Thursday night reminded me of what it is that I really like about Rodrigo's teaching/classes. We warmed up, and a pretty rigorous warm-up at that. And then we pummeled. And pummeled and pummeled and pummeled.
The entire "instructional" part of the class was just focused on this. It must have gone on for 30 minutes or more. Nothing but pummeling for underhooks. No takedowns, no thing. Just position, position, position. Then switch partners, and battle for underhooks some more.
I did okay, but I had a hard time remembering some of the pummeling techniques from my Greco-Roman wrestling book by Martell.
As I remember it, the best way to go for the underhook is to bend in the direction of the arm that you want to underhook. Use the underhook to pull the guy into you to disrupt his balance as you bend.
In other words, say you've got the underhook on your right and are trying to get the otehr underhook with your left arm in order to get double underhooks.You would want to drive your right shoulder into the guy and dip down to your left. This will help put his body in the right position for you to slide your hand and wrist between his side and arm. You are driving his body toward the arm you want to use to hook him.
Some of the guys I was training with were trying different things. But none of them in and of itself seemed superior. Some guys would frame their arms across your chest, locking in your one underhook under their upper arm.
This sort of gave them more tools to work with. But mostly just to try and grab my hooking arm as I went for the underhook. Locking my underhook in place doesn't hurt my pummeling effort, at all.
It kind of reminded me of the figure four from the guard. It definitely keeps things in place, but it is hard to advance the game from that position.
(Update: Here's a link to a previous post on the subject. I might actually have it backwards ...)
