19.08.09 Soft skills to the clinch (Diary Entry)

Aug 21st, 2009 by Jamie Clubb

Juniors

Another hot day’s training in the gym, so I got the juniors outside for their initial exercises. Three students took turns in running the warm-up exercises for the rest of the class, taking advantaged of a steep hill to work various crawling exercises and even break falls. Then it was straight into pre-fight training. We briefly discussed the tenets of respect, awareness, courage, discipline and open mind, and how all them stem from a good attitude. We did a little surveillance work, discussing potential hazards and common sense ways to avoid danger when outside and in secluded areas.

This then nicely dovetailed into the tactic that bridges the soft skills of the pre-fight with the hard skills of the in-fight: the fence. The fence, of course, is the name given by Geoff Thompson to a natural fighting technique used to line up a pre-emptive strike. Since Geoff’s writings and teachings on this subject, the technique has been often incorrectly articulated and misunderstood. I won’t go into details of instructors that teach a static (and therefore artificial) fence and others who teach block and then strike from the fence, I think I have ranted before about them. My point is that the fence is a tool to sense whether a person is going to be physical or not, so that you have time to initiate the attack, preferably a strike. This sensing, which Geoff describes as a “sensory tentacle” or “antenna” is simply a leading hand held out in front that acts a subconscious barrier between you and your antagonist. Once this hand is touched or your antagonist attempts to remove it, they have one intention in mind: they want to get physical!

Matty Evans, who I credit with a good deal of my education in practical martial arts, once confessed to me the difficulty he often came across regarding teaching a student to be pre-emptive. As his coach, Geoff Thompson, says on my second DVD “Cross Training in the Martial Arts 2: The Anatomy of Hand Strikes”, teaching someone to hit hard is easier than teaching them to hit first. This point was later reinforced by another good friend of mine, Dennis “Samurai on the Door” Jones, who explained that most people who came to study martial arts had a placid and even timid disposition. This psychological handicap prevented them from actually pre-empting an aggressor and it seems very understandable that so many martial arts, despite the weight of evidence to the contrary, still teach reaction-based tactics for self defence. This is why I have always been interested in working attitude from the first day of training and I keep returning to it again and again. The point has to be made; the fence is your physical alert signal. As Geoff points out, you are reacting in a sense; you are reacting to their initiation to strike. Iain Abernethy suggests that this is the real meaning behind Funakoshi Gichin – “The Father of Modern Karate” – “There is no first attack in karate”.

You can see the difficulty to manage this concept even with experienced students, often reacting too soon or hesitating when their fence is touched. I teach the fence by having a student decide how close they are going to comfortably allow the average person to come to them. They put out their arm straight and shout “Stop!” Please note that this isn’t necessarily part of the role play, just an exercise to determine distance. A child’s fence is actually a little harder to judge for two reasons. Firstly depending on a child’s age they may be still developing their distancing skills, which is one reason why we have to teach them the specifics of road safety. Secondly, size differences are a major issue with children meaning that their fence can fall outside the physical distance, meaning they might have to act earlier with larger people. After the distancing is decided the drill can begin in earnest. We just drilled with focus mitts today, emphasizing the importance of using good body mechanics, not telegraphing the strike and the repetition of the strike as the coach moves backwards and even changes the angle. The target is struck until it is covered. I had the students both straight strikes and the hook.

We moved into the in-fight with some focus mitt movement drills. This was a little different from the usual proactive movement drills as we introduced the concept of multiple strikes in-between movements. So the students began with one-strike-and-move all the way up to six-strikes-and-move and then back down. This was then followed by freestyle proactive drills, including physical feedback and so on.

With the stand-up stage covered, I had just enough time to look at a basic move from the clinch. This is the simple under hook takedown. If applied correctly this move requires little transitioning and you end up in the mounted position very quickly. It is best introduced after a simple pummelling flow-drill, where a student has an under hook each. They keep swapping sides in a flow. Afterwards the two protagonists then fight for the double under hooks.

The class finished with some MMA free-sparring. Then there was the topic of the week. Last week I was caught out for the first time with geology. The best I could do all week was to think of the way layers of rock over time resembled the way we layer individual techniques. Seeing a possible opening from geology another student went with astronomy. The scientific study of the stars is, of course, closely linked with the laws defined in the science of physics. There is so much in physics and particularly in the philosophies and examples set by the pioneers of physics that can be compared with progressive martial arts.

Galileo, an important figure, in the history of astronomy and science, is a brilliant example of an individual who moved practical ideas forward and was so ahead of his time that he had to modify and invent new equipment to get the information he desired. Newton, a great pioneer of physics whose worked touched heavily upon astronomy, came up with laws of science that help us understand about body mechanics. Einstein is always an inspiration because his theories caused a paradigm shift on Newton’s, demonstrating the importance of continued study and progressive development of education in the sciences. Martial arts should resemble this progressive attitude.

Seniors

The seniors also looked at the clinch range, but we came at it from various different angles. To warm-up with we did some grip fighting with the emphasis on flow and establishing dominant positions and sensitivity. With a feeling for movement and a degree of resistance, we moved into drilling the plumb hold (Thai clinch) and the over hook/under hook hold. These are basic pummelling flow drills that can easily be cranked up to full resistance activities, where the objective is to control the centre. In the case of the plumb you are controlling the head with both hands and in the case of the under hook hold you lock the body and take a person’s balance through the small of their back. After this I revised some basic wrestling holds, which put a person in an advantageous position: these include the necktie (single plumb hold), wrist control, transition from the under hook to the back and the seatbelt (harness) position, which is a rear hold with one arm over the shoulder, and the other arm under the opposite arm. We then integrated this back into some more competitive grip fighting.

The next stage was to introduce some striking into this range. In order to progress onto this an understanding of the cover concept had to be revised or introduced to new students. Rather than launching into the high intensity pressure drills that are Strategy One versus Strategy Two, pitting striker against grappler, we simply drilled one person striking and the other covering and clinching. This introduces the feel of a transitioning between the stand-up striking range and the clinch. On from here we looked at the headlock/armlock position from the plumb. This is a perfectly legal Thai clinch hold, but in MMA it can be used a standing arm triangle, an effective takedown and transitions with ease into a ground arm triangle submission hold.

The next logical phase was to follow the takedown into the arm triangle choke/strangle. Technically it works as strangle, as in restricting blood flow to the brain rather than closing off the airway. For some reason, possibly through translation problems, the hold is being called a choke more and more, and the term strangulation becomes ever rarer in grappling circles. The odd name “blood choke” is also sometimes used to designate the difference.

The class finished with some MMA sparring. Then we warmed down working some shadow boxing positions along with some solo positional work. I like to go over this as much as possible to help provide students with specific solo work they can do back home.

Here is a good article with some quick video reference footage on the art of the Thai clinch, a useful area to explore when studying head clinching and striking when holding: http://slcmma.com/muay-thai-clinch-work

Footage of the arm triangle is considerable. During the lesson I gave a quick overview of the versatility of this hold. A version of it possible in nearly every pinning position, the knee-pin being the only exception, and it can even be successfully done through and from the half-guard. Here is a good introduction to the technique on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjSu2lDjDmI