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Koei-Kan Martial Arts

Why more people don’t train?

Most of the time I cant figure out why everyone does not train. I mean there are health benefits, it is a great way to meet amazing people from a broad range of backgrounds, and you get increased confidence in being able protect yourself and your loved ones. Then I see a picture like this and it hits me – most of the time we are training we do kind of look ridiculous.

In this picture we were screwing around working on techniques off of a leg bar.  Mr Sellon has longer legs than I do and gets this sweet hook with his inside leg and then proceeds to do his best to prevent me from being able to father children. Ever. That or he is practicing for thanks giving and making  a wish.

It seems I can counter if I pop his hooking foot, and then spinning out, but wit the ankle lock on it makes timing tricky. In the real world he would break my ankle before I pulled off the counter. I think I need to ask Sensei how to get out of this one.

Categories
Martial Arts

Leg Bar

So normally when I think of leg locks I either am thinking of an Achilles lock or an ankle lock. Last Wednesday’s class was a little weird at the end. One of the brown belts showed the 3-sided choke, and that lead to a round of “have you seen this one”. Well we started in an arm bars and Sensei showed a leg bar – which is just weird – you basically end up with your weight on your shoulders and your chin buried in your navel.

Sensei did not teach the move – just showed us (on me) twice. However I think this is what was happening. It felt like he stepped over my leg, hooked the ankle and sat back pretty much like you would setting an arm bar. Just like you need to be careful sitting into the technique with an arm bar so you don’t blow the elbow, Sensei was similarly carful to keep things loose enough while sitting into so  he did not blow my knee.  He could have easily torqued against my knee and blown it any time he wanted to, but the bar seems to be a pin pulling straight down the V formed by your thighs. The result is stacking the pinned person on their shoulders.

 

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Koei-Kan Martial Arts

Learning a new choke

Wednesday I nearly didn’t train. It is not my regular night, I just went to the dojo since I needed to clear out the cobwebs. It turned out to be an amazing night. It was just sensei and three of us training – so lots of 1 on 1 training time.

One of the people there showed this cool choke I had not seen before.

You start working up a collar. In the picture you grab with the lower right hand and slide the left hand up the collar. Then bring the right hand up. This leads into a bunch of things. This choke is used if the person on top bobs their head down, which if they are posting to pin the person on ground is not too uncommon. The choke gets set when the person on bottom, without letting go, pops their top hand over the head. This crosses the arms setting up the scissor choke.

Sensei pointed out that it is fairly easy to counter the setup for this choke by just pressing into the shoulder. I drew the picture with the top person pinning with their forearm – but seisei showed the counter with the left hand of the top person pressing into the GH joint of the shoulder.

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Photos and Events

Missing grad school

Just ran across a bunch of old photos from back in grad school. Not sure what I miss more about grad school – dumpster diving with my friends to get parts to build insane things, or having an advisor who’s response to “Hey, are those your students out there dumpster diving behind the physics building” was “Yes, get a camera”.