The new person who came to try the class out in the last few weeks signed on for 2 months tonight. He said that he was a bit wary to try a jitsu style since he had a background in many different do arts like judo and karate-do. He said he really likes the classes.

We went through the medicine ball warmup, breakfalls, and then reviewed takedowns; ankle-knee, step on foot push shoulder, and crab takedown to the rear individually, and then mixed it up where we practiced transitioning from one takedown to the next (1st attempt fails, switch to alternate, etc). We also covered bear hug from the rear.

After taking a break for vacation and birthdays, i'm back to my normal schedule. Tonight we did a 50 minute high stress warm up (woohoo!) followed by front scissor (full guard) escape and then some basic hold escapes using the yawara stick.

I also put some flyers up on the community bulletin boards at a few local grocery stores. I'll go around some more this week and put some more up in the area.

I worked one-on-one with Colby tonight.

First started out with some skipping and medicine ball drills to loosen up and finished up with breakfalls.

I first reviewed all of the basic wrist grab escapes. From there we went onto some variations to wrist grabs (or hard handshakes). First was from a hard handshake and transitioning into an inner wrist lock takedown. we had worked on this wristlock takedown previously. We worked just the takedown several times to get the footwork down and the hand positioning. After a few tries, I added in some afterthrows: knee drop and stamping kick, jump over/land on elbow, and finishing with the prone armbar. Here I focused on foot positioning across the body for the armbar. Assuming that the armbar is being applied to Uke's right arm, Tori's right leg "should" be over top of uke's torso and hooked over uke's left ribs as much as possible. This gives Tori control over uke's body. If the leg wasn't there, uke can easily roll onto their stomachs from their right side while bringing their feet up towards their head so their body ends up 180 degrees from where they started. by doing this, their arm rotates so the elbow is up, escaping the armbar (of course Tori can then transition into another technique, but that was beyond the scope of class tonight).

We spent the majority of class working on this technique.

In the last 20 minutes, we did two other techniques from a hard handshake: sankyo with the wristlock takedown to the rear followed by an arm pin and strikes, and a type of wristlock takedown to the rear, but it is applied at waist level: tori steps to 45degrees to uke's right side and rotates so that he's standing beside uke facing the same direction. as tori rotates, he brings his right hand down and into the small of his back (back of the hand touching the small of the back) while holding uke's hand. This forces uke's elbow to bend. Tori grabs uke's elbow with his left hand and lifts it upwards as he steps straight back, taking uke onto his heels and then to the ground.

I received my Black Belt College Level 1 Teaching Certificate examination on Wednesday. I'll be completing that in the coming weeks. Sensei Mariedke also managed to negotiate permission to display advertising (signage, pamphlets, etc) at the Leisure Center where the dojo is. This should hopefully get some more people into the dojo to try things out.

Full house tonight! Kyle, Trevor, and Sensei Krista were present for the adults class. I ran them through skipping, medicine ball throwing and tossing, focus mitts (jab, cross, hook, upper cut), groin kicks, and shin kicks. By the time that was done the juniors class was over and I had Kyle and Sensei Krista work with Sensei Mariedke while I worked with Trevor to review techniques for his up-coming yellow belt exam. We worked through all of the yellow belt hold escapes: wrist grabs, bear hugs, double rear arm pin, 2 hands on throat arms bent as well as from the mount.

Overall a great class.

Trevor's back was spasming, so for the adults it was just Colby and me again. During the warmups, I helped Sensei Mariedke with doing breakfall 4 and breakfall 8 with the juniors and adults.

After, Colby and I did a portion of the high stress warm up. 2x skipping, 2x overhead medicine ball toss, 2x standing medicine ball into the abs, 25 supine medicine ball drops, and then finished with 2x10 front/groin kicks and 2x10 shin kicks on the medicine ball.

We then reviewed wrist grabs: one hand on each wrist straight and across, 2 hands on 1 wrist, 1 hand on each wrist high and low.

We finished off with a ground defense technique: 2 hands on the throat while in the full mount. We worked in some anterior femoral strikes with the elbows after tori gained release and turned uke over onto his back.

First class back after the deep freeze (and when my car would start).

