Impact with attitude. That was the theme for the day as Lee Morrison arrived back to Ireland for his 7th Irish combatives seminar. The seminar which dealt with the complex subject of counter weapons was held in the lovely town of Inch, just outside of Gorey Co. Wexford.
Anyone who has trained with Lee will know what I mean when I say Lee was his usual dynamic self and led the seminar with explosiveness and realism.
The seminar kicked off with a look into the murky world of Knife culture including the mindset behind knife attacks and the intention to use any sharp edged implement as a weapon of choice. From there we moved into weapon concealment and deployment. How can you understand something properly if you have no idea how these events unfold?
As usual, the content was precise and delivered masterfully. Once everyone had an understanding of weapon deployment we entered into the concept of cover, crash and counter. Ballistic impact with cruel intentions is the UC trade mark. Palm strikes, elbows and knees from close proximity were the name of the game. Lee under pins this principle of UC training with a simple adage - "Hit hard, be ferocious, so much so that you remove your assailants initial intention of harming you, to one of self preservation - now the shoe is on the other foot". One of the great things about training with Lee is that he has walked the walk and is now talking the talk. His upbringing and his time as a young man on club doors in London, Portsmouth and Southampton mean that unlike many of the so-called Reality Based Self Defence "experts" out there he has real life experience, including live knife encounters with one which punctured his bowel. So what you're learning is what has worked with experience - think of that the next time your 'combat instructor' teaches you to roll under sniper fire, or teaches you how to disarm an m1 Carbine. This is what separates the wheat from the chaff.
The seminar moved into ballistic weapons, employing combative take downs and stomps, crashing using the spike method into offensive clinch work to blasting the base which brought us nicely into the take down section. Every module progressed through tactile and body language awareness into skill isolation then into 50% speed and power and inevitably into zero compliancy- where you didn't know what you were dealing with until the weapon was in play.
The day flew by as it generally does. Towards the end everybody was well and truly ragged around, realism can only be realism, there is no in-betweeny bits. The CS spray was great fun as the spray was changed for water and we had to operate under the same conditions to deal with such a hold up. Too finish off we covered some stress training to put the newly learned skills into some scenario work with limitations, as you can imagine great fun was had by all. It was hard, it was sore it was ego battering - but that's what UC is.
It was great to see all the guys and gals again and put in a full day of top notch training with Lee. A big thanks to Lee, and Rob for hosting. No matter how many times you train with Lee, you always come away with a fresh perspective and something new. Worth it every time.
You can read Jon Mackey's thoughts on the day by reading his blog
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