Week 39: single leg capture

Single leg capture: x4

1. Drive knee to head, left arm under knee, transition right hand to heel to get him hoping back.

2. Outer leg trip

3. Pulls back to escape you transition into double knee capture and the takedown is most reminiscent of a rugby tackle motion. You collapse him from his knees.

4. Both arms under his knee, keep the right elbow crease under his knee lifting high as the left hand wraps around his shoulder for a ‘steering wheel’ take down.

Of course all of these need to be practised in a random order on both sides and with pressure from an unwilling partner. Free form ground fighting (strikes and subs. Lesson learned from my the most amount of pressure I have received was not to give up, keep breathing and stay active. Granted my face and ears disagreed but I survived considerable physical and subsequently emotional self imposed pressure. Proud of over coming this small combative hurdle

Week 38

As this has been the most traumatic week of my life this post is simply a reminder of what was covered in the lesson.

Striking combos

Hands v feet sparring rounds

Securing neck clinch, 3 points of pressure. Against strong posture, counter to clinch using posture, body shots and body clinch

Cerone leg kick set up

Breaking all the rules v striking conformity

Ridge hand to thigh

Double punch

Single leg shot spinning elbow or high reverse elbow

Conditioning: press up off balancing, press ups, static leg raise hold, low and high plank plyometric style, mat throw and catch plus static hold

Week 37: syllabus; double leg plus inner forearm choke detail

Started tonight with a some nice fast paced warm up drills. The first being the knee tap. If successful the opponent needs to sprawl as sanction. This progressed into a knee grab as if doing a single leg takedown.

Second warm up drill was working from Clinch to single leg free form movement. As always the head is key, no looking down, spine must be nice and positive.

Main part of the class in terms of learning and technique work was in two parts. Firstly we drilled Double leg detail.
Milsy and Charlie broke it all down very nicely into steps:
1. Squat down
2. Lead knee down
3. Capture the back of the knees as you press the ear against hhis lower rib cage, head on the outside, elbows in tight, eyes up, positive spine then step rear leg around his lead leg.
4. Stand and lift his lead leg and drive around with your head.  Drive with the head keeping the eyes up as this will prevent the head from dropping. Ensure the drive is in a circular motion over his standing leg forcing him off balance and thus to hop to maintain balance. Worked both sides for ages which was great as it gave us time to simply drill well.

The second part of the class revolved around Inner forearm choke detail. Last weekend Nate Diaz finished Jim Miller with a variation of this. Joe Rogan called it a power guillotine.  So the learning was around the inner forearm choke and transitioning into a forearm and bicep suppression.  Lee started from knee level. Opponent was on all fours and the inner forearm detail was outlined.  Key learning points: shoulder pressure, stack other forearm perpendicular over his trapezium, scrunch over to close tighter. If you want to roll to your back for the finish here is the extra key points: leg up on his back on opposite side to arm wrapping neck to prevent him escaping that side.

'Power guillotine' this is where the Promai naming conventions comes into its own coupled with being more observant watching MMA of what is happening. I should watch fights again with out commentary to establish what is going on in terms of body specifics. Lee said that Diaz simply dived deep on the neck which for us became a forearm and bicep suppression, Diaz also lay down perpendicular as to deepen the attack on the neck. Lee had us work this plus the arm in variation which went on very quickly.

After class I talked to Lee about the naming convention and how I find it really helpful. No more do I need to remember all the different labels for moves, now it more a case of being more self aware of the 5 types of submission and which part of my body is on his and how is it affecting him?  At first the Promai naming convention was completely alien and struggled to get my head around it. Now I have a clear understanding intellectually as well as practically. A simple change of language has improved my performance in grappling.

Sparring conditioning. Small glove stand up long and clinch range,fast but light, free form grappling and striking. Big glove long distance sparring. Plus rounds of shadow fighting, sprawls and push ups. I ended the session having a most entertaining grapple with Ptas. Lots of positional change, sweeps, sub attempts. Nice and even. Physical chess.

Week 36: grappling and conditioning

Guard pass: Sitting back and sticking knee in the centre of his hips will open his guard.

Triangle from mount: sitting in a nice a high mount offering attack to the head. He should cover up this giving you the chance to gain wrist control, push it to his chest as you step over put the shin behind his neck. Fall to the side side as you close the triangle.

Knee bar from guard: As he stands to stack your guard, underhook an ankle and move your hips to allow taking him down by manipulating with your legs. As he goes down wrap his leg for the knee extension. Get the hips against his knee to act as the most powerful fulcrum.

Calf suppression from guard: Could be my new most favourite sub. From open guard, keep his mind active with your hands as your lower shin looks to 'rest' on the back of his knee. When the time is right swim under his arms, take your head towards the foot you are going for, this will help to give you more power and leverage in the compression. Put that foot back with your lower shin compressing nicely against his calf. A sweet, sweet submission.

