Clubb Chimera Martial Arts : CCMA

 

 

 

 

 

Juniors

 

 

 

 

 

 

Knife crime is a very relevant concern in the UK today. We don’t have much in terms of a gun culture as countries like America and South Africa does. However, assaults with edged weapons have become increasingly common in recent years. Knives are easily accessible and most able-bodied people will know how to use them. We use them in our daily lives to cut up our food either in preparation or during eating. Pen knives, Stanley knives and Swiss army knives are all readily available and that is just the legal stuff.

 

Years ago I was criticized for teaching knife defence to children by a parent. However, it didn’t take long in our conversation for the parent to start telling me about the local problems with knife crime among youths. In short, we protect our children from the horrors of this world. I don’t believe it is psychologically beneficial for them to be exposed to explicit violence at an early age, but it is our duty to teach them safety and to empower them with the training required to keep them away from harm. We teach children road safety from an early age, but we don’t show them explicit pictures of pedestrian casualties. Likewise, a child doesn’t need to see pictures of drowned people in order to be encouraged to learn how to swim. One thing children old enough to train with me will almost certainly know is that knives can be dangerous. Responsible parents will have needed to teach this in order to keep their children safe when they haven’t got their eye on them. Correlate this with the concern we have of youths carrying weapons. Now tell me that at least knife awareness shouldn’t be taught to children if you are professing to teach self defence. It is relevant. It is important. Children know about knives. They know they are dangerous. They carry them because they feel that they possess the danger. There are even parents who live in areas prone to gang activity who actually encourage their children to go out armed.

 

So, before we moved onto any physical exercise we needed to discuss the issue of knives. The class needed to understand that anyone is capable of using one and when seeing one the first tactic is to escape. A person who uses a knife is often desperate, so bringing one out in defence may escalate the situation unnecessarily. Furthermore, with reports that a large percentage of people are stabbed by their own knives, it goes to show that carrying a knife can be counter-productive.

 

Before I ever cover knife defence I feel that their must be an emphasis on drilling a clear escape. People fight how they train. I have seen examples of this all the time. So, the drills began with an exercise whereby students ran away as soon as they saw someone draw a practice knife. The runaway point was always a legitimate exit. Students were instructed to stop after making it to the exit before returning to the next game. What can happen in an excitable exercise like this is that students can easily take shortcuts and train dangerous tactics like circling back into the knife-wielding attacker. Other bad habits include handing knives back over to your training partner. Our students drop their training weapons once the drill is finished.

 

To begin with one side possessed practice knives, but as time went on we had so that only one or two people had them and other students acted as distractions. This heightened the sense of awareness. The next stage we looked at was the use of incidental weaponry. By using scattered safe objects the class picked up whatever was available in order fend off their knife attacker.

 

After a couple of rounds of normal MMA sparring, the class warmed down and had a discussion about the various issues covered in the lesson. I gave them one final test and drew a practice knife. It helped illustrate to them the “double tap” and the dangers of switching off after a stressful incident.

 

Seniors

 

We began with a fairly rigorous warm-up. This began with various movement exercises around our large gym: running, sprawling, stepping off 45 degrees, side stepping, rolling in all directions, double leg takedowns, basic combinations, moving on your backside in all different directions and snaking all different directions. This went straight into a round of MMA sparring. Then from this the class hit the full high percentage warm-up of straight strikes and hooks from all ranges, covers from all angles, chokes and transitional kicks. This is all done non-stop to create an anaerobic feel. Then, and only then, was a water break permitted. The point of this was to put the mind and body completely under pressure. Fitness is a by-product of training under stress.

 

Tonight we looked at developing the straight rear hand strike. Before the days of Geoff Thompson’s Masterclass I was part of Geoff’s very small invited group of students and instructors. Geoff Thompson, a true pioneer in self defence training, believed a lot in layering techniques. Every week we would work on a single technique and work it from different ranges in repetition and against different levels of resistance. This is the way you really “own” a technique. Too many students and instructors are into collecting techniques - what the great Karl Tanswell calls “learning by accumulation”. It is a very superficial way to train that delivers poor results. 

 

We drilled the straight rear hand strike for the whole of the remainder of the lesson and we will do the same with the other high percentage techniques contained in our warm-up drill. We trained this strike pre-emptively with restrictions imposed from short range. Then the structure and balance was tested with one student moving with an accessible focus mitt whilst another held onto the striker’s non-striking arm and pulled him different directions. Next we looked at training single-minded target seeking. The pad holder tries to keep the striker at a distance and pulls the focus mitt away, teaching the striker to clear and chase after the target with the same strike. This type of training can then be pressure tested within an S1 versus S2 type of exercise.

 

Next we looked at improving the body mechanics of the strike. One exercise for this involves dropping a heavy bag as you strike. The weight helps the striker to understand the importance of using body weight. You are forced to use your body weight to move with the bag. You let go of the bag just before you strike. A common error is for the student to strike only using their arm and loading up from the shoulder. This simple method, taught to me by Mo Teague of World Combat Arts, helps correct this.

 

Finally we looked at the in-fight stage and sporting application. The strike is now fired from a position where the student needs to maintain their own defence and in a manner that doesn’t telegraph the shot. This is done by having one student in front holding the focus mitt and another behind. Both monitor the two sides of the student, ruthlessly critiquing mistakes, such as dropping defences, by giving physical feed back to exposed areas.

 

We finished with a gentle warm-down and stretches.

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