Clubb Chimera Martial Arts : CCMA

Juniors

close low line strike from a 45 degree angle in the junior class

We continued with the plyometric obstacle course style warm-ups and then focused on groundwork. A great way to get juniors into the idea of moving from different ground positions is to introduce activities, often ones based around the game tig (or tag). Build-up tig is a great exercise in its own right to promote the priority tactic in self defence anyway: escape. It also has great secondary benefits such as promoting agility, explosive movement and faster reflexes. When the game is done from set ground positions that incorporate the use of all four limbs such as tiger/bear crawls and crab walks it can improve specific coordination.

Following the self defence line the next phase was to drill asymmetrical ground fighting. This is an old drill we have used since day one of CCMA. One student stands at the head of a student who is lying on his back. The object of the exercise is for the standing student to prevent the student on the ground from getting to his feet. This does not involve pinning or grappling combinations other than if the student on the ground exposes their back; it is designed to promote defence against blows to the head and body whilst on the ground and can be done with multiple attackers.

the sit-out movement

After this we moved onto symmetrical ground fighting. This began with a revision of pins and the transitioning between these top positions. We did this as a passive flow drill, the emphasis being for the person top to be able to quickly and correctly move around the body. Next we got into the real meat of the lesson: the guard. The guard is a position that has varying degrees of use depending on the situation that you are in. Our position is that in a civilian self defence situation the worst place to be is on the ground. If you end up on the ground the worst place to be is on your back. If you are on your back the best position to hold is the guard because it is the only position that offers any degree of control. As a concept, as outlined by Mo Teague of World Combat Arts, the guard has three ranges: Long range, mid range and close range. We looked at close range, which is the classical guard position.

The students drilled arm-bars and triangle chokes from this position as well as some basic sweeps. Then it was put under pressure with some guard passing. Those who sat in the guard wore boxing gloves and were permitted to strike and were given the objective to pass the guard into a pin. This is a variation on a very standard and regular specific sparring exercise found in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu classes all over the world.

Snaking

Discussion: The tactics of the three phases of conflict – pre-fight, in-fight and post-fight. The three ranges of the in-fight – stand-up, clinch and ground.

Seniors

The seniors also warmed up with plyometric specific training using obstacles. Portions of the lesson were videoed and will be seen on YouTube shortly. Training, on the whole, therefore was back to the core of CCMA methodology. However, we did explore Eddie Quinn’s “The Approach” a bit more as well, although that was not recorded. My reasons for this were that although we were testing the very basic principles of Eddie’s system, I am not qualified to teach it properly and there were was not enough time to give it a really fair hearing. With the huge amount of misinformation and disinformation that can be found on YouTube the last thing I wanted was to have people drawing incorrect conclusions from the training in “The Approach”. As it happened, a student who hadn’t trained in the method ever before was very happy with using it in the Strategy One versus Strategy Two pressure drill.

Back to CCMA and we began with some proactive pad work from restrictive positions. This differs from the power development training which is usually static or just promoting forward pressure in order to escape. These drills promote more in-fight movement and are obviously orientated towards MMA although there are good self defence benefits as well. After isolating the various positions the focus mitts were abandoned in favour of our new boxing glove method as we moved into transitional coaching. The boxing gloves worn by the person being coached were then disregarded in favour of MMA gloves or bare hands to get a larger range still of attacking applications. This then nicely dovetailed in several rounds of MMA sparring.

Senior warm up

We then revised some of “The Approach” briefly and did some impact work with the Thai pads before putting it to the test in the S1 versus S2 drill. The lesson was finished with regular S1 versus S2 and a warm down.

Discussion: Dogma warning! Despite adopting an open minded attitude albeit with a sceptical bent towards training, I do have my personal preferences. I have found through training and observing various systems that there is a broad performance criterion that all decent hard skills self defence programmes have. If they don’t meet these criteria then I currently believe they are severely and fundamentally partial. My criteria for the training of good self defence soft skills are: Pre-emption, proactivity and pressure testing. These will be covered in a future article. CCMA are not expected to endorse these performance criteria and they will not be outlined in our syllabus or philosophy, but I feel all that we have always fulfilled this criteria.