Chi Town Throwdown : Feedback and Suggestions

**Matt Bernius** · Posted On: 10/04/2004 10:51am

Ok folks,

Here's the place to post feedback and suggestions about the Chi Town throwdown. This can come in two categories:

1. Feedback/suggestions about throwdown format.
What worked? What didn't? How can we improve things for the next one?

2. Feedback/suggestions about personal performance.
Again what did people do that worked? What did you dig? What didn't work? Where are out areas for improvement? How can we tighted our game over the next month?

So we'll ask that only people who were at the throwdowns participate with comments. And that all comments are couched fairly, without personal attacks or insults. The whole goal here is to not worry about egos and help each other get better.

- Matt

**Matt Bernius** · Posted On: 10/04/2004 10:59am

So onto the comments...

Just A Black Guy, you asked for feedback, here goes:

I think you're in a great place for how long you've been studying. Your techniques were pretty crisp overall and you were willing to throw everything and the kitchen sink at people.

On the improvement side, here are a few things to consider:

1. Distancing - Overall your technqiues were reaching maximum power and extension about an inch off of the person you were working with. I don't know if you were conciously pulling or not, but in general you need to get closer. Otherwise, people who can read distance are not going to react against your technqiues (so if it seemed like I wasn't respecting your techniques yesterday, that's why).

2. Telegraphing - You need to work on hiding your techniques (especially kicks). While they were all crisp, nine times out of ten your body told us that they were coming long before they actually made it to us. This is a tough thing to work on and comes with experience.

3. Arbitrary techniques - You threw everything and the kitchen sink which was great. However, there wasn't always a logic behind your attacks. So you sometimes threw techniques that just didn't fit the situation. Again this is an experience thing.

finally

4. Work on developing hooking power - this is something you might want to talk with One Winged Angel about (king of the hooks). You were good at slipping the low hook in. Unfortunately, the feeling that I got from being hit by your hooks is that you don't understand power generation for them. While I know you weren't going full on, I never felt that there was enough behind them to do any real damage if you were. That being said I think a few changes in how you're throwing them (shifting to a bit more of a western paradigm) and they'll have a much bigger impact.

Hope this helps. It was great working with you!

- Matt

**lama_xy** · Posted On: 10/04/2004 11:26am

1) Throwdown format. Location needs to be checked out for every little nuances (some places might not like the idea of some of us hurting ourselves on their premises). Organizer needs to have an "alternate" (in case you are late). Contact info for organizer and alternate/back-up needs to be available to all Throwdown participants. Maybe an instructional portion at the beginning of the Throwdown so participants can warm-up while learning something from other participants?

2) I worked with Matt*, Zing!, April, Jeice, Keinhaar, and Samurai Steve and none of them have expressed an interest for feedbacks. However, feel free to give me feedbacks if you have a minute or two.

Thanks,
Chuong

**Nid** · Posted On: 10/04/2004 11:27am

In the introductions it was made rather clear that nobody wanted to get uglied-up nor slammed on hard dirt. Hence I think it'd be premature to draw certain conclusions. Something that'll clear up a lot of this confusion about who was pulling punches, taking it easy, holding back, working mainly on technique ETC would be to have something like a minute of full-on, conventinal MMA rules fighting (or something) like I saw in some of the other throwdown footage.

**OneWingedAngel** · Posted On: 10/04/2004 11:39am

Format – Yeah, definetly needs more organization. Back-up plans, or scheduling well in advance, but we already know that, now. As far as how the throwdown is held, I liked the idea of stations. One station teaching standup techniques, then another for throws or ground or whatever. Maybe get people to volunteer to do some teaching and everyone can work for an hour on whatever they wanna work on.

Personal performance – I ended up working with Matt Bernius, Xango, and Samurai Steve, and I’ll offer what suggestions I can. Matt, I don’t remember most of what we did, short of hooking you in the head a couple times, and nice job with the weapons.

