L.O.C.K.U.P: A Self-Protection System Based on Simplicity

This past Saturday, I went to a training seminar put on by Lt. Kevin Dillon and Sergeant Geoffrey Anderson (shown here) of L.O.C.K.U.P (Law Officers Combat Kinetics for Ultimate Protection), an organization that teaches the most practical manoeuvres for law enforcement officers. Because of the simplicity of their system, the moves are equally useful for people who only have a limited amount of time to put into self-defense training. I'd like to impart some of what I learned.

Like in my style of Jiu-jitsu, this system focuses on protective manoeuveres that use only gross motor skills. Skills that require fine motor skills take much longer to learn, sometimes years, in order to be proficient enough at them for them to be useful in a high stress combat situation. That's fine for people who want to devote lots of time to martial arts training, but for people who only get so many hours to learn usable skills, simplicity is key.

The L.O.C.K.U.P system draws from a wide variety of martial arts, taking the most efficient, gross motor skill reliant techniques. One of the moves that was shown comes from Aikido. Because of its simplicity and dynamic nature, it can be used in a variety of situations. In the video below, I demonstrate its use against several shirt grabs that we practiced at the seminar.




One of the main principles of the L.O.C.K.U.P system is to react to the aggressor before they get their hold on as you can see in the video (unless they manage to surprise you from behind). As our instructors emphasized, it's easier to defend against a hold before the hold is fully applied. I wholeheartedly agree.

There was so much more imparted at the seminar about their training concepts that I can't cover it all in a simple blog post, but I can say that my students quite enjoyed the new material. I highly recommend the L.O.C.K.U.P. training courses to any martial arts groups and law enforcement organizations. I also bought their DVDs which I will watch soon and review here on my website.

M.I.C.E - The New Injury Acronym

Many of you know that I've been coping with a pulled hip flexor for the past couple of weeks. My MMA coach didn't believe that I would do what was necessary to recover from my injury. He said, "Fighters don't know when or how to take it easy." He's wrong about me though. My dojo depends on me too much for me to be laid up by an injury. So I'm on a strict recovery program set out by my Jiu-jitsu student who is a doctor.

Conventional wisdom when it came to muscle and joint recovery used to be RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation). But recently it has been found that immobilizing an injury (unless it's a fracture, torn muscle or your doctor advises you to) shuts the muscle down and restricts blood flow. Instead, modern medical research is suggesting that moving the muscle and encouraging blood flow to oxygenate the area and flush out metabolic waste helps you heal faster. Now many doctors are saying that RICE should be used only for the first 24-48 hours of the injury after which MICE should be used. In this acronym, "movement" replaces "rest."

In my case, my student/ doctor recommended that I bike 20-40 minutes a day. I also did some gentle strengthening and stretching exercises specific to the hip flexor. Biking replaced my morning yoga work-outs since I didn't want to accidentally do any stretches that would aggravate my injury. Then after the whole routine, I would ice my hip flexor. I was also told to avoid grappling, breakfalls and any other high-risk activities. My coach focused my training on other skills and strengthening exercises like boxing, and a variety of upper strength development drills (i.e. hand stands, push-ups, neck raises, etc).

Now, after two weeks I'm not feeling pain any more, though I still have to be careful. This is when the injury is most likely to be re-injured, because it feels fine, even though it's still in a weakened state. So still no grappling, etc. but I'm going to try going for a gentle walk-run work-out on Sunday.

I'll be so happy when the injury is fully recovered and I can go back to my usual training regime.

Listen to Your Body: The Importance of Injury Recovery

People who are into the martial arts hardcore find it hard to do what is necessary to recover from an injury if it means skipping training or holding back during training. I count myself among them. That being said, I've learned how important it is to listen to your body when it tells you it's hurt.

Yesterday, I had two people in my class who didn't want to listen to their body. One of them hurt their toe while doing cone hops. He thought he had just bruised it until I called out to the class, "Ok everybody, stop what you're doing... Who's bleeding?" There were a couple of pools of blood on the mats that had me worried. The student who had though he had just "bruised" himself came forward. I took him into the washroom to administer first aid and discovered that he had a very deep, wide cut across the webbing of his baby toe. He had managed to cut his toe on part of the plastic where there was a design cut into the cone (*never using THOSE cones again...).

"This is going to need stitches," I told him. He resisted somewhat saying he wanted to just wrap it up and keep training. For further credibility, I had the student in my class who is a doctor have a look and confirm my diagnosis. I wrapped the student's foot in gauze and sent him off to go get stitched. The student was more frustrated about missing class than he was about the actual injury. While I appreciate the sentiment, my students' well-being comes first. If he had tried to let that cut heal on its own, there was a chance it could have gotten infected. Ultimately, this might have caused him to miss more than the one class.

Another example of this mentality came from the same class. I had a new student who was very keen about training with us. He was just coming back to training in the martial arts after having suffered a back injury. I told him to do whatever he was comfortable with in the class and that there was no pressure to do everything. I wanted to make sure he didn't do anything that might hurt his back.

