Clubb Chimera Martial Arts : CCMA

Juniors

Today’s class was mainly a fighting class. I made no excuses for it. Children fight more than adults, they are far more vulnerable than adults and they see violence more than the average adult. This varies from playfighting to brawls at school to more sinister problems I hope none of my students ever encounter. My point, however, is that rather than edging around violence in the form of non-contact games, sparring and over complicating matters with detailed prearranged abstract forms, we need to engage with the reasons why children train in martial arts. I do this by keeping a good relationship with the children and guardians of my students, listening to my class and, above all else, give them what I say my classes offer. Students in my class learn to fight when no other option is available and as a form of sporting attribute training. We covered both today.

Firstly we looked at the Strategy One versus Strategy Two game again. This is a base game for us that strips down assault and counter-assault to some very simple principles. This is where we quarry our techniques. The game teaches observation, awareness, strategies and tactics. It puts students in the mind of a victim and of a predator, so they can learn from both experiences. Hard skills-wise students learn the best methods to deter and counter-attack an abduction attempt whereas the predators are restricted to restraining holds.

We then took whatever techniques were quarried and brought them onto the focus mitts with some movement drills. This was followed by several rounds of MMA sparring. The class was finished with some specific functional fitness exercises, targeting the legs. These were partner exercises that included repetitions of double leg takedowns, standing up in the guard and round kicks.

Seniors

After the high percentage technique warm-up and some MMA sparring the class looked at the cover again. We looked at it from several different aspects. Firstly we looked at prompting the correct behaviour. The cover is prompted usually as a contingency plan when one person needs to close down on an attack. It is used to regain the initiative. You can either cover and strike, which is preferable in self defence, or close down and grapple. So, the first exercise consisted of one student feeding a volley of continuous strikes whilst the other covered and took control either by getting back in with their own strikes or clinching. Next I looked at strengthening the structure. We did a series of exercises to develop this. They included having one partner trying to pull the cover away whilst the covering partner kept changing position and moving in. This was done both standing and from the knees. Then we had one student performing sit-ups with the cover whilst the other stood on top of the cover. In order to test impact we increased the pressure of the exercise by having one student bounce off the cover of the lying down student.

Mobility was next. The cover must be mobile and move to wherever the attacks are coming from. This was done by having one student continusouly feed strikes from all different angles and the other move the cover appropriately. It is important that the person operating the cover keeps their head and looks through the cover. There is no point in going blindly into the tactic and hoping for the best. In order to rectify this I had the student who was covering carry out a visual test at the same time, saying how many fingers I was holding up as the other student continuously fed them strikes from different angles.

The lesson was finished with an example of a technique that can be used from the cover. Having looked mainly at hand strikes and clinching the highline I changed to the lowline grappling attack. This came in the form of a double takedown. One student feed strikes whilst the other covered and went in for the takedown. This technique was doing using our resistance bands again. It’s a great piece of equipment and I will try to use whenever the lesson presents an opportunity. 

The class was finished with a warmdown of shadow boxing, positional work, triangle sit-up, stretching sprawls and sit-throughs, followed by a more traditional series of stretches.

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