21.07.2024 Les Bubka kindly invited me to teach alongside him in Guildford. We both looked at martial arts cross training methods and a common theme appeared to be keeping training alive as well creating angles. These are probably two of the biggest hacks in martial arts learning. I kicked things off by asking those assembled what they would like to cover. Tracey Radley of Kurotan Practical Karate asked for more work on the jab. Therefore, my session began with some shoulder tapping games, followed by foot-stepping games, followed by combining them. Next we moved into one-for-one restricted space sparring, encouraging fluid to and fro striking. We then went to body shot training to better emphasise using your feet to get to a target first. All of this underpinned the mechanics of making a jab work more efficiently, controlling range, hitting with getting hit and moving out once the shot had been delivered. Then the jab proper was introduced, using it against an opponent given the task of going to the body. Tommy Joe Moore suggested allowing the jabber to tie up the opponent. Tracey Radley suggested having the body shot fighter throw more than one punch. At this point we began looking at attacking from the blindside, creating angles. This was done using the circle challenge where fighter moved in off angles to a person in the middle. Les took the angle theme further in his first hour with some restrictive sparring. This included fighting off the wall and pitting a clinching attack against an outboxing defence. It's a great dynamic close to how I train asymmetrical pressure testing for self-defence. The game evolved into more restrictive space and then both sides were permitted to strike and grapple, allowing the clincher to enter with punches and the boxer to manoeuvre in the clinch. This moved us onto drawing tactics, using baiting from the outside and setting up kicks and knee strikes. My next hour continued the angle theme and the use of the jab. I discussed proactive head movement where fighters move their head to create feints and move positions rather than just used them to avoid punches. With this in mind we slipped a jab and touched the centre of an opponent's chest. This was first performed as a warm-up exercise with a "jabbing machine".Then we made it live with the jabber actively hunting with their jabs and the responder looking to touch the chest not getting caught. Next, I layered in touching the back of the jabber's shoulder whilst the jabber sought to use their rear hand to touch the responder's shoulder. This game turns into the jabber looking to throw a jab/rear hook combination and the responder looking to slip/jab and throw an overhand. The overhand section was also isolated, demonstrating how difficult it was to get that angle without slipping or without throwing a jab. We extended upon this with a version involving throwing a round kick to the back of the leg off the angle with the jabber trying to check it and throw their own rear leg round kick. This changed to the single leg, which began with simply having the responder trying to touch the inside of the jabber's thigh from behind. Les taught a single defence into a throw or a neck-crank/face-bar submission. He moved onto using the gi where sleeve grips can be used to set up strikes and takedown, followed by counters into takedowns. https://clubbchimera.com/services/
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