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.

Class tonight was great. Llyle dropped by to train and signed up. I had Kyle, Llyle, and Trevor in tonight. After a quick warm-up I finished reviewing hold escapes for Trevor's upcoming Yellow belt test. Kyle and Llyle did the basic escapes as well as variations to bear hugs from the front and rear, over and under the arms, bear hug from the side, double rear arm pin, and 2 hands on throat (arms bent). I then reviewed the valley throw from last week as well as the two after throw controls.

Sensei Mariedke took the last 15 minutes and broke out the Kali sticks and we played around with some single stick Kali drills which brought back (very rusty) memories of that Kali seminar that was hosted by Sensei Duscheneau (I think? It's been a while) in Gatineau several years ago.

Lead adult warm-up.

Focused on proper footwork for hook and upper cut punches.

Taught variations of the jugular notch take-down:

finger in-line with arm and push finger in and down

open palm, facing down, apply pressure with index, middle, and ring fingers & wiggle.

Collar takedown: grabbing collar vs hooking hands over shoulders