Saturday found me in Mechanicsville Maryland at Tim Anderson’s “Maryland Martial Arts”. I gave a 5 hour seminar to their fight team on leg locks, takedowns and takedowns into submissions from sambo. We also worked some casting punches for brutal ground and pound. We also touched a bit on savate since there was some interest in seeing just what it was like. A very good time was had by all, I hope, and I look forward to going back down in a few months to do it again.
We then broke out the longsword trainers and went over some basics and a few plays of Durchlaufen…not something we are heavily focusing on but a fun diversion from the constant punching and twisting of limbs. It is still great training but the variety is welcome.
We ended the session with some more entrenching tool work. Basically covering what we did last week and getting more comfortable with it. We worked lopatka vs knife a bit more this time around, getting used to intercepting the knife with the flat of the shovel rather than the edge. The edge is definitely more deadly but the flat of the shovel offers a much greater chance of successfully defending oneself against the attack that IMO it is vastly
superior. I will have to try and get a few clips of this filmed to share.
2 rds shadow boxing
2 rds focused boxing sparring
1 rds heavy bag
1 rd GnP floor bag
1 rds focus gloves
Next up…grappling/sambo
We went without jackets today and had a major focus on getting the toehold correct since I have some sort of mental block about it when rolling. We also did a two foot sweeps as well as two leg hook takedowns into kneebars.
Last up…e-tool or as the Russians call it ‘lopatka’ which is infinitely more fun to say that shovel. We worked the lopatka against some unarmed attacks, punches and kicks. We also worked some lopatka vs knife and lopatka vs lopatka. Even with a mighty dull edge and then taped I still got a cut on my hand. Nothing major but blood sells.
On a totally unrelated note…really enjoyed watching Fedor Emelianenko vs Brett Rogers on Strikeforce this weekend. Good fights tend to get me fired up for training I think. Good thing we train on Sunday and most events are held on Saturday night.
Only Justin and I today…
2 rds shadow boxing
2 rds boxing sparring
1 rd savate sparring
1 rds heavy bag
1 rd GnP floor bag
1 rd focus mitts
We threw on our jackets next…
2 rds grip/off-balance work
2 rds gentle freestyle sambo (my shoulder is still screwed so Justin once again took it real easy with me.)
3 rds par terre (ground work) At least for this we were able to go pretty much full out, things move so much slower once the fight hits the ground. It looks like until my shoulder is up to snuff that we will be hitting on the ground work pretty hard.
I had some grand designs on doing some e-tool work but daylight savings time threw me for a loop and it got darker and hour earlier…and I forgot to put a light in our training area so we called it about 15 mins early.
Matt had ordered some Cold Steel longsword trainers, they came in, so this was our day to play with them.
It had been a while since any of us has actually worked on any German longsword material. I had been reading up on it for the past couple of months in prep for us starting. We did a quick review of some of the basics….the four wards, the basic cuts etc…
We then worked through a few plays from the bind into the grapple.
After the longsword we threw on our jackets for some sambo…
First off we worked on a throw which was an interesting variation on a thrown we have been doing since we started. I could not hope to put a name to this. We then went over a few variations on this variation:)
We ended the session with some ground work…the sambo switch and the double reversal. Both of these deal with single or double leg attempts that have gone horribly wrong.
I’ve added a library page for manuals, essays, etc…Nothing new there now, just some of the pieces from the old Geocities site for now. You may not have seen some of this for a while though so why not check out what I put up so far? Serbian wrestling, Parkyns, Wylde and Woodmans Pal.
We broke out the mountain axes and worked through all of the figure
eight motions that we use in both the right and left hand. Earlier
this week I took my CS Norse Hawk and replaced the short haft with a
sledge hammer handle that I had worked over a bit with a belt sander
giving it a more rectangular shape. I think the best CS hawk for this
conversion would probably be the small trail hawk.
We the took out the Lopatka or e-tool. Lopatka is the Russian name for
it and I think it lit means little shovel. We did a progressive drill,
e-tool vs bayonet, followed by the same type of idea against a knife.
We finished up with the e-tool held in more of an ice pick grip with
the blade along the forearm acting like a shield against the knife.
We left out the grappling again this week, my shoulder is still sore and Matt is getting over a broken collarbone from a motorcycle accident. Instead we brought out the knives again and went over the drills we had worked on last week.
Basic one for one parry thrust drill and a matador style thrust from the Castillian guard. We geared up a bit and upped the intensity from last week. We ended the session with some work using the e-tool, we worked through the triple round strike that I use with the shillelagh. Honestly this combination works great with any weapon…even very large two handed ones…and of course unarmed.
Short clip showing an interesting combination strike on the right hand side. The first strike is intended to bring the weaon down and the second two should capitalize on the lowered weapon…if all three strike then Bonus! This can be done on the left or outside as well…this is just abasic outline for the idea of a triple. Play with it and let me know what you come up with.
started with 2 rds of shadow boxing then some interesting combinations on the pads:
1. lead frontal>lead fouette to the kidney>rear fouette to the head
2. lead elbow followed by a rear knee to the thigh or a rear elbow followed by a lead knee to the thigh.
3. while lying on the ground in sort of squared position…right fouette to the ankle followed by a very quick right chasse to the ankle then as you turn over on your side a left fouette to the ankle. The could be done on either side and the order of the kicks could be mixed as well.
We then each did a round of feeding and beating on Fred the Head.
Next up grappling….
we worked the triangle step into our grappling freestyle footwork…triangle step, level changes, European sprwal and standard sprawl. Next week we will be adding in shoots for some real active grappling footwork.
We then did some throws from the whizzer grip using the triangle step as the mechanics…we made the above clip to illustrate the idea.
We finished our grappling session with a review of leglocks: Achilles lock, ankle lock, foot lock, heel hook, kneebar and knee crush.
Out came the mountain axes and we worked through a short set I created to help with flowing and memorizing of concepts…we ended our session with some JdP where I got to try out my new maple stick. it passed muster meaning i will have to make a few more of these very soon.
