Our next guest on the podcast is writer, educator and combat sports specialist, Mr Rama Reddy. He is well known in the industry as an instructor, educator, combat sports commentator and founder of MMA gyms and organisations. Rama has combined his passion for education and love for martial arts to create pedagogies for coaching and training the various combat sports.
In this episode, Rama discusses his journey into combat sports and the role that his background in education has played throughout.
He also delves into a new and interesting concept that he has been working on, called Athlete Psychographics. This concept represents various archetypes of athletes that can be applied across all sports and competition, and how that plays out in their approach to tactics, preparation and technique. This gives us an insight into how we may train the different archetypes as coaches and instructors.
We also discuss the effects of COVID on combat sports and the ways in which Rama and his team are getting around it.
Please refer to Rama's post on Instagram (@ramareddy.mma) for further details and an illustration of the Psychographics. Be sure to check out Rama's work on pedagogies and other content such as blogs and articles on a wide variety of topics based on martial arts and education.
0:28 - Rama’s introduction and his journey into the Combat Sports industry.
03:12 - “Education is the tool that allows civilization to be civilization.”
His reflection upon the pedagogical and technical shortcomings that were present at the time of introduction to wrestling. The Dan Gable Effect and a small account of wrestling around the World.
10:35 - Rama’s venture into other sports and the importance of an athletic culture from a young age.
14:20 - Introduction to Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
15:20 - “I’ve always been interested by Conflict and Combat.” The primal aspect of grappling.
18:53 - Touching upon the misinterpretation of martial arts as violence.
19:12 - “Violence requires victimisation, it requires a lack of consent.” Love fighting, hate violence!
20:30 - Filler
22:12 - Rama’s advent of creating pedagogical systems for coaches to understand how context plays a role in training.
27:50 The 4 Rs of Rama - Relevance, Relationship, Rigour = Results.
29:02 - “If something is too easy - people get bored; if it’s too difficult - people get bored because it’s overwhelming.”
32:45 - “The wrong technique at the right time, is the right technique.”
33:40 - An example of how a constraints-led approach can recreate relevant contexts in fighting.
37:50 - Athlete Psychographics (episode thumbnail) - Rama delves into the archetypes that he has developed by creating axes to better understand competitors.
*Please refer to the post on Rama’s Instagram page (@ramareddy.mma)
“The competitor (spike) is most likely to find the most effective way as quickly as possible.”
48:30 - What separates brawling from fighting.
51:44 - The other aspects of the Psychographic and how to perceive them as coaches.
56:20 - The effects of COVID on the industry and ways to get around it.
1:03:43 - Adding another axis to the Psychographic and how it can affect the pedagogy - building a 3 dimensional approach to it.
