2024-12-23

Teaching my regular classes at the Ross Farnsworth - East Valley YMCA.

Last night in my pre-Christmas adult class, I taught the class one grab escape from each of the five Heian katas. The one I taught from Heian Godan is the same one I described back on October 2, it uses the downward “X” block to rising “X” block combination as a finger lock called “yubi gatame.”

Here’s the thing about pain compliance … it doesn’t always work. The student in the picture below was perfectly comfortable in this position.

This turned into a good setup to explain the following two important points about the use of grappling techniques:

1. The point of this drill was not to submit the opponent through pain compliance. The point was to escape from a same-side wrist grab. Regardless of whether the student in the photo above is dancing around in pain, it’s pretty clear that I’ve escaped the wrist grab at this point.
2. When all else fails, punch them in the face. 😈 I’m not kidding. Even if this doesn’t “hurt”, they’re still going to be too worried about what’s going on here to put up an effective defense if you decide to punch with the other hand.