FMA Concepts and Research (diary entry)

09.02.19   The first of this morning’s lessons was a special two-hour lesson. This brought my client up to the 8 hour point of this 10 hour course in Martial Arts Cross Training. We are using Southeast Asian weapon concepts to develop attributes for Mixed Martial Arts and unarmed Self-Defence training. Previously we have been mainly looking at the use of angled strikes and also footwork. This lesson looked more at transitioning through postures via stick-work and trapping principles.   We began with double stick posture transitioning to warm-up and then footwork drills. Next we revised the 12 angles with the single stick off both sides. This was followed by some simple hubud knife drills to work dexterity attributes. We then tried out a simple Filipino Martial Arts entry into a lock-off position, setting up for diagonal knee strikes. This was then turned into a simple takedown. Next we drilled a knife hubud drill to build switching hands dexterity that we looked at implementing into MMA and self-defence. These were done on the focus mitts first with punches and then on the Thai focus mitts for elbow and knee strike applications. We trapped, broke grips, cleared obstacles, broke postures and struck targets.   Training was finished with 3 x 5 minute rounds of specific sparring. The first round was focused on grip-fighting and stand-up grappling. The point here was to use trapping principles to break holds and establish new grips to break postures. This is great for developing tactile awareness in combat and putting these methods under the scrutiny of pressure testing. The second round brought in MMA sparring gloves and layered in hand strikes. The final round layered in elbow strikes whilst wearing full-face head guards.