Tuesday 4 March 2014

Class notes: Pummeling and torquing the shoulders

Tonight we essentially covered arm drags and the left hook. If only it was that simple. There was an incredible amount of detail and subtleties and I will undoubtedly make some glaring errors in recalling the learning from tonight. But that is one of my goals: to go back through this blog and make corrections. Don’t treat it as a type and forget tool but an on-going an organic document of our martial journey.

Pummelling

Started the session by getting both warmed up and re-familiarised with this drill from wrestling. Some tips were:
Keep the weight forward through the torso. It looked as if a drunk was walking forward, that kind of very heavy ponderous step. In reality you are on the balls of the feet, straight spine, hips away from theirs to avoid your partner clasping his hands. Slightly extend the arm to create space for your other hand to find the underhook.

From the pummel we looked at the following attack variations:

- Thai clinch
Taking control of the head out of the pummel plus the two restraint style manipulations – the one with the hand on the back of the head and the one where you lift the underhook and grab your own forearm. These two definitely need to be filmed. Both of these manipulations came out of taking the head in the clinch and it ending up against one of your shoulders and not in the centre. More time needs to be spent drilling these.

- Arm drags to get to the ¾ hug from the pummel

- Double wristlock, if they are low driving the elbow into their shoulder to continue the push down

Arm drags to get the head and arm trap

Two variations based off of his resistance or defence which is a push to the chin. Shoot the shoulder through. Pull him into your bicep. Key point for the head and arm are holding his head, do not let go when transitioning from his defence to passing the arm. Keep control of him, don’t let him go. Martin talked about being constrictor like. There is no rush if you have control of him, work for the right position and let it settle into place. Don’t try and dive in head first, shoot your load then he escapes. This is something that grappling in MMA taught me. When you have position take your time if you are controlling him. Let him fight you and in fighting against you he will give a gap or over extend giving you the chance for the finish. Grappling in BJJ and MMA also taught me about not panicing. If the move is not working don’t use more force. Transition to another rather than being fixed mindset about a move. For me being a smaller man I had to use position, technique and levers as I could not out strength someone. However I did enjoy outworking someone and being very tenacious. I also enjoyed putting myself in bad spots to work on defence and see how they attack. And I enjoyed learning to relax, move, breath and give him no space. I enjoyed tapping and then going right back at it.
Moving forward I am looking forward to trying my own go to move on the ground, people solving it and coming up with new ways to apply it. But also working around an on-going injury and developing a new and evolved skill set on the ground and integrating it all together. Especially the nastiness of catch. I will only respect you my training partners if you try to be nasty…

Left hook:
Mechanics of the action, weighting, direction of the power and the follow through.

Slow punching the hand with a two and then a three to further embed the mechanics of the punches.

Punching the numbers on the hands

1, 1-2, 1-2-3, 1-2-3-2 tight hands always protecting the head with the non punching hand.

You jab, he jabs back, you lean back but loaded and protected, then throw the right hand followed by the hook.

Time went way too quick tonight. Next session can’t come around quick enough. Lots to go and visualize, practice in a reflection and on camera. Gloves next week, woohoo. Not so long ago putting gloves on scared the shit out of me, now that once fear has become an opportunity for some physical chess, creativity and a chance to put the learning into practise.

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