Let's suppose you said to me, "Her Mark, I've never learned to drive, you mind helping me out?"
I say, "Sure, hop in!"
We sit there in the front seat, while I slowly and laboriously point out everything on the dashboard and steering column and describe their functions.
Then I present you with what you've been waiting for, the keys. Hell yeah, it's go-time!
You insert the key into the ignition, crank it and then I instruct you, "OK, leave it in neutral and try the turn signal. Good. Now adjust the rear-view mirror. Well done, hit the wiper. Terrific. OK, turn it off I'll see you tomorrow."
I'm sure, if you're smart, you'll think to yourself, "Um, this guy may not be the driving coach I had in mind."
The charitable among you may think, "Maybe he's just being thorough let's see what happens at the next lesson."
So, you (you're Mr. or Ms. Charitable in this little skit) show up the next day, I quiz you on the dashboard, you pass with flying colors.
We go through the key presentation again.
You crank it, I ask you to try turning the steering wheel a little to the left and now to the right and then... "Perfect. We're done for the day."
"WTF?" Now, the vast majority of you are done with Mr. Hatmaker the Driving Coach.
If (if) I have any super-duper charitable folks out there you may show up for one more day, just to see if I've been holding back.
Day 3-The same noise, let's drill in neutral and call it a day.
Now, I've lost all of my apprentice drivers, and rightly so. After all, you came here to learn to drive didn't you?
Now, let me ask you this, when you drill the clinch do you do the short pummel, that is, the over-under swim almost exclusively?
If so, congrats you're one of those super-duper charitable folks who tolerate Mark's let's learn to drive in neutral motorcar lessons.
The over-under clinch or short pummel is a neutral position, that is a 50/50 agreement where either fighter (assuming matching skill and conditioning) has equal offensive and defensive opportunities.
In essence, both fighters working exclusively from this position are cancelling each other out-that is working from neutral.
Don't get me wrong, the over-under swim is a nice conditioning warm-up but that's about it. There are harder warm-ups to be had. Why waste precious training minutes with a too long drive to nowhere in neutral?
If you spend longer than 3 minutes merely swimming with no other add-on per session I suggest that you are fine with the idea of driving while never putting the car in gear.
The over-under clinch is meant to be a reference point-a base position to work out of (actually to be avoided by emphasizing dominant angle over nose-on insertion.) For five RAW volumes now (RAW 150-154) we have been building to how to ride the body inside and out all the while by-passing the middle/nose-on/neutral position and if we do fall into it by rote of good opponent defense we address how to return to dominant angle positions instead of simply muscling and treadmill swimming in a neutral positon.
These past five volumes have introduced the outside dominant angle reference points that are far preferable to the neutral position and then we've have built how to make these points ride/flow into one another. In other words, we are learning to drive our opponent instead of idling and wasting fuel.
In an ideal training world our over-under swim drill or short pummel should move into the competitive outside positions after an initial three minutes of gorilla thumping warm-up. Don't idle more than three minutes, it's a waste of time.
The far far far more valuable and aggressive drill is the side-to-side body-travel.
To the RAW Crew, (and all prospective RAW Crew-Members) anytime a takedown or takedown defense is presented, even if you see it in sterile isolation, understand that to mean that I want you to initiate it, drill it, implement it out of the side-to-side flow, and by all means you may sometimes get momentarily stuck in an idling position but use the skills we have built over the last four volumes to low-gear it out of the ditch, get back into overdrive and fight from there.
Again, why waste precious training minutes with a too long drive to nowhere in neutral? Hit the nitrous, Crew!
BOXING FOR MMA
