Personal Defense Readiness - Close Quarter Form

Here's another important video from the Personal Defense Network. One of the best ways to practice all the tools that we've already demonstrated, you just put them together and visualize a scenario. We call this the close-quarter form. And what I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna have Robin and Jason work with me so that you get all three angles. Okay guys, here's what we're gonna do. We're all gonna demonstrate the close-quarter form together. As you can see, I've got, Jason at my right, Rob's to my left. You're gonna be able to see in one take all three angles so you can help visualize this. Imagine a threat is coming towards you. Your hands are out of say 90 fingers are already split this is instinctive, this is intuitive. When push comes to shove and you need to defend yourself from our closest weapon, closest target. Index palm, palm strike, rotate your hips, lower your center of gravity. Come back into that spear frame, we call it combat stance. Visualize an attack from here. What you're gonna do is what we call a micro flinch, as you cover, and then drive your fore arms out. Again, keeping a lower center of gravity. Imagine the threat is still on you. And at this point here, you're gonna come up and strike up under the throat with a vertical elbow, and come back down and smack or rake the face. Imagine the threat is still on you. So you're pushing this person away from you. You're gonna come across with a horizontal elbow, always get your hips into your torso, using your core strength. Keep your center of gravity lower gravitated. Reaching for your seatbelt analogy, come right back, grab the face. Now, imagine, your attacker is panicking. They're trying to clench and grab you. You're gonna jam out, this is that outside 90 frame. I'm keeping the attacker off me. I'm gonna come up and lock and load a diagonal elbow, come across the back of the head or whatever target is open, grab the head, and then from here, I'm gonna drive in a quick short knee and push the threat away. And you would practice this over and over again both sides and be dextrous moving forward, circling, just to get comfortable with this. Yeah, what's great about the close-quarter form is remembering that, you need to visualize that threat. Actually think about someone on you and just see that person there, feel that impact as you extend through the different moves and different feelings that you're gonna get. When you actually have to deal with an actual threat. It's really important to do that while you're doing the close-quarter form. The next evolution for practicing your close quarter tools of course is with a partner. So you have the luxury of working with a friend. You're gonna grab your partner and you're gonna run through what we call a close-quarter form. But this time what you're doing is you're gonna make contact to the obvious target as we go out remember closest weapon, closest target. So in this case here what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna have Jason and Rob come together as two guys having an argument in the street and I'm gonna narrate a confrontation, watch out how slowly they go. What's vital here is that you work slowly and carefully. So Rob is the aggressor here, he's threatening Jason, he's trying to diffuse it. The diffuse is not happening. Robin crutches a little bit more Jason's hands are up, he index palms Rob when he feels that thread is too close. He's got to get him out of the way. From this position you could see his right hand is engaged and ready to go. So he's gonna drive his palm out of the way. And Rob goes back a little bit. Look how slow they're going. This is vital, if you're gonna practice this at home you actually want to imitate these positions because you're not sparring, you're not practicing boxing or kickboxing. Rob is gonna lock and load a haymaker and freeze right there. Notice how Jason did a micro flinch because this is a similar movement of, Oh man, here comes another attack. Your body braces for the attack. Rob slowly comes around for a haymaker and Jason intercepts with the classic spear outside 90 split fingers. Remember the extensor versus flexor rule, physiology rules here. And Jason has a much better position, He owns the inside. Rob, kind of psychologically is influx here, doesn't know why his attack is not working. Grabs on kind of in a panic bear hug to hold on Jason who is keeping him off and with the outside 90, but he sees again, CWCT. The attacker's throat or jar face is right adjacent to his right arm. He's gonna do a vertical elbow and come right back down with a rake or an index palm to the head. Rob is still again, imagine your attacker. Last time he attacked a good Samaritan in the street, his attack was successful. He's influx here, and this is vital to play into that. And it really helps organize why Rob is behaving like that. So from here, he's still trying to get in on Jason. Jason's gonna hit him with a horizontal elbow. Notice how little Jason has to move. That's the key thing what I was explaining earlier. Your attacker puts his targets right in front of your weapons. He comes back with that face wrap rake and now Rob is gonna come and in a panic go to tackle Jason who intercepts again with that outside 90 open hand position we call a half spear. He's now gonna lock, Jason is gonna lock and load a diagonal elbow. He's gone for the brachial, the back of the head, stuns his attacker, indexes the head, and you'll see CWCT kneed at the ahead. And the move stops right there. What's important here. You start thinking about what you saw and how this came together is the pace and the speed. You can understand the tools, you can understand mechanics. You can't go fast with this. You're working on target acquisition and really taking what you visualized and putting it into three-dimensional model. That's great. These drills are things that you can do at home. You can work with a family member, work with a friend. You can introduce someone to these concepts. Very simply, and the key is efficiency. The key is working with what your body does naturally. We always want to do that in the middle of the dynamic critical incident and finding a good, efficient way to train where you can really feel these things. And I'll tell you what, it's great to be on the bad guy side of this too because you get to feel how this is all going to play out. You really get both sides of it. It's important to switch back and forth and make sure that everybody gets the benefit of both visualizations. Check out more videos, just like this one at the Personal Defense Network.