Evolutionary Self-Protection

“Ground and pound” – that was the focus of this session. The rather unpleasant position you see the floored gentleman in was what we took some time to focus on: you’re on the ground and somebody decides to take that as an opportunity to do some serious damage to you by enlisting the help of gravity in order to make his strikes (which are unfortunately directed towards you) very powerful indeed.

Getting Knackered: Pads, Pushups and 4 Points.

After loosening off, stretching and warming up with some ground mobility, we played a fun game for cardio: Striker stands in the middle of the hall with a Padholder presenting focus mitts on either side of him. Striker hits one (pads are presented randomly so the choice of strike is freely made). If it was a good enough strike, the padholder takes a step back. If not, the strike has to be repeated. Once the padholder steps back, Striker turns to the other padholder and does the same. This is repeated and as the drill progresses the two padholders are a longer and longer run apart from each other, until the striker has to run the whole length of the hall in order to deliver those strikes!

We also played with some intervals of pushup variations: standard (fists under shoulders), alternating with one hand in front of the other, downward-dog shoulder ones and pushup jacks (down = feet apart, up = feet together). The emphasis was, as always, on posture and breathwork and – within those criteria – getting very tired very fast!

Following from this, we did an interesting ground mobility drill. Person A holds a very high quadrupedal position: hands and feet make a square on the floor, face down and bum up. Person B crawls and rolls around those four points, being restricted in movement by the torso of their partner. This is something that sounds easy but isn’t! It’s also great fun and serves to trim down superfluous movements.

A Spot of Breathwork:

We looked at the four levels of breathwork: places to ‘breathe from’ (an analogy to shift focus – of course scientifically you breathe from your lungs regardless of anything you do!) and also places which we can affect a person’s breathing with. We partnered up and explored different ways of affecting and even fully preventing a person’s breath, and the benefits of certain levels of tension and relaxation depending on what was being affected and how in terms of retaining the ability to breathe when someone tries to stop us from doing so.

Support in Groundfighting:

We did a few drills involving taking away an attacker’s support when they’re (intending to start) raining blows down upon us when we’re on the floor. As we’ve covered already (and here), climbing up your attacker is a great strategy which keeps you relatively safe as you get up onto your feet. However, if you’re being pinned down to the floor you of course have to remove that obstacle before you can start climbing. We started off looking at disrupting posture, removing stability and control with various pins, starting with simple pressure applied with the hand and moving onto things like knees and grabs. This evolved into partners actively trying to pin each other, passing the pins and gaining positions of dominance in free flow.

Padwork from the Ground:

Similarly to earlier this month when we spent some time looking at striking from a disadvantaged position, we worked our striking from the ground while being pinned by our partner. This brought together all of the breathwork, grappling skills and striking work we’d looked at:

• With the breathwork (and awareness of tension and relaxation) we don’t ‘gas out’ and lose energy easily.
• With relaxed movement we generate adequate striking power even when we have only a short distance to accelerate the strike in.
• With the grappling skills of removing an attacker’s support and preventing them from pinning us, we turn the tables and gain a position of dominance from which to effect our escape.

Bonus Feature – Soft Tissue Manipulation:

Made famous by Richard Dimitri of Senshido, ‘The Shredder’ or soft tissue manipulation through clawing is an excellent methodology to gain control of an attacker with. Essentially, by digging the fingertips into soft tissues that can move over bones (for example the cheeks over the teeth and cheekbones) a significant amount of pain can be caused without significant injury, and as such this can be used as a low-force option (thinking about the force continuum, as always). It’s also very distracting and unpleasant when used on the face, as the face can be turned away (disrupting posture) and eyes can be covered, made to close by reflex, etc. However, it’s a versatile methodology in that it can be used as a higher-force option too – eyes can be damaged, skin (ears, nostrils, etc) can be torn, hair pulled, etc. It is an excellent setup for close-in striking such as quick, close-range elbow strikes, using those controlling hands as a reference point.

Here’s a short video demonstrating ‘The Shredder’ and explaining how it feels:

As you can see, it’s excellent stuff.

The Appendices – Relaxation, breathwork and striking:

To finish, we just loosened off with some relaxed movement and breathwork: one person stands in-between two others being pushed around, and using relaxed movement retains good posture and avoids being overbalanced by avoiding direct confrontation with the force presented. Depending on levels of comfort and experience, we worked up to strikes instead of pushes too. Having two people providing this stimulus is a great progression with this kind of work, as you may have conflicting directions to deal with (one person shoving you into someone else’s shove)!

As always, it was a pleasure training with you all. Many thanks to everyone who came and I hope you’ve all had a great weekend. See you next time!

-Josh Nixon

All the details of this class are on the Public Classes page up at the top. Your first session is FREE and all are welcome to come along and take part. Every session is beginner-friendly. If anyone has any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch.