On the Mat Day 366: Specifi Sparring - Escapes

I was later than usual arriving last night but was still the 1st one there. F-sensei told me a lot of people turned up the previous night so he expected a slow night. In the end we had a good number of people but most of them were late arrivals after 9pm due to work.

Escaping Houdini style

I started off doing scissor sweep drills with Matt. I've seen this sweep so many times but still do not do the technique correctly. The secret of it is in extending the body fully. You should not be bent at the hips. It sort of feels like you are storing up kenetic energy for the sweep something similar to a drawn bow would do. He showed us a drill to get our grips and let the opponent decide which leg they post then react accordingly with the sweep on the correct side. This would make a very useful drill because it is a very common position in sparring.

For sparring, again, I did escapes. Taking inferior positions such as rear, top and side mount. This is very good practice for me and I can't think why I never did it so intensively like this in the past. It really helps me to get more sensitivity to where I am being attacked and to defend appropriately. Sort of like stopping grips while standing, this specific sparring seems essential to me to build correct reactions to incoming attacks from the back, side and mount.

Successful escapes for me were:

Mount: Bridge, leg-drag hip escape to full guard.
Back: Trap choking arm between my ear and bicep, grab knee and turn back into their closed guard.
Side: Only practice with Miura-san who crushed the air out of my lungs.

At the end I watched Kondo vs Miura and saw Kondo's spirit wither as Miura just submitted him the same way a couple of times. Following that I saw F-sensei completely dominate Miura with butterfly sweeps and very tight armbars. I wish I had recorded it. It just hammered home the fact that with technique a super strong guy can be dominated and what was the hammer can easily become the nail.


Sparring time: 5 x 6 mins = 30 mins