Guillotine baiting inside guard to jumping pass into head and arm triangle. Does what it says on the tin. I was hoping for another 30 minutes to deepen the learning and understanding of these techniques. For some reason they seem still caught in my visual memory so will take the opportunity to get visualising them before bed tonight.

Free form striking round, free form clinch round, free form grappling round.

Heavy bag conditioning striking from mount, guard and clinch. 30 second rounds.

Mirror striking shadow boxing with specifics inserted: body shots, head shots, knees and elbows, sprawls, push ups, double knee whilst maintaining. Very tough towards the end as the floor became very greasy from sweaty feet and the mirrors became redundant from condensation. Great pace a nd variety to this drill.

Mat static hold rounds and talk of mental over physical strength. Lee reminded us that the body is stronger and has more stamina than the mind thinks. He used the analogy of £1000 on the floor to go for 10 more seconds. A pleasing sound was that of mats dropping to the floor before mine did, which it didn't and that most of those are bigger and stronger than me. Interestingly, my limited vision gave a me a view of Crag and Ptas both who remained strong through the mat lift also. It is the time of the smaller man!!!

Video link for the guillotine bait: http://www.mma121.com/videos/mma-submission-tip-guillotine-to-arm-triangle-choke/

Week 35. Clinch and takedown

Toes, chest and shoulder striking drill Free form clinch, eyes closed, no closed grip Single, double leg, single and double hip control. Normal then adding striking, one for one looking for the double leg and lift up. Feel like the kettlebell training is helping as felt strong in the lifts. Much more so than normal. Hold in side control and try to control and submit, other to up and escape

Week 34: stand up and sparring

Clinch domination: 
Working good positions for the lifts we looked at last week plus dragging the opponent to the mat. Initially we took it in turns offering resistance. It moved into us both fighting for dominance in the clinch and the drag down if available.

Centre attack striking verses escaping:
Feeding person below strikes and they simply have to escape. Joe had us on a numbered circle whereby number 2 would rotate every round and number 1 stays on their back at the start of each round. Very tough on the bottom as simply physically demanding. Trick is to break their posture and recover to at least half guard. 

Lead punch then rear punch attack followed by own 3rd attack:
This drill is designed I think to develop sound body timing and rhythm and fluid attacks. Joe also talked about attacking and defending against the open and closed side. The closed side is outside his lead arm and away from the power rear hand. Open side is moving towards, circularly, towards his power hand. 
We then developed into adding of our own 2 attacks after the straight lead and straight rear punch.

Ground defence rounds: 
Have to defend and get up. Use smart and appropriate ground defence posture. Person on the feet needs wing big wide shots down on the opponent

5 minute conditioning round: 
1 punch then duck, 2 punches then squat, 3 punches then sprawl, 4 punches then bob and weave against 4 round punches.. A really tough physical drill.

Rounds of MMA:
Starting standing then to the ground if needed. The big positive for me tonight was staying relaxed on the feet and finally pulling off my first compression submission; the calf compression

Week 33: Lifts from clinch

Theme was syllabus work for the session.

Joe started us off with a clinch warm up looking for primary grips then without using the hands. Without the hands is harder but requires a different set of skills. I found myself using my head and spine as a third limb. From this I can conclude that I should be doing this when allowed to use the hands. Simply makes control much more effective. Now I have a better understanding of Randy's dirty boxing where he used his head to pressure the opponent against the fence to enable striking and control at the same time.

We then moved onto positional grappling without using the hands to hold or grip. Chris knees me in the eye for a shiner. Purely accidental as happened in transition in movement. 48 hours on my right eye lid looks like a strutting peacock.

Single leg attacks: a drill we have looked at quite a lot recently. I am getting better at dropping and driving with my eyes up. Know that the knee or him at the end of the shoot so stay posture positive. Light bare hand strikes were then added to keep attack positions appropriate and not sloppy.

Lee then began his part of the lesson by teaching us a series of clinch lifts from the level 2 syllabus

Lower back lift
Double hip lift
Side hip lift
Rear hip lift

For each of the lifts it is important to keep the elbows in tight and to lift from the legs. Use the whole body and not just the arms. We then had some time to practise chaining the lifts in any order of our choosing to make the learning deeper as opposed to patterned.

The learning was then taken to the ground to employ the same methodology to side control escape. Ensure double underhooks control with your back on the floor and that the forearm is into his hip crease. This will enable more effective escapes as you will control his centre and his hips.

Grappling with Ptas for 3 rounds. Upward knee rotation for Ptas, I got an inner forearm choke from bottom control, Ptas pulled off inner forearm choke from centre control.