Plural Assailant Engagements going further

[Ryan Murdock]

On the back of the video package for Plural Assailant Engagements Vol 1: Ground Survival, there is a list of prospective future installments in the series:

Standing to Ground Evasion
Ground to Standing Escape
Standing E&E
Weapon Survival

Has anyone else taken the ideas and drills in Volume 1 and extrapolated them to these other topics? Anyone out there tried to piece together the hints and take it to the next level in their own training groups? Would be interested in comparing notes.

[Ryan Murdock]

My apologies for the delay, I wanted to expand on this sooner. Here is a brief summary of the work we did in my training group with the Plural Assailant series. Our goal was to take the training drills and strategies presented in Vol 1 and try to figure out what subsequent volumes might look like. Nothing earth shattering, but I think we came up with a couple useful training ideas. I’ll try to keep it concise. Keep in mind this stuff is better demonstrated than written about.

Ground to Standing

In our Ground Survival component we focused on evading a la weeble and the other methods on Vol 1, with the goal of reaching a place of relative safety and recovering a standing position as soon as possible. But what happens when you’re attacked on the way up? We took as our base position being raised up on one knee, the other leg planted on the foot. Practiced all possible variations of shock absorption from this position, and then creating planes (methods 1, 2, 3 and then improvised planes using chest, back…). Takedowns from here using parallel and concurrent force systems. Biomechanically efficient ways of regaining a standing position, and taking attacks at the same time.

We also explored the idea of using the attacker to facilitate our rise back to standing. This came from something Coach Sonnon said long ago in a post I can’t find. We took this hint and explored attacks where we would create a plane to slip and then climb the attackers body or load off him by, for example, pushing on the bent knee of his forward leg. We get an extra spring that helps us to our feet, and the attacker has that foot momentarily pinned in place with the weight. In the climbing example the effect is something like that of taking the joint mass centre in IOUF. The attacker has to support your weight and so his movements are limited. It also happens very fast. This is difficult to explain in print but play with this on the mats, I think there are possibilities here.

Standing to Ground

This is pretty self-evident so I won’t write much. Ground engagements. Ground engagements applied to throws, trips, sucker punches where you’re knocked off your feet… Every possible scenario we could think of. Also using ground engagements to take cover behind obstacles in the case of projectile weapons. Sutemi or sacrifice throws where you take the opponent to the ground with you…

Standing E&E

We took our base of Shockability and applied it to multiple attackers by exploring the strategies of bridging and layering (I take layering in the standing case to be shoving the attackers into each other, entangling them, letting them entangle themselves…). In order to lessen the fear reactivity and to slow things down at the beginning we used classical drills from the Free Bayonet series. The attackers lock one arm in the fencer’s position and walk towards the receiver, feeding an attack. The receiver must create a plane and keep moving past. Then the next attacker comes, feeding in the same manner. The key is to move, not fight. The drill picks up speed naturally. When it got easy we progressed to attacks of increasing difficulty, incrementally. The punches became shorter and faster, attacks were mixed (various types of blows including kicks, all improvised), obstacles were introduced… We also introduced Shock Engineering, and the receiver tried to land blows in passing. Never standing in place fighting one attacker. Slipping and landing a blow on the fly, with the goal being escape.

Key points were constant movement, soft eye focus to take in the scene rather than an attacker, positioning (I mean slipping to the side where the other attacker isn’t)…

Weapon Survival

All of the above, with weapons. Amazing how much more focused you become when sticks and knives are introduced! Even a padded stick hurts the side of the head. Also interesting how the two attackers interfered with each other. When swinging a long weapon for example, unless the attackers are very well coordinated with each other, there’s more room for you to maneuver between them, and more room to pile them into each other, to create planes so that the weapon swings towards the second attacker…

We also explored various hidden weapons, introduced suddenly and at random, by the attackers and by the defender.

Putting it all together

Finally, we put it all together. All attacks were asymmetrical. For example, one of the attackers may grab and punch, or apply some sort of clinch or hold so that his partner may strike. Clinch work comes in, the goal being to take control and throw the attacker right away, or to otherwise escape so that you can move, not fight. If the receiver is thrown to the ground, the above ground survival skills come into play, with the goal being to regain the feet as soon as practically possible. The overall training goal was to sew together all the stuff in each of the levels, and also bring in IOUF, Leg Fencing, clinch skills where appropriate. To blur the lines between venues (which are artificial concepts anyway) and begin to sew skill sets together in a multiple attacker scenario. You can see the endless possibilities for training scenarios here.

I’ll end on that note. That’s about as far as we took it before a change of training focus took us into a new cycle. All a logical extension of the materials presented in Vol 1. But I hope to generate some discussion, ideas on where to take it from here.

[Scott Sonnon]

Superb.

[Ryan Murdock]

Coach Sonnon,

1) Any hints on where to take it from there? I realize this is a pretty well-rounded approach, tying together resources from your body of work. But is there anything we've missed?

2) Also, any plans to complete the series, or do you consider it unecessary given that much of that info is elsewhere within your resources and is there for those who look?

3) Finally, any plans to release further ROSS material in the martial as opposed to sport flavours? Of course the sport resources like Fisticuffs and Leg Fencing have been extremely useful to us, but I'm thinking stuff along the lines of the Bayonet series, Shockability and Plural Assailant. It seems like the focus at present is mainly Circular Strength work and Clubbells (I'm experiencing huge gains from this work too, of course, but my first love is martial art :wink: ).

Thank you again for the wealth of quality training resources. You can see that we appreciate them and are really trying to pick them apart :D

[Scott Sonnon]

Ryan,

1. I think that you're on the right path and should continue to explore.

2. I don't know at this time, but I think that people can take PAE1 + 3DPP and extrapolate.

3. Dave Rusin and Oleg Yakimovich will be producing ROSS materials very soon.

[Ryan Murdock]

Coach Sonnon,

Thanks very much. Excellant on all 3 counts! Can't wait to see any new ROSS materials! But of course any new RMAX release is like heroin to a junkie :twisted: On second thought, maybe that isn't such a flattering comparison :shock:

I'll be ordering the new 3DPP book next week, as well as Core Cadre Curriculum and the Anabolic Bruiser manual (although an actual bruiser will have to wait a bit).

[Scott Sonnon]

Don't worry, you can use ABCs with any Clubbell weight.