Clubb Chimera Martial Arts : CCMA

Juniors

Circuit day! This is an opportunity to revise various key areas, practice coaching skills, specialize in certain areas and it is also a good fitness test. Following a warm-up led by one of our students I set up six stations.

The fence: The coach moves into a student’s personal space and the student responds by striking the coach’s target. Touching the fence is usually the trigger.

Kickboxing: Working the stand-up range, this station focused mainly on kicking and punching under pressure.

Anti-abduction: This self defence station pitted a padded adult against a junior. The junior was permitted to use all methods that their disposal to escape the adult, including full contact striking and controlled biting tactics.

Wrestling: This station worked the clinch range. Under simple grappling restrictions a student fought to remain standing and to unbalance and takedown their opponent.

Passing Guard: Working a section of groundwork. Students worked on escaping the guard and pinning their opponent

Escaping Pins: The student worked to escape from being pinned.

During the debrief I looked at good and bad things that arose from the night’s training. There was good effort shown by all and some students showed a real spark for survival, the key objective in self defence. On the bad side we looked at the lack of proactive action taken in the anti-abduction exercise. This really puts the pressure on for children in self defence and, in many ways, it is the litmus test. Some students really went with it and fought like hell cats. However, few used their voices enough and many held back when it came to being caught by the adult “abductor”.

We began the fairy/folk tale connection to martial arts and self defence. I was asked about Robin Hood. Robin Hood is a fascinating legend with a huge span of different interpretations. I would highly recommend Tony Robinson’s accompaniment to his series on British heroes for an investigation on how the legend was formed. Anyway, the story contains several indigenous martial arts such as the art of the quarterstaff – most famously described in Robin’s meeting/duel with Little John – and the British broad sword. Most of famous of all martial arts found in Robin Hood, however, is the use of the longbow. The longbow was the art of England and the weapon that the country became synonymous with during the 100 Years War when the English archers famously defeated the superior technology of the French crossbowmen. Much of this was put down to the intense and regular training the archers undertook from childhood. In fact, it became law for many peasants to learn how to use the long bow from an early age, so that when they became fully mature adults and able to take part in battle their archery skills were virtually soul nature. The success of archery is an historic example that superior training is a huge advantage even over superior technology at times.

Robin Hood is also a story about a nobleman who gave everything up to become an outlaw in order to face a corrupt regent prince (John). Despite being born into privilege he fought for the poor peasants his band of “merry men”. It’s a fable about having the courage to stand up for what you believe in and a willingness never to give, key principles in the CCMA process. 

Seniors

We began with some two-on-one feed and strike pad drills, going through all the ranges. The rest of the lesson focused more on MMA; although I would argue that the two-on-one drill also develops great attributes for MMA just as the MMA stuff provides good attributes and plenty of heavy crossovers for self defence.

The students went through various grappling exercises – neck wrestling, pummelling, takedown practice, pin transitioning, moving under pins and guard jumping/passing. After this they revised some of the cover work we did last week. The cover theme nicely led into some other drills that followed, namely thinking about attacking whatever gets in the way. This is a very Southeast Asian concept and I argue it is a worth considering up to a point. Attacking the attack is a sound principle and is certainly the most generic one I can agree with that fits the individual. However, I would add that attacks should be directed at the highline whenever it becomes available and go for the head as soon as it presents itself. I don’t hold much with fixating on attacking limbs for prolonged periods.

Today I wanted to explore attacking the lowline, legs in particular. We began with some low stamping kicks to act as a jab. Then we began blocking low round kicks. Block is such a passive sounding word and I don’t like the impression it gives. I think if you have time to block a low kick why not intercept with something damaging. So the shin blocks both to the inside and outside of the leg are directed right at the kick rather than as a sturdy deflection. We then moved to catching kicks to the mid-section and the counter. Again, the counter is applied proactively. Although I am not advising that you choose to have your leg caught it can be used as a means to close the distance and clinch.

We continued the theme of counter-attacks using the low line with a defence against a rear waist lock. I taught the rolling knee bar. This can work well in a sparring situation, but scarily it is being taught as part of the MCMAP military self defence system! Keeping the theme of knee bars I also covered its use when attacking and defending from the half guard.

CCMA’s next Process workshop is scheduled for 27 March 12pm – 3pm. Everyone welcome! This is a workshop dedicated to approaches and methods as opposed to lists of techniques and combinations. From natural technique selection to intelligent cross training, CCMA offers a fresh way to discover, research, test and confirm the way the individual fights! Click here for more details.

Tags: Archery, England, Folklore, Literature, Little John, MARTIAL ARTS, Robin Hood, Tony Robinson