Bonus Session: The Importance of Building a Frame | 32 min (Patreon)

Bonus Session: My own training explanation of How the clinch frame and clinch lock relate to each other -

This is the second time Kate Allen-Cottone (fighter and owner of VIII Limbs Academy in Philadelphia ) has come to visit me at Petchrungruang and work with me in clinch. The work presented here is at times more theoretical than the “put your hand here and your foot there,” kind of technical breakdown, but it includes that as well. By theoretical I mean strategy and the foundational framework of clinching as an art form. And building a frame is a huge part of that. 

You can think of a “frame” as similar to your stance in striking. You return to it over and over between “moves” and it’s the most fundamental and balanced position you will find yourself in. It’s a launching pad for everything else. You can throw a punch from any body position you like, but punching from a casual, squared off and feet together position is certainly inferior to throwing the same punch from a stance, where the effectiveness of it and distribution of weight bring power and explosiveness to the same technical movements. That’s what building a frame does. Another point that is often neglected in how we learn clinch in the west is the lock. Yes, the lock is taught in almost every gym - or some version of it - but it’s kind of taught as a finishing move. Like a submission or something. That’s not how locks work; they’re more transitional than that. If you get too still with a lock, it loses effectiveness, you don’t get any points and the ref breaks you. If you keep moving, scoring, and ultimately use that lock to weaken your opponent’s position before transitioning to a finishing move, that’s how locks work. They’re a wrecking ball to your opponent’s frame, and then you build atop the rubble.

Something interesting that came out of this session with Kate was that she knew the arm position of one of the most common frames (one hand on the neck, one inside the elbow of the arm), but she had learned it more as a “move.” You get to this position in order to do a turn and a knee and then you’re done. Frames aren’t for a move, they’re for all moves. It’s a way to gain balance and “footing” so to speak on uneven terrain. When two fighters are swimming their arms against each other, each trying to get to a dominant position, it’s very busy. A frame is a way to slow that down, or to at least to orient yourself and your opponent so that you can have better control of both your own strategy and how your opponent might respond. You can only really learn how to use this strategy by long-form clinch sessions, where you just keep moving and working without breaking or stopping for 20 min or more at a time. You have to find your way out of bad positions and work your way into good positions in a non-stop and back and forth manner. The frame is the “break” so to speak. When you get into your frame it’s kind of like returning to neutral on a gear shifter - you know how to get to each of your other positions or moves from that “home base”; it’s the start over button rather than breaking and actually starting over. You return to it over and over and over again.

The lock is like a slow-motion button. There’s a lot of moving and jockeying for position in clinch, but when you get a good lock in all of that slows down. It simplifies dramatically, because once you have that lock you are in the advantage. You can knee to some degree, or you can simply counter all your opponents moves. Your opponent, because they’re locked, will become far more predictable in their movements. All they can do is knee or struggle to get out, so you’ll wait for the knee and turn them, or you wait for the arm that will try to push you off and you use that opening to elbow. A good lock is like shutting off the lights but you have night-vision goggles on; you can read your opponent and the moves you make to get to the finishing move are far simpler than when you’re swimming for a grip. Picture a predator chasing prey: there’s a lot of confusion and movement involved in corralling the prey into a dead end or tiring it out, or anticipating which way it’s going to turn. It’s hard. But once the predator locks its teeth on the leg or neck of the prey, everything becomes much simpler. Remember, though, that a lock is transitional and not the end-game in itself. It’s not wrestling where you pin someone. There’s always a way out of a lock and there’s always a way to punish the person who has the lock, so you have to use it to get to your ultimate and finishing move. It’s just the slow-motion button, not the stop button.

Some techniques covered in this session:

• Breaking the body lock, both low and high grip
• Positioning the elbow on the basic neck grip for maximum control
• Using the head as a third appendage and to impact opponent’s strength
• Attacking the jaw in the clinch as a nerve point
• Body throw
• Using pulling and backwards movement