Midoriyama-jitsu

Wrestling practice today working on set-ups:

• Kiss the bicep / Steering wheel: From a neck and inside arm tie, drop your weight as you try to push your partners head to their arm.
• Snap to underhook: From neck tie, switch step out of the way to punch the opposite undertook in. Get a praying mantis grip on their head with your tie hand
• Kiss the bicep reaction: When your partner stands upright, use a penetration step to place your forehead on the center of the chest. This is an inelastic collision, your head is stuck. Now grabbing the near leg step laterally with you lead foot as you grab their other leg. Now pull there legs past your legs as you transition from head pressure to shoulder pressure into the side mount.

High crotch set-up requires you to "open the window”. Two options shown today were when with the kiss the bicep set-up or when they overreach your tie. Take a penetration step and roll to your knee, grabbing between their legs and clasping the back of their thigh. Step through with the rear leg and punch with your free hand to turn the corner, becoming perpendicular with your opponent hips. Overgrip your wrist and look toward their contralateral scapula.

• Use your overgrip hand to grip their anterior thigh and grab their opposite leg with your original high crotch hand. Step in front of them as you pull their legs laterally past your rear foot. Your shoulder will go to their abdomen and you will end up in a low side side control.
• If they block your anterior reach hand, pivot backwards about 90* as you “bow” dumping them front of you.

 

Next we worked on some ground-n-pound (GnP) principles:

• From the situation where they have fallen in front of you, use your rear hand to grab the ankle of the ipsilateral leg. Lift it at drive it laterally, kick the lateral and posterior side of their leg. Throw their legs across your body and away, insert your lead shin behind their thighs. Throw a solid rear shot. Step past their hip into knee on stomach, throw three punches.
• From the low side control, free your superior arm and obtain head control. Snack your arm under their head and grip the anterior side of their axilla. Throw three downward elbows to the flank. Then control their biceps with this hand and deliver three forearm smashes.
• From knee on stomach throw your lead hand, rear hand, lead hand, and rear hook. Jump to the other side and repeat for the round.

While the junior students worked on our fundamental self-defense techniques, senior students worked on the Kesa Gatame Kill System.

Fall 2019 Introduction to Wrestling and Notes on the Figure Four

In the Fall 2019 Goshin Jitsu Mixed-Martial Arts introduction to wrestling we started with the pummel. The pummel exchanges overunder positions with your partner, you switch sides by slapping your chest on the overhook side and swim through, under their arm pit. Your partner does the same      thing on the other side to switch the over under. Your lead foot is on the underhook side. One of  the keys in the pummel is to make your opponent carry your weight, pull on their underhook arm to disrupt their posture. We worked on repositioning our opponent with the pummel. The way to do this is to drop step a quarter turn with  your underhook side, pulling with the underhook as you push with your head. Their foot should make a loud thud demonstrating that you have shifted their weight to one of their legs. You can then easily pick up the other leg for a takedown.

Next we worked on using the head and arm tie to do the same thing. The head and arm tie means you have gripped their neck with one hand and are controlling the other arm inside their biceps Drop step away from the arm tie as you try to make them kiss their bicep by pushing their head toward their arm. They should pop up, as they do the head tie hand pushes their shoulder as you grab behind their knee of their lead leg.

The figure four is a solid submission grip. If they have a joint you can twist it enough for a submission with the increased leverage of the grip. Today we did pattern recognition for the Americana and kimura. We did the “surrendering gorilla” basically doing sit-ups in the closed guard and getting “batting practice” looking for figure four set-ups. We did the “figure four clock face” (or Every 60°) where from the side mount you look for Americana, straight arm lock, and kimura on one arm depending on the angle of their arm.

I often have trouble with opponents “pulling through” when I attack with the kimura. They simply pull their arm toward their opposite shoulder, trapping my  overhook and putting me in a reverse kimura. I have two tactics for mitigating this:

First, from the closed guard or half guard  I straight arm their wrist backward, behind the plane of their body. Then, I pivot my body to their arm, and secure the overhand grip. Now i force the bend in their arm and pull their elbow to my chin. To finish I attempt to place their hand behind their head.

The second way I attack from the closed guard is to create a shin shield on the inside of their elbow. I keep a solid grip on their wrist and then reach over their arm to secure the figure four grip. Only once I have a solid grip and have broken them down do I slide my knee out a finish the submission.

Regardless of the "Rules of Engagement", The Human Body Can Only Move In So Many Ways

Warm-Up:

Well at least some of them.

