Gareth Lewis is the head instructor at Lockdown MMA at the Poneke Dojo in Wellington.

Each week, he provides a his thoughts on different aspects of MMA, aka "Mind-Dump".

Check out what Gareth has to say this week below.

Within a fight gym, there are many levels of talent. The majority of us, though, sit somewhere in the middle.

At any given time, there may be more people in the room better then you, and in other rooms, you will be better than most. Using statistics as a guide it is unlikely that you are the best or the worst – this is the best place to be.

To get the most out of your training, you need to make the most of every training partner. When training with people that are better than you, this is where you use your A-game.

In MMA, this means that you are staying in your strongest area, be that striking, wrestling or BJJ. It is up to you to maintain your area and stay there as long as you can.

Against people better it is the little victories that you are after, this can be maintaining your area, so staying on your feet if that’s where you’re strongest, getting back to your feet when taken down and so on.

If you have some success defending the takedown then you can really work your striking skills.

On the flip side, when against people that are not as good, it is a good opportunity to work your weak areas.

With MMA, against a less experienced fighter you can go against them in their strongest area and see how you go.

Then in the individual areas it gets a little more fun. If striking against a less experienced opponent, it is a good chance to work areas that you are ready to try out in a live situation.

A good example would be trying out your head movement against someone with punches that you don’t fear.

This gives you the confidence to be a little loser with your defence and use your eyes and head movement to avoid as many punches as possible.

You can also practice your footwork to move your opponent around at your will or to trap them in corners.

The options are endless, but basically, when striking against a less experienced person you are working skills that do not include punching your opponent in the head a lot.

With you working other skills it allows your opponent to attack without concern of getting their ass kicked, which makes it more enjoyable for them as well.

This can also mean that you are both working at a high rate and both getting a lot out of the round rather than one person dominating.

This is the same for wrestling as there is always going to be a skill difference. However, one key difference is I never liked practicing bad habits.

This means when you are working skills against the less experienced opponent you don’t wrestle normally and then wait for a takedown and defend.

This is practicing allowing people to get in position to take you down – not a good idea. Instead it can be good to work a position against you, this can be anything of your choosing.

It could be offence or defence then depending on your relative skill to your opponent it determines how close or far it is from a drill.

Against a skilled opponent you might just be working one skill against them, the single leg. Your opponent has no idea, but that is your goal. You keep working until you get it.

When training with someone that is at a lower-level skill, this is where you decide how far away from your goal you need to be.

This is done so the training can be beneficial for both you and your training partner – you both get something to work on.

This could mean that they start deep in a single leg position, leaving you to survive and escape. If they get success, then they start a little further away and so on until you find the sweet spot that you want to train in.

For me, BJJ is the easiest to do this in, relative to my game on my back, my top game is quite good. This means that against people that are a lower rank or have a lot less weight I tend to work my guard and other positions off my back.

This seems to backfire a little for me as I tend to use my wrestling to get to my knees and get them on their back. But this isn’t really working my defence and offence – instead, I must put away my escapes for the time being.

Depending on the level, you can let an opponent get deep in a submission and see if you can survive/escape. This is helpful as it gives the opponent some much needed confidence if they tap you out or at least get close.

In all the times I have done this, there is only a very small percentage of people celebrate as almost everyone knows what is going on. This type of rolling allows both people to get success and both work at a very high work rate.

This mindset came about when I was training in America. I asked the elite fighters how they got a good workout against us mere mortals. It must be said that Randy Couture (yes, name dropping) gave me the best answer.

Randy always wanted a good round against anyone he was training with and more often than not, he found a way. Some of those rounds were even with me.

Seeing his mindset changed how I approached training, I would usually try and kill people that were not that good – and guess what, you run out of training partners really quickly. Hence the need to get the most out of training process.

-Lockdown MMA.