Close Quarters Defense & Entanglement

Now we're gonna look at the entanglement process. Obviously if Rob throws a blow on me and continues to start hitting me with both hands, we're gonna end up probably in some type of tangle of limbs and we need to make sense of this to be able to access our handgun. Now, a lot of times what we see especially in a contact range of assault such as a knife. Rob may initiate with a blow where he hits me, I take that shot, I'm semi-conscious, he's drawn a knife while I'm somewhat semi-conscious. We tangle and I don't realize I'm getting stabbed okay, and this happens repeatedly. So whatever we do in the tangle, has to account for always the presence of a weapon. A knife possibly coming out perhaps a knife that we miss or any other type of contact range weapon a gun, that's coming out of a waistband even. We need to think about arm controls. So, a couple of things in our tangle. What we're gonna look at is first of all posture. Now I've spoke on posture just a bit and that we want the hip squared and the pelvis lowered, ideally lower than his. We don't wanna turn our hips and get bladed to the point where I'm hopping on one foot once again as Rob is bowling me over especially on my gun side. So, what we're gonna look at doing is defining the entanglement. Now I'm gonna give you four tools to work with very, very simple tools. Anytime my hands are between Rob's arms and Rob's body where, I am reaching up and I am grabbing his shoulder. Notice my elbow is in here. We're gonna refer to that as an underhook, okay. So, I have an underhook I may have a single underhook or I may have double underhooks but my arms are between his arms and his body. Anytime Rob's arms are between my arms and my body where I'm topping the elbow and my elbow is in, we'll refer to that as an overhook. So we have two hooks in our catalog, underhook and overhook. Anytime I take control of Rob's arms at the bicep and I drive his arm back away from his hip, we're gonna call that a bicep tie. And anytime I take control of Rob's arms at the wrist, we're gonna call that a wrist tie. So we have four tools, two hooks and two ties. Underhook, overhook, bicep tie and wrist tie. What I don't want Rob to get is his arms between my arms and my body or I don't want him to be able to achieve underhooks. This is problematic from a postural standpoint. If Rob has two underhooks on me, you'll notice it's not very far for him to shift down to where he's encircling my waist, bows my spine by surging up and now I've lost my balance and I'm entangled and falling, okay. The other problem in the weapons based environment that we operate in is, any time Rob's hands are between my arms and my body, he has much more access to my equipment. Also, in the drag race to a knife or a gun if Rob's hands are between my arms and his body then I have a much harder time fouling him if he tries to go back and grab something around his waist. He'll always get there first. So, what we wanna look at is trying to keep him from encircling our waste and make sure that we have that good underhook position. So this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna learn our overlooks by a Greco-Roman wrestling drill called pummeling or swimming for underhooks. Now what's gonna happen is, Rob will take an underhook on me. I will take an underhook on him on the opposite side. So we're in a neutral position essentially. I have an underhook, Rob has me locked in with an overhook where he's cupping my elbow with his hand and I'm in the same position. Now, what my objective is to do is to get out of this and we're training together to learn that inside position. So I will take the bladed edge of my hand insert it right here in the crook of his elbow just like so and drive downwards with my weight. Rob we'll do the same thing on his side, where now he has the underhook position and I have the underhook position on the opposite side. And if you'll notice in this motion what we're gonna do is just go back and forth for a minute or two. Where we just hobble. And I achieved this position where we just pummel and I achieved this position. And we pummel and I achieved this position. And we pummel and this is a conceptual thrill and we're just trying to really learn how to get on the inside right, okay good. So, one to learn that underhook mainly because we don't want that or between our arm and our body, our arm and our gun. Now, ideally what we achieve is a hook and tie position specifically, I would like an under hook on my non-gun side and either a bicep or a risk tie on my gun side. That position, the optimal position would be here where I have an underhook. And I have either a bicep or a risk tie dropping my weight with my head right here. Notice the position of our hips. The reason I want this is because it allows me a number of options. It allows me to escape to the underhook side. It allows me if my head is on the tie side, it allows me to escape okay, to the tie side depending on which side I get my head caught on I can escape to either side. If I can't escape to either side, what this allows me to do is get a tie up where I will encircle his waist, drive this back, capture this arm thus bring up my gun arm and accessing my pistol on the clench, okay. So I've got two hands tied up for that split second enough to get those shots on him. Now you notice where this hand is and the relationship of the muzzle. Again, another reason we really wanna define that number two angle because everything is so close in here, there's very little margin for error. So, the other thing this allows me to do if I strictly have empty hands is to go to some type of attached striking gang. Where, I may take the same tie up but instead of accessing my pistol maybe I just punch him in the face. And then try and get my escape and then try and access my