Went to class today after being off for nearly two weeks. Good to see familiar faces once more - Elliot, Keith, Little Steve, amongst others. Also saw Jaffer with his shiny blue belt. There were a couple of blue belts in the house, as well - Raz, who is fast becoming a familiar friendly face, and a Polish guy whose name escapes me at the moment. I think this is the first time I have seen this many blue belts in one class. This led myself and Elliot to expertly discuss which shade of blue looks better. To be honest, I wouldn't mind which shade of blue I get eventually. I will be so pumped up I'll even wear it at home.
By the way, Kevin mentioned that the Motta Gomes seminar down in Portsmouth went very well and a couple of belts were also given. Dang! If I knew they were handing out belts I should have gone down and nabbed myself one. Hehe
Enough of the lame jokes and onto the training. We practiced pummelling again as a precursor to takedowns. Elliott kindly tweaked my takedowns a bit to make it more effective. I seem to be combining shoulder throw takedowns with the over the leg takedown. By erroneously having a wider base during shoulder throw, I had difficulty getting my opponent over my shoulder, as my hips aren't as aligned to his hips as before.
We then did escapes from side control using shrimping combined with pushing at a 45 degree angle and moving your hips away from your opponent. To make the teaching more effective, Kevin asked us to escape without using the technique. Myself and Elliot did a bit of experimentation during drilling - getting the outside hand onto different positions to try and negate the technique. We also thought long and hard with regards to why the outside hand is placed against the opponent's near hip, instead of a monkey grip or by the outside hip. Elliot had a light bulb moment and surmised that it was to prevent getting a knee in for a possible butterfly guard or half guard. Now, why didn't I think of that?
I liked the way we were able to rationale the techniques during drilling. A small part of my work is to train NHS staff to be able to prevent and manage aggression and violence. This necessitates teaching physical techniques to effectively manage a violent and aggressive individual. As a large number of staff I teach are not familiar with the techniques nor physically inclined to to them, I find it useful to break the techniques into manageable segments and to give rationale as to why "this hand should be in an overhand position,and not underhand", etc., by getting them to try the wrong way, to see the effectiveness in doing the right way. In my opinion, this creates an understanding as to why they're doing what they're doing - because it makes sense. I believe this was what Kevin was trying to instill in us by letting us practice the wrong way.
Annyways, the technique flowed onto a reversal, which highlighted the need to have a deep underhook using your inside arm. From then on, you could choose several variations: grabbing your opponent's outside knee and driving your shoulder forward to attain reversal, use of single leg combined with outside knee pick, or single leg combined with outside ankle pick. All of these end up in side control. Very effective techniques - as long as panic does not set in and you start muscling your way out of a side control only to find yourself in an armber or a choke...
I did not fare well in sparring today. I got absolutely tooled by everyone. My ribs started to bother me again on the second match and I was gassing out. Obviously didn't help that everyone had burgeoning submission skills and did not hesitate on trying them on me. I guess my blog title says it all : I am a grappling dummy.
My breath was coming in gasps, which impacted on my ability to survive. Let me make it clear - at this stage of my journey, my aim is to survive and start building my defense game. Tonight, I wasn't able to do any.
Funnily enough, during handshakes one of the new guys referred to me as BJ Penn. I probably am - cardio-wise.
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