Protecting the Frontline Course 7 (diary entry)

March 24, 2022 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
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23.03.2022 Today we moved onto the law section of my Defending the Frontline course for teacher client of Drum Kempo Ju Jitsu. When it comes to teaching self-defence, it is a disservice not to address the legal side with a degree of rigour. After all, the term self-defence is defined by law and any time it might be claimed it is subject to judicial procedures. Perhaps law enforcement officers will be able to immediately determine at the time of an […]

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Clinching from Combinations to Sparring to Getting Dirty (diary entry)

March 22, 2022 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
Swarming clinch

21.03.2022 Hour five of my client couple’s course on the clinch for MMA covered three areas of the MMA clinch: combinations for shoots, asymmetrical sparring and dirty boxing. The former took the form of revising combinations 1-3 via shadow boxing. We then moved onto combination 4 that is the first to involve a counter move. In this instance it is a sprawl off a jab/cross combination. From the sprawl the fighter drives up from the ground with a rear hand […]

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Rubber Guard & Z-Guard Revision (diary entry)

March 17, 2022 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
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16.03.2022 Tonight my client had a 1.5 hour lesson focusing entirely on the rubber guard and its set-up from the Z-guard. We began with a thorough sports specfic series of warm-up exercises before revising the following: Z-guard set-up to rubber guard Gogo-plata to oma-plata attack flow and counter Double-arm triangle Dead Orchid Adjusted gogo-plata with leg The lesson finished with 3 x 5 minute rounds. Round one concentrated on defence from the Z-guard and rubber, round two focused on guard […]

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Kingham Hill Self-Protection Course 7.8 (diary entry)

March 17, 2022 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
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16.03.2022 Kingham Hill’s self-protection course reached its eighth lesson for group one. Group two are on their fourth lesson. The first group’s lesson was only concerned with soft skills. We covered unattentional blindness, the Cooper Colour Code and situational awareness. Group two were almost entirely focused on hard skills where we covered evasion exercises for tactical escape training, predator versus prey pressure testing, obstacle clearance focus mitt training and hunter target training. We finished the lesson with a look at […]

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Settling and Starting Controversies (diary entry)

March 17, 2022 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
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16.03.2022 Wednesday’s second lesson was “Learn from the Fight” where we examined two fights in 1953 and 1954. The first saw Rocky Marciano make his second title defence, this time against old rival Roland LaStarza. The second saw the amazing former World Featherweight champion Willie Pep in one of his most controversial fights with Lulu Perez. Rocky Marciano versus Roland LaStarza Undisputed World Heavyweight Championship 24.09.1953 Roland LaStarza was born on 12 May 1927 in the Van Section (that is […]

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Protecting the Frontline Course 6 (diary entry)

March 17, 2022 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
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16.03.2022 Wednesday’s first lesson, my teacher consultancy course focusing on frontline self-protection training, took a divergent path.  Instead of continuing with today’s stage of the course where we cover self-defence law, we moved into discussions on how best to deliver the material. The subject was steered by the very serious problem of lip service being paid to certain core elements that define the purpose of self-protection teaching. My thanks to my client at Drum Kempo Ju Jitsu for convincing me […]

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Setting up for the Double Leg Shoot (diary entry)

March 16, 2022 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
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14.03.2022 Monday brought my couple clients’ to the fourth hour of their current course on MMA clinch. We returned to covering eight MMA combinations specifically designed to set up the double-leg takedown. This week we covered combinations two and three. These are described in my previous lesson report from last Thursday.  Today we broke down different ways strikes can be used to make an opponent vulnerable for the double-leg shoot. Two obvious ways is to make the opponent adopt a […]

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Double Leg Set-ups 1-5 (diary entry)

March 11, 2022 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
set up sprawl

10.03.2022 I returned to teaching a longtime client of mine at the 4.5 hour point of his course. This client books six 1.5 hour private lessons with me and 1 x 1 hour course. It is an arrangement that better suits clients who live a bit further out of the half an hour radius I offer for regular one-to-one or small group training. He has trained with me for several years and also transferred over to online training during lockdown […]