handgun, okay. So, looking at the clench again we have four tools or entanglement. We're looking at the underhook, keeping my elbow in. Just like so. We have the overhook which is not preferred where, I am trying to counter by cupping his elbow here, him from withdrawing that hand okay and getting to anything he may have. Or, creeping his hand on down along my waist to try and keep him from accessing my handgun. We have the bicep tie which is again a very needed tool. One of the main reasons we need a bicep tie in the catalog is because it stops this kind of motion. And finally we have the wrist tie which allows me to get control of his hand and move that hand from point A to point B, as if I were trying to control the muzzle the handgun he may be holding. So four tools altogether. Under hook, overhook, bicep tie and wrist tie with the preferred combination being the hook and tie. So, putting that together with our default position an example of that may be when I'm managing that unknown contact, Rob comes up and swings on me boom thrown here as quickly as possible. I need to try and establish that position and dominate this clench positionally. Because I don't wanna stay here. Ideally I wanna get out and maybe get rounds on him while I'm there, from a good safe position. Now we're gonna look at escaping an entanglement. We've made sense of this tangle by defining the arm positions. And we've told you exactly where we want you to go to establish the best position for the widest number of options whether that's shooting him while entangled, or escaping. So the first thing that we gonna talk about is escaping. Now, basically what keeps me from escaping is Rob's arms. Now, ideally what I wanna do is I would like to get to Rob's back before I unentangle. The reason for that is I don't wanna break range in front of his hands. Such as, if this is just some kind of empty hand assault okay, but I feel the need to break range. Even if I do that, if Rob is a good puncher and I break range right in front of his hands here boom, I eat that shot. If Rob has a knife maybe in this hand and historically we've been taught probably break range, get the gun blah blah blah something like that. If Rob's got this knife and maybe I've got to wrist ties and I'm trying to keep him desperately from sticking me again, and I break range to go to the gun I'm just gonna get one down and stubbed. So, or if there's a pistol involved. Let's say I felt Rob go to his waistband to try and withdraw that pistol I've chased it and I'm gonna try and break range in front and go to my own he's probably gonna get the gun out first. So, by getting to Rob's back and getting to some position here, at least if he want us to do any of those three things what does he have to do? He has to turn into me and I bought myself a split second of time to get through those layers of concealing clothing. So, we wanna get to his back ideally before we actually break an entanglement. So let's talk about how to do that. The arms are what keeps me from going directly to his back. Now I can go one of two places. I can either go under Rob's arm. If I escape like that we're gonna call that a duck under or, I can move Rob's arms enough out of the way to just step into him and step around it. And we're gonna call that an arm drag. So, only two ways to escape. Now, when we talk about escaping let's look at the duck under first. Typically where we see this come in and I'll give you a number of ways, if a guy grabs me in one of those crazy Hillbilly Headlocks, here. You'll notice that Rob's elbow is up, okay. And I told you before we wanna keep the elbows down when we're doing our clench work so nobody can escape under our arms. If he gives me this okay, he gives me what I refer to as a lazy elbow. That's no problem if he's trying to bulldog and drag me down to pop that here and get to the gun, okay. Maybe there's a second guy coming in and that's why I'm going to guns now. If I really get a good angle on Rob while I'm trying to pummel or swim from an overlook to an underhook. Quite often if I drive him back enough and level change just right and throw that arm up, I'll get under that arm, okay. Now, I'm at Rob's back now you'll notice also when I'm doing this, we have hand control. 'Cause this is a chasing hands drag race to a weapons kind of gang. So I'll always have to maintain whatever Rob does with his hands, I may have to chase them depending on what's going on as far as what's coming our way or what he has in his hands. So, swimming or bumping with the lazy elbow. The other place duck unders come in is if I have Rob in a risk tie and I just raise this arm up as I squat and throw his arm over my head. Or, if Rob has me in a wrist tie maybe Rob's got my wrist. Maybe I've pulled my handgun let go, I pulled my handgun. Rob averted back here just for a second, just like someone so he's got ahold of my wrist. If I know that I've got this duck under available, well it's no problem for me to slip under take that off my head, take that shot, get out and start working him at range. Which is where I'd like to be. So, four ways to look at the escaping with a duck under. The arm drag is nothing more than where I release with this hand, cup his elbow, move this arm enough out of the way to step in and capture his hips. So, let's say I can't get this duck under by raising this up and Rob's pulling the other way what I'm gonna do is come across, capture his elbow and then quickly sweep that across his body here where I'm attached and now past his arms. And I can start working my way around to that preferred position to escape from. So we have two techniques. We have a duck under, which takes us under the arm. We have an arm drag where I'm moving the arm enough out of the way to be able to stick to him past that arm and move around to his back. Both of those are two basic escapes.