north-south choke

We had a very small class on Saturday. And for the first time in ages, I was the lowest ranking player on the mat.

Of late, I've ended up scarily near the right end of the line-up. That means having to take the warm up. And worse, I will get roped in to teach stuff...

Anyway, Saturday was about working on the north south choke. With only four of us there, we took our time to work on the small details of this choke. How does it work, what makes it work better? And we got a fair few reps in. I had read up on this choke recently, so it was very interesting to have the chance to practise it. We looked at a variation where you set it up while in side control and then go to n/s to finish the choke.

Then we had a crack at an escape from side control where he has an underhook on our far arm and the other arm around our neck. A three step affair. First step, hip out so we are on our side facing the opponent and our free hand on his hip. Second step is whizzer him on the underhook side, then bridge up while shoving up with that arm. This creates a space under him big enough that we can feed our head through towards his far hip. Step three is to put the head in that gap, and holding on to his whizzered arm, we rotate around it until we are face down in front of it. This requires that we swing our leg as we rotate to get some momentum while we pull on his upper arm.

Then we sat around and talked for a while and went over some other small stuff. It was quite a laid back affair.

Oh yeah, aside from a few wrestles we had at some point. I was severely squashed and manhandled by a big purple belt. I was pleased that I fended off several attacks and bought time, but the outcome was inevitable in every roll. Having said that, he did stop a couple of times to encourage or correct something I did. So while painful, it was a good learning session :-)