Water in the waves

Today I gave a night water lesson. We worked on grappling mostly with the legs being the primary movers and here are a few drills for starters:

Have your partner lift your legs high or support them on a floating object and do push ups facing the waves and thus learn to keep a positive pressure in your lungs (avoid water coming in) and learning to adapt the the air availability and inhaling when you can and exhaling when you need to.

keep the static push up again facing the waves and with the head completely in the water and lift your body and head together to breath only as much as it is needed and have the body move so you avoid cranking your neck up and out and moving with less tension.

Lie down in the waves so you are completely in the water and do sit ups with your back straight. You can only inhale on the top of the up and you must learn to relax the body from jack knifing so you can actually reach the surface in order to inhale.

Lie down facing away from the waves and when you feel the wave coming and the buoyancy starting to lift your upper body roll backwards and learn to move as a whole because otherwise you simply twist and go with the wave. Sometimes you need to transfer the movement to another body part and that includes the lift.

Stand chest deep in the water and start to squat measuring the speed and tension in your body so you can squat and avoid floating and jerking in the water. Learn to direct the mass of the movement so you have control through awareness of the direction and hold of your body.

After this we rolled in the water learning to keep the eyes open and to find with the arms where the surface is safe and where to guide the body in the water away from the sharp rocks and junk.

The rest of the lesson was about movement while in contact and taking down the partner using the water to your advantage. We shot a few movies but there was no light so nothing is discernible.

A big thank you to Vladimir Vasiliev and Mikhail Ryabko for the water lesson on DVD and in person.