Hands - head - forearms - hips are the layers of defense in takedowns. Thus protect the lead leg with your lead hand, elbow at knee height, hand in front of the knee. Keep your head at or below your opponent’s. Use your rear hand to check and range find their head or shoulder. If they do not clear your lead hand it, your arm blocks the takedown with the help of the hip, checking into them perpendicularly.

To do the snap down your rear hand cups the head and the lead hand their elbow pull them down and lateral to your lead leg, using your legs not just your arms. Then double leg them laterally.

If they grab your wrist with their ipsilateral hand pull them across your body and grab their wrist with your free hand while freeing your hand. Pull to the single leg.

Remember that you must be eye-to-eye to engage your opponent, when you are ear-to-ear your are in a stalemated defense. To break this pull them forward, then push their ipsilateral elbow medially to break their clinch.

90° muay thai pivot drills.

Lead pivot: Rear kick, your opponent with step toward you, while you step 45° anterior laterally with the lead foot, check hand with your head hand (which will remain lead), pivot to the same stance, cross, lead hook, rear kick. Repeat. The lead pivot is easier but unless your are opposite leads will mean you are pivoting into their power side.

Rear pivot, version #1: Rear kick, your opponent with step toward you, while you step 45° anterior laterally with the rear foot, check hand with your rear hand (which will become your new lead hand), pivot to the opposite stance, cross, lead hook, rear kick. Repeat. This allows you to pivot to their weak side but is more complicated because of the lead switch.

Rear pivot, version #2: Rear kick, lead hook, cross, your opponent with step toward you, while you step 45° anterior laterally with the rear foot, check hand with your rear hand (which will become your new lead hand), pivot to the opposite stance, rear kick, lead hook, cross, pivot step. Repeat.

 

Wristwatch Grip

Grab the medial side of the ipsilateral hand palm to the posterior side of their hand, twist it anteriorly so their thumb is pointed to the rear. From here step in next to them shooting the underhook and “popping” their near chest with your shoulder, options:

1. Reach down with your free hand and then your underhook hand to secure their near leg. Take a step back to “drop them in the hole”.
2. If they step the foot back to avoid the single leg, drive your underhook up, as you step past them and knee tap the far leg
3. If they try to whizzer with their overhook, control their head with your free hand, elbow pointed to the mat with your forearm along the neck, a drop step first your near foot (the underhook side) then your rear foot to spin them to the mat.

Later we took this same set-up of striking, using the catch and parry to underhook and do the same takedowns.

Combinations or Combinatorics

Combinations are the closest thing combat sports gets to forms, e.g. kata, poomse, etc. They are phenomenal tools for making "words" out of the alphabet soup of techniques taught. They train form in an engaging manner and work cardio by their repeated application. To fight these combinations must be contextualized and made tactical. They need to be applied with and without rhythm. They must be improvised in the timing and speed they are delivered. Otherwise they doom us to low yield applications of high yield fundamentals.

Tonight we worked the jab-cross-kick or 1-2-kick set-up of the hands, in three ways:

1. Jab and multiple jab until the cross opens, e.g. corrections to defend the jab open the cross line.
2. Jab-catch jab-cross: Your jab forces the counter jab opening the line for your cross.
3. Jab-evade kick-cross: Your opponents provoked response is the tiip or kick,which you evade by clearing or pulling your lead leg back.

Next time we'll review this and delve into the addition of the lead kick.

Sensitivity as a Combat Attribute

Today I made an appearance at Goshin Jitsu. I hope to make many more. With the beginners we taught basic footwork, forwards, backwards, to the sides, and the rear 90° pivot. The two stepping drills we worked on:

1. Shuffle retreat, switch retreat, 90° pivot
2. Circling the mat using any step less than three times in a row, avoiding the blue pads, and trying to catch our team mates

We also introduced kicking, helping each other stretch and turn on the ball of the foot.

With the advanced students, I reviewed the jab range finder I learned at Top Level Gym. This strategy prunes your opponent’s decision tree by throwing the jab, followed by two “range finds” extending the arm and using the palm of the glove to make contact, you step laterally to set-up an outside line. This gives you information, if you cannot reach they are out of range, if you can just reach they can likely be hit by a kick or cross, and if your arm is bent it is likely best to throw a short cross or round knee. If you check their arm and it’s loose you know that it is likely you can push it aside to set up your shot and if they are rigid that they will be more easy to turn.

We did four 2-minute rounds:

1. Jab-range find-range find cross
2. Jab-range find-range find rear kick
3. Jab-range find-range find rear round knee
4. Any of the above with the holder feeding different energies.