Drill Post #13: Defending the Attack

This will relate back to drill post #7 where the trainee sometimes has to switch up from attack to defense, but in a more concentrated way.

This may be done initially without footwork, but after working it in a stationary fashion, it should be done with the trainer moving the footwork around freelance.

Staying just INSIDE the fighting measure where the either of you can reach with a strike without having to step in to do so, the trainer has his hands somewhat up, but a bit wide and low so as to give the trainee available targets. The trainee throws a consistent flow of strikes using training targets (such as a light palm contact to the neck of the trainer, or the chest), and periodically the trainer (who is not defending) throws a strike or two at the same time as the trainee is striking, forcing him to choose appropriate defenses with his striking or passive hand (or bob and weaving).

Many martial systems have simultaneous defense and attack as part of what they do, but attack and simultaneous defense is not the same mental skill, and the reason to do this drill. Note that in many fights, both swing away and one gets knocked for a loop just out of happenstance.

Drill Post #12: Sandbag Training

Hitting a sandbag feels better to me than a heavy bag or banana bag. Mine is up against a beam so there's no swing, and I like how little it gives. Years ago I used it with my first teacher's training medicine for conditioning and though I don't use medicine anymore, I still like hitting it without gloves for a certain amount of conditioning. Furthermore, what I like to do are freelance variations with hand, elbow and forearm strike and straight blast combinations close to the bag; think "inch punching" but using the full range of strikes instead of just the straight punch. Try combinations where your striking tools start from three to six inches away from the bag. Remember that if you are punching for a neck or throat, or elbowing a temple, you don't need the most loaded up variation possible.

Drill Post #11: Shadowboxing

I doubt that I need to explain the value of shadowboxing to anyone interested in these posts. The way I'll suggest rounds of shadowboxing will mirror some of the partner training we've covered up to this point.

- Round one: Just footwork. Make sure that any piece of footwork is connected to any other. That is, if you have, say, six most basic bits of footwork (step/slide advance, step/slide retreat, side step right, side step left, slide;/step advance, slide/step retreat), then that makes thirty six possibilities. No need to put it in a series, just make sure that you are playing with it and covering the variations.

- Round two; Hand strikes. Whatever you want to be part of your arsenal, throw it in there, jab variations (finger jabs, palm jabs, vertical and corkscrew), crosses, short and long hooks, high and low strikes, elbows, "miscellaneous" strikes such as whip hand/finger fan, scrapes. Mix steady and broken rhythms. In other words, a jab, cross, hook smoothly, and sometimes half of the jab or cross before the following strike.

- Round three: Kicks. Just loosely combining kicks and making sure to be able to lead kick to lead kick, lead to rear, rear to rear, and rear to lead, including advancing, stationary, angling variations.

- Round four: Defense. Combining footwork with hand and kick defenses.

- Round five: Putting it all together. Just like with the focus gloves/mitts, you want to move from offense to defense with hands and feet, sometimes interrupting one thing to continue with another. For example, half way to the completion of your jab, you retract it to a modified cover or a bob and weave, imagining that the opponent's hook was going to nail you before your jab landed.

The rounds don't have to be long, but it's good to work through different areas of focus.

Drill Post #10: Focus Mitt Training

Few non-JKD martial artists acknowledge that the use of boxing focus mitts in Asian martial arts was started by Bruce Lee. The initial method Lee and his students used was very crude; single targets and simple combinations. The methods evolved very quickly, but there is still a base level of use that is not common amongst the many systems now using focus mitts. Hand attack, hand defense, kick attack and kick defense are the four categories of stand-up fighting that we want to be able to flow between. It is assumed for this post that the trainee has trained the attacks and defenses that would be worked with here. The "feeding" by the trainer is at least as much of a skill as the trainee responding smoothly. The trainer should smoothly move between the four categories above, so that, for example, he holds the mitts for a hand attack combination, possibly switching up on the last punch of a combination to make the trainee miss and flow into another hand combination, or a kick, or at the beginning, middle or end of his hand combination the trainer throws a hand attack to make sure the attacker is able to defend his attack. The meaning of "smoothly" is that the trainer keeps the trainee moving with no pause for a response of at least three "change-ups," that is moving from one category to another. If the trainee gets to pause or cruise between each new thing to respond to, then the trainer is not doing his job. [Here comes the plug...] That's the focus of my Essential Self Defense Vol. 2 tape (still haven't heard whether the company that owns the rights will properly put them into DVD format. Don't order DVDs of my Essential Self Defense 1-4 series from Beckett Media until I can confirm that they have done this. At present they offer this series on-line, but are putting the wrong DVDs in the boxes if you can believe that).

The trainer may present everything as a visual cue, or he may also call out combinations as well as, for example, tapping his thigh with a glove as a signal for the the trainee to throw a controlled no-power round/hook kick to the trainer's thigh. That would be an example of a mitt hold that is not not recommended because they require too much accuracy from the trainee when going for power. Properly done, this training can provide much of the value of sparring without the wear and tear.

