Tuesday, 1 January 2013


ARREST/CONTROL TACTICS and Vectors of Force
Author: Odhinn Kohout

At your next class take some time when you are demonstrating some arrest/control techniques to your students to explain how control is maintained.

New students will over analyze their hand positions when performing an arrest/control lock and get frustrated when they cannot control the arm of their training partner to any degree, let alone if it was being attempted on the street with a real bad guy resisting arrest.

I have drawn out some quick examples from 2 different figure-4 locks that we teach and added some vectors of force lines to show how the entire body can be used to ensure control. 

  
 

Both locks rely on hip or core strength and not arm strength to keep the arrested person under control. This principle will be lost on some of your students at first as they will try to “muscle” every lock that is shown using only arm strength. 

Keeping the elbows in tight to the body will enable your students to start using their hips as the primary means to apply force to a lock rather than their arms. This vector of force from the hips is not solely from a rotational axis like a clock face. The Officer is free is stand straight up and use this leverage to apply vectors of force in a linear direction as well. You can see how this could be applied as shown in the second picture in which a wrist lock has been added to the figure-4 creating a double lock on the arm of the Attacker.


Experiment with these principles as they will add to your defensive tactics program.
Be safe Guys.

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