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Fight Study 165 – UFC 322, ONE 173, RWS
We are back! Discussing UFC 322, ONE 173, and RWS. Fight Study is essential listening for thoughtful martial arts fans.If you’re new to LMA, start with our table of contentsTranscript[Note:Transcripts are autogenerated and may contain errors.]This is Fight Study. I am your host, Sam. Today we have a special guest that I've been trying to get on the Southpaw Network for several years now. Everybody on Discord knows her as Jessica. Jessica has a long history of combat sports, but she started...
Adapting to Training Frequency
(Originally a social media post, so the audience is non-LMA "coaches.")Training frequency determines the approach and the results. Coaches love to imagine ideal programs. But material conditions decide everything.If you have a free club with rotating, inconsistent, and temporary participants, your plans don't matter. Your conditions do.If you're only seeing someone once, or not again for months: What is a realistic expectation? What becomes the priority? What's the approach f...
CTE in Combat Sports
Important documentary about brain health in combat sportsTo access the complete Liberation Martial Artscurriculum and contribute to the sustainability of this project, consider upgrading your membership. Find other ways to support us here. – Sam✊✊✊(I write daily about martial arts and other topics from a liberatory perspective. If you like my work, please support me on Patreonor Substack, or make a donation. Find Southpaw at its website. Get the swag on Spring. Also check out Liberation ...
November 2025 Highlights: Part 1
This is a highlight from two recent muay Thai exhibition matches featuring LMAists (black headgears) from the Liberation Martial Arts Learning Lab.It's been over two years of LMA—no muay Thai coaches, no standardized drills, no exact techniques to memorize. Just adults coming together once or twice a week, exploring, organizing, and refining their movements. That's it. With that small investment of time, we've done a lot—things other approaches can't replicate, even with youn...
Head and Neck Sugo
Head and Neck Sugo invites us into one of the most vulnerable and sensitive regions of the body—the head and neck—where even slight pressures can ripple throughout the entire system. It's an exercise in intimacy, precision, and restraint. The goal isn't to overpower but to dwell in: to feel the slightest shifts in another person's structure and respond without tension or panic.If you’re new to LMA, start with our table of contentsThe activityBegin standing, facing your partner....
Over-Under Sugo
In Over-Under Sugo, we explore one of the most fundamental relational puzzles in contact movement: how two bodies share and contest the space between their trunks. The framework is simple—one arm over, one arm under—but within that symmetry hides a deeper education in control, comfort, and connection."Over" means draping over your partner's arm; "under" means threading beneath it. Together they form an over-under—a 50/50 weave where both are entangled yet balanced. Here...
An Education on Training Gloves
Understanding your gear will make you a better fighter.Remember to spray protectant on your training gear when you first get it and every few months after.To access the complete Liberation Martial Artscurriculum and contribute to the sustainability of this project, consider upgrading your membership. Find other ways to support us here. – Sam✊✊✊(I write daily about martial arts and other topics from a liberatory perspective. If you like my work, please support me on Patreonor Substack, or...
Head-to-Head Sugo
A spirited activity exploring balance, structure, and connection through co-regulated pressure with the head and neck.Where Solo Neck Wrestling built stability and mobility, and Head-to-Head Connection centered on sensing and sustaining contact, this Sugo extends that strength and sensitivity into influencing and being influenced.If you’re new to LMA, start with our table of contentsThe activityPartners begin facing each other, gaze lowered toward the hips, foreheads or crowns gently touching....
2-on-1 Sugo
Through the tangling of the arms, 2-on-1 Sugo develops spatial reasoning, pattern recognition, and creative problem-solving through the body. It cultivates a keen spatial awareness and the capacity for Wayfinding through physical complexity.The goal is not to "escape," "win," or "free" yourself, but to explore—expanding the imagination for new pathways of movement and engagement.If you’re new to LMA, start with our table of contentsPhysical and emotional safety rulesF...
Sunday LMA Class
We have a Sunday Liberation Martial Arts group class in Los Angeles. Get hands-on live experience from day one. $20 a person.
Unlocked: Have Gi, Will Travel (Supercut)
This trip took place in 2008, and this series originally aired in 2014. These experiences sowed the seeds for Southpaw and eventually Liberation Martial Arts.To access the complete Liberation Martial Artscurriculum and contribute to the sustainability of this project, consider upgrading your membership. Find other ways to support us here. – Sam✊✊✊(I write daily about martial arts and other topics from a liberatory perspective. If you like my work, please support me on Patreonor Substack,...
