Personal Defense Readiness - Training at Speed

Here's another important video from the Personal Defense Network. Why don't you go ahead and just run us through what that close quarter form is gonna look like. Jason, go ahead and throw the helmet on and walk us through that. Again, we'll get back ready into our training situation. I'll take your watch for you. Sure. And let you guys run through that whole process. What you'll learn, as you get a chance to get to one of Rob's courses, or one of our courses, or anyone that's using the High Gear equipment, is there's a very important initial phase called the threshold drill. The threshold drill basically says, I'm gonna go for speed, but, how much power can my role player take? So somebody who's smaller is gonna take less power, less follow through, than somebody that's bigger. So every move that you're gonna practice, you're always gonna do a threshold drill. As an example, if we just were starting with the encroachment, Jason would move in, we'd index here. This move really doesn't hit, this was a stop. But my next shot, the palm strike, I would go maximum speed, but no power. So the movement would look like this, and I would ask my partner, how's the follow through? So, it'd be here, and I'd be asking him what's the follow through like on that. "How's that feel?" A little bit more. A little bit more. So I'm only giving him incremental. And I'm coming in there, and that's probably the energy transferring through there. He's probably gonna say that was okay. Uh huh. At this point here, you would then back track, and you would put that together. So it would be encroachment, I'm hands up, and I'm doing this, and I'm moving in. I'm getting right on the person. But, if we ask Jason, who can talk through this, Jason, how are you doing? Pretty good. Pretty good. He's there, but can you imagine, now I always love asking this question, if I took the helmet off and I did that rep, how many reps do you think we could do? And the answer is always- One. One rep. So it's the same thing. That would be the index palm. Move in a bit closer. So, let's say I've knocked him back, and somehow however mean and violent this guy is, that shot didn't stop him. I want you, as hard as you can, as fast as you can, big hay-maker. So, you can see the impact here was much more significant that time. Big collision. I'm feeling' it on my arms. But my role player can do that over and over again. So we can get force on force reps, where now we're working the different tactics. And we would go through, you know, let's bring it down to the knee, but we'll go to, instead of, I always avoid contact with a friend, whether it's a training partner or family member I'm training. Contact to the head, we always say, should be accidental or incidental. So, if I were going to hit him in the head, I wouldn't do any real follow through. It would be more of a quick shot. When I'm just, as soon as I feel that plastic, I'm backing off. Just because we don't know what's happening to my partner's brain at this point here. But we will practice follow through to the chest, to the body. So, if we simulated from here, if you remember in the form, I stopped the guy, I'm coming up over, I've hit here and now I'm doing the knee. Threshold drill says I'm gonna go speed, so, I'm gonna go speed and contact. Okay, I think I followed through a bit too much on that one. So, Jason, how'd that feel? Okay, any deeper on that? No. Okay, so he's saying no. So, I would practice from here. And I would just be nailing the guy. But here, I'm really getting' core and really driving in there. The next phase, stand up for me, the next phase from that would be to take it, so we wanna, we wanna build the movement so it's kinda like a succession, so we're not just doing single insolations. So we're simulating in the form that the tackle came in. And what we're doing, is from here, so put a little bit more energy on me, I'm driving the guy off. I'm actually force on force. Okay, hop up, Jason. Thank you. You can see where that's the real value of the gear. Is that you get to put all these things together. So, now we've seen the application of these techniques at speed here in the training scenario. Why don't we take the suit, and take you guys into a more realistic environment where we can simulate some attacks, and look at that next level of development in our training. That scenario. Putting everything into context. All right, Jason. You Okay? Yep. Okay, essentially, what happened there, I came through the door. Which in terms of personal defense stuff, I would always tell my students never to do, you know, clear your corners. For the purpose of the scenario, what I did is I was fidgeting with a key. I came around, and slowly do this, I got grabbed. The first thing I did in training, was grab my hands. Which is, if you remember from the instruction, we talked about flinch, cover your head, do what