Regardless of your martial art, be it grappling or striking – VARY THE LOCATION OF YOUR ATTACKS AND TARGET THE whole body. When my three senior grappling students, eddie cummings, garry tonon and gordon ryan first exploded on to the national and international grappling circuit, people were shocked at their efficiency in attacking the lower body – a target that had been systematically undervalued throughout the history of jiu jitsu. Their tremendous success in this regard had a downside. People thought we were advocating leg attacks above others. This was NOT the case. All of my senior students are just as proficient in upper body attacks. When they train with each other, the attacks are evenly distributed. When they train with outsiders they tend to score much more on the legs since their opponents are not familiar with our system and usually struggle to resist in that area. WHEN YOUR THREATS CAN BE TARGETED OVER THE WHOLE BODY, OPENINGS WILL APPEAR WITH FAR GREATER REGULARITY THAN IF YOU TARGET ONLY A LIMITED AREA. This is true in all martial arts, not just grappling. As your opponent moves to resist a threat in one direction he will become vulnerable not another. Here, Georges St-Pierre digs hard to the body of rival Michael Bisping. The power of the blow is apparent and Mr Bisping HAS to address it with defensive measures. You can clearly see how those defensive measures have made him vulnerable to a second blow with either hand upstairs to the head or with the right leg to the lower body. Such is the way of all martial arts. In grappling you must have at least one very strong means of attacking legs, arms and neck so that you can distribute your attacks across the whole body. VARIATION OF DIRECTION OF ATTACK AND THE RESULTANT UNPREDICTABILITY IS A CORNERSTONE OF AN ATTACKING GAME.