Upper Arm Sugo
Fostering adaptive, embodied grappling through sustained struggle over upper arm control.If you’re new to LMA, start with our table of contentsPhysical and emotional safety rulesFingernails trimmed and filed.Tight clothing only (e.g., rashguard): prevents fingers from catching or scratching exposed skin. We avoid tank tops at the LMA Learning Lab to minimize scratches and skin infections.No jewelry, no zippers, no pockets, or holes in shirts: nothing your fingers or your partner's fingers ...
Safe Hands, Spirited Contact
Protecting your hands means strengthening your fingers, stabilizing your wrists, and learning to shape your hands.Shaping your hands is not just about self-protection—it's also about preventing accidental injury to your partner. You'll learn to mold your hands to the shape of your partner's body, rather than pinching, scratching, or poking. The more you can feel your partner's surface and adapt to it, the safer both of you become.If you’re new to LMA, start with our table of ...
Trauma-Informed Intuitive Eating
Diet simply means the way one eats. In theory, everyone has a diet (as in eating pattern). But these days, when someone says they’re “going on a diet,” it implies something prescriptive—a set of rules or a program they’re following to change their body or health. Usually, it’s about losing weight or “eating clean.” And while wanting to improve health is great, sometimes what people perceive as healthy behavior is actually harmful behavior rationalized as being for health. In othe...
Stable Roots, Spirited Play
Strong ankles and feet don't just need mobility—they need stability. Joint stability means your joints stay in place when force is applied, helping you transfer force and prevent injury. That's why fighters tape their ankles, hands, and wrists, and why wrestlers wear snug shoes and socks. When a joint is too loose, it can shear.If you’re new to LMA, start with our table of contentsLMA's wu weiStable joints often mean stiff joints. Stiffness doesn't mean limited range of motio...
UFC 320: Cory Sandhagen Was Onto Something
When I'm analyzing UFC events, it's not always the headliner that grabs me—it's the fights that offer something to dissect. At UFC 320, that fight was Merab Dvalishvili (c) vs. Cory Sandhagen for the men's bantamweight title. In fact, the fight itself serves as a useful lens for looking at Alex Pereira vs. Magomed Ankalaev (c) and Jiří Procházka vs. Khalil Rountree Jr.At first glance, Dvalishvili vs. Sandhagen looks like a familiar Dvalishvili beatdown. When a champion is th...
Introduction to LMA’s Sugo Wrestling
If you’re new to LMA, start with our table of contentsSugo (수고) is a word woven into daily Korean life. At work, on the street, or after a long task, it is exchanged as a nod to effort: “You’ve struggled, you’ve toiled, you’ve endured, you’ve given effort—thank you.” At its heart, sugo encourages in the original sense of “call into courage:” “fighting spirit, endure well, persist, keep at it, I see you, I’m with you, good struggle, meaningful effort, I share your stru...
Why Wellness Is Getting MORE Conspiratorial
Health and fitness spaces have always been political. What’s new is the acceleration of old patterns—purity, distrust, and “clean living”—which are now louder and more profitable through social media. If we truly care about health as carework, not content or clout, we must call out the forces shaping wellness culture.This didn’t come out of nowhereWellness in the US has long overlapped with racial purity politics, social engineering, conspiratorial “nature cure” philosophies, and...
Against Japanism
As a Korean radical, I am regularly horrified by the persistence of Japanism—a fandom for Japan shaped by colonialism and soft power—among Western-educated people. By "Western-educated," I not only include non-white people, but also Asians from countries colonized by Japan. This fascination runs rampant not only in mainstream culture but also in progressive and even radical spaces. What saddens me most is that the people most often influenced by the "Cool Japan" initiative—...
Reinforcing Our Roots
These activities are invitations to reinforce your roots—not by drilling them into rigid form, but by creating the conditions for strength, balance, and composure that future activities can grow from.If you’re new to LMA, start with our table of contentsFront knee raisesLift your knee to belly button height. Stay with the same leg if you want to challenge your balance; alternate if you want rhythm. Explore how many you can do in a row—10, 20, or more—without forcing a number. Let the cou...
