Clubb Chimera Martial Arts : CCMA

Juniors

The theme for today’s lesson was developing attitude, fighting spirit and the will not to give in. I believe this is the foundation for any good self defence programme. Without attitude, which comes under our tenet of “Respect”, everything else from awareness to technical skill can mean nothing. I also believe that children best learn physical skills first. This makes my task of teaching a realistic self protection system to them somewhat of a challenge for two good reasons – non-physical skills are more important than the hard skills and children are more vulnerable than the average adult. The best option I have currently found is to use physical methods to reinforce non-physical attributes. In most cases we put this into a type of discussion – both open forum and formal – after an activity has finished: “What have we learned?”

The warm-up today was led completely by me this time. I like to promote responsibility and independence, but the class regularly needs fresh injections of ideas. All the warm-up games focused on escape. Running or jogging around the gym is perhaps one of the most common types of warm-ups taught in martial arts classes and it rarely has any direct relevance to their main training. For this reason, I generally avoid it. However, it can have a benefit if you give the runners a functional focus: you are being chased! Then it can be slowed down to punching pace, as in MMA style blitzing. The temptation was to go into some footwork or include sprawls, rolls, and covers as we often do, but I kept it focused on escape. We did break away releases into sprints. Here free thinking came into play and I was impressed. Some of the children instinctively signed the bite action to my hand when I gripped their wrist whereas others reigned hammer-fists onto my forearm and wrist, and still more stamped. The second time I attempted this grip they ran before I could get hold of them, pre-empting me very effectively – now that’s what I call progressive learning!

Next we went straight into a single game of Strategy One versus Strategy Two. See previous entries and my second article on “Reality Training for Children” on details of this activity. This time, however, an additional rule of adult intervention was added and the time limit to release a grappling attack was increased to the count of five. This promoted good self defence training teaching the children to call out for assistance to alert the attention of an adult and the increased time limit was included so that the students might think more about applying good counter-aggressive tactics.

Before the next exercise the students were reminded about taking control of their bodies, which by this stage were charged with adrenaline and nervous energy. I explained how these feelings were similar to what they would feel before a conflict was to happen and afterwards – addressing “pre-fight” and “post-fight” stages. They did a few breathing exercises and focused on the next task in hand. This was to be two exercises focused on delivering the aggressive/negative fence in a more formal fashion. The problem with teaching the fence is that you often end up taking up a good portion of the lesson. It is a concept as opposed to a technique and, in order to make it effective, has a very personal structure. Nevertheless, I was able to get a row of students to come forward quickly whilst those using the aggressive fence gave a shove and a slight shift back with the words “Back off!” The students coming forward then returned to the personal space and were met with a controlled strike to the face. I had to go over this a little bit because instinctively people do not like to make aggressive face contact with people they don’t want to hurt. This is where all the stopping short of the target and, worse still, intentionally missing the target rubbish practices comes into play. There are plenty of safe ways to get around making actual unprotected hand-to-head contact which teach efficient technique delivery. If you consistently stop short of a target, which is common in many martial arts classes then you pull your strikes in a real confrontation. If you miss the target on a regular basis then you are just teaching yourself sloppy technique. You can touch the target whilst retaining the correct structure of the strike and this is what I had them all do. The touch contact can vary from giving a little brain shake, which is something I reserve for the adult classes and as an isolation exercise rather than having someone walk unprotected into it, to simply touching the target. The latter version can then be overlapped with the second exercise where the focus mitt is brought in and the students can repeat the exercise and, this time, hit the target with full force.

It is worth mentioning that Dennis also has an excellent variation on this type of drill where by you can get a feel for hitting a real human being by shouldering your training partner’s body and having them absorb the impact. This version cuts out the striking tool and spreads the force out over a very large surface area plus both impact took and target are soft. However, it has the benefit of being able to apply the principle of generating the strike full force into a real human being. We didn’t do this today, but I have used it many times in classes and courses. The traditional martial artist Chris Rowen likes students to absorb full contact strikes to the abdomen and then apply touch contact the face in order to retain the realism and get a degree of feedback.

After these re-cap style warm-ups the lesson in earnest began with timed rounds of ballistic rapid striking on the focus mitts. They started with our usual proactive pad-work, as described in previous diary entries. Then they isolated on blitzing forwards and backwards. At this stage it is perhaps worth pointing out that I am using Matty Evans’ definition of blitzing as opposed to the Taekwondo/semi-contact competition one. The pad hold moves forwards and backwards competing in pressure with the striker who hits heavily from one hand and then the other. The footwork is basic striding and the impetus is to run over your enemy with uninterrupted striking. Then they did a variation of one of Iain Abernethy’s will drills whereby they built up hands strikes in multiples of two with a sprawl all the way up to and back down from ten. Next they did a variation of a World Combat Art Muay Thai drill blending punches and kicks before a drink break.

The class was divided up into beginners and advanced sparring groups. The beginners did a couple of rounds of stand-up wrestling and a single round of submission grappling on the ground. The advanced did their regular MMA sparring. The class was finished with some relaxation techniques and a discussion on maintaining standards for future public events such as MAF-UK.

