Help with wording for rules.

JohnPJones

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Long story short I'm a karateka who is unhappy with all rulessets for karateka to fight under.
I dislike karate combat's 5second rule and their one knee up rule.
So this is what I'm thinking, let know if you see loopholes in this wording or if it's unclear.

"Once one fighter is grounded (definition of a grounded fighter will be elsewhere in the rules) both fighters will be returned to a standing position if there is more than 3 seconds without a fighter executing effective strikes, changing position, or actively attempting a submission."

Does that rule make my intentions for the ground clear?
 
Long story short I'm a karateka who is unhappy with all rulessets for karateka to fight under.
I dislike karate combat's 5second rule and their one knee up rule.
So this is what I'm thinking, let know if you see loopholes in this wording or if it's unclear.

"Once one fighter is grounded (definition of a grounded fighter will be elsewhere in the rules) both fighters will be returned to a standing position if there is more than 3 seconds without a fighter executing effective strikes, changing position, or actively attempting a submission."

Does that rule make my intentions for the ground clear?


Then intentions are clear, but it basically means the refs are also the judges, whether 'effective action' is taking place depending largely on their arbitration.

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing; if you are running your own event, then you can use your own judgement to reward the kind of fighting you like to see, and or chose guys whose judgement you trust. Rules that are more simply 'deterministic' can be helpful in matters of wide adoption though.

What criteria you might want can depend on how much emphasis you want to put on closer quarters aspects of fighting that day. A simple but profound example would be scoring touchdowns: any time the opponent touches the ground with anything besides their feet, you get a point and the action is reset. This can come from knockdowns with strikes naturally, but obviously also from manipulating the opponent in other ways to make him go down as well. Thus, it is not only selecting for balancing, clinchfighting, but organic integration of striking and grappling capability as elements of a cohesive whole in gameplanning; a backbone of vale tudo fighting, whether one is planning to keep things in neutral, or take things to the ground, or opportunistically both.

If you would want to open up more emphasis on groundfighting, then something like a 10 seconds of action on a grounded opponent, whereupon you are scored a point, and the action is reset back to the feet. Thus, it is not just the takedowns by themselves that are important, but riding and escaping that is also important, in order to make your stuff stick (or prevent your opponent's stuff from sticking), which are the basic preconditions of possibility as to whether you can have a successful ground game or not. This is something Demian Maia did in his training camps for instance.

If you would want to place more emphasis on finishing attacks in this context, then you could extend the idea of the previous criteria with an addition, where if one athlete attains a dominant position that puts the opponent in chancery (eg, osaekomi, back takes, crucifixes, headlocks, saddles, submission holds in general, and so on like that), then as long as they can maintain it (or recapitulate it or transition to another chancery within some seconds of losing it), then they can stay there continuing to rack up larger bonus points. Actual KOs or subs are of course possible as well. This naturally would incentivize cultivation of 'killer instinct' for quick dynamic sequences to turn neutral position into finishing positions (and awareness of how your opponent may do the same).

A lot of these example criteria you might notice reference phases of position, but not necessarily striking directly. One simple reason for this is that relative body positioning is generally easy to identify, which lends itself in turn to simple scoring rules. Another reason is that things can get unwieldy when trying to combine scoring for more gross positioning (like say side mount) and scoring for more granular actions (like say elbows from side mount) into a single scoring system. Amateur boxing, for instance, can do a 1 punch=1 point scoring system because they don't directly touch on positioning at all - indeed, specifically disallow much of it. If a touchdown is one point... but any given hits are also one point... well, that would be rather disproportional.

In contexts where positional control is valuable though (and in something like MMA it is definitely valuable), starting from that end rather than the other is usually more elegant. If the question is, if you would want to specifically incentivize more striking on the ground as well, that is a good question without many good answers; any one particular positive measure in this specific regard, would so oft entail graver distortions elsewhere. More generally speaking, the best incentive for fighters to strike, is simply making strikes legal in the first place.
 
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Maybe add in attempting to change position. Some smashing style guard passes aren’t lightning fast.
 
Long story short I'm a karateka who is unhappy with all rulessets for karateka to fight under.
I dislike karate combat's 5second rule and their one knee up rule.
So this is what I'm thinking, let know if you see loopholes in this wording or if it's unclear.

"Once one fighter is grounded (definition of a grounded fighter will be elsewhere in the rules) both fighters will be returned to a standing position if there is more than 3 seconds without a fighter executing effective strikes, changing position, or actively attempting a submission."

Does that rule make my intentions for the ground clear?

What is your intention on the ground firstly?

What sort of situations do you want available or to avoid?
 
What is your intention on the ground firstly?

What sort of situations do you want available or to avoid?
I want to allow ground fighting, but avoid hugging matches on the ground, or using the ground game to catch breath.
 
I want to allow ground fighting, but avoid hugging matches on the ground, or using the ground game to catch breath.

Depending on round length 3 seconds is pretty short. It won't be the person on top trying to tie up and rest it will be the bottom fighter. Maybe make it atleast 10 -30 secs andyour original wording to advancing instead of changing position.

That makes me think I need to be actively moving forward and trying to finish or get to a spot to finish. It will be the bottom fighter holding on.
 
Depending on round length 3 seconds is pretty short. It won't be the person on top trying to tie up and rest it will be the bottom fighter. Maybe make it atleast 10 -30 secs andyour original wording to advancing instead of changing position.

That makes me think I need to be actively moving forward and trying to finish or get to a spot to finish. It will be the bottom fighter holding on.
if the bottom fighter is trying to stall and hug, the top fighter can keep it going by striking.
Ive seen way more MMA fights than I'd like where even the top fighter seems to use ground game to rest a few seconds or more at a time before doing something.
 
if the bottom fighter is trying to stall and hug, the top fighter can keep it going by striking.
Ive seen way more MMA fights than I'd like where even the top fighter seems to use ground game to rest a few seconds or more at a time before doing something.
Can’t strike meaningfully if they are controlling your posture. Unless you want to pity pat their body or head you need to break free from the hug.
 
if the bottom fighter is trying to stall and hug, the top fighter can keep it going by striking.
Ive seen way more MMA fights than I'd like where even the top fighter seems to use ground game to rest a few seconds or more at a time before doing something.

It would come down to round times but I would allow either 10,30, 60 seconds of ground time provided you are advancing positioning, landing significant strikes or performing a submission. Then you just need to clarify what a sig strike is.

You will definitely see the bottom guy holding more than the top unless the bottom player is a wrestler or bjj guy. Most strikers with limited ground games will hug and pull people into them. Not sure who you have fighting.
 
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