Hock Hochheim Seminar Photos

Hock Hochheim Seminar

Just spent a great weekend training with Hock Hochheim. We covered so much stuff my head is still spinning - unarmed, knife and stick work, as well as touching on aspects of firearms work. Hock is a funny guy, with a great collection of war stories and recollection from his days with the military and civilian police forces. Check out his website if you don't know who Hock is.

Day one started with Hock's dodge/evasion drill (no it's not jumping out of the way of a classic American car) against knife and stick. Then we went through his military knife fighting, which is brutal and to the point. No fluff here! We then work some stick fighting combos from Kali and Escrima, including some great chokes and takedowns with the stick. Then we learned stick disarms.

Day two included Hock's Spartan series of drills, more stick work, lots more knife including disarms and knife grappling!

We worked through Hock's Stop 6 theory and much more, so much it was going in one ear and pushing day one's material out of the other ear.

Hock is a CQC legend and a character, if you get a chance to train with him, do so (it's well worth it).

Legal Denfense and Verbal Judo

I've just been reading an article about Queensland Ambulance Officers being taught self defense and "verbal judo", or the art of verbal de-escalation (what we used to call 'talking your way out of it'). After spending the other weekend learning the principles and praxis of verbal de-escalation from Richard Dimitri, it is re-assuring to see the Emergency Services also see this as a desirable skill (the article mentions that the Qld Police also receive this training).

According to the article:

There were 56 assaults on Queensland paramedics in the financial year ending June 2008, including 11 in the southeastern region alone.

But the figures do not include incidents like the one on the Gold Coast, where ambulance officers were threatened, but not physically assaulted.

LHMU state organiser Jason Dutton estimated the trend was continuing with about 20 attacks in Queensland within the last six months, including one paramedic who suffered a fractured jaw after being struck by a drug-affected patient on the Sunshine Coast.

"At one stage it was just the culture, you expected to be targeted, but paramedics just want to do their job, be safe and go home at the end of the day and that shouldn't be an unreal expectation,'' he said.

"People have left their jobs because they were assaulted, which is a terrible thing."

Recently at a 'Street Edge' class at Defensive Measures International, our teacher Paul Johnstone, read out advice on the legalities of self defense from the QPS (Qld Police Service) website on your rights of self defense if violently attacked or threatened. I've tracked down the page to share here as it is specific to Queensland where I live. I highly recommend that you check the legalities of self defense in your jurisdiction rather than taking the advice of some self defense or martial art authority who lives in a different area, which may have different laws.

The QPS website says:

Physical Self Defence

In Queensland you have the right to physically defend yourself with reasonable force, provided that this force is authorised, justified or excused by law. It is not necessary to attend self defence classes or undertake martial arts training to be able to effectively defend oneself. Each person has a survival instinct that acts to preserve their safety if threatened. The determining factor as to whether a person can successfully defend themselves is their commitment to their own personal safety.

It also gives the go ahead for the use of improvised weapons in a situation, but firmly rules out premeditated carrying of weapons for the purpose of self defense:

Weapons

Depending on the situation, weapons may be used in self-defence. Items such as a pen, keys, hairbrush, (in fact, nearly any nearby object) can be used as an effective weapon. Remember to emphasise however, that the force used must be authorised, justified or excused by law.

As a rule, the law generally does not allow the carrying of anything that can be described as a weapon. This includes mace, spray dyes, most personal alarms, or any other items which have been specifically adapted, such as sharpened combs, knives carried for the purpose of self defence etc.

I recommend reading the whole article if you are Queenslander wanting to know your rights in relation to self defense.

For further information relating to assault and the legal defenses of 'self defense' and 'provocation' I would refer the (Qld-based) reader to the Criminal Code which can be found here.

Knowing the law and your rights is one less impediment to action should you be confronted. You do have the right to defend yourself physically if neccessary, but must do so in accordance with the rule of law.

Hopefully you never need this information...But ignorance is no Bliss!

