Due to the postponement of Vagabond Warriors 2.2 and the filming of the new Vagabond Warriors functional fitness video, I was able to book in a private lesson. My client requested that I go through my interpretation of "The Cover". For my full thoughts on all this, please read "Take Cover".
Today's lesson began with a warm-up involving prompting a defensive reaction from the student, striking with focus mitts. This was repeated with the student in a "code white" position - eyes closed. We then isolated the proactive defensive nature of the tactic by using a grappling exercise. The coach wrestles the student and the student responds by putting their cover up to move in. This exercise encourages the student to use his elbows to strike limbs, shoulder muscles and anything that gets close, effectively making him act like an aggressive porcupine - anything you try to attack hurts you!
I isolated the whole motion of falling into the cover, to make it less stilted. It isn't really a stance, rather an emergency position one chooses in response to a situation going very badly. This was then incorporated into a code white drill, where the responding student covers, moves in and jams the incoming strikes. The coach keeps striking until the student connect with their own strikes.
This was then drilled from different postures - kneeling, seated and on the back - and then with multiple attackers.
We also looked at attacking the cover. Attacks to the cover involve striking at the wrists and the muscles on the arms, as well the looping around the arms to attack the face and body. This was also performed as a three attack combination inside the ground guard position for the purposes of attribute training. We also performed an exercise that finds weaknesses in the cover - one person holds the position whilst another pulls at the arms and wrists.
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