Sunday 13 December 2015

Sunday with Rannoch ESU



Sunday I was invited out to Bonaly Outdoor Centre to do some Krav Maga with Rannoch ESU scout group. I would like to thank Chris for the invite out and a huge well done to all the guys there.
Had a good few hours to go over stuff and got straight into some striking patterns from a neutral base and a switching into a left lead and moving off from there.
We then got stuck into the bread n butter of Krav the 360 defence and worked through it in a drill before building it into a small situational drill reacting from a big right hand haymaker shot. We built on a few variations of it and built round an initial entry and counter to entry and counter with continued pressure and then finally entry to counter into control and takedown.
The 2nd half of the session we focused on some Krav responses to knife attacks and threats, working on high and low line and starting from a static threat and moving up to an active attack.
We finished off the day looking at some shredding techniques from senshido and how they can be adapted into Krav.
I had a great day teaching and was really impressed with how they all threw themselves into the material. It's always difficult to cover all that system offers but we managed to cram a lot into our time and the feedback and questions I was getting were great, showed just how much the guys were taking in, not just getting spoon fed stuff and repeating it.
Could have easily spent another 3 hours going over stuff as even now thinking back there was stuff i'd have loved to go over but just didn't have the time.
I hope all that attended gained something from the session and enjoyed it as much as I did.  As always in finishing I placed emphasis on how in any confrontation a physical response should be the last resort and first and foremost should be trying to verbally deescalate the situation or get to safety and then if all else fails move onto a physical response and try todo the bare minimum you need to do to get to safety.
Thanks again.

Michael

Sunday 6 December 2015

Tactical Edge Christmas Seminar Review

So Saturday saw Master Davies host his annual free christmas seminar as Best Defence in Arbroath.
The day was split into two parts, in the morning we worked through some of the systems weapon strips and looked and some firearm defence and third party protection protocols and in the afternoon we took to improvised weapons.
With any type of self defence tool prohibited in the UK, being able to pick up an everyday item and utilise it as a equlizer against an armed attacker is a great skill to learn and the conceptual nature of Tactical Edge allows a seemless adaption from empty hand to weaponised defence.
As ever all the drills, info and humour were on point with Mr Davies throwing information on each subject from all angles covering personal defence, 3rd party, failure and legalities of defence and interpersonal conflict. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and as always the difficult part isn't the training but trying to remember everything we covered.
Thanks to everyone from my lot that turned up and to the people we trained with, always nice to meet other practitioners from other parts of the country and obviously thanks to Mr Davies for hosting a great seminar.

Shadow Boxing

Continuing on the theme of training at home, another great bit of equipment's training you can do is shadow boxing.

shadow boxing is essentially fighting an imaginary opponent in front of you, normally this is done in

front of a mirror as to begin with you should be hyper critical of your motions.

If we were just looking at boxing then we'd look really only at one lead and pattern of footwork but as we do more than just standup boxing we're going to break it down into 3 stances.



1-left lead, left leg forward

2-neutral stance, both feet level

3-right lead, right leg forwad



so we have three stances to work from and to start with keep striking to a simple Jab, Cross, Hook, Upper Cut combination.

From a neutral stance you can choose which hand to start with as thats the point of having a neutral stance.

so to start with take your left lead, you can have both heels up or just the rear heel either or is fine and have a slight bend in your knees.

you wanna keep your shoulders slightly shrugged to protect your neck a little and have your chin tucked down with your eyes looking forward.

Have your arms hang straight by your side and bend at the elbow bringing your hands up until they're around shoulder height then rotate up from the shoulder until your hands are inline with your jaw.

This should be you in a basic "fighting" stance, now we work a variety of systems and every systems will have a variation on stances and position but you can adjust your stance as you need to.

Now your in your stance start throwing the combination, jab,cross,hook,upper cut. if you can get in front of a mirror then great, the trick is to throw out nice fluid full motions.

As you throw a Jab your left leg should twist forward on the ball of the foot which will push the left hip forward and in turn twist the left shoulder further out, as it twists back and you throw the right cross your right leg will twist on the ball pushing the hip and shoulder forward. Each twist in coordination with the corresponding hand strike will deliver more power, fundamental motions and body mechanics of striking. Its important that you twist when you strike and not lean, when you lean your displacing your body weight and compromising your balance where as twisting still moves your weight behind the strike but it shouldn't affect your balance.

