Restrictive and Transitional Training for Self-Defence and Combat Sports (diary entry)

30.07.16   Today’s second lesson was this client’s fourth class in her Personalised Martial Arts Cross Training course. With our focus still on circular techniques, we brought everything back to self-defence techniques. The different dynamic between self-defence fighting and match fighting was discussed. Despite a tremendous amount of overlap and effective attribute development, the essential difference between these two fights is that one is an asymmetrical combative situation and the other is a symmetrical one. The first usually consists of one individual countering (pre-emptively or reactively) to another individual behaving in a predatory fashion of some sort. The second consists of two individuals mutually consenting to a fight for dominance. The first will become an anaerobically fuelled physical assault or counter-assault having initially involved some form of ambush (a pre-emptive attack from the interview stage is still a type of ambush). The successful fighter in this instance is the one who does their best to act fast and keep on the proverbial front foot, applying consistent pressure. This fight takes on an interspecies dynamic with two humans treating each other as predator and prey. The second type of fight will become an aerobically charged physical contest (regardless of the lack of formal or agreed rules) that will involve a good degree of tooing and froing. The successful fighter will probably be the one with the best tactics adapted for the match. This fight takes on the intraspecies dynamic and is, therefore, easier to default to from a mental perspective when training.   We looked at restrictive training to increase power at a short range. Having started with the torso rotation exercise using wide spread arms we took this exercise through transitional postures. It was worked from a standing position, with one knee down, with both knees down, from seated (where I introduced butterfly guard) and from the back. The movement was refined into a proper open hand strike. We then trained this strike off the wall to offer another type of restriction, encouraging greater engagement of the core muscles.   Next we moved onto the backhand strike and hammer fist. These were thrown from an offline position. They were then combined with a close-range variation, the backward elbow strike, and moving onto incidental forward hand striking techniques. Here we looked at the importance of forward pressure in self-defence. Using the non-striking hand as a referencing tool the striker is able to throw an uninterrupted flow or rapid strikes whilst moving forward into the target. We brought in straight rear hand strikes, overhand strikes, downward hammer fists and upward knee strikes.   We moved onto kicking using the different transitional postures. This began with the Silat style grounded round kick, which puts great emphasis on extending the hip and one fully posted arm to generate more power. We then trained an intermediary phase where the fighter lies on one side with the arm folded underneath and finally from a completely prone side lying position.   Moving back to a standing position, we crossed back over into combat sports and looked at the round knee strike from clinch. This also focused a lot of attention on extending the hips and generating force using a side pendulum or Newton’s Cradle type action. We also briefly covered using the side elbows using a similar action.   Picture from "6 kinds of Muay Thai Knee Strikes" for the Yellow Pages.