Thursday 17th September

A great session, and some great MMA.

We started off instructing at the corto range - the use of HKE, and the close range hand strikes, eye gouging, and the now infamous "forearm shiver".

We played the Thai roll drill - which has a "cousin" in Greco.

We looked at the sleeper choke in context.

We had those who wanted to roll on the mats doing so. We were able to personally instruct fighters in the importance of escape and defence. Like KB, if your defence structure is no good, he'll knock you out first. Against a stronger or more experienced player it is important to have your defence and counter working.

If you can't defend his lock and his pin you'll never get one of your own.

Members were able to roll with each other and try moves out. As with anything it's all about "flight time".

On the wood we got the focus pads and Thai paids out. Again we worked more on single shots and the attributes such as form, speed and power, before looking at naturally flowing into combinations.

In freeplay we looked at simple SDA to ABC:

SDA:
punch
kick
block

ABC:
punch punch
punch kick
kick punch
kikc kick

Defensive ABC:
Opponent punches - you block
Opponent kicks - you block
block and punch
block and kick

It soon builds into a skillful exchange of free sparring.

Back on the mat we played VT - the kickboxing soon went to a clinch and the we had groundfighting.

We saw more use of the strikes on the ground and some fights were finished with ground and pound.

We also started to see some natural takedowns occur, and we were able to do away with "stop and kneel" in at least one match.

There was weapons practice for those who wanted it, which is also a good way to cool down, or if you have had enough of the fast pace of VT.

We'll carry on with VT training by doing rolling and KB seperate, as the cmpetition fighters do, then playing the mixed sparring.

We'll do more clinch more, regularly do the Thai roll, and look at how that expands with escapes and finishes.

We'll do more HKE.

We'll do throws and takedowns from the clinch, with and without gi, and how to defend and throw and puncher or kicker, see how long it takes for that element to come out in the MMA matches.

We'll instruct more pins, and their escapes, and finishes from the ground, both locks and chokes. We'll practice ground and pound with the pads.

We'll look at the 3 standing chokes as they work in the Street, ones from the Door.

With impact, we'll look more at building the attributes with focus pads and Thai pads for the 4 main KB structures, and we'll look at drilling concepts as well as ABCs and def ABCs.

Remember - if you see it taught you see it fought!
We don't practice flowery stuff for the sake of it - you practice moves that you'll bring out in your sparring that will be there if you need it in the ring or on the Pavement.

We'll get more use of the shield as well for power body kicks.

With weapons we'll get everyone doing stix through the first 9 sinawalli so they can drill together.

We'll get those with sword working sword vs stix, then sword vs sword.
Then we'll bring in more Bo, and some Jo.