Thursday night last

Hi all, this is post should have been written after last thursdays no gi class (instead of slightly preceding tonights no gi class), but still better late than never.

We had a fairly small class, but still it was a good class. We had a new student called Chris come along who was largely motivated by the need for self defence. Chris was unfortunately a bit nervous about trying a martial art and I suspect his family was his main motivation for coming. I got the impression that he wouldn't stick around on his own if he wasn't motivated in some other way. So I took him through some basics and tried to spend a bit of time making him feel welcome. For the other 2 participants, Nick and John, I went through a combination of techniques from guard, it went;

• Figure 4 from butterfly guard
• Opponent forces arm straight, Upwards shoulder lock.
• Opponent doesn't tap, force arm past your body and take opponents back.

In between going through these techniques I taught Chris a self defence scenario in the following order;

• Fence position
• Straight Right Punch
• Head cover and shoot to body
• Underhook and setup "Radix" Clinch
• Shuck with underhook and get back
• Rear Hoist take down
• Establish Knee Ride

At the end of the session I think Chris was happy with the class. I reckon the fact that he had had a good workout and that he had found out what he could do made him feel fairly confident. Chris said he would be back this week, I certainly hope he does come back. I know from experience that the first few sessions are the hardest to go to and if you get past those you tend to be OK, so all being well he'll stay with us.

I am not sure how many people we'll have tonight because it is Hobart Show Day public holiday, but I have heard that there may be a few folk coming along, so maybe it'll be OK. Anyway I'll put up a post and say how it was.