Krav Maga Class 85: lunges and squats, gang shoulder tag, focus mitts, front kicks and scissor knees, level 1 chokes

TJ’s class on a cold and rainy Tuesday morning. Went in feeling good and optimistic. Left my BJJ gi in the car though. Forgot my rash guard.

We started out with the jog warmup, shuffle, backward, then lunges halfway around the mat, then sidestep squats halfway around the mat. Oof, getting me there.

Then shadow boxing to warm up. Suddenly, shoulder tag! Knee touch tag! Gang shoulder tag! Exciting stuff.

Get a drink, put on gloves, get focus mitts, and do combos with a no-hold knee as a finale. I had a group of 3 (me, Thomas, and Matt) and we did pretty good on the mitts, even though we often forgot which knee to throw. Didn’t matter, the hold was the same for both.

Gloves off, pads away, kick shield up, and we did front kicks up and down the mat. This time I was with Dave (who TJ kept calling “Jeff”) and that guy is terribly uncoordinated with his legs. He’s like my brother Matt, who has to do a stutter step to get his body moving in a coordinated way. He’s also very solid and it’s difficult to defend his chokes. Anyway, then we did front kicks back and forth across the mat, and then scissoring knees. After that I held pads for him and Yas, and we did round robin throwing front kick, scissoring knee and then flavor combatives to conclude the phase, throwing the pad to the attacker to hold for the odd man out.

We ended the class with a review on pluck choke defenses – from the front, side, and back. After training on each by itself, we then put them all into a stress drill. One person stood in the center, eyes closed, while all but one of the remaining students peppered him (all males in this particular class) with focus mitts. Eventually, the last student would apply a choke, and the center man (!!) would have to open his eyes and do the defense. I felt very natural at these choke defenses, and I guess I did them okay.

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