So nice fluid motions and for shadow boxing to be of the most benefit you really need to be your own worst critic, you need to notice if your hands drop after you strike, you need to notice if you draw your hand back before you throw a strike or drop the hand to far for the upper cut. This drill only benefits you if you criticise yourself and correct bits.

As you get more confident you can then switch your stance which will change your hand strikes and obviously if you move to a right lead your hand strikes will be the opposite, right jab, left cross, so on and so on, this moulds into are "closest tool closest target" philosophy.

As i said before from a neutral stance you can throw the jab from either hand and follow up accordingly, still twisting on the ball of the foot to drive the hip and shoulder forward.

Hopefully i've explained that well enough for you to give it a try if you've never done it before.

Shadow boxing really is one of the most beneficial solo combative drills you can do, its the equivalent of Jurus or Kata's in traditional arts yet i rarely see anyone doing it at the gym and if i do a lot of people have a tendency to rush through the strikes and jar their strikes out, start out slow and fluid and once you have a good foundation you can then add in more strikes, elbows, knees, kicks and build up your power but don't go rushing into it and just flail your arms and legs out.

i've included a video of one of the greats running through some shadow boxing, this is what you can build to once you have the basics nailed, notice his foot work even when he's throwing power behind his strikes. Again we're covering a generic form of shadow boxing, each system and style will have a variation so adapt as you see fit.





Tuesday 1 December 2015

Push-ups

So the festive period is setting in, and unfortunately in Scotland, that means more often than not the weather turns to s*&t.
The weather and other festive attractions often see's a drop in the number of people making it out to the gym to train in either fitness or martial arts.
So with that in mind throughout December I want to use the blog to give you some home training ideas, so in the event you can't make it to class you can at least have something to train in the house.

Obviously solo training can only go so far and I urge you to get along to the gym if you can, as theres no substitute for a good training partner but if not hopefully I can provide a half decent alternative.
Some posts will be articles, some videos and others just pictures but i'll try to make them as easy to follow as I can. I'll try to cover a variety of subjects but if theres something in particular you'd like to train or work on just email me and i'll do my best to respond.

First up, quick bit of fitness.

The PUSH UP,  one of THE most basic and functional exercises you can do. You know the excuse I hear the most for not doing them "oh I'm not good at them" ??? What??? well if you're not good at them then practise more and you'll get good.
Honestly, such an easy movement to perform. Set aside a half hour, could even do it while you watch TV, set aside the time and do sets of 10 reps, if you can't do 10 reps do 5 reps, if you can't do 5 reps do 3 but take the time and work on them.
If you can do a few with decent form try some variations.
The video below shows a friend of mine Rannoch of Simple Strength Scotland and 100 Rep Challenge doing some variations of the push up you can do to keep it interesting.


Thursday 26 November 2015

THE LOW LINE - YOUR LAST LINE OR YOUR FIRST

THE LOW LINE - YOUR LAST LINE OR YOUR FIRST

 In class I rarely see anyone utilise a low line entry, in kickboxing we use our lead leg as a low line jab to gain entry and open up with our punches or elbows so it makes sense to incorporate the same 'concept' to the reality side of our training. so here's the drill,  we're in our neutral stance with our hands up, the attacker is trying to advance on you but your fence is keeping him at distance. Now you've got about a foot and a half of distance, without looking kick the attacker in the shin, you can use the toe of your shoe or the arch of your foot. Think about it, if he's up calling you all the names under the sun he's looking at your face, he's waiting for you to react facially, for you to look away or to drop your brow, he's not thinking about his low line and under the effects of adrenaline ,which the body naturally releases under stressful situations whether your on the giving or receiving end, you can get tunnel vision so his low line is almost completely off the radar. This little shin kick can cause a handful of reactions, he might back up, he might drop his hand down to grab the pain or he could just look down casually but any of these reactions breaks his OODA loop and allows you to gain entry. People from the gym know that contact to your shins HURTS, the average guy doesn't condition his shins for impact and even if he does we're not looking to knock him out or break his leg with one little kick, it simply creates a reactionary gap and that gap is all you need to gain entry and finish off with hand strikes or elbows. Obviously don't go smashing your partners shins every two seconds, use your partner for targeting. To gain power do short kicks on heavy bag or if stuck in the house use a trusty door frame, remember the trick is to stay relaxed and snap it in. Throw this into your training and see if it benefits you. It's better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.                    


