Close Quarter Battle Course

I've spent the last week training with Geoff 'Tank' Todd in his Phase 1 Close Quarter Battle system. This is a system of unarmed close combat derived from European military systems, such as those taught to Allied Service people in the Second World War. This system was pioneered by the likes of Fairbairn, Sykes, Applegate, Biddle, Nelson and others, and taught to the shadow warriors of the Special Operations Executive, OSS, Commando squads and other similar groups. More about this system can be found here.

Monday through Thursday was basic skills development, with Friday being spent on Test Preparation and the Phase Test.

The course initially covered basic options for Unarmed Offense and Counter-Offense, including long and short range options. In line with Tank's philosophy of 'take 'em out, don't take 'em on' this methods are designed to end a fight quickly and decisively. We followed on with contigency options, in case you fail to take out the opponent with your primary options. These included techniques for quickly ending a stalemate situation. Favoured techniques are those found in books such as 'Kill or be Killed', 'Do or Die', 'Get Tough', 'Defendu', 'The Red and Gray Manuals' & US Military Field Manuals on Combatives.

The system appears simple on the surface, but is designed to be reliable under extreme stress. Range is crucial, as is a correct mindset, use of vision, and control over breathing and heart rate.

Also covered were edged and blunt weapon disarming, both when the opponent presents the weapon and then swings or stabs, and when you find yourself held at knife point or pinned with a blunt weapon (ambush phase attacks).

Hold Prevention and Hold Escapes were covered. In hold prevention you don't let the opponent grab you. With hold escapes, you've stuffed up and been grabbed in a hold such as a full nelson, hammer lock, sleeper hold, headlock, bear hug, etc, and must now escape this hold. All responses are based on those learned in the Offensive and Counter Offensive phase. This is the great strength of the Todd System, it is cohesive and logical. It relies on dirty fighting, from a sound technical base.

The tone of the seminar is very military, with techniques being performed to command in a method reminiscient of my Army Basic Training. This method did seem to increase retention, even if you didn't feel you were retaining it at the time. But this training always feels that way to me.

Lastly we moved into Combat Milling (sort of sparring, but with no 'in-out' invloved. Geoff said sparring is too sport-oriented and against the ethos of CQB. For those familiar with Kapap, Combat Milling embraces the concept of Kadeema) and the free fighting aspects.

The Course started with about 28 participants, including Security professionals, Police from a number of States and Countries, Martial Art and Self Defense Instructors, and Civilians; but within the first couple of days, some had decided that CQB wasn't for them. By Friday afternoon, all but 8, having been warned of the intense nature of the Testing Phase and the high level of perfection required to pass, had elected not to test at this time. I think many were put off by the footage we were shown of previous tests.

The Eight Testees (not to be confused with 8 Testis which would be just plain weird) began testing late Friday afternoon, after a full day of intensive preparation.

The test phase started with a 'Combat Sickener', designed to rattle and fatigue the participants and test thier determination and 'intestinal fortitude', as Tank would say. Then all of the aforemention skills were tested and graded on a scale of 1 - 5, with anything less than a 4 being not good enough to pass. The Knife Disarms were done with a live (and very sharp) blade, with the course Doctor on standby (as he was for the entire course). The Knife used was Tank's Green Role Knife, which can be seen here.

By the end of the skills testing, Tank told us that only three of the eight of us had not already failed. When he read out my name, I was stoked, being sure I'd already failed. I had decided sometime earlier that I would keep going with the testing phase until told to stop. These participants were told they could still participate in the combat phase of the testing, but should take five minutes to weigh up whether the risk of serious injury was worth it, knowing they had already failed. Many participants had already been injured by this time.

All but one of them decided not to continue, which left only four of us (none of whom were the big guys and one of whomwas a lady). We then proceed to fight each other participant in continuous rounds. upon completion of these fights, we were told we had not yet sufficiently internalised the skills and mentality of CQB. The testing phase was now over, yielding a 100% failure rate. Some participants appeared sad or pissed off, I just felt elated that I had pushed my self to go on and had gotten that far. I asked for and received feedback as to what I could have done better, but also was told that I had looked calm, centered and wasn't breathing too hard, which I put down to the intensive nature of the Street Edge training I've done over the last couple of years.

All in all, I really enjoyed most of the course and am glad I had a go. Lots of people talk a good talk, but with this course it's 'put up or shut up', with nowhere to hide and no room for excuses and BS.

If this sounds like your cup of tea, then check out the website, www.toddgroup.com, now I'm off to rub some more liniment into my bruises...

To Tank, Shane-o, Doc, Rowdy, Gusto, Jonathon, Badass and the other instructors on the course, thanks for all your help and support during the course, and for pushing us when we needed it.

