, let's and. And see if it. See what you can do, see what comes up, as opposed to just saying, okay, let's do 10 reps of Lomachenko shift right, let's do 10 reps of lomachenko shift left, and now put in your spar. No, let's spar. Let's put into sparring right now. No technical instruction, no repetition, no any of that bullshit. You watch Lomachenko. I will create the environment where, if Lomachenko was here, he could do his shifts. And you try them.

Adam Haniver [01:03:46]:
And Lomachenko himself has developed that from the rounds of sparring. Situational sparring conditioned sparring, the open sparring, it's emerged from necessity, as opposed to, you can't imagine him going, right, we're going to do 10 to the left, 10 to the right, and make sure you do it in the open spar. It just doesn't work that way.

Adam Singer [01:04:04]:
And we self organise based on our intentions. So I can help my athletes with their intentionality and put them in an environment like, if you want to work on those shifts and those angles, then it can't be done on a long range MMA touch spar, because that's not where that occurs, but it can be done. That might be a good place where I put one guy's back foot on the cage. So now he is stationary, he's punching. Both sides are punching, they're sparring, but one person is stationary. So now the person on the outside can manipulate all the distance and by doing that, can play with those Lomachenko angles. Yeah, yeah. Just do some rounds of that, and then lo and behold, they're playing with it. And you know what happens? A lot of times it never, ever shows up when they're doing full MMA work, because it's really just not a high level. Not high level. It is high level. It's not a high percentage type of movement at the range that MMA happens, it's actually not a high percentage movement for almost anyone else, except for Lomachenko. We don't have a ton of Lomachenko imitators. When push comes to shove, the basics, everyone sort of looks very similar.

Adam Haniver [01:05:28]:
Absolutely, yes. They're simple little constraints that you can put in the place. I mean, an octagon is different to a ring as well in terms of what type of skills you throw. If you're manoeuvring someone into a corner, there's a little bit more wiggle room. I think in an octagon isn't there to move laterally because of the shape, so that, that changes the skill slightly. But at the end of the day, there's still a restriction behind you, there's still a perimeter behind you.

Adam Singer [01:05:53]:
The question you have to ask is, the person whose back is to the cage has different risks in MMA than the person in boxing. There is a risk in boxing, you can pull your head back, in MMA you can't. So you can lean on the ropes, you can't lean on the cage. That's different. But also when your back is against the cage, the bigger threat is the other person just shooting on your legs. So how you respond to that contextually is different than in boxing.

Adam Haniver [01:06:26]:
So that's interesting itself, isn't it? So the whole, the whole environment, the shape of the ring, even the flooring, I've not, not considered the flooring. Is the flooring a lot softer in a MMA ring than is to a boxing? Does that change things?

Adam Singer [01:06:38]:
Not necessarily. I mean, it certainly could change. The other night in Georgia, even though we're, we're sort of in winter. My room on Tuesday night was humid as hell and by four or five rounds it was just slick. My maths were slick and guys were slipping and I said, stop bitching and start figuring out how to fight on this surface. Because I have been to local MMA fights where canvas is not slippery. Right. A boxing ring is canvas. An MMA ring cage is canvas. However, most promotions have sponsors and they put the sponsors logo on the canvas, that's plastic.

Adam Haniver [01:07:26]:
That's like a vinyl. Yeah, yeah. You go all over the place with that.

Adam Singer [01:07:29]:
So now it's not slippery in the middle because there's no sponsors, but once you start backing towards the cage, it's slippery.

Adam Haniver [01:07:37]:
And that's a good training. That's a good training constraint as well to add in.

Adam Singer [01:07:41]:
Why not? I follow a lot of other sports because MMA and ecological. There are very few coaches talking about ecological dynamics in mixed martial arts training. There are a few in Brazilian jiu jitsu. There are a couple of very high level ones. Greg Souders is one. I follow his work and talk to him. Rob Cole, a couple other guys. Kabir. I don't want to leave anyone out, but there are a couple of guys doing really good work in ecological dynamics and grappling. In MMA, no one's putting out material and it's me and Scotty basically talking to each other on the phone three or four times a week trying to figure this out. And the ironic piece is that even if a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu gym is doing ecological dynamic training for Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, their striking programs are still completely traditional, which I find very strange. But I get it. Because fully alive training in MMA is difficult. Coaches get bogged down in all the different components of MMA. The risk, the danger. And if we come full circle, I understand why guys hit bags and hit hand pads and do dead training, because it's hard to fill the time.

Adam Haniver [01:08:59]:
And keep it 100% representative.

Adam Singer [01:09:02]:
And keep it 100% representative without guys, people getting hurt or getting tired or fatigued. It's one of the reasons. The push towards ecological dynamics is one of the reasons that we stopped having a separate striking program and we just went full MMA. Because instead of doing some hand pad work, we just go into another range or another drill or another area, we combine areas and stuff. So I like the idea of every Brazilian jitsu practice is the same. The whole game is played every session. Because every drill can't have everything. It gets too big. But we don't slice it too thin. But occasionally, like on a Saturday morning, we spar. Saturday mornings, we might warm up with a couple rounds of just hands. But I won't call it boxing because I don't want them to sit toe to toe and box. But sometimes that's what it looks like and it's fun. I mean, boxing is fun, but it might just be okay. Hands only. Hands and kicks. Hands and shots. Hands and kicks and clinch. Hands and clinch. Just removing and adding just little components just to see how it develops. Just to keep it repetition without repetition.

Adam Haniver [01:10:22]:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Adam, thanks very much. Really appreciate your time today. And this is going to sound massively cliche because you've heard every single bugger say it over the years. We could have chatted for another two hours or three hours on this one.

Adam Singer [01:10:38]:
But we should chat again, even if we don't record it, because the last time completely this one. And because I spoke too much and I didn't get a chance to ask you how you would train an MMA fighter. So I think we should do another podcast. And the question I want to ask you is, let's say I hire you to coach at SBG Athens. Your specialty is boxing, but I say to you, I need you to teach striking for MMA.

Adam Haniver [01:11:06]:
Now I've got to really think here. Now. Now I've got to really think a little bit.

Adam Singer [01:11:10]:
Yeah, there's a learning curve there. Obviously. And you might not know as much about MMA, but I would like you to think about how you would coach my MMA class as a striking coach.

Adam Haniver [01:11:23]:
Okay, I will. I will meditate on that, sir.

Adam Singer [01:11:28]:
I need my own podcast. My brother is killing me.

Adam Haniver [01:11:30]:
You do.

Adam Singer [01:11:31]:
We don't have a podcast. I know, Adam, you.

Adam Haniver [01:11:33]:
You do, mate. You need to press that button and get involved in it and. And invite loads of people on. But yeah, these are rich conversations, right? And like I said, I don't want to sound cheesy, but this. This is where we grow as coaches. The conversations. We can go and do official courses and bits and pieces, but this is where we learn and we develop and we make sense and all that kind of stuff. And it's just been absolutely fascinating. And I'm sure you put your thoughts here that boxing coaches might be thinking, we're so much better. We're so much better at striking. But as you say, context is king, and I think we do need to consider that. Right, I must shoot. I'm going to get the boys from school. But once again, thank you so much.

Adam Singer [01:12:07]:
For having me on today Adam, it was a pleasure to do this. It's been nice to meet you and get to know you and hopefully we'll do it again.

Adam Haniver [01:12:12]:
Absolutely. Likewise. All the best. Ya. Take care of yourself.

Adam Singer [01:12:15]:
Bye.

Outro Speaker [01:12:16]:
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