Q&A With LMA
Someone asked us some questions about why LMA is worth supporting, and we're sharing our answers here in the hope that they will resonate with you, too.Q: Why support Liberation Martial Arts?A: If a project doesn't create real change, it becomes stagnant. That's where many martial arts training efforts can stall—caught up in endless onboarding and convincing people why they should train. A year later, things often look no different than day one. If no one grows, what was the point?...
Push-Pull
A partner activity that fuses elements of Bulldozer and Tow Truck. Partners share weight and momentum at collision range, learning to recycle gravity, foster safety, and transform pressure into adaptive play.If you’re new to LMA, start with our table of contentsSetupRoles: push-puller and stumbler.Partners begin face-to-face, within arm’s reach.The push-puller clasps the stumbler’s upper arms (shoulders, biceps, triceps area) with their palm. Keep fingers together in a hooked shape for saf...
Spirited Play Sections
If you’re new to LMA, start with our table of contentsLiberation Martial Arts is the opposite of conventional Western pedagogy. Most systems work from the top down: knowledge trickles down and learning is broken into isolated parts—like memorizing letters before you’ve ever spoken a word. In LMA, we reverse this. We front-load our practice with what takes the longest to grow: comfort and spirit. Here, learning sprouts upward and outward, following the nonlinear, natural progression of huma...
Crisscrossing Crabs
Fostering shared rhythm, tempo, haptic sensitivity, and co-created movementThe activity asks practitioners to dwell in this unstable coordination, learning to sense weight shifts and tempo changes through the whole body. The practice co-creates movement together rather than executing memorized steps individually.If you’re new to LMA, start with our table of contentsThe activityPartners face each other with wide roots for balance.The inside partner clasps onto the triceps from inside-to-outside...
Attached Crabs
Exploring how attachment alters movement, awareness, and intuitionThis is not about smoothing movement into uniformity but about discovering what gets co-shaped when individual autonomy meets tandem movements.If you’re new to LMA, start with our table of contentsThe activityWhen two crabs are bound together, neither moves as they would alone. This module invites you to link arms with your partner (like Crisscrossing), connect heads (like Head-to-Head Connection), and step wide. Keep the heels ...
Crisscrossing
Co-creating rhythm while progressing through space—no talking, only communicating through touch.If you’re new to LMA, start with our table of contentsVideo descriptionThis activity starts just like Bulldozer—same arm position, partner leaning forward into the driver. The key difference: both partners keep their feet wide apart. This creates a stable base for teetering side to side. From here, the driver steers their partner as if turning a big bus wheel. The driver leans one way while stee...
SDS9 – S5E26: "Call to Arms"
This episode was recorded on August 31, 2025.We recap "Call to Arms" and discuss the things to come.You can also listen to this episode directly from your favorite podcast player by following these instructions: https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/212055866-Subscribe-to-your-Audio-RSS-link-on-the-Patreon-app(Note:Many phone plans come with Paramount+ for free. It can also come with your cable package, credit card, or in a bundle, so make sure to double-check. There are also oth...
Bulldozer and Tow Truck
If you’re new to LMA, start with our table of contentsTwo practitioners push against or pull away from each other, yet both are carried by the same current of play.The activity is simple: one partner pushes, then pulls the other while maintaining safe connection. The other partner resists to provide challenge but does not deny their partner’s turn.The video begins with one practitioner as the bulldozer.Palms press flat to the shoulders, fingers together like boxing gloves, forming a seal tha...
SDS9 – S5E25: "In the Cards"
This episode was recorded on August 3, 2025.We recap "In the Cards" and discuss how even the baddies have interior lives.You can also listen to this episode directly from your favorite podcast player by following these instructions: https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/212055866-Subscribe-to-your-Audio-RSS-link-on-the-Patreon-app(Note:Many phone plans come with Paramount+ for free. It can also come with your cable package, credit card, or in a bundle, so make sure to double-chec...
Head-to-Head Connection
If you’re new to LMA, start with our table of contentsThis practice fosters trust between partners, as they depend wholly on physical connection to guide their movements and interactions.Video description: Two practitioners, wearing headgear, begin by touching forehead to forehead. From there, they explore maintaining head contact—sometimes shifting connection to the crown, the side, or the back of the head—while mirroring each other's movements through haptic sense alone. No words are...