Warriors at War Update

Chris "Nemesis" Jones has just informed me he has been challenged to a rematch by his recently defeated opponent. Apparently the fight is happening in May. No doubt the other guy is training hard and trying to learn from his mistakes. And I know Chris will be re-doubling his training efforts too. The other guy will probably try to use his reach advantage this time and I know Chris will be working to crash through the opponents guard into close quarter range in order to neutralise this reach difference. I look forward to Chris' next victory in May.

Warriors at War

This entry is a congratulations to Chris "Nemesis"Jones for his victory in his first ever Kick Boxing bout in last night's main event, Warriors at War at the Broncos Leagues Club. Chris has been training like a man possessed and it has paid off for him in his victory over a much younger and much taller opponent.

Round one saw Chris taken to the ground a couple of times by his opponent catching his kicks. It wasn't looking good by the end of this round, which went to his opponent. In Round Two Chris finally realised that this was a fight not a sparring match and got stuck in. Their were some great punches and knees throw by both contenders, but due to his level of controlled aggression Chris took this round.

At the beginning of Round Three, I turned to Dan, a mate of Chris and myself, and said to him that Chris really needed to take the other guy out, because if it went to points it could be a close thing.

Well Chris didn't disappoint, he came out hard and fast. He landed some hard hits, which took his opponent to a seven count early in the round. Then a little later a series of knees to his opponents torso took most of the fight out of the other guy. Then seconds later another knee to the body and one to the head ended the fight, with the Ref calling a TKO.

Good stuff Chris. Everyone keep an eye out for Chris in the future and an ear out for his theme tune, the sound of Gyuto monks chanting exploding into the Disturbed's "Down with the Sickness".

In talking to Chris after the fight he says he realised he had a lot more training to do. And knowing Chris, he will set to training with renewed vigor and a determination that will see him go far.

When has the fight really begun?

I spent yesterday attending Richard Dimitri's first ever presentation of his Walk the Talk seminar at Defensive Measures International's training facility in Brisbane, where I train a few times a week.

This seminar dealt with pre-fight cues and in building perceptual speed, rather than physical speed. Perceptual speed is the ability to rapidly see the physiological changes that occur in an opponent's body prior to him attacking you. Instead of looking at the opponent's chest for the first sign of a strike, you are holistically viewing the opponent looking for the 'tells' (as they call these signs in poker) that he is about to preemptively strike you. Then you can seize the initiative and strike the first blow instead. These 'tells' are subtle, like a wrinkling of the forehead or a tightening of the lips, changes to skin colour and many more. You then look for signs of 'winding up' and weight placement to indicate what strike the opponent will likely attack you with. What is his closest weapon and what is your closest target? How does your current posture pre-dispose the opponent to attack in certain ways rather than others. This teaches you to use a de-escalation stance as a form of 'target denial'.

Rich then gets you to experience who you react when you are on the verge of attacking someone, so you can see it through the attacks eyes and also to teach you about self control (so you don't snap and become a homocidal maniac), using a unique drill called the 'emotional invocation drill' which is very confronting but also very rewarding.

The aim of this seminar is to teach you the real dynamics and evolution of a real street fight. This is not really a 'martial arts' seminar as such, at least not in my view. This is for those who want to understand 'real violence' and as such I would highly recommend it to those whose jobs bring them face to face with violence on a regular basis, as well as those who realise that traditional martial arts training methodologies do not equip you for real world fighting (But hey don't take my word for it, check this article by kung fu master ZHAO DAOXIN). There is a vast gulf between a consentual 'match fight' scenario (like a muay thai fight or UFC) and getting mugged at 3am in a dark alley when you are tired, alone and likely to end up dead or in hospital if you make the wrong choices. As Rich says always assume the other guy has friends with him and is armed. If you are wrong, then this is good news!

You've just been Shredded

Yesterday I had the pleasure of training with Richard 'The Shredder' Dimitri, doing his 'On the Cutting Edge' seminar. It was fantastic!!! Richard is not only extremely knowledgeable about self defense techniques and psychology, he is also a really humble, nice, down-to-earth guy who kept us laughing and learning all day.