Michael


Wednesday 11 November 2015

Stabbing Video Clip



Terrorist Stabbing Video Clip


So earlier in the week I posted a video on a security guard being approached by a woman who proceeded to attempt to stab him. In this blog piece I’m just going to go over some points that stood a out to me and as always use the video as a learning tool. According to the reports the security guard was relatively unharmed and deployed his firearm and stopped the attacker off screen.

To help out i’ve taken a few screen shots of the video to put my observations in context



So the chunk of the video, depending on what site you watch it from, is the woman walking up to what looks like a security check point. I’m sure this guard has done this 100’s without incident but with hindsight we can look at it and say in this shot, this is the preferred distance to have, the guard has a very slight vantage point being a step up but that step up also gives an advantage of more distance to be covered by the attacker.
Also there is no need to let this woman any closer to him than this, from the looks of it all he’s doing is looking over some papers but again in hindsight….



















So next shot is her advancing up the step and gaining some distance toward the guard, she looks to be handing him her paperwork. So this is kinda clever whether she meant it or not, by walking up and asking the guard a question or handing him something to engage him it acts as a distraction so she can get closer to him and close that gap. We talk about this kinda of technique in Tactical Edge a lot when dealing with a threat position, in order to get that reactionary gap
we can ask the attacker a compliant question to take his mind off the situation, effectively causing a little cognitive disruption which would allow you to act accordingly.
We see here that the woman uses a similar technique knowing or unknowingly. At this moment once the guard has the papers from her he could have ushered her back down the step or motioned her to back up, thats something you see often from police officers in the US they’ll usher a suspect back to create that reactionary distance, good habit to get into, distance is opportunity!









So here the guard gives himself a bit distance, only for the woman to reposition her bag while he looks over her papers.
Again the guard is doing his bit and looking over the documents so isn’t really looking at the woman as a threat and really why would he?? realistically he’s probably already done this 100 times that day, its habit, its regular, nothing really out of the ordinary has been spotted yet









These next few shots run together nicely. So here the woman unzips and goes inside her bag. Why? she’s already handed the guy her documents and yes we don’t know the conversation they’re having, she might be telling him she has more papers or ID in her bag but from the mere look of the silent video this looks odd. The guard should really be asking her
what she’s going for or moving into some kind of stance or authoritative posture. 





the hand in the bag is obviously the woman checking for or repositioning the knife ready to be drawn, this persistent or constant checking for the weapon is something i’ve seen a few times. It’s almost like its a reassurance action from an attacker, they’ll be talking or shouting getting more aggressive but one hand will tap a pocket a few
times or the hand will be covering the area the weapon is in almost like a protective motion or they’ll be hiding a hand in a pocket ready to be brought out. The reassurance tap/hover is a very subtle pre-fight indicator that can be difficult to spot when things are kicking off, here though there doesn’t seem to be much aggression on the onset until
the knife is drawn.





The last set of shots is the guard looking right at her and she’s looking right at him with a fixed stare, the next few shots are of the knife being drawn and thrusted.
Ive included the elapsing time in the screen shots, it might be too small to make out but from the knife being draw, raised and thrusted its less than a second! LESS THAN A SECOND for the woman to draw the knife from concealment and thrust it!! for the draw, raise, thrust and attack to the guard is just over a second until the guard is off screen. This is violence in action folks, less than a second to pull a weapon and strike and this looked like ideal “low stress” conditions, doesn’t look there was large shouting matches, no threats beforehand by all accounts this would be a ideal defence situation to be in. The guard has no initial flight or fight response because he only has the time to react so theres no big adrenaline dump until maybe after or during. Typically your defensive response to a situation is decided upon before a punch is even thrown
because theres a “pre-fight” phase of an altercation, this is the play ground style shit you see when guys hands get lower and there voices get louder, typical “alpha” posing until the first punch swings in. We don’t have that here, everything is by the numbers ordinary for all accounts until the knife is drawn.
Another classic we see is that dominant hand no1 angle line of attack.

 





This is actually a great video to pull from because of the very nature of it, the majority or cases I’ve seen, read or reviewed have had a pre-contact phase of either posturing or threatening before hand, we get none of that here it very much looks completely out of the blue. you could pick holes in what the guard did and could have done all day but thats not for anyone to judge. we should view this video as a learning tool and look at it as objectively as we can and realise just how quick something can kick off especially when we don’t expect it.
Again from the news report I read the guard managed to stop the attacker and came away with little to no injuries so sitting saying he should have done this or that makes no difference, this situation brings a favourite phrase of mine to mind “no right or wrong way just a more preferred way”


















Sunday 25 October 2015

The Reality Of It

Was clearing out some odds n sods on the computer and came across a blog piece I wrote for Combat Ready a while back.
Seems relevant to repost it with the rugby world cup being on and all.



