UC Seminar in France

On the 27th and 28th of February this year UC was hosted for the first time in Tours, France. We held a two day event with day one covering the basic foundational Game Plan aspects of UC such as Personal Security "soft skills" based around situational awareness and threat recognition, then into the more Combative aspect of "hard skills" driven via the tactics of pre-emption and continuous attack.

From here we looked at vertical counter grappling and working from ECQ from a stand up perspective as soon as two combatants clash. Here we employed such counter offensive options as ballistic manipulation, use of the environment, biting and gouging. All were employed in order to get to the primary option- "making space for ballistic impact".

Day two was dedicated entirely to dealing with multiple assailants, looking at the essential Combative principles for dealing with the pack mentality namely; the need to be pro-active in response along with the essentials of priority positioning and mobility backed up with the essential requirement of keeping your head "Mindset."

From here we covered a variety of 2-on-1 and 3-on-1 drills as well as methods of Self Preservation during a possible crowd incident or mass attack. As always we broke down the structure of such scenarios, drilled our responses then took them straight into scenario training with good effect.

The guys in France came from a myriad of experience including Krav Maga, Boxe Thai or Thai boxing, Savate and Senshido. Practically all of these guys had had the great experience of training with the excellent Fred Perrin, a superb Close Combat instructor and knife maker from Paris. I have been a fan of Fred's work for some time and have many of his tools in my collection of KIT (: Everyone here had great familiarity with the knife, both as a natural tool and its weapon potential.

What struck me most about this beautiful part of France was just how friendly everyone was, everywhere you went people would smile and chat. For someone that travels the European circuit quite a lot it was a refreshing change from the usual reception you get in bigger city places. My thanks goes out to my host Jeff and to all who took part in the training and showed me such great hospitality. I look forward to further events in the future.

LM.