Ranges

One thing I've noticed that I do that many others don't is attempt to step out of drills "safely". Pushing on the face (or shoulder etc) while angling off to a relatively "safe" zone and remaining ready to re-attack or defend.

This was partly something I've always done but has recently been reinforced by what Iain teaches and advocates.

It can get you some odd looks when drilling with people that don't do such things. :)

And I really like the sound of your drill structure. People can often get "comfortable" at their favoured range and that can break that. Perhaps a variation on that would be making the instructions only applicable to one side of the sparring/drilling? So the other person is reacting to the changes in range/intent.

Call out drills are great.

There are other kinds of drills that you can use to help focus on the particular range and skill set you want your athletes to develop as well. Here are some suggestions...

Objective Drill- give the athletes a goal to achieve (in this case, entering and securing good grips in the clinch), once there they re-set to the starting moment and go again. Example- you have both fighters sparring really lightly and playfully (again we are working on entering) with the punches and kicks (or whatever your stand-up game consists of, throws, etc). Designate one person to be 'it' for the drill. Anytime during the match, that person chooses to enter into the clinch range and the partner defends. Let them experiment and figure it out.

Re-set Drill- stop the progression and play once we get out of the area we are developing. Example- exiting from clinch. Have both players work their clinch games until the coach calls stop. As the coach, simply call out re-set once the play either goes from clinch to ground, or one side escapes.

Isolation Drill- Work only the particular range and technique. Have the athletes take turns and share information. Group disscussions on what worked and why for different people also help greatly.

Hope this helps...

Love this post!

Ranges are naturally dictated by our human limbs and usage of these limbs.  So it boils down to punching, kicking, and grappling/clinch.  Dynamic drilling is so important, as it's training all the permutations and combinations of our limbs and reactions.  This really is the ultimate goal as a human being...to be athletic, alive, and utilize our limbs efficiently in and out of the various ranges dictated by our limbs.

@ shoshinkanuk - Call out drills mentioned above are amazing.  I have dabbled with them, but after reading your post, I am excited to try this out again.

@Andrew Carr-Locke  - hey again! I think we talked earlier....you're the SBGi - alive - guy! LOL...it shows in your thinking! Good stuff! Anyway, when I used to train regularly with my JKD friend, we did the objective drill and isolation drills.  But, we played with it by controlling certain variables...

example with the Modifying the Objective Drill:  Both partners spar lightly, then coach yells "Go", one partner just kicks say, the other defends with punches only.  You can alter this drill by having partners take turn at various ranges.

Yup, we have call-outs as we spar in the clinch range. 

Again clinch is about controlling the position first, and then working throws and attached striking. To disengage properly you still need to be in control of your opponent, so work for those concepts first. Once control can be established by each person (i.e. all students know what you are talking about and can apply it), then the sparring begins. During the play for control coach can give commands such as specific takedowns or throws (established beforehand- we use call-outs of "throw" & 'shoot") or disengage (call-out "break") or attached striking (this continues non-stop until the next call- "hit" or "strike") and controlling your opponent (call-out "position").  

So the drill has two people playing in clinch randomly and actively .The coach has 5 calls. Throw, Shoot, Break, Hit, and Position. The athletes develop their skills with each of these areas as they go. 

Have fun. 

P.S. - for entering into clinch, I'd use a similar structure from a free motion striking range. Calls can be for boxing only, kicking only, entering into clinch, shooting for takedowns, Mauy Thai (kickboxing with limited grappling), MMA, etc... Imagination’s the limit. 

Great post Jim - and great replies.

I'm generally most comfortable fighting at the 'clinch' range, and I encourage my students to be there too.  

Often getting there isn't a problem - a really committed attack that you avoid tends to put you there, providing you avoid by moving in (or ducking and staying put).  I tend to find that if you evade by moving back (and I think it is safe to say that on occasion we've all done that under pressure) you can end up in a continuous firing line of strikes which make getting in close very difficult - since in general the only way to effectively stop a series of strikes is to change the attacker's mindset and put them in a fresh OODA loop by hitting them hard (generally to the head for best effect).

This poor position leaves only two effective options (if the person is genuinely attacking you with contact as opposed to light sparring):

One is to cover the head and crash in (rather like the two handed lunger in Heian Yondan) - this takes stones and carries risk.

The other is to pull back and attack with a long range weapon.  This takes greater footwork speed than your attacker, a strong guard and greater skill (than the other option).  It also carries the risk of keeping you forever in the assailant's ideal range.

JWT wrote:

Often getting there isn't a problem - a really committed attack that you avoid tends to put you there, providing you avoid by moving in (or ducking and staying put).  