Small class: Kyle, Mike, Trevor and me. Mike and Trevor are novice white belts. Kyle is preparing for his brown belt.

Started off with one pair skipping and the other pair tossing the medicine ball. switched after 2 sets. Then 1 paid worked on focus mitts while the other pair did the standing abdominal throws and switched after 2 sets. finally, 25 supine medicine ball drops.

worked on breakfalls 1, 2, 3 from sitting and standing, 5 from the knees, and 7 from crouching and standing.

Small class tonight; I did the warm-up with Mike and Trevor. Both were new students. The usual skipping, medicine ball, front kick and shin kick exercises in the warm-up. Went over defensive stance and how to get in it. Moving in defensive stance.

worked on parrying and side-stepping a straight punch and then getting into an arm lock:

Uke punches with right hand. Tori steps diagonally left and parries with the left hand. Right hand grabs uke's wrist and turns it away from uke to move elbow into the up position. left hand slides to just above the elbow. Left hand pushes down, right hand pulls up. arm bar. Transition into a wrist-lock to the front.

worked on 1 hand on lapel:

drop to defensive stance, slap to the face distraction with hand opposite to side being grabbed. follow thru and grab the back of uke's wrist and reverse, putting uke into a front wrist lock.

variation: get into defensive stance/shin kick/grab wrist with hand on the same side as the lapel grab. with free hand, execute a thumb lock.

variation: get into defensive stance/shin kick/grab wrist with hand or elbow on the same side as the lapel grab. with free hand, jugular notch take-down.

variation: shuto strike with hand on the same side as the lapel grab to uke's elbow to collapse the arm, step forward with left leg so uke and tori are shoulder to shoulder, right hand palm heel to chin to push chin up and head back. ears off the hips and step thru with right leg to perform takedown.

Sempai Mark did a quick 10 minute stretching warm up. I then got the next 45 minutes to run through the standard warm up: skipping, overhead toss, standing abdominal, supine abdominal, boxing with focus mitts, shin kicks and front kicks.

After, Sempai Mark worked with Brad and Candice. This was Brad's second class and Candice's first class back after 1 year. We picked up where we left off on Monday's class with Orange Belt techniques:

1. Side Nelson: basic and variations
2. one hand on each wrist from behind, held close: basic and variations
3. one hand on each wrist from behind, held far: basic and variations
4. Kata: right hook (& block), left hook (& block), right hook (& block), try to shoulder throw & fail, turn inwards, left hook (& block), drop in front of uke and do: (a) a modified ankle-knee take down, (b) strikes to the anterior femorals and an ankle-knee pickup, (c) tori hooks upper (right) leg behind uke's knees and scissor's uke's knees, forcing him to fall forward.
5. Showed the basic takedown to the rear. This seemed to be a modified version of what they were calling a crab takedown where the body positioning is essentially the same, but tori pops his hips forward and twists his arm backwards to bring uke off-balance. The basic rear takedown has now been adopted as the "basic crab takedown" and the previous crab takedown is now the "advanced crab takedown." the feedback from Dan and Kyle was that the takedown to the rear involved almost no effort at all and was more effective than the advanced crab takedown.

#2 basic: drop body weight into defensive stance, punch across the front of the body to break the wrist grab, elbow to solar plexus, groin slap, elbow to bracheal plexus origine, knee-ankle takedown.

#2 variation: open palms, facing backwards. left leg side steps beside uke as tori raises his right hand over uke's head and moves his left hand behind his back. Tori then arcs his right leg around and steps slightly behind uke while bringing his right hand over uke's head and behind him to bring him off balance and take him down. also showed variation with grabbing wrists and more forcefull takedown.

#3 basic: back kick to groin. drop kicking foot to the ground approximately between uke's feet and step back with support leg to re-center yourself and balance. FUWAT.

45 min SOLO high stress sparring drills with medicine ball, shadow boxing, and skipping

spent about 20 minutes teaching the juniors class while Sensei Mariedke did grading.

shin kicks to the medicine ball

roundhouse from defensive stance (lead and rear legs)

roundhouse from horse stance with partner

did all of the kicks, especially the shin kicks, to the phrase "Let. Me. Go. Now."