Haryana to Rio – Sakshi Malik

From yearning to fly in an aeroplane as a kid to clinching a bronze medal at the Olympics, Haryana wrestler Sakshi Malik has come a long way in her fairy-tale journey to etch her name in the country’s sporting history. Born into a humble family in Mokhra village near Rohtak; Haryana, Sakshi tried playing kabaddi and cricket but wrestling caught her interest and she soon started to win bouts. But little did she and her parents know that one day she would become the first woman wrestler from the country to win an Olympic medal.

According to her father, she was motivated to take up wrestling from seeing her grandfather Badhlu Ram, who was also a wrestler. Coach Ishwar Singh Dahiya still remembers the day when a 12 year old Sakshi accompanied her mother to the Sir Chotu Ram Stadium Wrestling Academy in Rohtak.

“When she had first come to the academy, she would feel nervous initially but her fear disappeared with training and she won medals at the Asian sub-junior level,” her coach said.

She had to train with the boys and fight them in the akhara, in a region where the sport was ‘not for girls’. Sakshi and her family had to fight against all odds.

“She has given befitting reply to people who say that women cannot be wrestlers,” her mother said

On the night of Wednesday, August 17, Sakshi ended the country’s painful wait for a medal at the Rio Olympics by clinching the bronze medal in the 58kg freestyle category, pulling off a sensational 8-5 victory over Aisuluu Tynybekova of Kyrgyzstan in the play-off bout. She scripted history by becoming the first woman wrestler from India to bag an Olympic medal and only fourth female athlete from the country to climb to the podium at the biggest sporting event in the world. Overall, Sakshi has won India’s fifth wrestling medal in the Olympic Games.

Sakshi earned the dramatic win after falling behind 0-5 following the first period in the do-or-die bout. The Indian turned the tables on the Kyrgyzstan wrestler in the dying seconds of the bout as Tynybekova was in complete command inmost part of the clash.

“It’s not easy to come back when you are five points down – and to win the match in the last few seconds! She just kept going and kept trying to go for the shots and eventually she got them. From what I saw, it was pure grit and determination,” Arvind Lalwani, Team Singapore wrestler and head coach at Juggernaut Fight Club told the BBC.

Sakshi had lost 2-9 in the quarter-finals to Russia’s Valeriia Koblova in the fifth bout of the day before getting a second chance in repechage when her conqueror reached the final.

The  journey to Rio

2010: By the age of 18, she had tasted victory at junior-level competitions. She won a Bronze at the 2010 Junior World Championships in the 59kg category.

2014: She first came to the international limelight after taking home the Gold at the Dave Schultz International Wrestling Tournament (60-kg).

July-August 2014: Her professional international career began with a silver medal in the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, courtesy two 4-0 bouts.

September 2014: She crashed out in the Quarterfinal at the World Wrestling Championships in Tashkent. But not before beating her Senegalese opponent 4-1 in the Round of 16.

May 2015: Then on to the Senior Asian Wrestling Championships in Doha, where she won the Bronze.

Sakshi was one of three female wrestlers to qualify for the Rio Olympics, each hailing from Haryana, where women have long been treated as second-class citizens and ‘honour killings’ and sex-selective abortions are rife. Sakshi had spent the first seven years of her life in this village and may have travelled down that beaten path had it not been for her parents. In the build-up to the Summer Games, Sakshi had recalled in an interview some of the instances when villagers had sniggered and pointed fingers when she wrestled with boys or wore shorts in a state where women are usually covered head-to-toe and confined to their homes. Her bronze medal is a major victory over sexism in one of India’s most conservative states.

Right after the match, when her mother called to ask her if she was tired, the 23-year-old said that “Nobody feels tired after winning a medal for country”.

This year it has been the female athletes from India who have ruled the roost and made Rio Games their own. From Dipa Karmakar’s death-defying gymnastic moves, to Lalita Babar’s historic track final, to bronze medallist Sakshi Malik’s wrestle against all odds to PV Sindhu’s silver medal – these feats have ensured that women too are eligible of bringing honour and pride to the country.

