The Terror

Sticking with the theme of circles and angles, we looked at a few different angles of approach when dealing with a club attack.  We stepped straight in, we stepped in at an angle and we stood still and flinched.  To keep things simple, we only drilled against a straight overhead attack (the psycho stab).

Stepping straight in meant jamming up the attack.  If the defender didn’t have a stick of their own, this meant there was a preference for blocking the arm holding the stick rather than the stick itself.  The reasoning behind this is while we were using nicely padded practice clubs, a “real” weapon might be much less forgiving to the bones of the defender.  If the defender had a stick, there were a couple more options when stepping in – we chose to explore a simple upward block while holding the stick with both hands at either end.

For stepping off at an angle, the stick/no stick options were remarkably similar.  We chose for the defender to step to the outside of the attack, thus gaining an easier route to the attackers back.  In case of a miscalculation of the incoming attack, the defender raised a soft upward block with either their stick or their arm.  The hope was that the incoming strike would miss completely but sometimes hope and reality don’t coincide.

Then after thirty minutes of drilling, the students came at one another with sticks in a slow speed drill.  Watch the video to see how things turned out, then read the whiteboard.