Over the next two days there was a huge amount of information to take in, lots of training drills and excellent lectures all supported with superb hand out material. I for one have taken a lot, from all the great people teaching and training over this weekend and I will now strive to recall the whole experience from my notes and memory. I will record it here as I remember it I apologise if I haven't reported events in exact order but here we go. We started with an excellent presentation by Mark Gitting and James Farthing regarding the training syllabus taught by Fairbairn & Sykes during the different phases of instruction dating back from the Shanghai period to the Commando and home guard right through to the S.O.E period and how the Close Combat methods were adapted to meet the environmental needs of the Operatives through each of these periods in time. Note was also made of the changes illustrated in the various manuals that Fairbairn produced through out these different phases all making for a very interesting lecture.

The knee strike was next with Mark Gitting who incorporated various ways of using the knee in and out of the clinch, along with MacCann's method of violently walking forward. Also the knee drop to a felled opponent. Then we looked at the hammer-fist/cycling with Simon Squires who taught the strike as an aggression and ATP conditioning drill which basically required one guy holding a shield like a rucksack where you would now grab a hold of the shield with one hand and strike with continuous hammer-fist blows with the other using as much forward pressure and aggression as you can muster while a third person will pull at your face and try to pull you off and basically provide stress. The whole thing is continued all out for ten seconds which is your approximate maximum ATP output and then the exercise is repeated for a total of three times for each trainee. This was an excellent drill and it was most interesting to me to see how each instructor has taken each of the basic gross motor strikes of the CQB syllabus and come up with some great and unique ways of training them and producing them as a teaching module.

This continued with Den who taught the elbow strike with a little influence from John Styers who wrote the classic text cold steel. He would use the elbow in a wheeling forward moving attack which Den had us practice as an offensive attack and as a reaction from a flinch cover to counter attack and also as means to take down someone's guard; all good stuff. Through out the first day we were given an array of physical drills and partner work. It was awesome to see so many enthusiastic people training hard everyone I train with or teach will all know that for me, it is all about INTENTION in training. Tenacity and aggression in all striking drills with lots of forward pressure coupled with a passion to win. This is how I train and how I teach and this is the main thing that I see people struggle with i.e. creating this intention in a training environment. But here I am pleased to say it appeared in abundance. The atmosphere during some of the drills and especially the scenario work on day two was simply electric so much so that when I came home and taught my first class back on the Tuesday, I was completely fired up and anxious to re-create the same atmosphere with my guys. One drill that I liked in particular was taught by Tony Da Costa he told us that it had been adapted from Geoff Thompson's circle drill {see 3 second fighter video} the drill required three people, two wearing a pair of focus mits that offered a third trainee who stood in between them, four targets to hit. The pad men would flash each pad randomly at varying heights from 360 degrees of direction where you have to react by striking as fast as you can. The drill started with Tiger's claws and progressed to using any strike to the targets fed by the pad men. The whole point is to develop reaction time and to train you to actively scan and use peripheral vision.

Day two started with an excellent lecture by Dennis relating to Operator Performance under Psycho-Genic stress. This started in true NLP form with the stimulus from a visual clip, taken from the TV drama SHARP with Sean Bean which showed Sean as Lt. Sharp on a battlefield on the eve of battle with a large bunch of recruits all of which had had no previous combat experience what so ever. He told them that tomorrow this battlefield would be a smoke filled place of fearful and disorientating confusion, this he re-enforced by having his men fire musket shots over the heads of the new recruits who quickly ducked for cover. Then he said something along the lines of; 'all that it will take to ensure victory is for each and every man to stand his ground load his gun and fire at the enemy, then reload and do it again, these guns will allow you to fire and reload approximately three times a minute, keep this up until the other side is no longer standing or retreats.' 'Now I know that each and everyone of you can reload and fire three shots a minute.' 'But can you stand?'

