Training Tip No. 34887-GR

[Anonymous]

Ok, made up the number on this training tip.

Anyways, another training suggestion from moi, a guy with absolutely no official qualification to suggest anything on the matter.

Here’s an idea for training multiple assailants and just generally for honing your target aquisition skills. Hit your BOB with a bunch of shots and then spin around as quick as you can and hit it again with a flurry of destruction. Alternate the side you rotate to, and you can move in and out as you do this.

In real life you’re not going to have to spin 360 degrees to move from one guy to the next, but the exaggerated movement helps you to train your balance and target aquisition. Spin, sight, kill. Right, left, right, right, left, left, left, right, whatever.

The bladed stance in the Escape and Evasion module number five means you won’t be rotating much more than your head and hips a little.

However, if you’re facing multiple assailants in extreme close quarters like a night club where everyone’s like two feet apart, then the bladed stance won’t be as useful. Probably be a lot of head butts, knees, stomp kicks, elbows, web of hands, and eye gouges, and general mauling, etc, with a chin jab thrown in here and there. Maybe some edge of hands.

I think it’s useful to point out that even if you’re facing ten guys, all ten guys can’t get to you at the same time. So you’ve got to use them simultaneously as targets and human shields.

Anyhow, if nothing else, I find it a great exercise for controlling your balance, footwork, and center of gravity to have to keep spinning around 360 degrees. You can mix in the bladed stance with the regular one, and move in and out on the dummy. In real life, everything kind of gets all mashed together and there is no real distinction to what you’re doing.

This is also a great exercise because if facing multiple assailants staying on your feet is going to be kind of important. Spinning around is a bit disorienting which is a great thing. Get used to it. Overcome it and become comfortable with changing direction and controlling your center of gravity.

I even recall a football drill where we did this. We’d “break down,” which is where you stamp your feet up and down really fast and then spin around and do other various things out of that position.

The other great thing about spinning around is that it forces you to develop good footwork. Good footwork is short, choppy, quick, violent steps with which you never overextend your center of gravity by taking long strides or over-reaching your upper body (like arm tackles, for example). Very important for defensive players who have to react on a dime to the guy with the ball, and blockers, etc. Offensive linemen have to master this as well, or they’d be flat on their ass every time they got nailed by the defensive lineman.

I think it’s great just to practice hitting BOB from the weirdest and most awkward of angles and positions. You can’t count on being perfectly lined up for every attack. This is why foot work is *THE* most essential skill a fighter must develop…after character, of course.

Without footwork you have no power, no quickness, no integrity of your center of gravity, and so forth.

It is my observation that footwork is *by far* the most underdeveloped skill in professional fighters. So many of them can’t control their balance, or effectively change direction, or react to surprises.

Footwork is dancing with the enemy. In a flash you’re in his face. You’re like a ghost appearing out of nowhere.

But, instead, most fighters try to close the space with their upper bodies instead of their lower bodies. They lean, they reach, they overextend. It’s rare you see a guy with truly exceptional movement.

In fact, this is what defines people who are athletic. An athletic person moves with a natural control of their center of gravity that the average klutz does not possess. It gives them a certain grace and control. You know it when you see it, because it’s a beautiful thing. Just like a dancer.

Some people do this naturally but it can be cultivated. And spinning your ass around will help.

Because the thing with multiple attackers is that just drop stepping in a single straight line ain’t gonna work – unless you’re taking an entry team’s conga line head on or something. You’re going to have be able to move all over the place, turning and shifting on a dime.

Footwork is the foundation of *any* athletic endeavor. That includes SDTS because SDTS involves physical movement.

So practice choppy stepping into violent and sudden changes of direction.

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