Drilling all Ranges and Transitioning through Grappling (diary entry)

21.05.12:

After a student-led warm-up of functional fitness exercises, we went back over last week's basics. Last week we focused on some muscle memory exercises (routines designed to create better retention of techniques). This week we revised the ranges covered by bringing them more into regular freestyle routines. We started with the fence, working straight and hooked hand strikes. Then these were done through all the postures - kneeling, seated, on the back and back against the wall. In this instance each posture was done to a standing position to install fast recovery. These strikes were then incorporated into MMAfocus mitt exercises. This took the form of freestyle proactive pad work and ended with 10 seconds intensive speed striking followed by 10 seconds intensive power strikes.

Moving to the clinch range, I had one student stand in the middle of a circle whilst his fellow students took it turns to tackle him at 30% resistance. He performed a takedown in response to the nature of their attack and size. Ground work was covered by drilling basic submissions from the guard - armbar, oma plata and triangle choke - as repetitions. These are muscle memory exercises to complete the work started last week. The lesson finished with some MMA sparring.

A short workshop followed, focusing on takedown transitioning. The rules we established were firstly to get a dominant grip, secondly to take a person's balance and thirdly go with the flow. We looked at some fluid grip dominance drills, training students to instinctively seek a strong inside arm grip. Then we looked at taking another person's balance with this grip. Next we looked at set-ups and traps. We did an arm-drag/double leg takedown set-up, which was followed with a sit-through and take the back recovery or a shoulder wheel throw. We then looked at counters from the classic schoolboy trip, going into a hip or shoulder throw or even an armbar.

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