Adults: Rau Drag Knee Cut

From the split squat, it can be really annoying to try to smash a knee shield, especially if they’re doing a good job framing on us with their top arm. That could be the same side, on our shoulder, or across. Either way, we need to remove this frame. To do this, we’re going to Rau drag.

I’m going to increase my pressure on the frame and get a light grip on the tricep. From here, I need to have a way to relieve the pressure. I can either push off with my arm on their lat or, if I have my knee under me, lift my upper body away with my hips.

Once we release this pressure, I’m going to pop the hand across, to the outside, and cup the tricep, bringing the pressure back.

From here, our elbow comes down on the knee shield as we slide out. Note that we’re sliding out, collapsing our weight, so they can’t recover their knees. We’re going to stop here, for now.

To finish the pass, we need to stop two things. One, we need to stop high legs and low legs. And two, we need to stop our opponent from getting up to their knees. Not that them getting up to their knees is a bad thing. We should be able to convert this into a backtake or a north-south attack. But if we want to solidify the position, we need to pin them and get them down.

By default, we stop high/low legs, because of the Rau drag if we keep our head down. There’s one simple way to stop them from getting to their knees. I’m going to hook on the inside of their bottom elbow. Without their bottom elbow, they can’t rotate and build enough height. I can flatten them back out.

Why grab on the inside? Because to get up, he wants to pull his elbow to his ribs. If I grab on the outside, he can still do that, and then he can build up and get up to the knees. If I hook inside, I’m placing a block between his ribs and his elbow.

From here, we have options. We can start to flatten them out and finish with a good, mean cross face OR we can circle around the head and attack the kimura. Our kimura should be strong and tight.