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Find your ‘FLOW’ in BJJ

The phrase ‘Flow Rolling’ often gets a bad rap in the grappling world. You know the feeling you go to slap and bump hands and your partner says, “You mind if we just flow?” You’re probably thinking, “Flow? What the hell! I want to fight!” People in the Jiu-Jitsu community often think of flow rolling as something less than live rolling. Some might even think that you only “flow roll” when you’re injured, broken, old, or weak. Flow rolling is a method of sparring that occurs at a lighter, less competitive / more cooperative pace than the regular rolling, involving a give and take in the match where your opponent is allowed to apply their techniques without your full defence and the emphasis is on movement and the exchange of positions. Flowing is when two students train from one movement to one movement without stopping or going for a “tapout.”

With an understanding of it’s definition and the knowledge of the basic movements of BJJ, a student can now flow. A practitioner will first warm up by stretching the legs, groin and later the upper body for a full body warm-up. The practitioner will start in a sit-down pose, on knees, facing his partner who is on their knees as well. They Shake hands and begin the first movement which could be bringing one partner into the guard position. Each partner will take turns and initiate the next move, never forcing a finishing move as the one of the main purpose to flowing is to not stop moving. A partner will move again until reaching a dominant position, like a full mount or knee on stomach. When position is attained the partner will let go of that position, knee on stomach in this case, and move to a side mount, or roll the partner off his back and begin cycle again. This training can go on and on, based on the skilled level of the students and cardio endurance. This flowing back and forth is a psychically a complete workout and mentally reinforces the techniques the students attempt during the flow session.

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once. But I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times. – Bruce lee

Develop your ‘Flow’

• Practice cyclical flow drills – Use these drills to help you develop more precise, accurate movements and transitions.
• “Dark” rolling (eyes closed) – When you grapple with your eyes closed you narrow your focus to your immediate needs. So instead of being distracted by all of the external stimuli when you grapple with your eyes open, you develop laser point focus on your partner. In addition, you are forced to move slower and with better precision which improves your technique.
• ‘Catch and Release’ flow rolling – This is a great way to move your body in and out of submissions. You want to use as little strength as possible and rely almost exclusively on technique. The goal is to exchange techniques with your partner using continuous movement with no breaks in the rhythm.
• The “right” partner – It’s important to find a partner who moves well. Also, find someone you roll with all the time who is familiar with the way you move. If they are choppy, resistant or in a deep egoic state it will be difficult to flow.

There are limitations to full intensity sparring (especially with evenly matched opponents) where each person will avoid taking chances or trying a new technique for fear of losing position and ending up getting submitted. This is where flow rolling will loosen up your game. Here are 4 ways that flow rolling can improve your jiu-jitsu.

1) Try new positions / develop your weaker positions

One of the ways one is discouraged from incorporating new positions or even attempting to improve your weaker positions is the fear that when your opponent counters the technique, you will lose your position on possibly get submitted. So you tighten up your game and instead restrict yourself to only your tried and true best techniques. But you have failed to try to incorporate that new position into your game and over a period this stifles your progress and growth.

With the cooperative nature of flow rolling you can attempt your triangle and your opponent allows you to lock it up before he starts the correct counter. With repeated attempts in flow rolling, you gain confidence in your ability to apply the triangle and have both added a new submission to your arsenal and corrected a weak spot in your game.

2) Exchange of many different positions

During a 5 min round of intense sparring, each person will attempt to limit the movement of their opponent and control the positions. This results in static matches where each tightens their grips and the movement between positions grinds to a halt. Instead, in flow rolling, you have the option to direct the roll repeatedly to the back position and try choke as many times as you wish. Repetition is the mother of skill and this a great way to get those reps in and make that technique part of your game.

3) Learning opponent reactions

Marcelo Garcia said that a key to getting deadly at submissions was to allow a tight, defensive opponent to move, thereby opening up opportunities for submissions. By the time most BJJ-ers are at bluebelt, they have some idea of their best positions. To bring their level up higher in those already strong positions, flow rolling will build your transitions to get to those strong positions and also build your knowledge of how your opponent counters. When you have a solid idea of how the opponent will counter your favourite technique you can now anticipate their reactions, start to build combinations and re-counters and thus always be one step ahead of your opponent’s defence.

4) Training around injuries

One of the unfortunate realities of bjj is dealing with training injuries. It can be frustrating to sit on the sidelines as you recover and feel that your hard won progress is slipping away. Training around injuries is a skill to keep your jiu-jitsu progressing and providing some mental relief from the frustration of being sidelined. High intensity sparring involves sudden, uncontrolled movements where you are unexpectedly forced to post a hand or shift balance onto your knee to avoid being  swept. Flow rolling will allow you to avoid certain positions that aggravate your injury and still retain your timing and movement.

