Overcoming Fear and building Aggression in women’s self defence

I’ve had the pleasure of teaching one or two ladies over the years and the one common problem they did have was building aggression. While it’s not always the case, most women live a reasonably calm life and rarely show aggression Everybody’s got the ability to be angry and fearful , and I think it’s important to understand fear, I tend to look at it like a useful tool, fear is there to tell you when you’re in danger, and it also releases chemicals that can help your body work faster and stronger to overcome dangerous situations, I’ve trained myself to see fear as a good thing rather than the definition, just like the physical training to land a harder punch on a bag, you can train your emotions  as well as a response to fear or danger. When you don’t understand the physical effects of fear e.g. fight, flight or freeze and adrenalin. These can be totally debilitating when not understood. And completely shut down your offence. But when fully understood they can help you massively.

Now when you look at aggression, if your aggressive when you strike a bag or target and visualise trying to inflicted harm on your attacker, and with training the body will respond to this with adrenalin as if you’re in a fight to a certain extent, because when you’re throwing strikes on a pad, in your mind your visualising a dangerous situation and the body responds, you will start to be able to switch the aggression on and off when needed. The problem some people have, not just women, is just being aggressive to start with, because generally from an early age your told not to show aggression or get angry, you could even be embarrassed to show such a raw emotion, and it can take time to bring out the lioness or Amazonian, so to speak.

One way I've found particularly useful is using thoughts to trigger aggression. most people have a thing or person that makes them particularly angry and all that your doing is taking that feeling and placing that on the end of every offensive strike, like cruelty to an innocent animal or thinking about someone causing harm to an innocent child or animal, possibly your child or a close friends child, visualise yourself in between the child and the attacker, it’s not about you it’s about the child, you’re the Childs only chance for safety, at this point you have no choice you have to fight back to protect the innocent, take all that anger at the thought of them harming the chid, and use that in an aggressive attack to overwhelm the attack and get the child to safety. just be aware that to much uncontrolled aggression can be just as ineffective as none at all, your focusing on a goal not going into a red mist, while aggression, intent and determination alone can be enough to come out the other side safely, add that to a trained skill set of explosive strikes and you’ve got some seriously effective self defence.

Here’s a clip of Jane one of the first students of mine, looking at her progression over a couple of years, she was very shy at first but as her confidence built with her training, it was like she became a different person, much more confident. The energy she was giving off went from fearful victim female to confident alpha female. For example if a lion was looking for some diner then it would study the herd for the weaker animals not just a limp or a little bit skinny. But the energy they are giving of, if there head is down and little or no eye contact, walking sheepishly this is very submissive, that spells diner to any lioness!

This is no different to a mugger looking for a victim.  if they were lying in wait to attack someone and they had a choice of the Jane before training and Jane after and they didn’t know, The Jane before training was thinking about becoming a victim, seriously lacking confidence in a violent situation so that was the energy she was giving off. You can pick this up from the way some people walk, the victims gate, A bit like a little scared mouse shuffling along and say if an attacker made eye contact with her and she quickly looked away head down he would instantly pick up on this weakness instantly. And you would only react like this if you were fearful.

Once she had trained to a certain extent, reasonably close to the situations she was fearful of, a lot of the fears got answered, she got a much better understanding of not only all of her fears and the situations she could be in not, but learning how to get out of the situations an dangers and how the body reacts to fear, with time that response becomes a trained reaction.

Once she got to the point at the end of the clip, rather than thinking victim and what if this or that happened. All her questions and fears had been answered an tested under pressure, in training. so rather than giving of the victim mentality pre-training. After training she was walking much more upright, head up and confident, she would be switched on looking for danger, she would look any dodgy looking fellow straight in the face and make eye contact with confidence. So a person may look the same but the energy they give off is completely different, and can directly affect an attacker’s choice of victim, DONT BE A VICTIM!

Whats the difference between kipping pull ups and ordinary pull ups?

