MMA and me; day 205

Day two at the new Shoreline yesterday, and with no set classes, but lots of people that wanted to grapple, I just got my no-gi jiu jitsu on! Rolled open mats for quite some time, going from a neutral position, from my back, from being mounted, from being face down on the mat. I had to take a couple of breaks when I jammed my thumb, then re aggravated it again half an hour later. After a solid hour and a half of grappling or so, we switched up and worked on some leg and muscle locks. We worked on so many, that I'll just try to focus on the ones that stuck out the most to me. First, from the four corners position (on hands and knees, opponent has one knee behind you, between your legs), run and roll and tuck your head as you do so, reaching between your own legs and grabbing with your outside leg around their knee pit, bucking up with your legs to flip them over you, and landing in a knee bar. Scoot your but back towards their stomach, pinch your knees, ball up to bring their knee towards your chest, slide your hands down to cup the heel, and then arch your back until they tap. Move their leg to the other side of your head and pin it between your head and shoulder to get a little better leverage, or swim it behind the bottom side arm to make it REALLY tight. You can also switch your legs to a triangle grip to secure the leg a little more. The upside of triangling your legs is that you can transition to a calf slicer. With the outside or bottom side leg wrapped around the ankle of the other, relieve the triangle, and slip that leg out behind you, and scoot your butt back as you sink the bottom of your shin of the other leg into their knee pit, and sit forward over them, leaning forward for the tap. You can either use your body to get the pressure, or bring your hand over the top of their toes, either way, the real pressure is on their calf from your shin, and it is terrible!

A quick one we learned, was from having your opponents back, with both hooks in. Relieve one of the hooks, and as you do so, sink the other hook deeper in, swimming your foot over their same side calf, and sitting out on that side. From there, reach forward and pull back on their foot for another calf slicer. You can push your shin forward, push on that leg with your other leg, do anything really to drive your shin into their calf, and this also feels just awful!

Lastly, was the knee pinch. As your opponent goes for an Achilles lock, get your hips up underneath them on top of their foot, but before you do any of this, make sure you get your arm underneath the knee of theirs that is between your legs. As you get in tight to them, you compress their calf around your radial bone, and from there you just need to make your arm parallel to the ground, and push and pull your elbow back and forth, keeping it on that same flat plane. This is so awful, you feel like tapping before it even gets really tight, just from the pressure you get from scooting your hips in tight over their foot.

Lots of fun, and pain (muscle locks hurt!), the new Shoreline gym is beautiful!