Sprawl-to-Cradle Counter Playbook

Mat Manual companion guide to "Cradle Off the Sprawl." Print it. The article explains the counter chain: sprawl kills the shot, the near-side cradle is threaded inside a two-beat window, and the shooter answers with the drive or the settle. This book drills the window until seeing it is automatic, builds both finishes, teaches the honest exits as scores in their own right, and gives the shooter their own defensive cards for the same two beats, because a counter chain trained against a shooter who never fights back is a story the defender tells themselves, not a skill the room has verified.

Name: ______________________________ Dojo: ______________________________ Grade: ______________ Start date: ______________ Current week (Part 11): ______________

BEFORE ANYTHING: PARTNER SAFETY AND AGREEMENTS ☐ Roll-through work in this book never lands a partner on the head or neck, and nobody is lifted or thrown off the sprawl. The roll travels low across the mat at agreed speed, walked at half speed until the landing standard in Part 8 is passed. ☐ The cradle is a pinning hold, not a squeeze contest. It is locked by position and weight. Squeezing a folded partner with arm strength to force a tap or a groan is a fault, and the set restarts. ☐ Necks: the head-side hand controls beside the neck and shoulder line, never by cranking the head sideways or pulling it down by the crown. Any neck pain, from either role, stops the drill at once. ☐ Shot entries in this book are fed at the card's stated speed and depth. A shooter who drives at full match speed in a beat-one card is running a different drill; the set restarts at the card's speed. ☐ Sprawl weight is settled onto the upper back, never dropped, and never driven through the shooter's neck or spine. A shooter whose head is trapped under a chest reports it with one word and the sprawl releases at once. ☐ Stop on any pain, numbness, dizziness, or loss of control, from either partner, with no argument. Log it in the session log (Part 16).

Part 1: The Chain at a Glance

Chain law: beat zero is a real beat. The sprawl is not the boring preface to this chain; it is the link every later link is priced from, and a defender whose sprawl is a rumor should spend the cycle in Part 3 and the library's shot-defense book, proudly, because that is where their scoring is actually hiding. No cradle exists off a sprawl that hasn't landed, and reaching early is logged as a fault, not as ambition.