Senior

The seniors went straight into our regular anaerobic warm-up drill of straight strikes and hooks from all ranges, covers from all angles, rear chokes/strangles and round kicks from all ranges. Tonight’s lesson focused on kicking or low-line striking. Geoff Thompson rates it as the weakest of all ranges except in the case of asymmetrical ground fighting and as a follow-up tactic. The tests we used tonight would seem to prove this theory. Kicks alone are generally quite a poor tactic compared to hand strikes and grappling.

We began with Strategy One versus Strategy Two one-on-one pressure-testing. The strategy twos had a very easy time of it. By adopting a low stance and attacking their opponent every time he lifted his leg, clinching and takedowns were easy. Kickers were forced to adapt. They weren’t allowed to use hands for anything other than covering and short range strikes like knees were only permitted as a free technique – in other words they could strike when being clinched but couldn’t use the clinch. The purpose of the exercise was to isolate and restrict kicking, so we can develop and adapt kicks. Interestingly unusual kicking methods such as kicking off the ground usually found in systems like silat had a higher success rate. This inspired me to do a ground fighting version of this drill with one student grappling from their hands and knees and the defender using kicks to ward him off from side, back and knees. The odds were still with the grappler, as the kicker had no other support method, but more kicks found their way to their targets for longer periods of time than before. I think the isolation of this area did show the efficiency of kicks, but other factors should be brought into account such as the general tiredness of the students after the very explosive timed rounds they had just experienced.

Can focus mitts be used for full contact kicking? This question immediately arose before I could get onto teaching blending hand strikes with kicks. On Geoff Thompson’s Masterclass, Geoff argued yes. Peter Consterdine also uses them. The general consensus from me and one of the more experienced students, a Muay Thai veteran, was that full impact strikes might be fine if you were delivering kicks with the instep of the foot, but they couldn’t be done with the shin. After all, isn’t this reason for inventing Thai pads? Our proactive focus pad sessions have the striker using both kicks and punches, and it struck me that the kicks were being pulled. I don’t like the idea of pulling any sort of strike on a protective pad. You might as well be doing some light sparring or conditioning work has been my argument for this type of practice. I don’t like the idea of a “target” pad either. The target is located on the human body, so what is the point of using an abstract training device like a pad if you can’t do to it what you cannot usually do to your friendly training partner? This is the purpose of pad work.

Years ago I was duped by a martial arts wholesaler who sold me some “jumbo” kickshields and, worse still, some “advanced instructor” Thai pads. Both gather dust in my garage these days. The jumbo kickshields might have a limited function as a piece of apparatus to be used to strike someone in a chaotic multiple aggressor/weapons defence format or as tackling pads. The Thai pads were anything but for an advanced coach; horribly unwieldy in their usage and unrealistic in their application as a target. My problem with both is that they provide too bigger targets and are not versatile enough with movement and coaching work I want to promote through CCMA.

Normal Thai pads are fine and certainly have their place as do belly pads and other great innovations that have come through the Muay Thai circles. However, my argument is that we should be training our students to be better coaches. This is the underlying self-teaching ethic of our classes. Better coaching means better methods for teaching techniques. If you can hold the smallest target possible to absorb full power strikes you will not only be promoting better accuracy, but also better versatility. We looked at a way to improve the holding of focus mitts in order to take full strikes. The structure of holding the pads needs to be firm with one pad reinforcing the other and the holder needs to be able to absorb the impact through their abdomen. Furthermore, the pads need to be held in a realistic way so that the kicker uses their shin correctly. Things consider include huge size and weight differences, and the pad holder being courageous enough not to flinch or move away from the strike.

Once this coaching method was confirmed the class moved onto some proactive pad-work. They feed strikes and kicks to the person they were coaching as well as taking them one pads. The emphasis was flowing from hand strike to kick and I have to thank Mo Teague and Peter Consterdine for drumming this into me during my training sessions with them. Sparring then followed, which went under rough stand-up or Muay Thai rules. The class was finished with a warm-down of shadow boxing and stretching out with ground grappling movements and then regular static stretches.

Discussion: Confirmation bias – it is a tough discipline not to go out to prove something you want to believe is true. Everyone does it to some degree, as we all have our personal motives. However, whenever possible, we must strive to be objective and impartial and, if anything, play devil’s advocate. The martial arts world is generally terrible at doing this. Egos, which are supposed to be quashed through the humility of formal martial arts training, stick out like postulating carbuncle on the face of our subculture. Either through a quest for power, money or self-assurance martial artists seek to prove what they say is right or the best. They set up situations that favour their ideas. We are all guilty of this to some degree and understandably so. However, I would like to promote the scientific philosophy of testing against what we hold in high regard.

Tonight we used methods that held the kick in question. It has come up wanting compared to grappling and hand strikes at the moment, but nevertheless through making it fail we have found further ways to adapt it and perhaps provided more evidence for its place as a good supporting method when coupled with hand striking or grappling. As always further researching, more testing and reviewing needs to be done.