We all need a little KNEE time

On Saturday I had the chance to work with one of our members who is resuming practice after time off due to knee problems.

I have a lot of joint concerns myself, so we worked together on adaptations of the techniques demonstrated that were less painful on damaged knees.

Here's what we came up with (this was a weapons take-away class):

• Gokyo tanto take away from tsuki
• as nage, you can pin from standing instead of going down to the ground.
• as uke, we chose to have nage to do the standing version of rokkyo instead of uke being taken to the ground via gokyo. 
• side benefit: nage gets to practice rokkyo :)

• Kokyuho tanto take away (with choke) from tsuki
• as nage, we chose to LIGHTLY compress the choke while instructing uke to drop the tanto rather than going down to the inside knee. Nage then threw uke into a backfall. 
• as uke, no modification was needed. 

• Kokyuho tanto take way (with arm bar) from tsuki
• as nage, no modification needed.
• as uke, you can skip taking a backfall after dropping the tanto, if needed. 

We improvised most of these as we went, but I'm sure there are lots of tried and true options for modifications that keep the martial effectiveness of these techniques while adapting to knee injuries. 

Comments, if you have them!