UC Seminar in Finland

On the 20th and 21st of February 2010 in the city of Tampere, we presented the 2nd UC seminar in Finland. This was hosted by leading Finnish RBSD authority, Senshido affiliate and UC apprentice Instructor Ville K. This event was held over two days, with day one looking at Situational Offence geared specifically at Counter methods, for dealing with the trained MMA practitioner.

Understand how this subject was approached - all Combatives practitioners within UC have a massive respect for both the level of skill, and the outstanding levels of physical conditioning that these martial athletes actually have. Most of us within the Combatives fraternity follow the UFC and similar events with avid enthusiasm.

But it is common knowledge now that practically everyone and their sister is practicing Thai boxing, BJJ or some Mixed Martial Art influenced method of training, including those that seek out street violence as a regular past time. Not to mention either the normal regular MMA competitor who may, for whatever reason, "momentarily lose it", or the fact that the fan base watching televised MMA and UFC events is now so huge, that even the layman watching on the TV may feel he knows enough to try something in the street or during some kind of similar situation.

It's a fact that the modern threat to the average civilian, door supervisor or police officer is changing. Knife culture is as it is, and gun crime is on the rise. Domestic violence and street crime are ever consistent, but in addition to that, a lot of people out there are now learning to punch, kick, grapple and use an array of weapons like they were born to do it. Fact is, if you're not aware of just how the modern enemy is adapting, then you will get beaten by it.

So then, we looked first at the general skill level disparity, between the trained and untrained individual, particularly in relation to cultivating impact power, along with their capacity in terms of getting used to manhandling and being manhandled. We also looked at their general desensitisation to violence in general sport combat training terms, such as how familiar they are with getting hit.

We then moved onto our Combative options to common MMA attacks such as: the Thai kick, the clinch, and any kind of single/double leg takedown or leg pick up. In addition to common positions once you’ve hit the ground - namely the "ground and pound", the closed guard, passing the guard, the guillotine choke, the triangle choke, the arm bar, and the dreaded rear choke on the ground with the hooks in.

Needless to say, without going into the specifics of what we employed, you can safely assume that any of the common fouls that are not permitted in MMA competition - such as biting, gouging, eye attacks, groin attacks, small joint manipulation, throat attacks, striking the back of the skull/neck, spinal attacks, use of the environment, buddy tactics, and the use of weapons, deception and all means unfair were employed with a vengeance, in order to help make up for the disparity in skill and conditioning for the average Combatives practitioner.

What was evident is just why such fouls will most definitely change the MMA game significantly, hence why they are indeed fouls and forbidden in the first place. Several further conclusions were also met, namely situational offence of any kind is counter-offensive from a less than ideal perspective of lost initiative. In other words, you are now reacting to something someone is now doing to you. This, of course, is contrary to being proactive and less than ideal, but if you find yourself here you must have a response.

Secondly, if you face a good MMA guy on his own terms trying your hand at his game, there is a high probability that he will knock you out, choke you out or turn you into a pretzel. But if you employ these Combative tactics with a bone-deep meanness and a will to win at all costs, then you've got a chance.

Day two was specifically for Ville's club instructors, a few Krav Maga instructors and a couple of real world operatives. Here, the focus was on instructional enhancement, employing methods to install skill-sets quickly to accelerate learning using principles from NLP and Neural Based stress inoculation and scenario based training.

Overall this was both an extremely enjoyable and productive events for all who participated; may there be many more in Finland.

LM 2010