Drill Post #9: I "Heart" Foul Tactics

So, as we've mentioned, that list of illegal/foul tactics that are part of sport combat MMA contests are what are known as (and should be sung to) "My Favorite Things." And again, before the MMA crowd gets their panties all up in a bunch, this is not to deny any of the many valid methods of that crowd, but it does go back to our view of costs versus benefits (how labor intensive is it to functionalize a tactic/technique versus another that will give you as good a result, our primary goal being the ending of someone's attack).

When taking someone through a progression of training, I don't like to wait too long before dealing with some standing vernacular grappling. By that I mean the "tent hug" mutual bear hug that guys often get into when the punching ranges collapse into a chest-to-chest scenario. This happens easily when one or both of the people fighting don't manage to control their effective punching range because they are both trying to agress. (We're assuming in this case that neither party is deliberately trying to crash/shoot in to grapple). It just takes an instant of inattention for this to happen.

Before I work with this material, I always like to ask a student what his instincts are when the bear hug-ish situation occurs, and by and large, when I bear-hug them (under their arms at first) they bear-hug back. The central point being that they respond with a defensive, not particularly effective thing. I then ask what the closest thing is that they can effectively attack. They may mention some decent possibilities, but not they ones I want to ingrain first. That's when I point out that the hand on the same side of my head (i.e. their right hand if my head is to the right of their head) is free to thumb an eye or attack the windpipe. These are the primary targets most easily available.

To drill this into instinct, the trainer throws a flow of very controlled light punches at the trainee who is up against a wall and not allowed to simply evade. On occasion, the trainer will start to "get messy" as in drill post #8, and although knees and close hand counter-strikes are good to do, the trainer will go for the under arm bear-hug and ideally the trainee will have his hand on the trainer's throat or thumb on the eye brow (the training target for thumbing the eye) before the bear hug is on. At that point the trainer gets pushed back into elbowing/striking range, so the trainee executes available variations. Do I need to say that both partners have to really control the contact? Light to no contact is the name of the game here. The Thais have drills they lump under the category of "Play/timing" and that's what we're after here.

Drill Post #8: Finger Wrench Drill

Of all the joint-manipulations/locks possible, the one that would be at the top of my Most Useable list would be a finger wrench. Going back to our observations regarding human combative instincts, it's clear that people reach out with their arms both in offense and defense, and often hands are open at that point. If you have "crashed the line," that is you are now in past the fighting measure and touching your opponent, you may have a finger available to grab and manipulate (a nice way to say "break or wrench"). As a general rule it will be when the inside of your arm is in contact with their limb and it is a quick slide down to get their finger before they know what's happening. For example, when executing a palm hook, if the opponent tries to obstruct with either a cultivated block or an instinctive defensive motion, a slide down the point of contact to the finger grab is viable. Other scenarios are equally good, such as a jackass pointing his finger at you in confrontation. It's not easy to accurately describe the way I like to train this, but give this a try; the trainer is grabbing/pushing the trainee in a messy way, and the trainee/defender, while looking for the most direct counter-attacks will grab the finger when that opportunity is presented (which the trainer insures will happen by sometimes actually in the mess of things putting his finger in the trainees palm). It's really interesting how many times, when doing this training at first, that I can say "freeze, now tell me what the closest thing is you can attack?" to a student, and they will point out three or four things they could do before I point out that my finger is actually in their hand.

As for the proper way to bend a finger, do not just grab the finger and point it back away from you, but (if, say, your right hand has grabbed his left index finger) use the little finger of your grabbing hand as a fulcrum to focus into the back of his knuckle as the index finger end of your fist bends it back towards him as you take the whole thing down to the ground while paying attention to move back and guard that he doesn't smack you with his other hand before the "point of no return."

Drill Post #7: Flow Training Between Defense and Offense

First, let's combine the drills from posts #2 and #4, so that the trainer is moving the trainee around and having him look for the close evasion and reposte, continuous evasion and the stop-hit, and then sometimes as the trainee is striking back (just as his stop-hit is landing, for example), the trainer, WITHOUT DEFENDING, keeps a continuous series of strikes going so that the defender/trainee has to go into a defensive flow like in post #4 for four or five strikes before the trainer relieves the pressure enough so that that he can go back to the "Frankenstein" scenario. It's fine, and of course recommended, that during the trainee's defense he is "time-hitting," that is striking back simultaneously with his defense. I have also referred to time-hitting as "sectoring" on the DVD of that name, and while I won't be going into an in-depth exposition here, I will say that if you are doing the cover as I describe in drill post #4, your free hand can either monitor the trainer's non-striking hand if it is up, or you can put it can in the trainer's eyes or throat (touch the chest or throat for training targets). Remember that when attacking eyes or throat, you don't need full-body power mechanics to make it count, so you don't have to disrupt your defensive structure. In the next drill post, we'll add some stop-gap foul tactics (AKA "Some of My Favorite Things") into the drill.