Flowing helps improve your agility and timing as well as teaches you how to use your momentum when you are training.

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Knocking down the myths in MMA

When talking about Martial Arts, it comes as no surprise to us that there are a few misconceptions about the art and those who practice it. Due to a lot of hype by mainstream media, those who have never practiced a Martial Art easily make assumptions. To set the record straight, here is a look at some of the major misconceptions about MMA.

No Holds Barred & No Rules? Is MMA the most brutal sport on the planet?

Many casual fans of MMA might perpetuate the idea that they like watching the sport because there are“no rules” or “no holds barred.” No Holds Barred, or NHB fighting is a completely different animal from MMA. MMA has several rules. Primarily there’s no biting, eye-gouging, head-butting or hair pulling in MMA under traditional rule requirements. Most leagues also forbid kicks or knees to the head of a downed opponent.

Mixed Martial Arts has often been compared to boxing and called more dangerous. However, the fact is Boxing has a much longer history and exponentially higher incidences of formal prizefights on record than MMA has in its still young life span. It’s been said that there is not a single recorded death that has occurred due to injuries sustained in a formal sanctioned Mixed Martial Arts Fight. According to the popular “Manswers” TV show, boxing is responsible for an average of nine deaths each year.

Mixed martial arts is a fighting sport, and there is some level of aggression involved and obviously a great deal of adrenaline, but that does not mean the sport is inherently brutal. Fighters do not battle to the death or face men twice their size, and the level of sophistication has evolved 10-fold since the heady early days of the sport when fighters fought in tournament-style showdowns facing multiple opponents per night. Now opponents are of similar weight, a typical pro fighter rarely ever fights more than twice a month at most, and the rules and customs of the sport are designed to protect the fighters from serious and life-changing and/or threatening injury.

Women can´t do Martial Arts.

There are certain individuals who believe that Martial Arts, clubs and academy´s are a boys only club. As a result, these people feel that women are unable to train and develop enough strength to defend against an average sized man or to discourage an assailant.

We know this isn’t true, as we have seen so much recent news coverage, where girls as young as the age of 23 have taken on and successfully defended themselves against attack. These real life stories seem to be happening more today than ever before. Women, who train in Karate and Aikido for example, will always have the element of surprise on their side. These women are trained to defend themselves with a focused counterattack and develop the skill to strike pressure points, bones and even organs of the assailant without hesitation.

All Fighters are Brain Dead Bruiser Types Who Come From Bad Backgrounds and Broken Homes.

Most fighters can take each other apart with unmitigated fury in the confines of a cage or ring and just as easily put all that aggression and intensity behind them as soon as the fight ends. Also, though some guys who fight take on the look of a common street thug in a bad action movie, looking menacing can be a psychological edge. Many Fighters are smarter than you think, and though some might come from troubled childhoods, have criminal records, or went to reform school, you usually find it is organized fighting that kept them out of trouble rather than what got them into it.

Many people are astonished to find out some of the toughest fighters in the sport are the nicest and most intelligent people you could meet when they step outside the field of combat.

Everyone in MMA is on performance-enhancing drugs.

Thanks to organizations developing relationships with professional drug-testing facilities such as the World Anti-Doping Agency, and promotions like ONE Championship placing new weight-cutting procedures into play, the sport of MMA is getting healthier by the day.

Fighters can no longer take performance-enhancing drugs and get away with it. There are also stiff penalties, such as extensive suspensions, in place for those who get caught. For a professional fighter, not being able to fight is a huge blow to their career and livelihoods.

What’s more, athletes like Shinya Aoki, Ben Askren and countless others have showcased skills that allow them to overcome physically larger fighters based on ability alone.

Grappling and ground fighting is boring.

Unfortunately for MMA fans, this is a comment that will likely be heard until the end of time by those who are passionate about boxing or kickboxing. You could almost compare it to American football versus regular football in terms of followers not understanding why you use your hands in one and not the other.

Regardless, MMA is maybe even more about what happens on the canvas thanks to its connections with Brazilian jiu jitsu and wrestling, as it is about standing and out-striking your opponent. Once you see a high-level grappling exchange leading to a spectacular submission, you’ll realize ground fighting can be just as exciting as seeing two fighters trading blows in the center of the cage.

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