A great class last night at Essex Fighting Arts and started with a video on knife awareness for our younger generation / teenagers. I cannot emphasise enough that in NO WAY am I encouraging teenagers to try to deal with a knife and the strong message for this video is awareness, not becoming a victim and avoid / escape. Knife defence skills takes years and years to develop and to be proficient while dealing with a knife. And to be honest, even if you are there is still a high chance that you could get stabbed, slashed or worse. Disarming a knife if extremely difficult even for the best of us so the message I wanted to get across is to have a plan of scape and to train those skills / awareness as well as fitness regarding running. Your plan is to run and to keep running so you’ll need speed and fitness and this is not a given and has to be trained. You clearly need to be faster than your pursuers so not to get caught, but you need to be fitter than they are also as even though adrenaline will take you so far, you will need a good level of stamina to out run the people who are chasing you. Build up your running until you can run for say three miles and then think about interval training so working on sprints vs steady state running. Know your environment so that when you do have an escape plan you don’t run into a dead end and run to safety. Be calm and talk softly giving them your mobile phone or whatever possession you have as they can be replaced but your life cannot. Work on the traffic light system, green when you are safe, amber when you step outside the front door and red when you know something is very wrong. These are all levels of alertness, but your gut will tell you when something is not right or if someone is acting suspiciously. Don’t advertise your phone by walking down the road with it lit up and your senses taken up by texting or Facebook. You need to be aware of what is going on around you as the sharks might be circling and you need to be aware of that. The video goes into more, but please be safe and never be tempted to get involved with anyone carrying a knife as any idiot can stab you so you are better off avoiding, evading and escaping.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wY5CgyodERc
Within the class we went through Gaja (elephant) techniques from a Jab / Cross involving Dakup (catching) the jab, outside deflection and upper cut. Also including various arm locks, throws, neck locks and more. We also touched on a bit of knife tapping (traditional Filipino) which we will go into more detail next time and drill this in. Have a great week and weekend and I’ll see you all next Tuesday, Ouss…
www.essex.fightingarts.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wY5CgyodERc
Within the class we went through Gaja (elephant) techniques from a Jab / Cross involving Dakup (catching) the jab, outside deflection and upper cut. Also including various arm locks, throws, neck locks and more. We also touched on a bit of knife tapping (traditional Filipino) which we will go into more detail next time and drill this in. Have a great week and weekend and I’ll see you all next Tuesday, Ouss…
www.essex.fightingarts.com