I tend to find that if you evade by moving back (and I think it is safe to say that on occasion we've all done that under pressure) you can end up in a continuous firing line of strikes which make getting in close very difficult - since in general the only way to effectively stop a series of strikes is to change the attacker's mindset and put them in a fresh OODA loop by hitting them hard (generally to the head for best effect).

This poor position leaves only two effective options (if the person is genuinely attacking you with contact as opposed to light sparring):

One is to cover the head and crash in (rather like the two handed lunger in Heian Yondan) - this takes stones and carries risk.

The other is to pull back and attack with a long range weapon.  This takes greater footwork speed than your attacker, a strong guard and greater skill (than the other option).  It also carries the risk of keeping you forever in the assailant's ideal range.

To what point in Heain Yondan are you refering?

I greee with your statement about staying in your opponents ideal range,  if you cover and crash effectively, I see this as a less risk move than keeping distance and using long range attacks. You'll have more options in contact to control your opponent.

Can't you change the OODA loop by information overload? Give new stimulus to observe contstanly (throw things at the eyes, punches, finger tips, spare change), or drastically change the orientation, new angles/ranges, give too many descisions to your opponent to choose to act from (maybe they'll get stuck in analisys paralysis). But then again, you can just hit em- HARD. I like that, lol. 

Hi Andrew

 1:00 - 1:01 I have the posture changed slightly (spine aligned with rear shin angle), and the arms more relaxed with my head ducked between, but essentially I crash in like this.  I treat the majority of postures in Shotokan Karate as stylised representations - not actual fighting movements. Depending on circumstances i may have the arms retracted with the hands round the head so it becomes an elbow led crash.

No need to watch the whole vid, but deployed defensively by me here at 03:07.  Though I would describe this as a more hybrid version as the left arm is clearly first and a protective gesture, while the right arm follow through stops the attackers second punch dead in its tracks.  Note the Hiza Geri follow through as per Yondan.

Essentially info overload is by hitting them.  If you are not engaged and the other guy is waiting for an opportunity to hit then the stimuli you suggest will be observed and affect his OODA loop as he is still in OO.  Once someone has engaged in attack however (and here I refer to a committed assault, not a guarded competitive assault) they aren't looking for odd movements - they're hitting you and are fully focused on continuing to do so, they're not in an OODA loop, they're acting. The only thing that is definitely going to put them in a fresh OODA loop is something that creates an information overload by posing a threat that has to be acted upon, and that's pain! 

Still don't know if I agree with your pain theory, but I do agree with your clarification and the description of having to get them into a new loop by giving them something they perceive as a threat (even if that threat is restraint). Makes sense that once they are engaged they have moved from OO to A. Thanks. 

I also like that you put the times of the movements- saves my short attention span from having to search through the entire clip. Funny, I teach crashing methods and clinch stuff, and use the heain system for a baseline of our program. Have never thought of that movement in Yondan as a crash. 

I can always pick-up new things to practice-even in the stuff I've been doing for ages. You gotta love this art. Cheers and thanks again. 

No problem Andrew. 

shoshinkanuk wrote:

What's people feeling, method and experience around this, 'dynamic range drilling' idea and practice?

One of the most effective drills I have developed is to have people partner up and run a series of 'changes' by verbal order (so it is not their choice), along the lines of spar, grapple, push away, spar, go to ground, get up, grapple, change partner, spar, grapple, 2 on 1 spar - you get the idea,

I think crossing ranges and skill sets via INTEGRAL training (like you propose) is critical and the way you propose it is very effective.  I learned a similar drill from an Erik Paulson DVD for MMA he calls "puke drills" where the focus was:  striking (sparring); then handfighting/ pummeling i.e. ("clinching", defined loosely), and then grappling in 30 second bursts with six bursts being equivalent to one MMA round.

I have also played around with what I call 'flow' drills designed to accommodate the same purpose... One example:  start with free pummeling, then on the whistle, coaches verbal, or best, a particular action initiated by one partner dictating a physical 'opening', that partner (the one initiating or ''feeding' the opening) suddenly becomes a spontaneous 'mitt' (bare hands) holder for Partner B to execute a series of arranged strikes, or where partner B will go right into a particular throw to get both on the ground, and then commence back to free grappling, etc....  If you play around with it, you can come up with a lot of permutations off the same idea.

I think it is imperative to TRAIN to 'switch' gears between skill sets.  You need to do it at the level of fully aranged forms of training, semi-aranged drills and games; and those that culminate with completely UN-arranged spontaneous forms of training.

Good question.

Im pleased we all seem to be of simlair mindset, personally im finding how you train, not neccesarily what you train is more significant. I guess I always new that.

Last night we worked a variety of ranges and I found it very interesting how different people clearly prefer different ranges, im personally most comftorabile when im out of your range - im tall with long limbs which gives me an advantage when I close the gap, or you close it for me!