Xango, forever teaching me I need to learn judo, all I can say is maybe work your hands a little more; if I didn’t just give you my legs to be thrown, you might have had a harder time.

Steve, excellent kicks, but try and work your hands as well. You have a good game going with the kicks, which can only be made better by stronger hands. Also, work your clinch a little more; you seemed to have more of a boxer’s clinch, trying to control rather than hurt(which is fine for straight standup/no knees, but add in knees and it starts to hurt).

Well, that’s all I got, anyone feel free to comment on me.

**Zing!** · Posted On: 10/04/2004 11:51am

Location was definetly an issue at the throwdown. Somebody needs to reserve a space for the next one in advance. I heard something about Hyde Park; the YMCA we checked out might be another place.

**Zing!** · Posted On: 10/04/2004 11:51am

Oh yeah, if anyone has any suggestions for me (which you almost certainly do) I'd like to hear them. I'm here to learn.

**Matt Bernius** · Posted On: 10/04/2004 12:02pm

Zing,

I think one crucial thing for you is to work on opening up. This is tough because you're still really new at this. But where as I mentioned that 'Just A Black Guy' needs to start considering what he's throwing and why, you need to get to the point where you're just throwing everything and the kitchen sink.

It falls into the area of, if you going to go swimming you need to get wet. You can't be afraid of getting hit. Especially if the sparring is non competitive. And you can't always wait for the perfect moment. Nine time out of ten you need to create those moments.

So I'd suggest just keep on drilling your techniques and work being more aggressive next time.

- Matt

**Judah Maccabee** · Posted On: 10/04/2004 12:25pm

I'll take any and all comments regarding me (thanks to those already posted)

As I said, however, I will only post about people who are interested in hearing the feedback.

Can someone post the group pic with all the names so we have a frame of reference? I'm mostly remembering clothing as identifiers for people. :o

**Yogi Bear** · Posted On: 10/04/2004 1:11pm

Let's see. Steve, fucking wicked kicks. I'm totally unused to dealing with either boxing gloves or protective headgear - I might have to do some light sparring with you next time around to figure that stuff out, because it really changes the sparring dynamics. In terms of stuff to improve, looks like you're really seriously tight and focussed against styles similar to your own and you might get a lot out of working at different ranges. There's a lot to the kicking game!

Hayt - dude, you've gotta use your frame! You *tower* over me, and have the mass and build to simply drive me into the ground, but you don't make it intimidating. Fix that! I wonder if you might not get a lot out of working the pushing-through-the-center stuff from Xing Yi or Tai Chi in a sparring context, you know? The "I am going to walk forward directly through you while attacking, and you better move, ok?" approach might really work for you. I hope we'll get to spar more sometime too!

Matt - holy ****. Slices, dices, does sticking hands eyes closed. I get the feeling you know a *bunch* of stuff I don't think I've ever seen and I'd like to see more of that. I found when we were doing sticking stuff that you seemed to wind up on the outside a lot leaving me access to your chest / head, but it seemed like mebbe you were preping for some of those "rotate 45 degrees, come in to the ribs" type stuff and just not bothering to follow through. I'm not sure. It confused me given how good you were that you seemed to be heading for what I typically thing of an ineffective position almost by intention???

As for the ground game, I think you'd pick it up pretty fast. You're pretty fluid and that counts for a lot. Gotta think less, though, the ground thing is really really low level software, like just heft. Really resistant to analytical thinking, regardless of what those BJJ weenies will tell you*.

(* I expect to suffer for this remark later. I'm hoping to learn some BJJ in the process!)

By the way, I *think* when I kicked you from the ground it was a straight push kick - that my foot didn't really *impact* your ribs all that hard. Is that correct, or did I actually boot you damn near full force? I'm fucking rusty at sparring and I noticed my control was way the hell off several times, that being the most spectacular. I did not notice any wincing, but I wanted to check!

I though I was up four times, but that's three. Who did I miss? Adrenaline state-dependant memory for ya...