So finally got a chance to go to a combat submission wrestling class. The bjj school I switched too has it on thursday. Guys a direct student of eric paulson, so I had to go and try it out. I got there a tad late and missed the warm up. The part that I did get was a double leg takedown drill from over hand. the rest of the class was focus on drilling finishing an opponent you've downed with a clean shot using either a sub, or ground and pound from a positon they couldnt' defend against. I started jits at an MMA school- where i fostered a lot of bad habits learning too punch while grappling. So it was very refreshing to get some striking into my game while still having to use jits now that I've had much more experience. once we got to the rolling aspect of class. the drill was basically top guy wants to keep opponent on the ground and pepper him with strikes or submit him. bottom guy is suppose to either submit him or escape to feet. I felt that the gracie combatives aspect that we trained really helped in this area against a lot of the other guys. However once the actual MMA fighters or the coach got involved, It wasn't as easy to escape. I really had to remember where my hands were at all times to avoid the KO blow. all in all I really liked it. the subs we went over were a different take on a lot of different ways. especially the leg locks we went over,and dealing with aspects like guys wearing wrestling shoes while fighting me - though painful, was very street applicable I feel. Looking forward to more of this. has anyone else ever done CSW classes before? Was the training format similar?
I train CSW once a week. Would do more if my training facility offered more classes, which they might soon. Regardless. Classes usually start with shadow boxing, then some wrestling drills - wrist control, pummelling etc... then onto a flow drill that usually that starts standing up- takedown to a submission combo flow. We focus heavily on the submission combination aspect, so much that the class has been renamed Submission Combination. We don't do striking drills in that particular class as the school offers JKD and Muay Thai classes for those who want to hone their striking skills. I love this class as it expands my BJJ repertoire of subs, escapes and takedowns and is more street oriented than BJJ (I trained JJJ for 7 years and it also expends my SD arsenal). the only regret I have is we don't spar -even lightly - and drill only. Then again I'm getting older and more brittle every day some maybe I should be thankful that we don't.
I've trained briefly at CSW in Fullerton, and I've been to various seminars with Erik. It depends on what class you go to as to what you get. There's straight nogi (although with the CSW flavour), kickboxing, shootboxing, catchwrestling, MMA and even Kali/Silat. What you describe is all pretty typical of stuff I've done with Erik.
In our CSW class we focus a lot on wrestling and other more applicable parts to no-gi fighting. Not really any strikes in that class for me.
I been to a direct CSW class a few times near me. I need to go to more though. I just missed out on a Erik Paulson seminar though
Trained for three years at a JKD place that included CSW. When they first got the program, there was a lot more striking, but it gradually evolved into a no-gi grappling class. Which was OK (I prefer no-gi) but I liked the whole, "parry the jab to enter the clinch to get a trip" that it originally had.
