Clubb Chimera Martial Arts : CCMA

Juniors

Last week we isolated hand strikes, so this week we focused on kicks. In order of importance I would normally follow Geoff Thompson’s hierarchy of ranges: hand strikes, grappling and kicks, but the nature of the drills we have been using lends itself better to another percussive weapon. After a standard warm-up of reaction drills, footwork and groundwork we revised the blitzing focus mitt drill from last lesson. This same principle was then carried over to kicks. We then discussed the best uses for kicks and weighed up the risk factor versus percentage of success with kicks. The higher you kick the less balance you have, there is also greater risk is higher of having your leg caught and these points are not satisfactorily offset by the percentage of successful results. Personally I love high kicks and there are plenty of case studies and footage of people who have pulled them off, but this doesn’t detract from the argument made in the previous sentence.

In order to feel the effectiveness of kicks I had all the students do a light one for one with the low round kick (roundhouse, turning or “hook” kick), the stamp kick and the push, diagonal stamp and snap variations on the front kick. The round kick is often delivered to the outside and, more painfully, to the inside of the thigh in sports competition, where it is used to wear down an opponent. In self defence it is best delivered lower. Kicks to the side of the knee might produce damaging results, but tactically it is more efficient even lower as an unbalancing yet impacting tool. The stamp kick is best delivered as a breaking away tactic. Usually it is one of the best tools a smaller person can use when their aggressor is controlling them from a long distance i.e. you are trying to break free from a long range wrist grab. The stamp has consistently proven its worth in adult-on-child abduction scenarios and real-life case studies*. The push kick is more of a sparring-based technique. It is not especially high, but the highest variation on kicking I taught today. In full contact competition the push kick is very effective and pretty fundamental for stand-up fighting. The diagonal stamp wasn’t covered in detail. Some self defence clubs, particularly those influenced by Wing Chun, use it a lot. I used to have it as a mainstay, but find it is a little specialized. Once again, it is a personal favourite of mine in sparring as it is less common than a low round kick, but this is a sports-derived tactic rather than one that I can verify as a successful regular self defence tool. The snap kick, of course, is the immediately recognisable upwards kick to the groin. It can be executed straight up as a type of front kick or at a 45 degree angle.

The students then donned sparring kits and practiced a simple combination designed to promote punching and kicking together. On the sudden command “fight!” they would immediately engage in free sparring. This on-off type training is good for focus, concentration and discipline. It can be quite difficult to go back to drilling technique when you have just had a full-on MMA spar!

I was happy with the overall improvement made by everyone. My junior class has students from six to 12 years of age and they have been training towards the end of term in some very hot weather conditions. Nevertheless, we have had an excellent regular turnout and the consistent work is producing students that can concentrate longer and who have made transparent physical gains.

Subject of the week: Handwriting is a dying craft according to some. However, it is still being taught in junior schools and therefore I was hit with it. Calligraphy is a discipline several old martial arts masters studied. Whether or not they did it to improve their discipline is a matter of conjecture, however, the subtle changing of characters certainly had a role to play in at least one martial art. Karate was formally translated to mean “China hand”, but famously changed to mean “empty hand” in the early part of the 20^th century. This changed the meaning of the art, which was originally paying homage to its Chinese root and now altered to mean unarmed combat. The sounds for both kanji (Japanese characters) are the same, “kara”, but their meanings were quite different. Besides from this, quite a few modern self defence systems consider pens to be good incidental weapons! This is a debate for another day!

Seniors

After our usual solo specific movement warm-up we brought in the focus mitts for some quick revision on using the cover. The cover still appears to be a victim of its own success. Many stay in it for too long or use it as a replacement for a guard, which I don’t see any advantageous justification for. The cover is a transitional, temporary, contingency counter-attack tool and little more. Staying it too long prohibits the user from regaining the initiative and it will only be a matter of time before it is breached with a well aimed blow.

However, when training the cover its success is not just on the student but the coach. The coach is leading the drill, but it is up to a good coach to encourage his student to be as proactive as possible. The prompts should be based more on natural activity rather than artificial commands. For example, a cover is prompted when a student is feed a barrage of blows (physical feedback). The correct response is for the student to cover and move forward or at an angle through the strikes and to either start striking back at the moving focus mitts or to clinch the coach. A good coach overlaps feedback with target striking, so that training is closer to reality, more emphasis is placed on the student to take charge and the drill doesn’t become unnecessarily stilted. A common error that is a part of the voice command legacy is for the coach to decide when the student should strike the targets. You end up with a predictable routine whereby the student covers, waits for the feedback to stop and then strikes the focus mitts.

There was no straight plan for today’s lesson. It was more to look at the different ways we can teach positive behavioural drills and attribute training. We began with the light contact “no-holds-barred” flow sparring and then did some short MMA rounds of full contact sparring. The debate wages on whether sports training is beneficial for self defence or whether scenario training is effective. The answer is more complex. MMA sparring is, without doubt, one of the toughest and demanding combat sports. Many high percentage techniques that are perfectly applicable for self defence are tested in a full contact environment in MMA against resistant opponents. There is plenty you can get from an MMA experience that will benefit your self protection hard skills more than your average “Reality-Based” Self Defence club. Despite what many say, your average modern self defence club spends way too much time training techniques against compliant partners and often committing the same abstract techniques and mysticism sins it accuses of the classical or traditional martial arts. I say this with full understanding that my club loosely fits under the modern self defence/RBSD/combatives banner and many of influences and inspiration comes from pioneers in this field. Unfortunately these pioneers are exceptions to the rule. Having said this, sports competition no matter how brutal has a single fundamental flaw that makes it differ from an average assault situation. Putting it quite simply, there is no “to and fro” in a non-match situation.

The match fight is an alpha male/female contest found in many species of animal. The contest consists of two animals of the same species fighting for dominance in order to acquire mating rights/territory/seniority in a group. It’s a deep urge that surfaces in human beings in various guises. The object of the match fight is to what is necessary to subdue another. It might result in death, but very rarely does. Scientists such as Desmond Morris have suggested that animals have an in-built desire not to kill members of the same species and certainly not the same group. An assault, however, more resembles a predator/prey situation in the animal kingdom. This is usually where two different species clash. They fight in a totally different way. One is a predator, the other the prey. The objective is totally different. The predator wants something the prey has and the prey just wants to survive, preferably through escape.

This was addressed with our next training method, Strategy One versus Strategy Two. The training method is designed to prompt realistic feelings associated with an assault situation and tactics appropriate for this type of scenario. Strategy One represents striking, pushing, counter-grappling and evasive techniques a student will use naturally to create and maintain distance. Strategy Two is all about grappling, covering and closing the distance. The S2s wear full face head guards. Today this was done in a one-on-one situation and with two-on-one. The rounds are usually much shorter than normal sparring rounds – no more than one minute long – and prompt a very intensive/relentless feel. Objective is everything and this is what S1 vs. S2 brings out in its participants. After this we added “edged” weapons (practice knives) to the drill.

Looking at multiple aggressors and the attitude of “never give in” again we went back to another “old favourite”: the scramble drill. This is pretty much like rugby, but without the ball… or many of the rules.

 The session was finished with a flow drill on the ground, performed off the mats. This immediately highlights the comfort you can get training on mats and was food for thought for all concerned. The ground becomes a weapon and your positioning alters significantly, if not in principle then certainly in execution.

*An example of this occurred few years back in Coventry when a little girl freed herself from a would-be attacker by repetitively kicking and stamping low.