WHY TRAINING AND AN OFFENSIVE MINDSET ARE ESSENTIAL
Author: Odhinn Kohout
Tuesday 27 November 2012
Monday 26 November 2012
Pain Compliance Techniques
Author: Odhinn Kohout
I have seen a great deal of material entitled pain
compliance tactics or techniques. Sounds good in theory but it is not very
practical in the sense of arrest control practices. My hesitation revolves
around the topic of “do you have actual…control over this person” or are you
attempting to control them through pain.
Pain is relative and completely subjective to each
individual.
An offensive mindset that is totally focused on a target/goal can
overcome a high level of pain.
This is true from both sides of the coin
as criminals can possess this as well.
The strategy that I teach to my students is to ensure that
the JOINT of the limb is locked and not just controlled in a way that causes
pain. Your knowledge of the rotational axis of a specific joint dictates the
level of control. It is not a complicated theory.
You do not need to look further than traditional wrestling
to see this concept in action. Different types of wrestling have their own
focal points from Greco Roman, Free-Style, Folk, and Catch to name a few. Many
of the submissions found in these systems lock the affected body part which in
turn causes a high degree of pain and resulting control.
I teach many “cutter” techniques in which a muscle such as
the bicep is compressed against the radial or ulnar bone of your arm as part of
a lock. Compressing the muscle will cause a nerve such as the “Musculocutaneous
nerve” nerve found in the center of the bicep head to become pinched which
causes pain.
This approach will offer you the safety of control with the
benefit of pain. My advice is to take a scientific approach to your defensive
tactics training which means analyzing what is happening from a biomechanical
viewpoint instead of merely “learning a new move.”
Train hard, stay safe.
Friday 23 November 2012
FBI: 72 police officers killed in the
line of duty 2012, up from 56
72 fatalities
occurred while an officer was making an arrest
54,774 officers were
assaulted while in the line of duty
Author: Odhinn Kohout
In line of duty service deaths continue to rise at an
alarming rate and the latest FBI stats are pin pointing a specific area of
concern and that is when an Officer is making an arrest.
Officers killed on duty rose 11% in 2011
And a grim 37% in 2010
Budgetary cuts will always target training first in an
effort to trim the fat but when we look at these stats it would suggest that
providing effective training for law enforcement personnel is a crucial
component. As Instructors one of ways in which we can help is too make sure
that we addressing concerns from our front line Officers and providing
solutions. Too often the delivery of a defensives tactics program overrides the
content. Time constraints are something that we struggle with in each of our
classes but have you taken some time lately to evaluate and scrutinize what you
are teaching to your students.
· .
Is it effective
· .
Relevant to the Officers duties
·
.Does it take into consideration feedback from
your Officers in terms of what they are encountering on the road
·
.Is it litigation based OR officer safety
orientated
·
.When is the last time you overhauled your
program
·
.Is the current program well received by your
Officers
·
.Can extra time be added to the program to cover
new areas of concern (have you asked management?)
For the training our company provides in private courses to
the Military/Police community it is constantly in a state of perpetual change
and evolution because…that is what my students want. We have a policy in place
called “check your ego at the door.” This applies to the Instructor Cadre as
well and you will never see any of us arguing with our students insisting that
OUR WAY is the best and only way to get from A-B. We don’t have a hidden agenda
we just want to provide the best training possible in order to maximize Officer
Safety.
One feedback tool that has worked well for us is something
that you can add yourself that the end of your next class. We call it a “Mandatory
Debrief.” Assemble your students and go around the class asking each Officer
what they liked and didn’t like about your training. You will need to toughen
up and not take things personally because remember “you asked.” Don’t jump down
a student’s throat if he is giving you his opinion and it does not line up with
your own.
Most Military/Police Agencies defensive tactics programs
change very little over the years and appear to be set in stone, for whatever reason
that is. The onus is us as Instructors to encourage and present change that
will satisfy both departmental needs as well as the concerns of our Officers.
Keep yourself safe,
and watch your partners back tonight on duty.
Tuesday 20 November 2012
Joint Locks (and Counters) for
Arrest/Control (Part 1)
Author: Odhinn Kohout
In order to properly understand
how to perform an effective lock on a limb of the person you are attempting to
arrest you MUST understand the orientation of the joint affected by the lock.
For example:
The wrist is able to rotate a full 360 deg while the elbow
joint only moves along one axis. I see many other combatives systems neglect the explanation (which in my opinion )MUST
follow along when teaching a group of Military/Police students how to perform
locks to either the arms or legs.