Ive often heard that kipping is cheating with a pull up,thats because they are infact two completely different exercises, achieving two different objectives.so i depends what your training for

with an ordinary pull up, the idea is to pull yourself up isolating parts of the body to train the specific parts,like a pull down machine,your body in a stable position isolating certain muscle groups, like the back etc, pull ups are an exercise for strength

pull ups clip

now with kipping pull ups they are designed to use the whole body in an explosive flowing movement,strengthening the kinetic chain as a whole,not just isolating certain muscles,this makes a kipping pull up an "explosive move for bodyweight training" 

the kipping pull up

and like with any exercise push yourself to hard and you will injure yourself,ive trained pull ups but never kipping pull ups,I dont think my back could take the whip.

MMA Exercises for the kinetic chain

A punch is a full body movement using your kinetic chain, core and breath linking together to build a wave of energy up from the ground  in an explosive movement, for someone just learning the kinetic chain using heavy weights forces you to use good kinetic movement, because you get to the point at a certain weight where strength alone fails. And there’s another point where you have no choice put to use both kinetics and strength  or you just won’t lift it off the ground .while the press or the swing is a superb exercise for initial explosiveness, it doesn’t teach you a full flowing kinetic movement like a figure of 8.and it can teach you bad habits when you’re looking at punching with the full kinetic chain.

 let me explain, with an exercise like the pivot press and the power clean, once you’ve extended out and finished the movement you relax and it takes much less strength to bring the weight back down and rest it on the floor or your shoulder at which point the movement stops or the flow breaks, it’s like throwing one punch stopping getting back into position and then throwing the same punch again, the other type of kinetic chain exercise teaches you to flow with the kinetic chain, and gives you a better understanding of how to strike and move in combinations, like a jab, cross, hook or moving from a kick to a punch the smoother the chain, the less any power is lost in the movement, the stronger the next strike and so on, this is what makes a full kinetic movement so important.

I have two favourites for understanding the full kinetic flow with two short clips

One is the kettle bell swing, breathing exactly the same way as I punch and driving the hips in the direction I want the bell to go ,to create energy and explosiveness to swing the weight in a continuous flowing movement once I’m in motion at no point do I need to lift or push the weight or stop

and my other favourite is the hammer and tyre for the very same reasons once I’m in motion at no point do I lift the hammer after the first swing I use the energy built up using the first kinetic movement  .by the way you should always keep a straight back where possible(I inherited a curve)

so once you’re in motion your continually flowing in a kinetic flow the stronger the kinetic chain and the core, the lighter and easier the hammer is to continuously swinging because the movement is much more efficient and there’s no energy leaking from weaker positions. Now there is a point in both exercises that I get to relax for a split second after breathing out on release of the kinetic energy built, but I’m not stopping the movement and starting again, I have to continue a full flow so that the chain completes itself. So it’s not like resting a weight back on my shoulder or putting a weight down, I have to be in a good kinetic position to catch weight on the way back down smoothly to swing it back up .these two exercises will make you much more explosive when throwing combinations because you’re not just learning one movement again and again your learning a chain of flowing explosive movements. The other bad habit from the press and clean is straightening out the triceps to finish the punch, I explained this in my last clip 

the kinetic chain and punching for the ufc and mma gloves

I get the feeling some people think I’m just teaching one type of punch? I’m not, the kinetic punching I teach is a Style of punching with the hands designed specifically for MMA Gloves fully utilising the kinetic chain. This punch can’t be thrown in Boxing or Muay Thai gloves, because the thumb position and doesn't allow you to land using the most efficient power line. boxers use swings in allot of punches, it’s normal and can’t be helped when you train in the big gloves and can build some real power. there is a more efficient way to build power is to rotate the body and bring the hand of on a smooth curve so that the forearm is driving every punch in which simply can’t be done in most modern boxing gloves. you would break your thumb trying, well I nearly did the first time I put boxing gloves on and threw a punch, thinking there would be loads of padding and my thumb landed first,!spiked the end of my thumb good style, I started in big gloves but quickly conditioned my hands to hit bare knuckle for self defence originally ,So I also noticed how I couldn’t make a proper fist with my hand in boxing gloves, and my punches weren’t as strong in boxing gloves because I couldn’t land on the strong powerline that I used when bare knuckle.

