MMA and me; day 254

Knee bar from half guard is where we left off, and we focused on the step over, and the back spin. Both utilize the same checklist while going for the knee bar, so we will focus on the step over. From half guard, swing your outside leg over their head, and end up sitting on their stomach, with both feet firmly planted on the mat, and swim your inside arm under their outside knee, elbow pit deep, and secure a rear naked choke grip. Keeping your hips in tight to their body, roll off to the outside of their body, keeping their knee tight in against your chest, and pinching it tight with your knees. Work your arms up to the heel, and keeping it tight, extend your hips and arch your back, pulling back on the heel, but keeping it in tight to your chest. You also don't want to focus solely on pulling the leg towards you, but also extending it lengthwise. This makes it much easier, and gives you a shorter distance to extend to finish the submission.

We also drilled a counter to the defense of the knee bar, which was pretty cool. As you secure the knee and roll over, they will likely throw their other leg over the ankle of the leg being threatened. So instead of rolling to the side, scoot your hips over so your butt is on the mat next to theirs, and throw your outside leg over their topside leg, and then bring it in close to your hips so you can figure four your legs. All the while, you have maintained the rear naked choke under their knee pit, but now you want to slide it out just a bit, so your wrist is in between their calf and hamstring, bring your arm parallel to the ground, and pull your elbow towards you while pushing your fist away, and at the same time pull their legs in as close to your hips as you can with your legs. This is a nasty compression lock, and they will likely do everything they can to extend their legs and get out of it, which just puts them right back into the knee bar. It's beautiful!!

Great day of classes last night, and I can't wait for fighters training tonight!!