Failure to do so, ends up frustrating an eager student who
cannot figure out why what you have showed them does not work when they try to
duplicate the technique in training.
Truth be told many Instructors do not have the
bio-mechanical knowledge themselves and therefore end up teaching a “bunch of moves” instead of approaching CQC
within an anatomical framework of how and why a joint is affected by a lock.
Ask yourself this...
Many of my own students ask me every course how to COUNTER
locks that they have seen or are concerned about the day that a criminal might
know how to use a sophisticated lock on them in the course of their duties. If
you do not know how the lock actually works then what hope do you have of
explaining an escape from it to your class of Officers?
Divide every lock you teach into two components:
1.
From the perspective of the Officer to affect
control
2.
Escaping from the same lock if attacked by a
skilled criminal
The horrible truth, is that you have seconds to escape OR
the limb will be broken.
It gets worse…
Depending on how the lock is performed the joint can suffer
a twist fracture instead of a clean break nullifying the limb for the rest of
the fight. One example of this is the common “heel hook” which breaks the knee
on an angle. You may have noticed that a Mixed Martial Arts Fighters almost
always immediately taps if caught in a “deep heel hook” as opposed to trying to
fight through it. The reason is it is better to learn for a defeat in which you
have suffered no injuries instead of not being able to train for 7 months.
The difference when learning locks is to understand the
difference between a lock which locks the bone and one that is based on pain
compliance. Everyone has a different degree of pain tolerance.
Criminals suffering from some sort of mental illness have a
very HIGH degree of resistance to pain. If your agency has incorporated “excited
delirium” awareness into its curriculum you will have seen many videos which demonstrate
this.
For Military/Police who may find themselves involved in a
violent arrest it is very important from the standpoint of Officer Safety to
keep a person under arrest safely secured. The person who you may be struggling
with could be of greater mass and strength which is why it is so important that
your students are not merely reproducing what you are showing them but actually
comprehending the material so that it can be used/recalled during the cognitive
process of field applications.
If you have any questions or would like to incorporate our
Joint Locks into your department’s defensive tactics program just contact me
and I will be glad to help.
Sunday 18 November 2012
Single and Double Leg Takedowns for Military/Police students
Author: Odhinn Kohout
Shooting in from a distance on your Attacker’s legs in order
to take him down is a really bad idea…
This technique is used in MMA all the time so what makes it
wrong to use when teaching Military/Police personnel?
Shooting in from a distance on your opponent requires you to
change levels before you shoot in order to lower your height so that it is in
line with your Attackers legs. This unfortunately gives him a HUGE heads up and
provides a few seconds window to prevent this from happening.
How will he stop you from using his legs for a takedown? It’s
really quite straight forward:
1.
Knee or kick you in face
2.
Sprawl, so that when you have attached your
hands to his legs you will be pulled face down to the ground with your Attacker
on top of you.
The last thing that you want to do when attempting to defend
yourself during an attack is to give any clues or advantage to the bad-guy
PRIOR to performing the technique. But this is exactly what will happen when
you try to shoot in on him from a distance. You might as well hold up a sign
which says “You might want to think
about sprawling because I am about to try a single leg takedown on you.”
How do we correct this as Instructors?
A good approach to teach your students is to use single or
double leg techniques from a clinch position. There is very little time for
your opponent to counter this due to the element of surprise and the proximity
of the leg attack.
Almost every NEW student that enters in an MMA gym will
learn use a sprawl as a way to counter a takedown, in fact it is taught to
almost immediately as an entry level technique. If we know as Instructors that
this is the case and criminals can also access this knowledge then we must
teach our students to not try and perform their tactics from a distance as to
alert their Attackers of their intentions.
Distancing is a topic that I find is seldom addressed in
Military/Police combatives classes. Your Officers need to to understand the
concepts using distance to calculate kick, punches, elbows and takedowns and
the ranges that make this effective. I will almost always see students trying
to perform elbow strikes from a distance that is too far from their target area
causing them to lead with their chin as they incorrectly throw their weight too
far forward over their hips.
If we look at leg takedown tactics it would make more sense
to grab around the floating ribs of the attacker instead of the legs( from the
initial attack) as the sprawl defense will not pull you back and down to the
ground. The waist and floating rib area also provides great control for sweeps
and many different types of throws.
Experiment during your next class with various distances
when employing single and double legs and see how dramatically it affects the
success or failure of the technique.
Train hard, train for combat!
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