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Here's another important video from the Personal Defense Network.
One of the best ways to practice all the tools that we've already demonstrated to you is
to put them together and visualize a scenario. We call this the close quarter form. What
I'm going to do here is I'm going to have Rob and Jason work with me so you get all
three angles.'
Okay guys, here's what we're going to do. We're all going to demonstrate the close quarter
form together.
As you can see, I've got Jason to my right, Rob to my left. You're going to be able to
see in one take all three angles so you can help visualize this. Imagine a threat is coming
towards you. Your hands are out, outside 90, fingers are already splayed. This is instinctive.
This is intuitive.
When push comes to shove and you need to defend yourself from the closest weapon or closest
target, index palm, palm strike, rotate your hips, lower your center of gravity. Come back
into that spear frame we call our combat stance. Visualize an attack from here.
What you're going to do is what we call a micro-flinch as you cover and then drive your
forearms out, again keeping a lowered center of gravity. Imagine the threat is still on
you, and at this point here you're going to come up and strike up under the throat with
a vertical elbow and come back down and smack or rake the face.
Imagine the threat is still on you, so you're pushing this person away from you. You're
going to come across with a horizontal elbow. Always get your hips into your attacks. So
you're using your core strength, keep you center of gravity lower. Remember the reaching
for your seatbelt analogy.
Come right back. Grab the face. Now imagine your attackers panicking. They're trying to
clinch and grab you. You're going to jam out. This is that outside 90 frame. I'm keeping
the attacker off me. I'm going to come up and lock and load a diagonal elbow, come across
the back of the head or whatever target's open, grab the head, and then from here I'm
going to drive in a quick, short knee and push the threat away.
You would practice this over and over again, both sides, ambidextrous, moving forward,
circling, just to get comfortable with this.
What's great about the close quarter form is remembering that you need to visualize
that threat, actually think about someone on you and just see that person there, feel
that impact as you extend through the different moves and different feelings that you're going
to get when you actually have to deal with an actual threat. It's really important to
do that while you're doing the close quarter form.
The next evolution for practicing your close quarter tools is of course is with a partner,
so you have the luxury of working with a friend. You're going to grab your partner and you're
going to run through what we call a close quarter form, but this time what you're doing
is you're going to make contact to the obvious targets we all remember, closest weapon, closest
target.
In this case here what I'm going to do is I'm going to have Jason and Rob come together
as two guys having an argument in the street, and I'm going to narrate a confrontation.
Watch how slowly they go. What's vital here is that you work slowly and carefully. Rob
is the aggressor here. He's threatening Jason.
He's trying to defuse it. The defuse is not happening. Rob encroaches a little bit more.
Jason's hands are up. He index palms Rob when he feels that threat is too close. He has
got to get him out of the way. From this position, you can see his right hand is engaged and
ready to go. So he's going to drive his palm out of the way. Rob goes back a little bit.
Look how slow they're going. This is vital. If you're going to practice this at home,
you actually want to imitate these positions, because you're not sparring, you're not practicing
boxing or kickboxing. Rob is going to lock and load a haymaker and freeze right there.
Notice how Jason did a micro-flinch, because this is a similar movement of oh man, here
comes another attack. Your body braces for the attack. Rob slowly comes around for a
haymaker, and Jason intercepts with the classic spear outside 90, splayed fingers.
Remember the extensor versus flexor physiology rules here, and Jason is in much better position.
He owns the inside. Rob kind of psychologically is in flux here. He doesn't know why his attack
is not working, grabs on, kind of in a panic bear hug to hold on. Jason is keeping him
off with the outside 90, but he sees, again CWCT, the attacker's throat or jaw or face
is right adjacent to his right arm.
He's going to do a vertical elbow and come right back down with a rake or an index palm
to the head. Rob is still, again, imagine your attacker, last time he attacked a good
Samaritan on the street his attack was successful. He's in flux here and this is vital to play
into that, and it really helps organize why Rob is behaving like that.
From here he's still trying to get in on Jason. Jason is going to hit him with a horizontal
elbow. Notice how little Jason has to move. That's the key thing, what I was explaining
earlier. Your attacker puts his targets right in front of your weapons. He comes back with
that face rake, and now Rob is going to come and in a panic go to tackle Jason who intercepts
again with that outside 90 open hand position we call a half-spear.
Jason is going to lock and load a diagonal elbow. He's going for the brachial, the back
of the head, stuns his attacker, indexes the head, and you'll see CWCT, knee to the head
and the move stops right there.
What's important here, you start thinking about what you saw and how this came together
is the pace and the speed. You can understand the tools. You can understand the mechanics.
You can't go fast with this. You're working on target acquisition and really taking what
you visualize and putting it into a three-dimensional model.
That's great. These drills are things you can do at home. You can work with a family
member, work with a friend. You can introduce someone to these concepts very simply. The
key is efficiency. The key is working with what your body does naturally. We always want
to do that in the middle of a dynamic critical incident and finding a good, efficient way
to train when you can really feel these things.
I tell you what, it's great to be on the bad guy side of this too because you get to feel
how this is all going to play out. You really get both sides of it. It's important to switch
back and forth and make sure that everybody gets the benefit of both visualizations.
Check out more videos just like this one at the Personal Defense Network.