PAIN IN THE PARK II

So, a slight change from last years pain in the park session (not to say we wont replicate that soon!). Tuesday night way all about movement and play. It was raining for some of the time. But that is the point of these outdoor sessions to find yourself in unfamiliar terrain, on an unstable surface, in a different environment. For those of you who opted to stay at home and eat Doritos, you missed the fun...

There is a direct link between how we play, move and ultimately operate under stress.

By encouraging our bodies to move freely we open up the possibility of spontaneous movement. We go beyond prefixed drills and combinations. Anyone can learn to strik, but it's how you then put it together with all the other movement and stimulation that takes place during an encounter.

The games we used to kick things off come from Frank Forencich and Exuberant Animal.

After a simple warm up jog round the park we had people pair off and do and Orbit Run. One person leads at a slow pace whilst the other circles. This is harder than it sounds (more so with a dozen folk on the filed at once). We moved on to mirror runs, follow my leader but at a pace.

We then did the siewalk drill where participants move through a resisting group, finding a path out the outher side. Next we played with structure, finding the points of articulation in the body that let us destabilise and ultimately topple your partners.

After this we used "heckling" - this simply involves having one team member stand on one leg whilst the team gently but firmly unbalances them. But the teams jobs is to destabilise and spot.

We included some tea cup drills and tai chi style silk reel moves to simply promote co-ordination.

Marcus then took these simple but challenging games and transfered the work we had done into a combative framework. It's easy to see how an understanding of your own movement promotes superior performance.

If how we train is really is how we fight then you can't do enough to get the body moving in a free and uninhibited fashion. And play is where it starts...