Urban Combatives

Fear Control:
Geoff encouraged us to close our eyes and look inward when we feel fear and to try and dissect the feeling by analysing it. Our inner opponent, the part of ourselves that creates this feeling of fear, apprehension and doubt does not like to be looked at. Instead it wants us to scatter our thoughts and latch onto worry and doubts until before we know it, everything appears much bigger and harder to handle than it really is. By looking closely at the feeling we can begin to make it smaller, small enough to deal with. Along with this method Geoff suggested the use of deep breathing such as that found in tai-chi, yoga and chi-kung as a means to help us to control the feelings of fear in addition to this he suggested a physical out let that will allow you to take the top off the feeling by utilising it as energy. Regardless if your anxiety stems from a possible physical confrontation or just the fear of change, its all the same and we all feel it at some point in our lives with varying degrees of intensity. But it is those of us that put ourselves into discomfort that grow as we all should know, anything worth having in life comes through effort and discomfort, this is indeed how we all grow. With that said we all moved into a physical warm up of jogging, sprinting, mobility work and some light stretching.

Vertical grappling:
This prepared us for our first physical drill with Geoff which entailed working from a stand up clinch with a partner and gently sparring for dominant grip. Here we are starting in a neutral grip clinch where each person has one hand on his partner's neck and the other on the out side of his/her upper arm from here we practiced 3 ways of escaping our partners grip. The first is to pull away sharply from your partners grip on the neck holding side this is done by wrenching away as you stiff arm him to release the grip. The second way is exactly the same only now you now grab hold of your partner's neck replacing his grip with your own. The final method entailed a slight lift on your partners elbow on the neck holding side as you dip underneath in order to get behind for a throw Greco Roman style or to apply a side neck crank/strangle by cranking your opponent's own arm and shoulder up tight against his own neck as you apply pressure from the other side with the radial bone of your forearm to the side of his neck or face. Once we had practiced these holds with a little partner compliancy we all proceeded to have a little free play sparring for holds with compliancy removed which was great fun. We then stopped for a well deserved fifteen minute tea break which gave everyone a chance to net work amongst each other.

Line up drills & combat distance:
We started our partner pad work with a drill for the double hip method of applying maximum impact, this is a drill that allows the hips to move first creating momentum at the shoulder for the punch/strike to follow accompanied by maximum body weight. As always with Geoff we focused on power punching from conversation range which is where most situations start. Then Geoff had us apply our short range punches and strikes from a very short distance with our backs to the wall and alternate pads fed by our partner from a very tight distance forcing us all to apply our game using both left and right hands. Then we did an excellent drill striking and punching as we rise up from a seated position and finally from a side Machado mount position on the ground with a partner. The reasoning for these superb drills is to help the student develop maximum impact power for hitting from a very short range and from awkward positions using both your strong and weak sides. Obviously if we can produce knock out power from here then just imagine the confidence you will develop when the conditions, range and line up are ideal from the fence at punching range with your strong side available.