Ribs and the Tomoe Nage

After a week off of jiu jitsu, my ribs felt good enough to return to the mat. Still tender occasionally, but good enough.

The fundamentals class was all about the tomoe nage, or circle throw.

Basically, from an elbow and collar grip, you put your foot on your opponent’s belt, hop your other foot forward a bit, then sit and use your weight to start the momentum to propel your opponent over you, and then follow and end in mount. Dan and I drilled it, building it up bit by bit since neither of us had done it before.

We then switched to a knee of belly escape. A common mistake is to push on the knee and elbow escape, which tends to leave you open for an armlock or a kimura. Instead we block the knee, and with our other hand, shove the foot to half guard and then move to regain full guard.

At the end of class we worked a sequence of throw, mount, escape to guard, pass to knee on belly, escape to guard, pass, standup in base, and then repeat.

All the throwing felt a little hard on the body, so I elected to not stay for the advanced class tonight.