My new gi came. yay. It's going to be odd training with a gi that has sleeves :)

I also got a judo book on Shimewaza techniques. I glanced through it last night before going to bed and picked up a few subtle but very important nuances on sanguineous restraints.

It was another small class. Trevor is going to be testing for his Yellow belt in April so we worked our way through all of the yellow belt requirements except the hold escapes for the first 75 minutes. Some techniques were new, some were refreshers, and others were just review and practice. The techniques were mostly stances, moving in the stances, striking, blocking, and kicking. Pressure points like the BPO, radial, lateral femoral and anterior femoral were also covered.

After Kyle and I worked together on some more advanced come-a-longs and sanguineous restraints and worked on trying variations and modifications of these techniques.

Tonight I led the adults through some breakfall review and kicking exercises to work on their balance and technique.

Breakfalls
Breakfalls 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, and 10.
With breakfall 6, added in a blow with a baton after they recover from the roll and turn to face their attacker. Gave some advice on how to make breakfalls 9 and 10 a bit smoother, and how to do breakfall 8 properly i.e. not to go sideways on the roll, but to tuck the head and kick with the rear leg to go forward.

Kicking exercises
1. Front kick to the medicine ball from a defensive stance, both sides, time on target is emphasized.

2. Advanced shin kick to the medicine ball from a defensive stance, both sides time on target is emphasized.

3. Roundhouse kick from a horse stance using your partner for balance & targetting, both sides (targets: chest, abdomen, solar plexus, thigh, groin, etc).

4. Side kick from a horse stance using your partner for balance & targetting, both sides (targets: floating ribs, lateral femoral, knee, etc).

5. Side kick from defensive stance using rear leg. For this exercise we kicked into a shield and used more than touch pressure.

6. Roundhouse from a defensive stance using the rear leg. Partner would hold the focus mitts with one mitt out as a target. Tori kicks the focus mitt, drops his kicking leg and re-adjusts while uke steps back and holds up the other focus mitt. Now tori kicks with the non-dominant leg. Repeat as uke and tori go across the room. When the wall is reached, we do the same drill, but this time uke advances on tori and forces tori to step backwards to re-adjust. By doing this, tori is forced to constantly re-adjust his distance to the target.

For 3 & 4 I emphasized bringing your non-kicking leg in such that the heel points towards your target. I had them do this and compare it versus just stepping in and not orienting your foot. Everyone agreed that when they point the heel it feels more natural. Also emphasized keeping the hands up to protect the face & not swinging the arm back as you kick as it off-balances you.

After class, I spent a few minutes reviewing Sanguineous #5 (knuckles to carotid) , #7 (rear naked choke), and #9 (pull lapel down and sidestep to get uke's head in a scissor-type restraint between uke's forearms).