Wrestling: Three Moves from a Single Leg
After boxing on Monday night, I decided to spend Tuesday freestyle wrestling at Genesis Gym in Marlow. Although they have had their wrestling class running since early in the year, I haven’t been able to attend very often because the class has been on a Friday night.
Now, however, it has been moved to a Tuesday! This is great news, because I love wrestling, it’s a great class and the coach – Chad – is excellent.
After a warm-up geared entirely around wrestling (shooting, sprawling and neck stretches), we got into technique work. This week, we focused on three moves that follow from snatching a single leg:
- Lift the leg high on the inside, start pulling it away and – at tipping point – kick the support leg out from underneath your opponent.
- If the opponent puts him leg between your leg as a defence, “run the pipe” by grabbing his ankle with you inside hand, turning inside and dropping downwards, to dump him on his butt.
- My favourite of the day: if the opponent takes his leg to the outside as a defence, get it up over your hip, step forwards and kick the back of your knee across his upper thigh, sending him flipping right over you. It’s brilliant, effortless and spectacular.
Alas, we didn’t have time to spar, but it was just as well – we were already drenched in sweat. It’s too hot to fight at the moment…