The first session of Wednesday’s groundfighting night began with clinching drills. Our first drill was the head clinch also known as the Muay Thai tie-up or plum blossom. Both hands are placed on the back of your opponent’s head using a palm-to-palm grip. This clinch is good for striking.
The second drill was the collar and elbow clinch. This is a bread and butter technique of wrestlers. Place your right hand on your opponent’s neck. Your opponent does the same. Grip his left forearm with your left hand. Your opponent does the same.
The third drill was the over-under clinch. Underhook your opponent’s left arm with your right, placing the palm of your hand on his shoulder blade. Your opponent does the same. Overhook his right arm with your left hand gripping him at the triceps. Your opponent does the same.
After practicing the clinches, we practiced pummeling. Pummeling is used to maneuver your clinch grips to a superior position or to prevent your opponent from pummeling you into a weaker position.
Next, we put on the boxing gloves, went into a clinch with our partner and then did some dirty boxing. Dirty boxing looks like two hockey players fighting.
The second session of the night involved throwing. We started out with putting ourselves in the turtle position (on our knees balled up like a turtle with our head tucked). Your partner put an arm around you. You tossed your partner over your shoulder by tucking her arm tight against your body and then doing a shoulder roll landing you on top of your partner.
Next, we practiced some forward break falls. First, we did them from our knees and then we did them standing stationary and then from a run.
Now we were ready to practice the drop-knee seoi nage (shoulder throw). After practicing some throws, we practiced executing a dorsal fin kimura arm lock from the north-south position.
We ended the night... as always... with some free rolling.
As you can see, the class took us from standing and fighting in the close range to the groundfighting range. There’s a likely possibility of this happening in a streetfight.
As has been mentioned before, as Kravists, we don’t want to go to the ground if we can help it. However, if we do end up there, we want to be competent in groundfighting so that we can deal with it effectively and then get to our feet.
