17.09.20 My client began her first self-protection for teenagers course today. We began with a lecture and discussion on attitude and awareness. This began with the importance of having a proactive and survival attitude as well as situational awareness. As a practical exercise, we looked at posture and target hardening. We also discussed anaerobic exercises designed to test and improve mental toughness. We also began both tactical escape training and the fundamentals of the fence, preserving personal space.
Tag Archives | self defence
Restricted Training Zoom Class for Forest Schools Karate (diary entry)
20.05.20 Tonight I was booked to teach for Forest Schools of Karate on Zoom. This 45 minute lesson focused on restrictive training and visualisation exercises to get the most out of home training. Whenever I guest-teach for clubs I am always impressed by the way particularly young students are continuing to engage as Lockdown fatigue sets in for society. Vijay Pathek’s child students were no exception. Siblings and individual students enthusiastically gave all my different training methods a fair go. […]
Predators & the 3 Rs (diary entry)
14.05.20 I taught a private lesson on Thursday, going over the material covered in last Sunday’s webinar. My client raised a couple of interesting questions that I was happy to discuss and I will summarise my views below. Firstly, the self-protection view of social and predatory/asocial violence distinctions is an extremely important area of study. To understand the difference between these two types of violence is to understand what should dictate self-protection and what is legally justifiable as self-defence. […]
Grappling Range in Self-Defence (diary entry)
04.03.20 Wednesday lunchtime’s lesson continued my sixth self-protection course for Kingham Hill School. Today I introduced them to stand-up grappling/the clinch in order to better understand how build next week’s anti-grappling techniques. Grappling is not the preferred option in an immediate high situation. There are exceptions, such as being corned unarmed by an armed assailant, but even then interception of the weapon hand and control via grappling is best assisted by striking. Low and mid-level threats might be […]
Pre-Empt! Escape! Check! (diary entry)
05.02.20 My Wednesday lunchtime lesson continued my sixth Self-Protection course with Kingham Hill School. We continued work with pre-emptive striking, the fence, continued forward pressure and restrictive training. I also discussed the three Ps of effective Self-Defence (hard skills) training. We warmed up by moving through postures. This would come up again later. Then we went back over target familiarisation off the fence. This progressed into tactical escape through an escape route and then a post-incident injury check. […]
Self-Defence & the Law (diary entry)
15.01.20 My Kingham Hill School Self-Protection course today was mainly a soft skills lesson. Again, due to mock exams I did not have a large attendance. I decided to treat this lesson as I would regular private clients and allowed them to ask me questions. We discussed some basic martial arts history to dispel a few misconceptions about self-defence systems. After this our main focus was on self-defence and the law. We discussed proportionality, pre-emption and the UK […]
Sixth Self-Protection Course at Kingham Hill School (diary entry)
08.01.20 Kingham Hill School began their sixth Self-Defence/Self-Protection course with me in their new sports centre. This means I have access to more facilities to better deliver this constantly developing service. With mock exams in progress, I had a smaller group today. I used this situation to prepare those who learnt today to help train the new attendees next week. We covered the basics on pre-fight personal security, tactical escapes, sprawls and covers as well as pre-emptive striking. […]
“When Parents Aren’t Around” Seminar in Botley (diary entry)
04.01.20 2020 was kicked off with a 5 hour “When Parents Aren’t Around” seminar for the Oxford School of Martial Arts. This school has been working closely with me in the development of a self-protection module specifically designed for children and teenagers. This edition of my seminar had a fairly broad target audience consisting of various ages. The majority were teenagers. I tailored the course accordingly, taking into account the locality which has seen a rise of 12.2% in […]
Ground-Fighting in the Final Lesson (diary entry)
05.12.19 Wednesday’s lunchtime lesson saw the end of this term’s course of Self-Protection at Kingham Hill School. Today we focused entirely on symmetrical ground-fighting. Training began with a warm-up of various crawls, snaking and other ground callisthenics designed for good muscle activation. Then we revised escaping to standing from a guard position. The object here was to empower the guard position, a typical place someone might end up in a sexual assault, and to present the best options […]
Self-Defence Chimeras (diary entry)
26.11.19 Tuesday night’s consultation lesson focused on the end point of a young person’s self-protection course. We decided to begin at this point and reverse engineer the process for the younger levels. My client’s mandate in this instance was for me to help provide a self-protection ideal for a first year university student. The below are some rough notes on what I would expect of a student aged 16 years and over who is considered to have completed […]
Anti-Grappling Training & Kingham Hill (diary entry)
20.11.19 Kingham Hill School covered anti-grappling in this lunchtime’s lesson. This is the stage in their self-protect programme where we are faced problems associated with being gripped, held, tackled and wrestled. Everything prior to this has been about pre-emption and regaining the initiative. I have promoted creating distance and focusing on using strikes to facilitate an early escape. We began with a short revision warm-up on tactical escape and combative movements on the move. These movements focused more […]
Tailored Programmes, Bystander Bullying & Some Combatives History (diary entry)
19.11.19 My second evening lesson was my teacher consultancy where we continued to discuss material for a children’s self-protection achievement programme, a specific programme for teenage girls in Varanasi, northern India and also a brief overview of this Saturday’s clinic on MMA ground-fighting. The achievement programme is layering in information from Dave Kovar’s Aware programme on anti-bullying. This is something my client is bringing in to provide simple skills for youngsters to help provide more information on bullying. We then […]
Transitioning Strikes & Postures at Kingham Hill School (diary entry)
13.11.19 My lunchtime Wednesday class continued my work with Kingham Hill School’s Self-Protection Course. We concentrated on postures, transitioning, restrictive striking and the cover against multiple attackers. We began with our usual tactical escape and basic combative movement warm-up. This was followed by a series of transitioning exercises. Here we looked at postures from against a wall, half-kneeling (combat base), seated (butterfly guard) and on the back both controlling and fighting against a pin. Then we isolated each […]
Concussions, Black Belts & Self-Protection Plans (diary entry)
08.10.19 Tuesday night’s CPD lesson for a martial arts teacher was largely a consultation. We discussed duty of care in one aspect of black belt gradings and also an overview of the self-protection programme this teacher is currently implementing. The value of the black belt has become a regular controversial topic since the commercialisation of martial arts. My client is part of an association that appears to have done a great job in adding validation to this qualification. […]
Progressive Basics in Self-Protection at Kingham Hill School (diary entry)
02.10.19 My third self-defence lesson at Kingham Hill School this term further built on the basic areas covered last week. This included tightening up and layering tactical escape principles as well as progressive pre-emptive strike tactics. The importance of developing day-to-day survival behaviours and aspects of the aftermath were also addressed. We warmed up with everyone walking with purpose taking in their environment. This included locating exit points and potential hazards. The class also paid attention to gait and […]
Teacher Training Continues (diary entry)
24.09.19 Tuesday’s lesson continued my trainer the trainer CPD course on self-defence methods. We worked more on anti-grappling and the offline/multiple defence overlap as well as testing tunnel vision under pressure. We also discussed proactive pad-work and objective-training. Anti-Grappling We divided up and isolated then combined the retention of balance when being gripped, pulled and pushed. This is the backbone of takedown defence. This is then integrated into a pad drill. The coaching student grips, pulls and pushes with one […]