This was an excellent analogy for defining the mental state needed to be truly combative. Combatives were designed for one purpose and that is for defeating violence and aggression. The quote that fits is 'you do what you do despite what your enemy is doing.' The following is a brief out line of an excellent power point presentation from Den. I have focused on just a few points relevant to this topic but you will probably notice that I have gone into a little more detail here than else where in this review the reasons being that first of all I really like this kind of information; clinical facts that dispel myth and create understanding and secondly this topic is so essential that without some degree of understanding what we are about to talk about, individual operator performance will always be hampered. So to start we looked at the security control centre of the brain, this is called the AMYGDALA and is the threat detecting organ of the brain. During stress such as that of a violent confrontation the Sympathetic nervous system will take over. A neural surge causes an increase in heart rate and raises our blood pressure this results in blood being withdrawn from our extremities in order to be pumped to our vital inner organs. Blood is also drawn from our brain cortex for the same reason; the result of which impairs our thinking, in particular our decision making abilities. Due to this restriction in blood flow to the brain, the Neo-Cortex or higher brain is gone and the Limbic System which is the part of the brain that is responsible for emotions takes prominence, making all complex decision making impossible. The result is that we are now reduced to the intelligence of a dog. In addition to this is what's known as adrenal dump this will create a release of endorphins that will make you stronger, faster and more resistant to pain and shock.

The flip side of this coin is the mental implications that will also have to be dealt with. These include auditory exclusion or impaired hearing, tunnel vision where our peripheral vision closes down hence the need to actively scan. Time distortion where events seem to play in slow motion as our perception speeds up to process information and also what's known as cognitive dissonance this is after action recall, when things start to appear jumbled or out of sequence and is why it is a good idea to reserve your right and wait for 24 hours before giving a statement after any event that may incur police involvement.

Just give the dynamics of the situation such as 'he attacked me and I defended myself I will give a statement tomorrow.' At which time everything will start to appear a lot clearer. Immediate post-event of a stressful situation such as after a violent confrontation, people often feel the need to babble and come out with every word that comes into their head in an attempt to justify their actions. Under such conditions where cognitive dissonance is present there is a good chance that your facts won't be straight. One point that this brings to mind is that a lot of people have been found guilty for what they have said rather than what they have done.

Then we went on to discuss the Vital Pyramid and how all this relates Mindset, Tactics, Skills and Kit. We looked at programming your sub-conscious through training in order to develop the correct response that can be released during stress along with the importance of keeping everything simple. Our motor performance will start to be affected as our heart rate increases; at 115 bpm we lose fine motor skills, at a 145 bpm we start to lose complex motor skills i.e. movement combining different skills and from 150-175 bpm gross motor skills are actually enhanced. This is why all of our hard skills curriculum are based around gross motor actions. Everything should be as simple as picking up a rock and hitting with it; this also applies to weapons and kit. The final part of this presentation looked at the training implications of Operator Performance under stress and I will sum these up with the following points;
1. All feelings associated with these phenomena are a normal reaction to an abnormal situation. These reactions are natural and realise that others have coped in this situation and so can you.

2. These feelings must be experienced in a training environment through scenario training. It is important to emphasise that for effective training, it is essential that we add this emotional content.

3. Also verbalisation is a Psycho-motor skill and it needs to be practiced along with the physical. This applies to all role-play, posturing, deceptive dialogue and trigger words.

4. Finally you must break tunnel vision by actively scanning during pad drills for example strike the pad then actively scan by turning your head left and right etc. This is the same in shooting where you are taught to draw, fire and scan then holster the weapon.

Quote; by Jean-Pascal Espercail of the French Special Operation Force.
''we train to perform reasonably well under extreme stress, rather then exceptionally well under reasonable stress.''

The next presentation was by Norwegian instructor Kjetil who never fails to captivate his audience with his charismatic approach to teaching. This was a real treat for the historians. Kjetil's lecture related to the S.O.E as they operated in Norway during WW2 all made very interesting material. This was followed by a superb presentation by my mate from CODA Jimmy (Fatwing) Farthing which related to the use of various objects to be employed as improvised weapons. This is a topic that I am most interested in and encourage all my students like wise. The hard skills continued after the warm up for the day with Kjetil teaching the Thai kick and various methods of employing it from a close range to the inside and outside of the thigh. In addition to this Kjetil showed a method of using this kick as an intervention technique by running in from a distance and Thai kicking out both of the aggressor's legs as you come in. A superb demonstration from an immensely powerful man. Next up was Mika who taught the Ax hand/edge of hand blow as his module. He emphasised the importance of conditioning the hands for this strike by repetitively banging them on hard surfaces such as walls and floors. Then we worked the short and long Ax hand on a partner for practice then as a line drill using a sinawali figure of eight motion on the spar-pro for impact.

The presentations continued with a ground fighting module from Mika who showed us various methods of fending from the floor and also some excellent close ground grappling techniques that employed the tactics of biting and gouging all real world stuff.