Hock Hochheim 2010 Brisbane Seminar

This weekend just gone, 6/7 march 2010, Hock held a seminar at Defensive Measures International's Brisbane Training Facility at Mt Gravatt. It was an action packed weekend, making it hard work to get up early to go to work this morning.

Hock covered various aspect's of Stick, Knife, Gun and Barehand Fighting, covering various counters to being attacked by these weapons.

Hock covered Stick level 1, knife 1 (revision for last year's participants), knife 2 and a fair bit of his Pacific Archipelago Unarmed Combat.

We did some great Arnis, Silat and Escrima type stick, knife and hand work. We did some very JKD / Wing Chun / Fillipino type handwork, including trapping drills, hubud and destructions, covering what would take months or years to cover at a normal club. As always the trick will be maintaining the skills developed and remembering all that we did.

It was great to get to practice some fast handwork and wake up some old neural pathways. Caught up with Dan, an old training buddy. Great to practice handwork with someone who can work at the same break-neck speed.

Learned some great stick drills, including some concepts which Dan said he hadn't learned in over three years of training Fillipino martial arts. It seemed to be a bit of an 'a-ha moment' for him, which is great. The stick disarms ending in joint locks were painful (and therefore good in my books) and I could tell Sempai Raymond was enjoying them as much as me.

The knife material was also brilliant, and can be found in Hock's Knife/ Counter Knife Book, which was a popular seller at the seminar.

A big thanks to Tim for playing crash-dummy for Hock and helping us all when we weren't quite getting it, Sensei Paul Johnstone for arranging the seminar, All the lads from regular training who showed (you know who you are!) and all the other participants. And of course a big shout out to Hock for a great weekend. To sum up the seminar, it was top notch!!! Hock is great in that he has some much info that if the group asks about a particular topic, he can explain and show the answer in great detail (that's how the two and a half hours of handwork drills started). It is a flexible approach that allows the group to really learn what they want to know with no BS about rank or readiness. If you ask, you are ready to here about it.

Hock's back in Australia this month

Well Hock Hochheim is heading back down under this month. Last years seminars were fantastic and I have no doubt that this years will be even bigger and better. For more info go here:
http://www.street-edge.com.au/hock_hochheim_seminar.php
or here:
http://www.hockscqc.com/shop/product353.html

Hock will be in Brisbane this weekend (6 & 7 of March 2010) covering knife, stick, gun and unarmed threat responses. Looking forward to this. Hock really takes time to help each participant and has a whole lot of funny stories to illustrate his points.

See you soon Hock!

Also heard a rumour that Richard Dimitri of Senshido may be returning to Australia this year too...

The 1 Litre of Blood Test

Continuing on our knife defense theme, last night in our Street Edge class, our teacher Paul told us to go home and conduct an experiment. In order to prepare us for the realities of a knife attack we need to know that we will get cut and will bleed. Now bearing in mind that the average adult has about 6 lt of blood, he asked us to make up 1lt of fake blood and pour it out somewhere to get an idea of what this much blood would look like. Well the above photo is the required amount, the coin in the middle is an Aussie 20c piece, just to give a sense of scale. I found it to be a compelling reason to avoid knife attacks at all cost. As a mate of mine once said "I intent to win all my fights by 500 metres."

Hock Hochheim's New Knife/ Counter Knife Combat Book

Hock has released his new Knife / Counter Knife Combat Book to coincide with my recent posts on Knife Fighting...Nah! Just kidding. Hock has released the new book of his own accord as we've been psychically willing him to, using our Special CIA Jedi mind powers.

This tome may well become the new textbook for knife enthusiasts, with it's 1750+ photos and 291 pages of information.

As Hock says on his website:-

“As a police officer, both Military and in Texas, people have died in my hands, arms and before my eyes. As victims of the knife, I have had to investigate their woundings, maimings and deaths. I have arrested these attackers in the act or hunted them down afterward. I have been to dozens of intense police, Assault and Violent Death Schools conducted by leading forensics specialists from around the world.

Since 1996, each year, I've taught combatives in 40 cities in 13 allied countries and examined the performances of thousands of soldiers, police and citizens. I have been a paid consultant for The US Army, the Navy, the Air Force and the Marines.

Plus, I am an avid, lifelong, obsessed student of crime, violence and military history. Through the years, all this has given me a certain unique perspective about edged-weapon combat, human learning and individual, athletic performance.

Knife/Counter-Knife combatives is extremely situational. It's chaotic, wet and ugly in a way few people, even most knife instructors, can ever imagine. It is often trained haphazardly and ignorantly with over-simplistic, dueling practice or endless, arsty, looping drills, or worse, totally ignored. Then, vital parts of it, such as knife ground fighting are often omitted, or treated like sporty, high school wrestling matches.

Military, police, martial arts and the aware citizenry - I am all of these things, yet none of these things. While each group knows things about fighting, survival, crime, war and violence, no one group captures the essence of knife combat in this mixed-weapon world, or matches it with fast-breaking, training psychologies, physical methodologies and cutting edge tactics and strategies. I bridge this gap. I assimilate and organize. We evolve to face the cunning criminal and the enemy soldier. Inside a continuum of weapons, we use the knife to save our life and our way of life."

To purchase this book, go to Hock's webpage on the book, here.

Pictures and text are all from Hock's website and copyright to Hock Hochheim, and are used under the fair use provisions for academic purposes only.