Gracie Combatives Reflex development

The way the Gracie Combatives program is setup, once you get your second stripe you become eligible to participate in the reflex development portion of the training. This is where you start to take those techniques you’ve been learning, tie them together and perform them repeatedly in order to make them a reflex. I guess that’s kind of self explanatory due to the name. LOL.

In any case, that was a slightly different ball game. We were working back take and remounts with a rear naked choke finish. As both the bad guy and the good guy in this drill, you are moving much more and much faster than you usually do in combatives class. It’s not full on sparring, but the resistance is there and combined with the speed of the movements you get a nice sweat and conditioning session out of it. My training partner and I usually flow it with some intensity while staying safe, so we always get that sweat on.

By the end of our drills, my boy Nikita and I were both sucking wind and had a real nice sweat going. I think this is a good way to recondition your body to sparring without too much risk. Granted, my lower back does hurt and I had to spend an hour doing my physical therapy exercises, but its still way safer than the unpredictable nature of full on sparring. My hope is that my body gets stronger, more flexible, and that over the time it can meet the rigorous demands of full on sparring. I’m sure that having done yoga earlier on that first reflex day helped too.

I’m loving the journey and it’s nice to see progress!