Evolutionary Self-Protection

As always, this week’s class was a lot of fun! Many thanks as always to everyone who came and we hope to see everyone else again soon! The sheer skill and natural ability I saw this week was phenomenal. Everyone did exceptionally well and should be extremely proud of their progress and prowess.

Here’s some brief notes to guide your martial ponderings…

• We started off this week’s awesomeness with a circuit of the usual kinds of calisthenics exercises: pushups, Russian twists, throwing a slam ball, passing a kickshield from hands to feet and back again while lying down, dips and burpees.
• Thoroughly warmed up, we loosened off with some quadrupedal movement before moving onto ground mobility drills involving a variety of rolls, takedowns and padwork from different positions.
• This week we took the drill we did last week on dealing with an attack with a stick and expanded on it with many logical progressions. Some key points to remember:
  • Once you decide you need to deploy force, and you find the right moment in which to do so, you must act immediately, efficiently and decisively.
  • Close distance and use your elbows to your advantage!
  • Get control and make sure it’s a strong grip you have. Anything less than your strongest is not good enough.
  • Act fast: strike and control.
  • You might get hit a little despite your best efforts, but there’s varying degrees of how much that’ll ruin your day. Your positioning and footwork has a lot to do with this. Train intelligently and act efficiently!
• We also looked at some options when using a high guard against straight and hooked punches coming towards us – it’s a very versatile and efficient method of protecting yourself.
  • Regardless, we’re not about to stand there and deal with one hit at a time! Just as with the stick:
    • Close distance and gain control.
    • Striking, striking, striking…
    • Disrupt their posture and you compromise them greatly – this can be used for takedowns or truly devastating striking opportunities. Or, if possible, just a shove and your chance to run away! Remember the Force Continuum – it has to be borne in mind at all times in your training.
• Sometimes, try as we might to avoid things getting this bad, we end up on the floor with someone trying to turn our torso from convex to concave with their feet.
  • Again, act immediately, quickly, efficiently and decisively.
  • Close distance, claw and climb your way up them. Grab whatever you find: clothes, skin, muscle, fat, hair… it doesn’t matter. Like a monkey climbing a tree. Credit to Andrew Holland (http://theselfdefenceexpert.com/) for introducing me to this very useful concept in his excellent Primal Combatives session back in 2013.
  • The closer you are to those legs, the more difficult it is for them to kick you.
  • Get up. Fast. And don’t forget that if you need to then striking can be done on the way.
  • After a tiring set of drills combining much of the aforementioned, we finished off with some percussive massage (Russian style) as a relaxation and breathwork drill.

This class is free for beginners and runs every Friday at 17:45 in Stoke-on-Trent (ST99NX). Everyone is welcome and all the details can be found here (or just click ‘Public Training’ at the top).