your body would do naturally. So slowly, hands come up. I grab my hand. I got jammed in the corner. Before I thought about doing anything martial art-y, I wanted to clear some space. So, there I used the outside 90. Get rid of my keys. I used the outside 90, splayed fingers, get outside 90, drive him away. Hey man, what are you doing over here? I told you not to park here anymore. This is my spot. Dude, give me a break. This I my spot. Dude, there's empty spots all over. Hey, man, what are you doing over here? I told you not to park here anymore. This is my spot. Dude, give me a break. We see here at the beginning of the scenario, Tony going into what is a natural body position for someone talking to you, or confronting you, in this public space like this. In today's society, we don't normally expect violent confrontation, and while this isn't tactical or defensive, it is pretty realistic for the start of a verbal confrontation that is going to become physical. This is my spot. Dude, there's empty spots all over. Now, at this point, of course, this is a choreographed scenario. It's a training environment, so we're never gonna get a 100% realistic, authentic flinch, but we still see, because we don't know exactly when the timing of Jason's attack on Tony is going to be. Some of those things. We see a sharp, lowering of center of gravity. And we see the hands kind of come in towards the head to protect the face. And then, when the motion starts again, you'll see that Tony will extend that and try to get into his protective spear position. So, here we're seeing the flinch, and we're gonna see the protection. At this point, Tony has achieved his great than 90 position, and is gonna start getting back in control. You can see that in an attempt to create space, by moving the opponent back, the opponent is now completely off balance, and Tony's gonna take a dominant position. It's closest weapon, closest target. Perfect example of that closest weapon, closest target idea. With an index palm with Tony's hand on his head, we know where the head is, and we throw that punch. And we see next, a shot to the mid section with the knee. Any attack that puts a lot of force on that mid section, the lower area of the ribcage, can effect the diaphragm and actually create a spasm, or a knocking the wind out of someone, which is going to give Tony a chance to get away. Hey, man, we gotta talk. What's up, dude? I told you. What's the matter, man? We gotta talk about this. What are you so upset...? You know what I'm upset about. Dude. I said, you know what I'm upset about. Jason, get off me me, man. Jason. What the hell's your problem? Just back off. Hey, man, we gotta talk. What's up, dude? I told you. What's the matter, man? We gotta talk about this. What are you so upset.... Once again, we see a natural body posture. We're not choreographing the defense. We wouldn't automatically, when someone we know comes up to us, go into a ready position. You know what I'm upset about. Dude. I said.... At this point, you can see that as part of Tony's flinch, his hands come up to protect himself and he intuitively goes to grab at the hands that are attacking him. And his hands come back down and make contact with the forearms of the attacker. You know what I'm upset about. Hey, Jason, get off me, man. At this point, Tony has been grabbed. The attacker has stood up over him and Tony's gonna go to his greater than 90 position to try to create space, create time and opportunity, to do something else. Closest weapon, closest target theory, hands go into the face, and that immediately becomes a hand attack to the face. A claw raking at the eyes, the face, the weak areas. Jason! Continuing that attack to the face gives Tony a second to get his bearings, to get his weight under him, to use the strength of his legs to push up and try to get into control. And as he braces himself on the table, he has the opportunity to continue his defense, or possibly escape. What the hell's your problem? In this case, Tony chose to strike one more time, wait till his opponent clearly had stopped his attack, and then stay close to his opponent, asking him what his problem was, trying to get his attention refocused on the fact that he needs to pay attention. Of course, this could be a friend. This could be somebody who just is doing something completely out of the ordinary. You're not necessarily going to want to hurt them, you just need to defend yourself. Just back off. You can see here, that after the attack is stopped and the attacker has demonstrated that he no longer poses a threat, or at least not an immediate threat, Tony's comfortable moving away from him, but he stays oriented towards the threat, and in that good lowered center of gravity, hands toward the threat defensive position, should that person just be faking it and decide to attack again. Check out more videos just like this one at the Personal Defense Network.