This was a movement intensive class. We started out with a series of basic reaction drills to find your feet quickly. The first and most simple was two people laying prone and head to head, and racing to stance on the whistle.
The second was the same thing laying supine.
In both instances we were not making contact but the point was to come up ready to engage not just to find your feet.
The next version was starting again supine, but side by side and attempting to win decent grips after standing.
The highest intensity version of this is the Tall Man Wins drill. Both people begin prone, head to foot and side by side. Each takes an overhook on the near foot. On the whistle you fight for the top position. The basic idea is that in any scramble the person who can elevate their opponents near post highest wins. Grab a leg and get tall. I filmed an example of this but it turned out poorly, so instead here is a clip from Kolat demoing the drill. The full video explanation is here.
Note that Kolat almost loses the exchange but it is the second effort to again elevate the leg that wins him the exchange.
After this we looked at a more specific situation relating back to all the sweep single work we have been doing, that was building back up out of a hard sprawl. First we talked about getting back to base off your stomach, and using a hand on the mat to circle hard away from the pressure and chase down the legs. It is often hard to let go with one hand if you are afraid of losing the leg, but holding on with both makes it significantly harder to circle back. Get the hand down and fight the pressure. Once there, follow the same steps and controls that we worked off our sweep single. Shelve the foot on the outside hip and build to the far leg being careful not to grip over the hip and feed back into the opponents overhook counters.
That said, it can be really hard to get back to the legs and good position. If you are circling and just can’t get there, we also looked at the far side peek out. The hand already on the mat comes up to ad a little extra punch and clear out the grips.
One really important note here is that in both of these examples the grips are on our body, not on our neck. If you are on bottom front headlock with your opponent touching your neck and threatening a choke, that must take priority and the procedures change. The above is specifically about building off a stuffed shot while you are still on the leg.
