Well another month rattled in hella quick.
Things are all go, our defence tool work shop lands on the 21st of the month, there's still a couple of spaces left so get in touch if your intrested in supercharging your current skill set.
We also have a couple guys at Combat Ready who are throwing their skills into the ring in march and are currently putting together a little training camp to get them in top shape for it.
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What a start back.
Great first week back after the festive break, everyone seems to be hitting training hard.
Classes in full swing and private clients setting some big goals for themselves. Also we have our first seminar/workshop of the year planned, February 21st will see RōninFMA teach defence tool tactics, a workshop designed to teach people how to correctly use some of the markets most popular self defence tools.
More seminars will follow throughout the year so please stay tuned for more dates and other subjects. We're also looking at the timetable to bring some other classes to Combat Ready's schedule.
Having only started all this toward the end of 2015 i'd like to thank everyone for the continuing support. I'd like to wish everyone a happy 2016!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
