10.09.2023 I was invited to teach a two-hour self-protection seminar for a group of 12-14 year-olds as part of a birthday party. We began with the definition of self-protection, establishing the legal definition of self-defence (hard skills) and personal security (soft skills). We then went through some simple escape […]
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
12.01.2022 Due to the situation presented with exams at Kingham Hill, the self-defence activity numbers haven’t properly been established. Therefore, I was left with only a few pupils for the beginning of my sessions. Seeing as all three of them were previous pupils, I decided to focus on some new hard skill work. We looked at pre-emptive striking against two antagonists. After a warm-up, we discussed dealing with the dynamics of this situation. I explained the importance of maintaining the […]
01.12.2021 The final part of my self-protection course for teenagers at Kingham Hill drew to a close on Wednesday. My two groups went back over their anti-grappling training, we also revised a lot of the main material from the course, looked at protecting others, dealing with “friendly interference” and I finished on discussion regarding the post-fight. My “When Parents Aren’t Around” course on teenage self-protection has been a 10 hour course for each of the two groups. We have gone […]
24.11.2021 On Wednesday I continued to teach my self-protection course for Kingham Hill School. As usual, this consisted of two lessons taught to two different groups of years 12 and 13. We got to the business of dealing with a grappling attack. The following areas were covered: Grappling is not the first choice for high risk self-defence situations Grappling is a good choice for middle and low-risk situations In order to defend against grappling, students need a rudimentary knowledge of […]
17.11.2021 Wednesday saw my two Kingham Hill lessons deal with the very difficult subject of ground fighting in self-defence. This can be a difficult topic to handle for non-martial arts students, unfamiliar with grappling and in their teenage years. However, we made it through with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Those who felt uncomfortable in dealing the symmetrical situations drilled this as a solo exercise. We revised transitioning through postures, followed by asymmetrical ground-fighting, followed by symmetrical ground fight both from […]
10.11.2021 My two afternoon lessons on Wednesday were a continuation of my self-protection course for teenagers at Kingham Hill School. We shifted our focus onto the regaining the initiative stage. This is the first stage of reactive fighting from a hard skills perspective. Here we are beyond preemption and we have been preempted. I always make a point of stating how much this stage needs to be avoided. Whatever happens here on in, is reliant on a degree of luck. […]
29.10.20 The seventh hour of my teenage self-protection course brought us onto the subject of in-fight multiple attackers. We revised all the hard skills material previously covered from pre-emptive striking to recovering from the ground, including multiple attackers at the pre-emptive stage before moving onto the main area of training. Here we looked at covering and striking against multiple attacks and using tactical escape footwork to exit a situation. I was fortunate to have my client’s brother present as well […]
08.10.20 The fourth lesson of this self-protection course for teenagers began work on handling the clinch. I made use of the client’s brother, who has also trained with me, and is within my client’s bubble as well as simulations on her freestanding heavy bag and shadow training. We began with a revisit of the fence and a discussion on the importance of establishing boundares as early as possible. It is advantageous to move into an effective position and maintain […]
11.03.20 Wednesday lunchtime continued my self-protection course with Kingham Hill School. We revised basic clinch grappling and began anti-grappling training. The solo warm-up began with some simple dynamic stretches moving onto grappling callisthenics and then we drilled moving from a low posture as well as sprawls and double-leg takedowns. Then we moved onto partner work. We revised the main clinching drills from the previous lesson – collar and elbow bulling, plum position neck wrestling, over-hook/under-hook pummelling and wrist-grip […]
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 […]
06.06.18 We entered the final stage of self-defence training in this particular course. I could expand matters into more multiple aggressor-based training, protecting others, takedowns and even weapon defence, but my mandate is to move matters in MMA training soon. Therefore, we finished with a look at symmetrical ground-fighting. The warm-up consisted of a series of ground-orientated exercises – bear crawls, crab crawls, seal crawls and snaking/shrimping. We began with fighting from the back using the guard position. […]
23.05.18 Training at Kingham Hill School moved onto combat grappling. We began with an energetic series of movement exercises, designed to reinforce various behaviours learnt over the previous lessons and to increase reaction timing. This started with simple changing directions, then altering heights of stances, varying footwork, striking whilst moving, covering, sprawling, switching ranges and finished with transitioning through postures to regain footing. We began our technical training with the side headlock. This is a primal grappling move […]
16.05.18 The second lesson of the day was part of my continuing Self-Protection/Mixed Martial Arts course I am running at Kingham Hill School. Today the class moved onto anti-grappling tactics. We overlapped pad-work, technique application and live testing on all the techniques cover today. We warmed up with posture transitioning and movement exercises. Then we began an anti-grappling exercise that involved one partner using grappling holds and the other placing strikes. This built up into a series of […]
25.04.2018 Today’s afternoon lesson was the second in Kingham Hill’s Basic Self-Protection/MMA course. We began with some simple fence targeting and target familiarisation. These exercises are designed to train a robust and legal way to set up a pre-emptive strike. I do this as a touch-contact drill to reinforce the behaviour to hit realistic targets. This is then overlapped with hitting the focus mitts. We discussed intent and the anaerobic nature of striking for self-defence. This was […]
