Knee-Shield in MMA (diary entry)

16.01.2023 The ninth hour of my couple clients' course on Mixed Martial Arts ground fighting took us on to using the knee-shield tactic. This is provides a very strong base of defence against top position striking and it was important to get both clients familiar with its use. After the warm-up I had them do some very light specific sparring where the objective was for the bottom fighter to defence against the striking opponent. We looked at responses to the opponent posting or trying to stand with one leg as well but the main focus was on just keeping the punches away and not allowing said opponent from pressing the fighter down or passing guard. Important objectives to assume control from the bottom include keeping both legs active. The top leg, providing the actual knee-shield, must be held high with the knee not passing the opponent's centre line. This is to prevent the opponent from being able to press down and flatten out the fighter. Likewise, the bottom leg must be engaged and a good way to do this is to get the toes under an opponent's near side shin which creates a type of single lockdown hold. The arms are then directed toward the opponent's far side arm, framing the shoulder and gripping the wrist. If the opponent posts up with their far side foot the fighter can under-hook their leg and seek a sweep. This leaves the opponent's free arm as the main concern. At this point we need to draw upon effective boxing defence by using the shoulder roll to catch punches and hammer-fists to the head whilst the exposed ribs might be blocked by pulling back the arm that is framing the opponent's shoulder. With the knee-shield now established as a strong position to fend off strikes, we then looked at the first of three sweep attacks. The basic sweep from this position involved transitioning to the dog-fight position and then shooting for the opponent's far knee. During the smooth transition the fighter needs to move to the opponent's near side, underhook the free punching arm (timing the punches provides a good countering opportunity) and post up on a forearm. The opponent should respond with a strong over-hook to prevent the fighter from just moving to their back. As the fighter moves to the opponent's side they establish the dog-position by switching their hooked leg and posting on their freed leg. The fighter needs to keep their head in tight to the opponent and have their free hand active to defend against punches before they time their shoot which takes the opponent over into side control. https://clubbchimera.com/services/