Why we built a structured MMA curriculum at BLAST

I've been thinking a lot about how MMA should actually be taught, especially to beginners.

At BLAST, we use a structured 48-lesson Core curriculum followed by a 72-class Development curriculum. There's a reason we chose to do this instead of simply teaching whatever technique seems appropriate that day.

MMA is an enormous skill set. A beginner has to learn striking, wrestling, clinch, fence work, takedowns, ground control, escapes, GNP, submissions, etc.

The problem with simply accumulating techniques is that you can end up with someone who knows 100 techniques but doesn't really have a system.

• They know a double leg.

• They know an armbar.

• They know a jab.

• They know a sprawl.

But do they understand how those things connect? And what happens when the first thing they try doesn't work?

That's what we're trying to solve with the curriculum.

Core: build the foundation

Our Beginner program is built around teaching a relatively small number of important skills and repeatedly connecting them.

For example:

Strike → create reaction → wrestling entry → takedown → establish top control → GNP → submission opportunity

Or from the bottom:

Defend → create space → recover guard → stand or attack

We're trying to teach students to understand the problems of MMA rather than just memorize techniques. We also deliberately review previously taught material. Learning something once doesn't mean you've learned it.

Development: make the techniques functional

This is where I think the biggest distinction is.

Development level isn't simply "Core plus harder techniques."

We deliberately repeat Core skills while increasing:

• resistance

• reaction variability

• decision-making

• positional difficulty

• integration between striking, wrestling and grappling

For example:

Core:

Learn the Single Leg.

Development:

The opponent defends the Single Leg. What do you do now?

Core:

Learn the Jab → Cross.

Development:

Throw the combination, read the opponent's reaction, and choose the next action.

So the progression becomes:

Technique → Reaction → Decision → Next Action

rather than:

Technique → Technique → Technique

A class doesn't necessarily need a new technique to be valuable. Sometimes the best thing we can do is take a skill the athlete already knows and put it into a harder problem.

Constrained practice

We don't want the first time a student experiences a particular problem to be during unrestricted sparring.

If we're working on defending a takedown against the fence, for example, we can start from that position and give the athlete repeated opportunities to solve that specific problem.

Then we take it into live practice where the situation becomes less predictable.

The goal is to gradually move from knowing what to do → recognizing when to do it → figuring out what to do when it doesn't work.

That's really what we're trying to build.

Not a student who can demonstrate the curriculum.

A fighter who can use the curriculum when the fight stops going according to plan.