Dynamic Muscle Tension Choke

I got the new guy in a straight-armed wrist lock, jumped up, clamped my legs around his neck, fell to the floor in an arm bar before he even knew what happened. 

That didn’t happen at all because I would have hurt my back and probably kicked him in the head instead.  Never the less, after choking one another for 20 minutes it had felt like I’d done the flying arm bar. 

Teacher was going over all the basics to prep Robot, and the Wonder Twins for the test in the 2nd hour, but got a bit burned out and decided to teacher a blood choke for the last half of the 1st hour.  When done correctly it goes smoothly and the main vein on one side of your neck gets pinched you go nighty-night. 

What I learned – Some people have a big vein on the neck and it’s easy to choke them (me).  Some people must have their vein buried deep in the or their body takes up the slack by pumping hard on the other side (new girl).  So when you can’t knock them out you crush them and that doesn’t work at all.  So the lesson is you better have something else up your sleeve.

Needless to say learning this technique means that everybody has a sore neck and has been choked out a multitude of times.  It left me wondering how much brain damage we were causing.

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Teacher keeps harping on the judicious use of muscle to stabilize positions. For instance – in preparation for a side kick our chamber is standing on foot, that knee bent, the kicking leg thigh is almost parallel to the ground.  What he sees is that many of use are not using a bit of muscle to help us stabilize here.  Once he tells folks their balance in this position improves dramatically.

This got me thinking about how much other pieces of the pie are tied together with a bit of dynamic tension.  Normally, the demonstration about being relaxed and kicking (for instance) is contrasted by having the student squeezing the muscles through the kick to demonstrate how it impedes the process.  While a fully relaxed exertion moves very quick.  It’s only at the end point in which tighten to give the big boom. 

I don’t know how to adequately describe this phenomenon, but I know it’s fundamental to a good kick, but hard to teach.