Class notes March 2012: clinch and takedown

Under hooks swimming: Getting warmed up by moving around and looking to get both underhooks in on partner from standing. It is surprising how warm you get from a drill that on the outside looks quite simple.

Knee tapping: A great drill to get the legs warmed up for takedown work. Active movement and each person has to simply touch the knee (inside or outside) of the partner and escape out. After several rounds I ended up with Seb who consistently sets a relentless pace

Striking and shooting in for the double leg: Rounds of shooting for the single or double leg. Again with Seb’s relentless pace. The key for me was to keep the head up all the way through the motion. When shooting the chin would drop. Thankfully Seb repeatedly reminded me of my error. This was something I was able to work on later in the session when drilling the single leg capture. Doing this drill right is hard. Getting lazy with dropping the heads, the levels incorrectly or a slow shoot will result in sloppiness.

Single leg capture plus details from primary grip then distance and with arm contact: Started working from clinch range with primary shoulder grip and secondary wrist grip. Bump his arm (shoulder control) up as you step back and drop the lead knee to the floor. Capture behind the knee with a strong cupped palm, face against his torso on the outside, rear leg straight and driving the body into him. Next stage was to add the wrist raise. When in the finished position lead arm has captured the back of his knee and you have lifted his wrist high above your head. Next we added the step around coupled with the correct grip (elbow deep behind his knee and capture your own forearm to tighten the control on the leg. The final stage was stepping away from your partner, manipulating his arms as to distract from your intentions and shoot at speed for the single leg capture.

Double leg takedown: As above but work the details to keep them tight and precise. Solo drill work on the visualisation and the 'L' shoot. Plus gloves at elbow to ribs. Lee demo’d a way to drill the work so far in lesson on your own. Place a pair of gloves on the floor to simulate our opponent’s feet. Simply visualise and shoot. 10, 000 times