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.

60 Minutes Knife Violence Story

At Saturday's Ninjutsu class, my teacher Paul mentioned a 60 Minutes story on Knife Culture and Violence in Australia. For anyone concerned with reality based self defense, the need to understand exactly what the 'reality' means is paramount; this type of information gives a vital and terrifying clue.

To watch the story, click here. Be warned, this footage contains footage of actual attacks, as well as scenes of the aftermath.

Close Quarter Combat Course - Brisbane 2009

Last weekend my mate Jimbo let me know that Geoff "Tank" Todd is coming to Brisbane, Australia, in August to run some Military Unarmed Combat courses. Having done some training with this school back in the early 2000's, I can vouch for the fact that it is no-nonsense reality-based fighting (my words, not Geoff's). Geoff is highly regarded as a 'master instructor' by many of the world's leading military combat specialists. He has inherited material from Charles Nelson, Blue Curran, Larry Jordan, Rex Applegate, John Whipp, Harry Baldock, Ben Mangles and others. Do not confuse this material with martial arts or law enforcement defensive tactics. It is what it says: European Military Close Quarter Combat. I believe it will culminate with phase testing, which is brutal, gruelling and from the footage I've seen of previous tests, carries a real chance of injury. This is not for the faint hearted!

The courses are running during late August, contact Geoff at this email for more details:

coms@toddgroup.com

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...