Taking it easy yesterday really helped. I was still a little sore, but ready for the clinic. Wrestling really is the closest thing that there is to an American martial art that there is.

Jeremy is clearly talented and knowledgeable, and has a good teaching style. He does need to work a little bit on his delivery, he comes off a a little quiet some times.

We started with the arm drag take down that I’ve learned by osmosis this past week. Nice drilling it for a few minutes as a group while Jeremy walked around and corrected various things. We built it up, starting with no hands, since your head is really the key with this. Do it right and you and take the other guy down with just a flick of your neck. Then we added in one hand, then the other, then running through the whole thing. Once everyone had that down, we learned the dump part. If your opponent is pushing back into you, you can switch to a single leg and change directions and pull him in the direction that he’s pushing, and he’s on his butt.

We played around with some grip fighting, experimenting on where and when we could go for the arm drag and various setups for the technique.

Then we also did a variation where instead of arm dragging and clinching, you drag and then duck under his arm and grab the single. Push into him to get him to push back, then pull back and hold his ankle and lift it so he’s hopping on one foot. Grab his leg with your other hand, twist it and foot sweep his other leg and he’s on his butt.

Lastly, we worked a similar twist motion, but on the arm. If your opponent has a good grip on your lapel, you can cup his elbow with one hand, cup his forearm with the other, and do the same twist and pivot with your hips and dump him too. I found this to be a little bit trickier. Something to work on.

All in all, a pretty good workshop. I’ve been thinking a lot about the tournament coming up, formulating a mental game plan. This take down is going to be one of the two or three that I’m going to focus on.