Kicking Back & Escaping the Mount (diary entry)

15.05.19

Wednesday’s second two lessons consisted of junior Muay Thai and Senior Submission Grappling. The former lesson involved working a lot on piecing the game together, reviewing Western Boxing from the previous course and merging aspects from the different disciplines. The second lesson focused entirely on escaping the mount position.We began the junior lesson an exercise for drilling faster returns and recoveries from kicks. The exercise is performed very lightly with the two training partners taking and exchanging various kicks. Mirror footwork also features in this exercise. This is a great way to loosen up and promote better fighting instincts as part of a warm up for kickboxing arts.We then went through a few simple fight tactics often found in Dutch kickboxing. This included prompting an opponent to shin-check before throwing a rear leg teep. Next we moved onto the focus mitts to go back through basic Western Boxing combinations, slipping and the peek-a-boo guard. From here moved onto the Thai pads for punching combination set-ups for various kicks and knee strikes.The first lesson finished with two rounds of sparring.The second lesson began with a warm-up of ground exercises, working on escapes. From here we partnered up to work the escape flow-drill before focusing on escaping the mounted position. We began with methods for blocking an opponent’s torso and then wrapping an arm to bridge and reverse to the top position. Next we looked at snaking to knee-shield and capture the half-guard. Finally we covered snaking to get the butterfly guard.The second lesson finished with a round of progressive, specific sparring.