21/05/2011 – Bladework: Defence, Disarm and Counter at Speed, Part 1

 Last saturday's work was a continuation of the previous week's work.  Today was the day for demonstrating how all the exogenous flow-based work people seem to expect breaks down in no time at all against a non-compliant opponent with lethal intent.  On top of that, we aimed to build the ability cycle quickly from one combative option to another during blade combat, whether empty hand versus blade or blade-on-blade, so as to improve our access to endogenous flow.

Homework assignment remains the same as last week, with added emphasis on rolling and falling.  Some of you are still falling in very dangerous, uncontrolled ways and this is unacceptable as you endanger not only yourselves but your partners also.  From now on, I mandate a minimum of 15 minutes of rolling and falling a day, whether all at once or summated together.  Please do this so I don't have to make you make up for it in class.

Train hard and I'll see you next week as I will be attending a certification event this weekend.


Objectives

- Revision of bladework basics

- Inoculation to blade combat at near-full speed

Warmup

- IntuFlow basic routine



Skill-Specific Biomechanical Drills

- Leverage disarm drill

- Body figure-8 to stab

- Biker flip grip change

- Figure-8 draw cut

- Rolling snap cut

- Finger-flip


Preparatory Partner Drills

- Partner push drill with blade

- Sweater-snag drill with blade

- Partner zombie walk drill with blade – to evasion, gait-shadow and soft takedown


Primary Skill Drills

- Empty hand versus blade – attacks at combat speed; evasion, counter and takedown

- Blade versus blade – combat speed; counterslashes, control to takedown or finisher



Objective-based Sparring

Uke attacks tori with blade. Tori, working from empty hands, attempts to disarm uke and either effect a position of control, apply a finisher having gained weapon possession, or both. Drill continues until tori achieves victory objectives. Round-robin format.

Circle