The Reality Of It 
       
          http://youtu.be/fiv4EEH79cA

So I came across this clip online, its from a game of Aussie football, think of a weird mutated version of football and rugby.
Anyway, in the clip we see two players have a bit of a scuffle during a tackle and then something goes wrong.
One player attacks the other and as you can see in the video its pretty clear what his intent was.
Now I'm not sure why he decided to attack and strangle his opponent but the ensuing attack is a fantastic example of how volatile and raw an attack can be and how quickly a simple tumble can escalate. 
These guys are professionals, they train to be hit and take a bit rough and tumble they also need to have situational awareness as they play a team sport and need to be vigilant of where other team members are and you can see how easy it is for them to be taken unaware, as the clip shows the two hit the deck and theres about a 5 second "stand off" then the player in blue&white stops struggling and theres about a 3 second gap where he does nothing and then BANG player 17 slams that choke on and has it on for about 15 seconds and thats including when the other FIVE players are literally trying to drag him off.
Now depending on the type of choke, your looking at between 7-12 seconds on average for pass out time, even if you round that down to a 20 second altercation theres almost enough time to be choked and knocked out 3 times.
Now our blue&white player has obviously been involved in these types of back n forth and thats why he puts up his little struggle during the "stand off" period then he feels number 17 back off slightly and he thinks "ah thats it over with" and you can see his arms physically drop in a completely defenceless manor, that in turn allows number 17 to slam that choke on. You can see our boy in blue wasn't expecting the choke to come and even when he realise's he reacts to slow to accomplish anything, its a frightening clip and it shows violence in action in a fairly brutal way.
As with any clip like this try to watch it and think "what would i have done? how could i have got out of that? I'm i training sufficiently enough to be able to handle a situation that violent?" everythings a learning tool.
The clip shows that it can happen anywhere regardless of location. 

Michael

Sunday 18 October 2015

First Post

Right or Wrong

So in class regardless of what system/style i’m teaching theres something I see almost every session, its the brain fart, that moment someone and their training partner are running through a drill and BOOM one of them stops with a bewildered look and will mutter “oh thats wrong isn’t it”
they’ll have stepped left when it should have been right, they’ll have hit with the right hand when it should have been the left, they’ll have done something that they know isn’t the drill they watched me demonstrate and they stop n stall and start again.
Obviously if your drilling a technique you want it to be right and you want the technique/combination to be as picture perfect as possible BUT in reality nothing you do will look like a drill, it won’t look like a technique or a pad combination and it certainly won’t work out like it does with a complacent partner. When we drill things in class we’re going through a make believe scenario, theres far too many variables involved in a real situation to ever say “you’ll definitely be attacked like this” or “this technique will work no matter what” We set up these drills and scenarios so you have context in which to place the technique, the technique is just a rough blueprint, a operating procedure for you to follow to get to a end result, its not gospel, you should be able to adapt it to suit you and your ever changing position and you’ll only gain that skill and confidence by not stopping during the drill and thinking you got it wrong, keep going until the end of the technique or until you get to a position of safety. It might not be exactly how the drill was shown but you kept going, you kept fighting, you adapted, you reacted and you didn’t stop. If you stop mid drill/fight then your attacker will get the upper hand because your not doing anything to stop them, you need to continually be defensive, counter offensive or offensive, the moment you stop any of those you give opportunity for your partner/attacker to gain the upper hand.
Once the drill is over then you can stop and think “i think that bit was wrong” or “i could do that bit better” but make sure you stop after the technique. So you stepped the wrong way or you moved to the inside instead of the outside, the main thing is that you kept going and made yourself as safe as possible during the situation. In reality you won’t have time to stop and worry if the technique was picture perfect and in reality thats not what matters, what matters is your safety. given the variables of any physical altercation it’d be impossible to train for every single variation in every type of scenario, we take from the highest percentage and work from there, if you get a bit wrong deal with, adapt and over come.

Don’t think of things as right or wrong way, think of it as  “No Right Or Wrong Way Just A More Preferred Way”

Tuesday 8 September 2015

Welcome

Welcome to the official blog of Edinburgh's Rōnin Fitness & Martial Arts.
Make sure to keep checking back for the latest news, class information and training articles.