Knee on Belly Defense

This week I got hit with some pretty nasty cooties, so I missed out on a lot of class. But today, since I was finally feeling well enough to change out of my pj's, I decided to go in and train once more before the school closed for New Years weekend.

Today, drilling centered around escaping the knee on belly position.



I looked for videos of the escape, but couldn't find any that matched what we learned in class. Basically, when the guy has knee on belly, you swim the foot and grab onto the guy's thigh (so the foot of one leg and the thigh of his other leg).

Then, you are going to block the knee that is on your belly with your hand and hip out the way their knee is pointing. An important detail is that, as you hip out, you don't want their knee to touch the mat. You want to push the knee in between your knees and pinch your knees together, trapping their knee. As you hip out, they will fall on their butt and you can sweep them that way, coming up into side control.

Today was a day of small breakthroughs in grappling. I have been working on taking the back without hipping out, using my legs and hips against my opponents body to kind of shimmy around in a smooth motion, without making space. The movement is really hard to explain. Again, couldn't find a video to help show it.

It's difficult to get that movement right, especially when the person is leaving you very little space. But today, I was finally able to get the movement right, so that my legs and hips gave me the momentum to go up and over. Woohoo!!

Going to Disney for New Years with my family so I will be off grid for a few days. Hope you all have a safe and fun New Years! See you in 2011! :)