20.06.2022 Hour seven of my couple clients’ submission grappling course brought them to using the guard. As with the top positions, I covered a flow drill. They transitioned from closed guard to open guard to spider guard to butterfly guard to half-guard back to the open guard and closed guard. Throughout the drill they did variations from different positions and we looked at the all-important safe transitioning. Services
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 […]
04.07.21 Sunday saw the first Vagabond Warriors Webinar Workout. This was a follow up to the previous Vagabond Warriors Cross-Training webinar where I introduced my teaching and training concepts. Here we had an opportunity to go back through this information and apply to home workouts. We applied CSI – Clarification, Scepticism and Individuality and the Hierarchy Of Training. Within the HOT plan we used the Tabata protocol for three workouts based on specific training, attribute training and functional training. Specific […]
12.05.21 My first client continued work with single and double stick fighting. We went through some more angles of attack, looking at extra stabs and then at one stick versus two stick sequences. The latter involved side checks to the head and I emphasised rebounding off intercepting strikes. Next we moved onto trapping with the sticks, making use of the butt end of the stick. My second client continued on the focus mitts with rhythm and flow combinations 11 and […]
02.03.21 Work continues in my teacher consultancy regarding the progress of sparring/pressure-testing for grades, especially but not exclusively to child students. As my progressive and proactive client suggested, we began at the beginning and looked at where and how sparring should be introduced. Key things to consider would be that gradings would not be a test for everything. A club does not have to have sparring in the first grading and yet students by this stage can be accustomed to […]
01.03.21 Monday evening began with hour five of my client’s course on stand-up pad-work. As previously mentioned these are both lockdown partners, one of which is on the road to recovery from a knee injury. The previous course took them through the 14 Muay Thai combination for rhythm and flow. Now we are taking each combination and applying them to the focus mitts. Having a lockdown partner allows for me to coach pad work whilst not holding pads and it […]
15.02.21 This is the third hour of my client’s second 10 hour course on stand-up striking. After a 10 minute round of warming up, my client with her lockdown partner decided to completely focus on the first combination from our 14 rhythm and flow sequences. The benefit of having a lockdown partner allowed me to teach the combination in three stages: Stage 1: Shadow boxing the entire combination Stage 2: Virtual focus-mitt training – using the combination in direct response […]
09.11.20 Tuesday night’s teacher consultation continued with ground-fighting revision. We used escaping side control as a starting point, covering reversals, arm-triangles and sweeping from the dog fight position. The reversal – a technique referred to by my client as a “pancake” roll – came from head-lock version of side control. Here we set up for escaping to guard and timed our reversal off our opponent countering the guard escape by putting more weight forward. The fighter immediately switches from snaking […]
24.10.20 My client reached hour seven of his course on Boxing techniques for martial arts cross training. We followed a similar routine to Tuesday and Wednesday’s clients, looking to increase fluidity through punches, develop footwork and look for small details to improve in basic technique. After our callisthenic and dynamic stretching warm-up we went through the basic punching isolation exercise. This consisted of throwing a constant flow of single straights, single uppercuts and single hooks before separating these into two-combinations […]
15.09.20 My Philly Shell training carried over into my teacher consultation lesson where we looked at bringing together much of what we had covered and integrated into kickboxing. We looked at the pullback/shoulder roll/rear hand parry into the right cross and back-step. From here we covered front kick variation or an inside round kick and then into a diamond step and spleen shot or outside round kick into a liver kick. This combination was then changed for MMA into jab/double […]
17.08.20 The third hour of my client’s Submission Grappling/Ground-Fighting course went back over the basic sweeps as well as the Kimura arm-lock from guard and passing guard. We began with our normal solo warm-up routine of ground-fighting callisthenics, including some new movements directly related to guard passing. Next the two lockdown partners performed some guard-passing drills before moving onto some resistance work. This took the form of a guard passing game where one had to get past the other’s […]
08.02.20 The Oxford School of Martial Arts kindly booked me for a two-hour clinic on Muay Thai tactics for Karate sparring. Quite simply, black belt gradings for these particular schools include a half hour fortitude test where conventional sport karate rules are abandoned in favour of a virtual no-holds-barred format (contact to the head is light and foul techniques are carefully monitored). I have previously taught a ground-fighting workshop with this in mind. This time we looked at the […]
04.02.20 My second Tuesday night lesson continued my teacher training and we looked at material for this Saturday’s closed Muay Thai for Martial Arts Cross Training Workshop. I began with an assessment of how fighters in this particular karate school sparred. This was so that I had a good idea of what I could add and how I would best be able to integrate the techniques I would be teaching. We decided that chaining punches with kicks, the low round […]
05.12.19 My junior clients covered their penultimate lesson in Submission Grappling/Ground-Fighting on Thursday evening. I introduced the butterfly guard, half-guard and back mount as well as the butterfly sweep, knee shield and rear naked choke. We also had some fun with a few advanced techniques. We warmed up with the usual specific callisthenics for ground-fighting such as various crawls, snaking and escape movement drills. Then I introduced the butterfly guard. Here we paid attention to keeping sat up […]
08.11.19 I was delighted to be invited back to teach to Hinnerup Karate for a second time. Since I was last in Denmark both my cross-training programme, “Vagabond Warriors”, and my children’s self-protection programme “When Parents Aren’t Around” has considerably progressed. “Vagabond Warriors” Cross-Training Martial Arts Workshop in Denmark (Part 1) Vagabond Warriors is the Clubb Chimera Martial Arts approach to cross-training. We use a Single Objective Path diagram to illustrate how an individual may cross-train in order to get […]
28.07.19 The first of our Vagabond Warriors Workshops focused on Western Boxing for Martial Arts Cross Training. We spent the majority of the lesson training footwork, various guards and the jab. These are all key components for setting up everything else in modern boxing. We began with an overview of cross-training. I discussed the problems with “welding” martial arts styles and techniques. That is forcing together two fighting aspects that do not complement each other. This creates a […]
