Having recuperated from last Saturday's Test Day, I'm back in the saddle again.
Wednesday, our ground fighting night started out with doing some light wrestling. At the end of a period of wrestling, the instructor asked if any of the least experienced grapplers had any questions relative to situations they found themselves in. Once a question was asked, suggestions and demonstrations for solving the situation were given by everyone that had an answer. Usually, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.
Later we practiced alternative mount position escapes to the Krav Maga mount position escapes. The standard “Krav Maga bridge, trap and roll” poses some problems for some individuals.
Next we practiced an alternative attack from the rear mount position. The bread and butter attack from this position is usually applying a rear naked choke to your opponent. However, since most savvy opponents expect this, an excellent alternative attack is a straight arm bar.
In Thursday night’s scenario training class, we started out with the standard confrontational situation whereby you made an attempt to de-escalate the situation. I always have a hard time putting myself in that bad guy roll. When I’m in the bad guy roll, I usually accuse people of cutting me off while driving or taking “my” parking space.
Our next drill involved practicing hook punches with and without focus mitts. Along with knee strikes, hook and uppercut punches are great combatives to use against that person who decides that they want to get in your face.
Later a scenario drill had you leave the room so that your group could plot its assault on you. When you re-entered the room, you had no idea as to how the scenario was going to play out. In my case, I was approached by two male individuals. One of them acted like he knew me and wanted to talk. All the while his friend was trying to circle around me.
Acting on the gut instinct that this did not look or feel right, I attacked. I kicked the guy circling around me with a back kick and then scurried away from the other guy.
We ended the class with a stress drill. You were surrounded by five people. Two held kicking shields, two held tombstone pads and one held a focus mitt. You could kick or knee the kicking shields, straight punch or hammerfist the tombstone pads and hook punch the focus mitt. Once the instructor said go you did the aforementioned. At times, the instructor would tell you to drop. You sprawled on the floor, got back up and continued striking until told to stop.
I wonder what we’ll be doing next week?!