A lot of reality based self defense instructors are stern and serious characters who portray a tough guy image like it's their personal armour, not so Richard, who is completely approachable and open to new ways of doing things if they are better than the existing methods. Not many people are so egoless that they can do this.

The 'On the cutting edge' seminar itself started with the verbal confrontation stage of a street fight with us attempting to AVOID the fight by verbal deescalation. If we could successfully do this or run away, this was encouraged. I was taught for the first time exact strategies, what to say and what not to say, to prevent the conflict going physical. Many martial arts and self defense programs pay lip service to escape and avoidance, but far fewer actually train it. They teach you to fight, and seeing as how you react like you train in real situations, this means that if you are verbally confronted there is a huge chance that you'll consciously or unconsciously escalate the confrontation to a situation of physical violence. You may naturally slide into an aggressive stance, cuing your assailant that you intend to get physical, which in turn turns on their adrenaline and makes them predisposed to a pre-emptive attack (see my earlier post on sucker punches).

Richard made a great point when he said you need to avoid contradicting or commanding the other person if you want to deescalate. For example if he says "you were looking at my girl friend" and you say "no I wasn't", you have contradicted him and given him an indication that this conversation isn't going to be resolved verbally. What happens next, he says "yes you did" BAM!! He's smashing you in the face with the sucker punch...

Or you command him, probably unintentionally, by saying "It's ok mate, just calm down" and BAM!!! Fist to your face...

So we practiced verbal deescalation drills. Then we practiced working out, on the fly, if the opponent could be verbally deescalated or if he was determined to attack us. So if he was, as Richard says, "a nice guy having a bad day or an arsehole". If we gave him a face saving way out and he didn't take it, he's an arsehole, so then knowing a fight was inevitable, we started transitioning into preemptive strikes. Richard employs timing and non-telegraphic movement to palm strike to the face as an entry method to move into Shredding. Even when he told us that he was going to hit us, we still couldn't see it coming or avoid the strike.

Just a note, this isn't designed for match fighting, it is a specialised tool for preemptive striking in a street style encounter only. It is as much about understanding the dynamics and psychology of this type of encouter, it is more than just 'a move' or 'secret technique'.

After getting this down, we moved into how to 'Shred' and having had Richard do this to me (to show me what I was doing wrong when attempting it), I can tell you it is frighteningly effective and just plain frightening. It is more akin to being mauled by a pit-bull than fighting a human being and this is what makes it so effective. You do not have a program for dealing with this. The close range ripping, tearing, gounging and striking is not what most people (even or especially trained fighters) expect. People expect kick, puch, trap or grapple, not a rabid lunatic, Hannibal the cannibal motherf*cker growling and biting your cheek off while gouging out you eye and tearing out your throat!!! This stuff is wild and feral and scary.

I didn't see a single person out of a room of training fighters who could stop the preemptive hit and no-one could manage any kind of defense against it. No Brazilian Jujutsu moves, striking or even reaching for a weapon occurred, just people falling into the fetal position and hoping this guy would stop soon.

After learning Shredding, we then applied this concept to static knife defense situations. We started with working out which way to move the knife through analysis of the knife's most dangerous angle of attack and then blocking that line and moving the knife in the opposite direction. Then we learned to anchor the knife and shred the opponent using the knife hand as our anchor.

Throughout the seminar Richard constantly emphasised the futility of violence and the possibility of it destroying your life even if you win. Covered were topics such as legal ramifications, revenge attacks and post-traumatic stress disorder.

This seminar was all about one thing, surviving real world violence. I would highly recommend this seminar to anyone serious about this topic.

Thanks to Richard Dimitri, Dom (for lending his body for research purposes) and Paul Johnstone of Defensive Measures International for making this seminar happen. And now I'm off to attend another day with Richard, who is offering his 'Walk the Talk' seminar for the first time ever. Should be interesting...