MMA and me; day 212

In kickboxing, we started things off with some stretching drills after jump rope. We got our hamstrings and hips all stretched out, and then moved on to some drills involving holding the lead leg in place, as we brought the rear leg around with the knee bent, to drive the knee over the hip with the boot on to catch and hold, then pushed off to return to our fighting stance. Next we worked on throwing a switch 9, stepping out with the lead leg, across with the rear leg, and then bring your lead leg up and around as though you were winding up to throw a pitch, and instead of slinging your arm through, you bring your leg around to drive it into their thigh. The next several combos we worked on, were variations of this spinning low 10. First, a jab, to switch stance, into the spinning low 10, and the key to this is switching your stance as the jab is still out there. It telegraphs less, and does a good job of keeping your opponent off balance. We also tried out simply stepping across to initiate the spin right off the bat, making sure to finish off at an angle so you don't leave yourself in the pocket and get tagged, and to further set up more offense from range. We practiced this by going back and forth from side to side kicking our partners outstretched glove, staying off to the sides after each kick. We finished off with a few minutes of light touch sparring, and I need to get better about keeping my hands up, and not backing up. I have a hard as hell head, but that should NOT be my first line of defense. Good class, and it was on to grappling!

We worked on a lot of defense to leg locks, which I was glad for, since we've been working on them a lot lately. First, we just worked on our entries into the leg locks, standing over them to a straight Achilles lock, turning to the hip, and then looking back over the shoulder. Stepping through the legs to drop for a knee bar, hipping through to transition to a calf slicer. We also added a new entry off the step through. Instead of leaning over for the knee bar, swim both hands under the inside of the outside leg, bring it over your leg and roll towards your near side hip to end up in a 50/50 guard, with their leg just begging to get heel hooked.

On to those defenses we talked about. When it comes to leg locks, there are really two main tenets you want to stick to, either bend your leg, or straighten it out. For a knee bar, if you bend your leg, you cannot be knee barred, period. You also want to turn your knee away from their belly button, slide your other leg over to get your foot behind their butt, put your foot in their hiney, belly down and kick out of there! For an Achilles lock, when you straighten your leg, it engages your calf and Achilles tendon, making it very hard to get the requisite pressure and leverage to get the submission. For a toe hold, you straighten the leg, and push on their hands with the other foot, because like Coach said, if the toe hold is on properly, it's barely on, so kicking and pushing at it should slide it off, no problem. Muscle locks are a no brainer; when the leg is straight, there is no muscle to lock or compress. Lastly, for a heel hook, you do want to straighten your leg, but that is only a part of it. You want to take your other foot, and pummel it into his arm pit, and push with both legs, because trying to heel hook two legs is really freaking tough. Lots of good stuff, taking Wednesdays off for a while, but back in tomorrow night, and I can't wait!