During the class, he did everything I showed and didn't take it easy at all. Though it looked like he was fine, he later confessed that the breakfalls were a little hard on his back. He explained that he wanted to test his back to see if he'd be able to go the distance. Upon hearing this, I warned him not to rush it, to go easy for the first period while he learns the technique of the breakfalls and to let his body gradually build strength for the new type of exercise. If this student were to continue on pushing himself too hard, too quickly, he might re-injure his back. Then he'd have to start the whole recovery process all over again.

As much as we martial artists like to push ourselves to our physical limits, we still do have limits and when the body cries out, it's best not to ignore it.

Over a Year of Stubborn Perseverance Pays Off

Today, I was very impressed with one of my students. I had noticed over the past couple of months that this student had really come into her own since earning her orange belt. She has a new confidence that exudes from every technique she performs. But today she went even further.

We were working on a variety of wristlock takedowns that were all new to her. And every one I showed her seemed to be magically clicking for her. She was eating them up and was eager for more. In fact, she was finding the newer, more technical takedowns easier than ones she was more familiar with that utilized movements that are typically easier to learn.

It's really not magic at all. She has endured over a year of training, a year of me being picky about her technique, a year of taking shots and doling out a few of her own, a year of stubborn perseverance in learning the wonderful art of Jiu-jitsu. And now it's starting to come together.

Now that this student has this foundation of technique and confidence, new things will take less time to learn and come to her more naturally. If she keeps riding the wave, her learning will accelerate at a rate that may surprise her. As a teacher, this is an accomplishment that gives me true satisfaction. It means that the student is starting to see what I love so much about the martial arts. I couldn't be more pleased.

Leaning into Punches to Increase Reach

I did some boxing training today. I've been avoiding grappling and ground work to let my injured hip flexor heal. The boxer that was training me is a shorter fellow, only 5'6", but he's pretty well built and therefore heavier. As a result, he fights in the super middle weight category. This means he often ends up fighting people significantly taller than himself. With this in mind, he has been helping me increase my range, which would be useful for minimizing the reach advantage taller people have, as well as giving myself a reach advantage over people my own height.

The trick is, when you're doing jabs and crosses, to lean in slightly at the hips, while simultaneously taking a slight shuffle forward with the front foot. The lean creates extra reach and the footwork keeps my balanced centred. It's a little hard to describe, but it works.

At first, it seemed unnatural, but once I got the hang of it, I found it gave me a significant increase in reach. I'm actually quite looking forward to sparring with it and trying it out.

Boot to the Head: A Look at Taekwondo

Yesterday, I discussed What You Learn from a Punch to the Face. It reminded me of the following video I stumbled across on Digg a few months back, featuring Taekwondo's best knock-outs.



The knock-outs featured in this video are all from kicks. In WTF Taekwondo, you're not allowed to punch to the face. As a result, people tend to use lower guards in tournaments. Of course, some TKD-ers are capable of blindingly fast kicks to the heads as you'll have witnessed in the video.

My old friend and student that I mentioned in yesterday's blog post always warned me that kicking to the head is not all that practical in a real street situation, however. He said you can do it maybe once in a fight, preferably at the beginning, when they're not expecting it, and as a result it could potentially a fight-ending blow. But if it doesn't end the fight, you had best not try it a second time because once they know to expect it, it's not all that hard to defend against.

To all my Canadian readers, have a great long weekend!

What You Learn from a Punch to the Face

In many martial arts, it is forbidden to punch the face while sparring. In our school, we allow it because you learn a lot from both punching to the face and being punched to the face.

In real self-defense situations, the head is a primary target. If you only ever deal with punches to the head in theory and not in practice, you won't be at all prepared for what it's like if you actually get punched in the head.

When I first introduce sparring to yellow belts, it's under very controlled circumstances. Students wear 16-oz boxing gloves and mouth guards and they spar at 10% intensity. Only punches and kicks to the shins are allowed. This gives them the opportunity to focus on one aspect of sparring at a time. At this stage, the most important thing to develop is the guard. When students are only allowed to punch, there are less different types of attacks to be ready for, giving them more opportunity to focus on using the guard to protect themselves from attacks.

The other thing students learn at this stage is mentally dealing with being hit in the head and face. Because it's new to them, they start out flinching quite a bit, making it hard to defend. Also, when they take that first punch in the face, even though it's a light one that doesn't cause damage, it still fazes them and puts them on the defensive. After a few sparring sessions though, this reaction lessens as their mind begins to cope with the state of duress that comes from being hit in the face.

As the attacker, by actually punching to the face while sparring, you learn to do it for real. When you only ever spar stopping your attacks just short of the face, your muscle memory develops to do this naturally. A former student of mine who was a 2nd degree black belt in Taekwondo discovered this in a situation when he was forced to defend himself. He tried to punch his would-be attacker in the face and his punch stopped just short of the guy's face. Fortunately, the attacker took this to be a show of skilled restraint and decided it wasn't worth it to get in a fight.

While many people don't like the idea of punching to the face or being punched to the face, it is an important aspect of self-defense. The key to alleviating students' fears when it comes to this is starting out in very controlled circumstances then upping the ante gradually as their skills improve.