I came across the Diesel Crew one night when surfing through the endless amounts of strongman video on YouTube. The Crew were pulling off some pretty impressive lifts, just do a search on YouTube for Diesel Crew and you'll see what I mean. Anyway I eventually went to there website to find out a little more about the Diesel Crew, www.dieselcrew.com and found that they actually had an MMA training manual titled "Building the Ultimate MMA Athlete".
I know the Diesel Crew do seminars with Zach Even-Esh, and I though that it could be a rehash of some of Zach's stuff but to my pleasant surprise its not at all, its completely new ground with no stone unturned in there approach.
Building the Ultimate MMA Athlete is penned by James "Smitty" Smith from the Crew,and the exercises are performed by the Diesel Crew. The manual is a juicy 306 pages of very unique fun and pain.
What really impressed me is that "Building the Ultimate MMA Athlete" covers everything you'll need minus actually learning how to fight, and I mean everything. From Diet, Recovery, to Energy Systems, training programmes, and the actual exercises themselves. They cover the whole nine yards in training and then some.
As you read the manual you quickly come to the conclusion that these guys have really studied the sport of MMA, and all the movements incorporated into the different techniques and positions. While reading you start seeing names like Fedor Emelianenko and Alexander Karelin. The Diesel Crew has been studying the movements of top athletes such as these in order to design exercises that mimic the explosiveness needed in this sport.
I've been working alot more on my stand up clinch game just recently, and have been doing alot of Greco Roman Wrestling. So I decided that for the week I'd really push some of the manuals clinch work exercises. I've set up my gear in the back yard for this, actually that is one of the good things about this manual, you can do alot of it in the garage, the park, or in my case the back yard.
After some warm ups I started playing around with sandbag grappling, which basically involves holding a sand bag in a standing clinch position i.e. double under hooks, the sandbag is then tied to a fixed pole or support with a giant rubber band. You then turn, pull, and twist like your fighting the bag, and it feels like a fight. The exercise as James puts it "simulates clinching and footwork under a load". I was having a great time doing this, both my kids were sitting on the porch with odd looks on there face, "Daddy what are you trying to do?".
As odd as you'll look doing these exercises they're a heck of alot of fun and you don't need conventional gym equipment, most of the gear you'll need is easily available at your local hard wear store, or even in your back yard. The only drama you'll have is in finding a monster tyre to flip, but with a bit of phoning around you'll grab one quite easily. I got mine from a local kindergarten that was changing its play ground, it was actually its sand pit. That being said, the manual gives you plenty of options in exercises, so if you don't have a particular piece of equipment then you have plenty of options to play around with.
After doing a week of clinch training with exercises like the one above I'm feeling pretty good, and its very evident that if I stick to these exercises and programmes I'm going to turn into an explosive wrecking machine in no time. I would go so far as saying that you could get a fighter with some rudimentary MMA skills, train them up using the Diesel Crew method and in 3 or 4 months you'd have a monster on your hands. You're probably thinking "yeah right", but a couple of years back we had a competitive strongman come into our Brazilian Jujitsu class, because I'm 108 kilos my instructor had me roll with him during sparring. Even though I had the technical edge over him he was just about impossible submit, its was like rolling with a rampaging bull. Combining strength work like the Diesel Method with technical fight know how will create an absolute monster of a fighter.
The manual is available at www.dieselcrew.com, and at $97.00 plus shipping and handling, is well worth it.
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