Image by The U.S. Army via Flickr
Richard Barnes kindly led the fun-filled warm-up. This largely consisted of awareness and reaction based physical activities. Students changed levels and progressed to more explosive movements as they gradually warmed up. After this we moved into some technique based MMA work, looking at the transition from stand-up to clinch and takedowns.
Blitzing and four double leg takedown entries
Jab and double leg takedown – red sashes and above built up the number of jabs
Jab, cross and front leg low round kick
Inward scooping block, rear leg low round kick and waistlock takedown
We then looked specifically at headlocks. Headlocking is a primal grappling move. Interestingly the sport of grappling seems to have evolved so that the headlock has become less common. This is particularly evident in submission grappling. Even the feared judo scarf-hold (a headlock position on the ground) is rarely taught in jacket wrestling sports like Brazilian jiu jitsu, as it gives away the back. Nevertheless, when a non-sporting human fight turns to grappling the headlock is an all too common position and it is imperative that any student who studies combat grappling (that is the application of grappling in self defence situations) is familiar with headlocks and, most importantly, how to escape them. The first stage of this training is to look at the earliest stage of a headlock and train behaviour to immediately counter it, rather than wait for it to come on full. So we drill slipping under the incoming arm and taking the back for a large number of repetitions. This theme will be explored in further lessons.
The lesson finished with some MMA sparring
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