Recently at class our instructor had us drilling technique to improve our double leg takedowns. The drills were focused on improving the penetration step, so that was the area we focused on more so than actually finishing the takedown (though we did get to that by the end of class). It was a grueling workout that caused my legs to burn in a way they haven’t in a long time. At our school we have pretty lengthy mat space, which means that as we did our penetration shots down the mat we were able to get LOTS of repetitions.
Here is the sequence we roughly followed:
- Warm-up by shrimping down the mat, then doing single leg lunges back down the mat in the opposite direction. The lunges were already giving a good leg burn.
- Drill the double leg penetration shot starting from the knees, 2 laps down the mat.
- Drill the double leg penetration shot starting from the feet, 2 laps down the mat.
- Grab a partner and drill the penetration shot starting from the feet, driving them down the mat with your shoulder, 2 laps.
- Finally drill a full double leg takedown to side control for 15 minutes with a partner.
If you don’t know what I mean by drilling the penetration shot from the knees, and then from the feet, the video below does a good job of showing the two variations:
I didn’t expect this to be such a great leg workout, but here I am 2 days later and my legs are basically unusable. Planning on doing some variation of this routine at open mats for a while to come.