Kimura Pt Deux Seminar!

What better way to kick start a new month off than with a seminar with your chief instructors?! Darren and Helen Currie made their first trip over of the new year to deliver what was to be an awesome follow up seminar on my favourite submission, the kimura.

The seminar usually starts with one of Helen's legendary brutal warm ups, but yesterday Darren had other ideas and ushered us all onto the large mats at the end of the gym.  With us all lined up in a long row, Darren demo'd four BJJ related movements and had us repeat the sequence four times and after the first set of four, lungs were opening and everyone was starting to get warm; five different sets of exercises were all repeated for four sets, which tested everyone's stamina and lung function.  This was a great way to warm up and build up one's cardio as well as strength and endurance and I will certainly using these in my warm ups and cardio sessions in the sparring classes.

From the warm up, it was straight onto the nitty gritty, as Darren kicked off with a quick recap of the first seminar on the kimura, as there were a few guys and gals that weren't present at the the first one; it was a great start to the seminar, as it refreshed the techniques previously learned and acted as a starting point for all the new material that was to follow.  And what material it was!

Darren left nothing out over the next two hours, covering this killer submission with a fine toothcomb, pulling off kimura's and it's close cousin the Americana from all positions, quite a lot of stuff I hadn't seen before.  There were submissions and brutal shoulder locks from the back position, with crucifix tie ups, designed to keep your opponent twisted up long enough for you to add insult to injury and finish them off with a kimura.

There were many 'what if?' scenarios from certain positions, with Darren giving the students and myself many options and go to positions and techniques that will be giving myself and the lads hours and hours of fun in drill time.  My two personal favourites were a sneaky omoplata style attack from the back position, that lands you in the bicep slicer position, ready to attack the opposite arm and an awesome shoulder lock set up from the reverse omoplata position, together with a 'what if?' scenario that I ain't disclosing just yet.  Looking forward to testing this on my poor unsuspecting students (they love it really).

Darren ended the seminar with a lengthy Q+A session on all things BJJ related and ended up showing a whole other bunch of stuff to really help overflow our Jiu Jitsu knowledge stores.

As always, an awesome seminar from Darren and Helen, packed with drills, techniques, counters, counters to counters and lots of fun at the same time; the mats were packed with my students from Bolton and Heywood, had a great turnout and support from all the lads and ladies, massive thanks to all who attended.

Running over the seminar notes with Darren, he noticed he'd miss out one area of techniques and positions, so it's highly likely that the next seminar at the club will be Kimura Pt Trois - watch this space guys!

Massive thanks to Darren and Helen for kick starting February off in style!