Wednesday, May 07, 2008

More MMA - Answers to questions

I just received some questions about the shift to MMA.
- Are the kenpo instructors competent to teach MMA?
- Do we like it?
- Will all the Lavallee schools shift?

In terms of competence, I think they are. They certainly know alot more than we students do and since they train many days / week with Kyoshi, I think they are strong. With that said, I have noticed more than on the old katas, that some details are not quite worked out among them.

I like it. I've never minded wrestling. I got my practice through my older brother who wrestled in high school and use to practice on me.

I have no idea how much this shift is just an experiment and how much it is a trend that will radiate out to the other schools. I know that they are using us a guinea pigs to get a sense of how much we can learn and how much we like it.

And learning submission moves is just so cool. It's very technical but when you slip in to the right position and everything clicks, its great.

This post sponsored, like much of this blog, by Time4Learning with has great third grade math lessons, fourth grade math activities, and fifth grade math printable worksheets.

2 comments:

Steve said...

Hey. Thanks for attempting to answer the questions. I appreciate that. You have no idea how heated the debate is on other websites over situations precisely like this.

Another practical question comes to mind. Are you guys going to be awarded rank of some kind? In my school, we are taught BJJ and can receive rank in BJJ. Our MMA classes have no rank structure. The instructors have experience with Western Boxing and Muay Thai, but are not (I don't believe) qualified to award rank in the latter.

Do you have a sense of how your school is going to handle this?

BBat50 said...

Steve - Since our school is mixed, I think we will keep the ranks and systems intact. Our school, which is part of the lavallee ten school chain, has always been "evolving". The curriculum moves around as kyoshi (Steve Lavallee) explores different areas. Overall, I'm a little tongue-in-cheek when I say that we're an MMA school. I think that after this 2-3 month experiment, we'll probably get back to the katas and regular curriculum. Think of it this way: we use to be 30% sparing, 30% kick boxing, 30% katas (kenpo, XMA), and 10% kenpo self-defense.

Right now, we're 30% sparing, 10% kata, 20% kick boxing, and 40% MMA.

It'll settle out probably four equal parts: kata, kickboxing, MMA, and sparing.

But, I'm guessing. Other background, Kyoshi (Steve Lavallee) has spent alot of time down on the mats at Gracie's school in Miami over the last five years learning jujitsu.