Kapap

Whilst many folks have heard about Krav Maga, not so many are aware of Kapap, short for Krav Panim El Panim. Kapap is possibly the oldest of the Israeli Martial Arts and is taught to Police and Counter Terrorism squads.

I recently attended an introductory class on Kapap, where some key concepts were introduced. Amongst them was the concept of Kadeema, meaning forward. It was explained that Kadeema referred to keeping on pushing through any barriers you encounter. It is similar to what I was taught in the Army about reacting to an Ambush. In an Ambush, we were told, there is only one way to go and that is Forward. You have to get through the Ambush if you hope to survive. Retreat will get you killed. Stopping will keep you in the 'killing ground' with predictable results.

We were also introduced to Kapap's system of Combat Conditioning, which included exercises such as the Frankenstein, which challenged my cardiovascular fitness.

Here is some footage of Kapap, to give you the flavour of this system.

I found the training to be as realistic as anything else I've experienced and hope to have a chance to learn some more.

In the beginning...

Fads come and go. And Martial Arts Fads are no exception. As a young kid growing up in the 70's and 80's, the first Martial Arts fad I remember was the Bruce Lee fad. Now even though Bruce died the year I was born, he himself was reborn with the advent of the VCR. Ahhh, those were the days... Months of School holidays each year with nothing to do but play 'Silly Buggers'. As an inner city vagabond child I wandered the neighborhood attempting to apply my (not so) lightning fast killer Kung Fu moves on my friends and the other neighbourhood kids.

The next major fad came with the release of Enter the Ninja. Suddenly the neighbourhood was filled with four foot tall, twenty kilo white killer ninjas, jumping out from bushes to accost each other with a variety of home made Shaken (although we all called them Shuriken at the time) and Ninja-To. Ninja magazine came out and became our text book for Suburban mayhem.

I got a job at the local video store, which I was paid for not in cash, but with borrowing rights.

I made my way through numerous martial arts movies with titles such a The power of Silence, Revenge of the Ninja, the Big Boss and They call me Bruce. Who could forget the martial arts spoofs..."A fist full of Yen". As kids we did all sorts of crazy stuff in homage to our righteous if somewhat homicidal role models - drank drinks composed solely of raw eggs, made flour bombs to imitate the amazing Ninja smoke bombs, bought Nunchuku from the local martial arts stores and then knock ourselves out trying to swing them.

Martial Arts fads come and go, but new ones never stop turning up. Remember when Jean Claude came out (his movies I mean), everyone loved Blood Sport, Jean Claude was a legend, back them. Everyone wanted to be a Dim Mak Black Dragon and break "the bottom one". Kick boxer ushered in Muay Thai and kids nation wide began beating banana trees into submission or doing the splits between chairs.

Back in the day the Local Police Youth Club was a bed of martial arts mania. We all enrolled in the only martial arts we could find - Judo, Karate, Jiu-jutsu.

Martial arts schools were rare, but business was booming. Each new book or video that came out was a treasure, even if in retrospect it was over-priced rubbish. No internet then, no MA movie downloads, no trolls whingeing about how crap everybody's martial arts were.

Then was the day of the Aikidoka, with people flocking to learn to Shihonage people through car windshields like Steven Seagal.

Oh yeah and I mustn't forget to mention the deadly internal arts - Tai Chi, Ba Gua Zhang and Xingyi. Effortless power to blow people across the room or kill with the brush of a hand.

Then came the UFC and things changed. Striking was out and BJJ was in. All the Boxers, Kick Boxers, Kung Fu Killers and Karateka who laughed at us rolling around on the floor doing our Jiu-Jutsu were laughing no more.

The UFC was a wake up call and reality check for martial artists and one that we are still feeling the effects of.

The UFC ushered in a new fad, the fad of 'reality based training'. This then led to a split into Sport based systems and Street systems, with people tirelessly arguing the merits of one over the other on Internet Chatrooms and Forums.

Now we have the Krav Maga craze and droves of people wanting to learn how to survive 'on the street'. Ex-bouncers writing manuals, SAS soldiers and Flat Footed Police sharing secret training methods, Ferals and Shredders tearing off faces.

Don't get me wrong, it's not all quite as linear as that. And the time-line may be wrong, I'm just speaking of my own recollections here. And also none of the arts mentioned have disappeared. With the advent of the internet we have access to so much more information than ever before.

But here I am, in this new dawn, writing down a catalog of my thoughts and experiences in martial arts. As I continue my thousand mile journey in martial arts I think to myself "I wonder what the next big craze will be..."