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MMA Combination 8 & The Dead Orchid (diary entry)

March 10, 2022 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
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09.03.2022 Wednesday’s fifth and sixth lessons were junior MMA and senior Submission Grappling. In the former we looked closely at technique and the final combination of this set. In Submission Grappling we covered the dead orchid submission from the rubber guard. Junior MMA’s combination – slip/cross/hook/jab/jab/overhand right/double leg shot This combination begins with a power punch off a slip. Typically slipping is best done when an opponent throws a big punch and this slip cross is tailor made for taking […]

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Kingham Hill Self-Protection Course 7.7 (diary entry)

March 10, 2022 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
hunting the target

09.03.2022 My lessons at Kingham Hill brought the first group up to removing obstacles from targets and the second group to hunting targets. The first group also got the opportunity to pressure test striking over obstacles using the gang-grip game. The second group discussed setting moral boundaries and principles in their self-protection decisions. Services

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The Return of Ezzard Charles (diary entry)

March 10, 2022 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
Charles vs Satterfield

09.03.2022 My second lesson of Wednesday was “Learn from the Fight” where we picked up the career of former heavyweight champion Ezzard Charles. The last we had seen of Charles was his rematch and fourth fight with Jersey Joe Walcott, a loss by unanimous decision that had squared both fighters at two fights a piece ending their feud. Charles’s felt he had won their final bout and told the reporters so but was stoic in his composure. The Associated Press […]

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Protecting the Frontline Course for Teachers 5 (diary entry)

March 10, 2022 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
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09.03.2022 Wednesday’s first lesson – an online teacher consultation for Drum Kempo Ju Jitsu in Ireland – brought us up to pre-emptive striking. We discussed the tactical reasoning for pre-emptive striking and I described why it is important for students to test the effectiveness of this tactic or rather the ineffectiveness of blocking at conversational range. It is too easy for teachers to find themselves inside an echo chamber that takes the effectivness of this tactic for granted whilst preaching […]

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Cover to Clinch (diary entry)

March 10, 2022 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
arm triangle clinch

07.03.2022 Monday’s lesson brought my couple client up to the third hour on MMA clinch. Building off the previous lesson’s swarming tactics used to clinch, this lesson we looked at the cover in MMA. We began with looking at the temporary transitional nature of covering and then looked at accessing the highline. From here we attacked with the plum clinch and the arm-triangle hold into strikes and a takedown. A demonstration I gave at Denmark several years ago on covering […]

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Vagabond Warriors for Forest School of Karate Day 2 (diary entry)

March 10, 2022 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
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06.03.2022 The second day of Vagabond Warriors for Forest School of Karate was a five hour seminar. The first two thirds of the day were mainly concerned with following the Proactive Feedback Loop Training model. There are many variations and the model is always up for progressive re-adaptation, but it follows a procedure I believe to be in alignment with Iain Abernethy’s Training Matrix. We used boxing as our base model and then trained some edited variations for ease of […]

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Vagabond Warriors for Forest School of Karate Day 1 (diary entry)

March 8, 2022 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
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05.03.2022 The first day of Vagabond Warriors for Forest School of Karate was a three hour lesson on the clinch. We specifically looked at striking in the clinch and also dirty boxing. We began with Muay Thai and looked at the double-necktie plum position. This included enterign the clinch from a stand-up striking position where we clinched from the outside as an opponent quickly shelled. This particular tactic was best applied in the midst of an exchange rather than when […]

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Children’s Self-Protection for Forest School of Karate (diary entry)

March 8, 2022 | Diary / Training Notes [ssba]
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05.03.2022 My weekend seminar for Forest School of Karate began with a two-hour “When Parents Aren’t Around” lesson. This was delivered as a hard skills lesson, the school already having covered the soft skills via Zoom. We used the following activities:  Tactical Escape Agility Training – Serving as a warm-up, we used agility cones to encourage serpentine running and lateral running whilst avoiding objects. Purpose: Besides general agility and fast-twitch conditioning being essential requirements for tactical escape training, participants are […]

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