Formosa Neijia

Sorry for the small pic. The title of this post maye seem strange for those of you familiar with Mark Hatmaker’s material. He’s not an IMA guy and this tape is not really IMA material. I say this is good groundfighting material for IMA because of how he presents the techniques. I’ll explain more below.

This DVD is by Mark Hatmaker, a MMA/NHB guy that you’ve probably never heard of. He’s not as big and as flashy as most guys with vids. He’s also not a BJJ guy, he does more old Western wrestling and boxing. He also produces a lot of his stuff through Paladin Press. If you buy this DVD from them, they’ll send you lots of interesting catalogs every other month that will be sure to deter anyone from breaking into your house. Paladin Press is famous for their “extreme self-defense” literature and I’m quite sure they are popular in places like Idaho and Montana, if you see what I mean. But don’t let that throw you off. They put out great DVDs like this one.

Hatmaker basically gives you an entire groundfighting curriculum and shows you how to perform it at home with no material other than a common heavy bag. That’s it. You get conditioning drills with the bag, chokes, strikes, mat maneuvering and positioning, etc. I was surprised by the amount of material that he gives here. It’s not everything that a BJJ school would teach you, but it’s everything that you should know to survive on the ground.

Him using the bag instead of a partner is really smart. Most guys don’t have someone outside of class to work with. That’s a weakness of grappling arts. By using the bag, Hatmaker gives you a full workout that you can do at home all by yourself. No more excuses that you can’t find a partner. Second, many BJJ schools are now moving to a sport BJJ mentality and curriculum. In the past, they were more self-defense oriented. What I really liked about this DVD was the fact that it is purely self-defense oriented. In fact, you couldn’t use most of this in a tournament. By using the bag, Hatmaker teaches stuff like pounding on the bag in order to get better position to end the fight. That’s the kind of stuff a training partner will not let you do, they don’t want to get hurt. Also, many of the moves he does on the bag are purely self-defense in that they ARE BRUTAL. Like I said, this isn’t sport BJJ. Hatmaker wants to teach you to survive a violent assault on the ground. One of the moves is called a “hamburger” because it describes well what you do to the guy’s face. And that move is SO simple. But you would never see it in BJJ class, nor would you ever in a million years be able to practice it on someone.

The bag is a great piece of equipment. Hatmaker teaches you to treat it like the opponent’s body so you can even do a type of free-fighting or randori with it. That’s what the cover pic shows.

This DVD is about 90 minutes long, so it’s a good deal for the money. No long intros or pushy advertising. It’s professionally done but still a little low tech. But that didn’t cause any problems for me.

So why is this good for IMA guys? Most of us are not going to be groundfighting specialists and that’s okay. What Hatmaker does is give you most everything you need to learn to fight on the ground in a way that you can train by yourself at home for next to nothing. Doesn’t that sound perfect? Any IMA guy could pick this up and use his heavy bag to get the basics of fighting on the ground with no need to join a BJJ school and learn lots of stuff that you don’t need (although visiting that type of school for a short period of time is still HIGHLY advisable IMO).

I recommend this because, as I’ve said many times, everyone who does MA period should know the basics of ground grappling. The “UFC Effect” is out there in full force. Don’t get caught by surprise when you wind up on the ground. Learn to deal with it before you experience it. As an IMA guy, I can tell you that being on the ground changes everything. It’s a totally different type of movement than I was used to. This DVD helped me get used to it.
This is one of the best, most useful DVDs I have for actual training. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed. If you get it, let me know what you think.