The Pendulum (diary entry)

English: The seconds pendulum, a pendulum with a period of two seconds so each swing takes one second http://weelookang.blogspot.com/2010/06/physical-quantities-and-units.html (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

pendulum (Photo credit: Joe Buckingham)

21.11.13

General Lesson

Having only a small junior class tonight I focused on defence against pins. We covered escaping side control from both sides using bridging and snaking/shrimping. Then we covered escaping the mount position, focusing mainly on bridging and turning the attacker. All the students learnt to tighten up their pinning position and everyone had a lesson in weight distribution and timing. The lesson finished with some MMA sparring.

Private Lesson

At my client’s request, we worked on escaping from corners and the shovel hook. The two ended up nicely complimenting each other. We warmed up with some footwork drills that put pressure on the client escaping by use of evasive footwork. Here the client learnt to switch his hips and change direction fast against an opponent who was cutting distance off using sideways movements.

We took this drill to the cage wall and emphasized the importance of the v-step footwork. We looked to create a pendulum effect with the feet, leading with the rear leg. The tactic involved making a movement to one side to encourage the opponent to block try to block the fighter off. The fighter immediately responded by using the v-step pendulum movement, coming out at a rough right angle on the opponent. We looked at this first from a boxing/kickboxing/stand-up perspective and the fighter used the opportunity for the fighter to use the momentum of the pendulum movement to deliver a low hook or shovel hook as well as a high hook. Tyson’s uppercut/hook combination also made an appearance.

Then we looked at it from a wrestling/clinch perspective, using the under-hooks again to manipulate movement and escape from the wall. It also introduced knee strikes from two angles. Training was then taken to ground and from the half-guard. Here the student learnt better under-hooking and also taking back mount.

We finished the session with a focus on shovel hooking, specifically the liver shot tactic. This was trained off the spot to gain maximum force from a rooted position and the incorporated back into the pendulum v-step movement.