 So that means unlike boxing were you train in the same hand position that you fight, meaning the same type of glove same fist and thumb position. But when you train in boxing or Thai gloves for mma most of the striking leant for mma is in grained in bag work, pad work and sparing in the bigger gloves, when you fight with the hand in a different position, there’s different angles and more powerful positions available for mma punching. So while the kinetic punch can be up to 40% harder a standard MMA punch, that’s a standard mma jab v a kinetic jab same with a hook or cross etc because its more efficient it also takes much less energy to throw and because of the change in angles and power you can use all your boxing and Muay Thai tactics, but with a much more effective punch suited and designed specifically for mma gloves

This brings me to the second part of the kinetic chain the yin to the yan so to say, what do you need to do to build explosive power on the end of the punch? Because you can build as much speed and power with a punch as you want, but if you’re not doing anything on landing it then it’s only ever going to be a fast heavy push, or a dull thud, and even an eighteen stone guy (114 kilo) who had punched all his life, never had any explosiveness on the end of his punch. To be honest I’ve met allot of people who can put all their weight into a punch and if that’s 18 stone then with that on the end of a dull thud it’s usually plenty. And let me tell you that big guy hit with the most powerful dull thud I had ever felt! Now there’s another type of puncher that’s a real rarity and I’ve met less than one handful on my travels, hold a pad for these guys and you will instantly understand what I mean, no matter how you hold the pad it’s that explosive it nearly always over extends your shoulder, when you decided to met the punch with the pad which is perfectly normal to protected the elbow and shoulder then you hand felt like it had no padding.
One guy who’s number two on my explosive punching list, martin used to thrive in directing his explosive punch down the bone of my forearm deliberately and even though you would be in a strong position, and you didn’t feel it in your shoulder. You could feel what could only be described as a shockwave of pain shooting down your forearm bone marrow and it really hurt when it came out the back of your elbow? However This guy once held a Thai pad for my main self defence teacher (Dennis Jones) throwing a big kinetic hook, he told me it felt like he had snap his forearm bone and commented at the time “any harder and it would have cut my lip” this is where the shockwaves come in and the kinetic chop, there’s 3 shockwaves the light snapping shockwave, the deep snap, and the ripping snap and each one steps up in power but the king is the kinetic chop and it’s a mix of second two shockwaves .
all four of these can be used on the end of most punches,hammer fist or backhand and anybody with any explosive power say a boxer or kickboxer already has started to develop these types of explosiveness just through general training and repetition ,will know what i mean.but it’s when you start to isolate and train the end of the punch, the explosiveness really comes into own. because you've really refined the end, you don’t have to try as hard top build power.shockwaves go hand in hand with kinetic punch.and to be honest the shockwave training made the single biggest difference in mine and all my students explosiveness and precision and it just keeps increasing.

oh and its superb for self defence!!

boxing and the elastic ball

I thought id upload some older clips on the elastic ball i played around with over the last 8 years
the first one is quiet comical,but it can be a great tool for hand to eye coordination

heres how to make the ball

How would george st pierre improve his JAB

Heres a look at what i'd teach GSP to improve his JAB, infact a totally new style for MMA gloves,THIS PUNCH CAN NOT BE TAUGHT OR THROWN IN BOXING/MUAY THAI GLOVES

now add the shockwave training onto the end of that and your looking at 40% increase at a proffesional level!

looking for fighters in the uk to try a new MMA punch

Hi guys, I’m Karl Eastwood, and I’ve got a REAL fascination with power punching, which I also teach. I decided to take a closer look at the MMA punching style, because it was different to the style I was using, I realised that the boxing gloves really restrict the power you’re punching with, because of the thumb position compared to mma gloves. So I’ve been developing a punch that’s new to mma, and it can’t be taught or thrown in modern Boxing or Muay Thai gloves. It’s been developed specifically for the MMA glove, and its ready to GO, Your looking at up to a 40% improvement of a standard MMA punch at a professional level , less effort to throw, significantly more powerful, with less chance of a boxers fracture. So I’m looking for some MMA fighters from the UK to test/train this style for free. I’m based in Hawarden near Chester, and I’m offering free private lessons and free video downloads to a select few. I’m willing to send out a few downloads across the water as well All I ask is that if you get a free download you genuinely spend a few months training the techniques and let me know what you think. You can contact me here instinctivecombatives@hotmail.co.uk

heres some clips explaining the punch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mmqe0u9Uqrc&list=PLa3lfJInckC02DVe21uTCroY8CH7vkTUX