“Choppers” & Empty-Hand/Bowie/Tomahawk Flow Drills by Mark Hatmaker

 

[The Video has little to do with the following, just a sort of eye-candy for those not into the heavy-lifting of combat musings.]

The Static-Expectation

Let’s toe-in with a bit of wisdom from Captain Sir Basil Liddell Hart.

“An important difference between a military operation and a surgical operation is that the patient is not tied down. But it is a common fault of generalship to assume that he is. (May, 1934.) Thoughts on War.

My like-minded readers have already made the jump to visions of “martial demonstrations” conducted in sanitized predictable environments with freeze-framed demonstration partners behaving exactly as we desire.

In such conditions, our martial surgeries can do wondrous things.

We can execute pinpoint strikes with a spinning hook kick, expertly slash and cut beaucoup “beauty to behold” knife “replies” to the frozen attack and find that very specific nerve bundle that will render an attacker’s knees jelly.

To be candid, some martial endeavors seem to exist exclusively in that realm of stop-motion Ray Harryhausen choreography.

“Martial” exertions in this realm seldom resemble themselves when it is not only the patient that can bleed, but the patient itself can move and desires to draw blood from y-o-u.

[Side-Note: Rigid creeds, stern philosophies, strict religions suffer the same “tied-down” burden. Real life seldom resembles the perfection on pages or the mellifluous sermon. Pragmatic philosophers of life, expect the personal vehicle of life to behave a bit different when in contact with the actual road of living and maneuvering with other people on the freeway. Expecting all “To drive as I do” is a formula for frustration and makes you poor company.]

The Flowing Compromise

If we move up on the combat thought-chain we begin to encounter “flow drills” as a solution to the static dead-end.

We see these flows in many practical/pragmatic martial arts.

We have the hu-bud of kali, the counter-re-counter of boxing, the hook-bust-re-hook chain of grappling, etc.

These drills [and arts] seek to put a little life back into the drilling. They strive to become a bit more reflective of battlefield conditions.

Here our patient isn’t tied down, they are free to thrash a wee bit but…

Often that thrashing occurs in confined and predictable ways.

To be clear, flow drills are a huge step up from the static variety of martial play, but the error they seek to correct has its own hazards to be aware of.

A Few Ideas to Be Aware Of When Training With Flow Drills

“How you train is how you will fight.”-Special Forces Maxim

I say nothing new here, training is meant to elicit patterned responses.

We must be scrupulous about the responses we wish to elicit.

Training is also a situational dependent endeavor, meaning that often the environment, the emotional investment, the degree of intensity we utilize in drilling also, wisely, need to be considered factors in any and all drills we conduct.

To quote another Special Forces Maxim,

“Let your training be reflective of the conditions of the battlefield.”

Merely moving beyond the static tied-down patient may not be enough.

[Our offering on Training Scars may be of value in this conversation.]

If you train any flow drill in a slow and contemplative manner, you are likely grooving that “emotional terrain,” that level of athletic intensity into your core-reactions.

If your flow-drilling provides “feeeze-frames” for “Hot spots,” that is, places to “go crazy” with your exaggerated “replies” you may be drilling for “loose here, hot here” which is not quite reality, is it?

If your flow drill is a repetitive loop then likely that requires YOU the surgeon, to lie down on the gurney and become YOU the patient and respond in a manner that allows your former patient to carve upon you.

Now, drilling requires tit-for-tat so all can play.

But…if we inculcate a continuous loop that contains the very tactic/motion we are drilling to thwart, when we start the loop as the “attacker” we are drilling ourselves to the error.

If your flow drill maintains similar range/distance within itself we, again, carve neural paths of no-retreat/no-advance within that movement set.

If our minds become grooved merely to responding to the drill but not to any like angle, or engage in other manifestation of the preceding, we have “slaved” to the drill.

In these cases, our patient may not be tied down, but they are also not ambulatory.

Flow Drills Are Absolutely Useful & Necessary

With all that said, one may think I am flow drill skeptic.

Not at all.

I am a skeptic of any and all flow drilling that exists with the above training scar errors.

Flow Drilling conducted with tactical variability and punctuated engagements go a long way to taking our Surgeon-Patient relationship a bit further up the reality chain.

See the Below Syllabus for More on Punctuated Flow Drills as they apply to Empty-Hand, Bowie Knives, & Tomahawks.

ESP RAW 223

The Black Box Project 10: The Clinch as Strike, Pt. 1/Street/RnT High-Singles Pt. 1/Tomahawk & Trade-Knife Flow Drills Pt. 1

Mark Hatmaker

www.extremeselfprotection.com

 

Upright Scufflin’ Hellaciousness: Striking

The “Street”/Rough ‘n’ Tumble Collar & Elbow Clinch, Part 1

·        The Clinch as Strike

·        The Clinch is Ephemeral, Fluid, & Not Static

·        Freeze-Frame vs. 32 fps.

·        The Sportsman’s C & E

·        Lead Hand Placement

·        Off-Hand Placement

·        Roughing the Sportsman’s C & E into a Less-Kind Freeze-Frame

·        Bumps as Part and Parcel

·        Chopping-In

·        + Butting-In

·        Bone-Blocking vs. Flaring

·        Rabbit-Popping

·        + Butting-In

·        “Meat ‘em”

·        “But, what about that rear hand, Mark?”

·        The Problem of Neutrality or 50/50 Opportunities

·        Sportsman’s C & E Exits

·        The X-Exit

·        The Shrug as Strike

·        “So, what was the preferred Old-School Collar & Elbow?”

Upright Scufflin’ Hellaciousness: Grappling

The Single-Underhook to Securing the Street High-Single

·        The Sport Single Low to High

·        The Street Single Inverts the Order

·        Moving from the Single-Underhook to the Street High Single

·        The Cinch-Step

·        The Grip

·        The Mechanics of Why You Never Flip the Grip

·        Head-Position

·        The Closing Step

·        Altogether Now 1/2/3

·        The Drive Drop

·        Repeat Cinch and Closing Steps

·        Clear the Leg

·        Pick the Heel

·        Fire from Above or Cover

Vicious Weaponry: Tomahawk & Frontier Trade-Knife

Using Familiar Empty-Hand Patterns as Access to “Punctuated” Weapons Defense-Offense

·        The Empty-Hand 1-2-3-4

·        1 as the Defensive Line

·        2 as the 1^st Chop/Stab/Slice Line

·        3 as the 2^nd Chop/Stab/Slice Line

·        4 as the Outside-to-Inside Attack Preparation

·        Standing to Kneeling and All Dogs in Between

·        Turning 4 into 2

·        The 1 & 2 Blend

·        The 3 & 4 Blend

·        Frontier Trade-Knife Spine-Grip 1-2-3-4

·        Frontier Trade-Knife Digger-Grip 1-2-3-4

·        Tomahawk 1-2-3-4 Limb-Lopping Version

·        Tomahawk 1-2-3-4 Skull-Splittin’ Version

[To snag the DVD of this material.]

[For more Rough& Tumble history, Indigenous Ability hacks, and for pragmatic applications of old school tactics historically accurate and viciously verified see our RAW Subscription Service.]

For information on the Expansive Black Box Project.