Tactical Edge was back in town..

Last night we had the pleasure of Mark Davies taking the session at Krav Maga Edinburgh. Mark is the founder of Tactical Edge and my instructor. Mark started the evening with a warm up focusing especially on the legs. I had asked Mark to cover kicking with us and go over some of the finer points. With Mark being a 4th Degree in TKD you could put on a stamp what he doesn’t know about this. Mark gave the guys drills that they could take away and develop at home. Mark stressed that kicking is something that takes time to develop and you have to work on it much more than techniques with the hands simply because we use our hands and arms everyday but the legs generally just move us about the place. We looked at functional kicking and Mark explained that if we could develop power with a high section kick then imagine the power we would have with a low section one. Mark explained the common pitfalls people make with various kicks and when exactly we should use each kick and gave pros and cons. He cross referenced at lot of the psychology of kicking with the blade arts and emphasised that we must make sure we do not fight in remiss. Kick at the right time. I often see this when people fight in the street and in a lot of clubs. They are in punching range but they attempt to kick which usually ends up with the guy catching the leg or the kicker following backwards as he is off balance. The other area I asked Mark to cover was joint locking and breaking. Again, Mark stressed this wasn’t really for us as a civilian to control and retrain people however, there might be a need at some point. He stressed that if a lock is failing then we simply flow to another one or straight back into striking. We do not just keep trying to get that lock on! At least if it comes to court we can say we attempted to restrain and then we had to up the force ladder. We looked at flowing into locks from common attacks and then flowing between the different locks relying on sensitivity. Again, close combat means “close” and under the effects of adrenaline and the speed of combat we will mainly be relying on sensitivity as opposed to relying on vision to interpret lines of attack etc. This is why certain arts have developed sensitivity drills over the years. Again, don’t confuse fighting with what you see in UFC or outside the chippie. People flailing their arms getting fatigued hoping for a knock out relying on that haymaker to save the day. You train to avoid those pitfalls, to flow, to be quick and to move onto the next guy or escape. It’s all about being a tactician. If its taking you more than 5 seconds to take down someone then you’ve done something wrong. More pics to follow but here’s one of Rannoch Donald from Kettlebells Scotland having a baby and some of the guys who survived until the end of the night. Marcus