Explosive Leg Power & the Versatility of the Kimura Lock

10.10.18   Today’s second lesson of the day was my weekly family session with an uncle/nephew duo. The first part of the lesson was the fifth half hour in my junior client’s course in Basic Western Boxing Martial Arts Cross Training. We continued training the peek-a-boo style. The second part of the lesson was my veteran senior client’s training in MMA, focusing on the kimura arm-lock.   The junior lesson looked at the uppercut and in tightening up my client’s performance. We focused more on correcting stance, keeping a spring in the knees. I find, for some reason, that children automatically lock their legs when you make them take a stance and it is a strong habit. This might come from standing around at school, but I am unsure if any research has been done on the matter. We worked a lot on keeping a good balance between stability and mobility. The peculiar ducking and slipping behaviours of the peek-a-boo style of boxing was also maintained throughout the lesson. We used the ducking action to both help teach effective upper-cutting and get a good bend in the legs.   The lesson finished with a round of sparring.   The MMA lesson began with a transition through the various ranges, beginning with mirror footwork then changing levels, reactions and placing strikes and takedown defence. Next we drilled neck-wrestling from the plum position, bulling from the collar and elbow tie, pummelling from the over-hook/under-hook and moved into takedown entries. When we moved onto ground-work, my client requested that we look at the utility of the Kimura lock.   A simple way to look at the range of applications for the Kimura is to put the lock on in a single position and keep it on whilst transitioning through positions. We looked just at pins for today, beginning with side control then to scarf-hold, next to north south and finally in mount. We looked at its use a means for acquiring a straight arm-bar and also as a counter to an opponent defending an Americana lock. All of this was trained with MMA gloves on to keep it relevant to the context of the training.   The lesson finished with a round of MMA sparring.   Above photo taken from this great instructional video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT0TqceznpQ