understanding the palm heel

thought you might like to see my new clips i put together on how i train the palm heel,hope you like them

heres part 1



and heres part 2

I`ve watched plenty of clips of people teaching various things both in work and on th enet, and your presentation and style is spot on, nice steady speech, good clear instruction, and good clips of controlled carnage to back up your points - especially from Mike Badger. Wouldn`t want to upset that man.

enjoyed watching those mate, the sooner you get a dvd out there the better, your stuff is an awful lot better than most.

and as usual top marks for having the big hairy ones required to post clips of yourself in action.

take care

Mol

you are very kind my friend

fivers in the post.....honest

Hi karl, are you self taught?

Peter Skillen wrote:Hi karl, are you self taught?

are we talking teaching ?

physical?

editing?

or lack of

Martial arts/fighting skills, Your film making skills are excellent. Not that your martial skills are not I just think it's always a good idea to give people an idea of your training background of the subject you teach etc..

heres my profile,but it needs updating



I’ve never gone looking for fights, but I have a serious ability to wind people up! In my younger days I was in around 12ish? fights,I never found the need to keep count, and won most of them with no skill at all just pure violence and aggression/determination and also lost a few, I’ve also been attacked with knives twice in my teens. (Details are in the knife defence training thread)

When I decided to move into martial arts it was purely for one thing, it was to find the best way that I could protect myself in a violent attack.
I was fortunate to have martyn a good friend who had been training for many years helped me get started, he had trained in karate and moving on to jkd and had studied some of Geoff Thompsons stuff (I learnt a lot from his books even before I started training, Jamie O’Keefe has some excellent books as well) he also had touched on what I call combatives what works on the street for the individual
so my journey started from an advanced point,

I was always told to keep it simple even though I wanted to get more and more technical more martial arty
“But look I can spin him round after catching this” etc
But Like a lot people in the martial arts I was searching for the “holy grail” of techniques

I’ve studied many systems from martial arts to combatives.Combatives was the nearest thing I found to reality and I’ve never believed what people say unless I can test it myself to see if it works at full speed full power and aggression.
And found many times that out of all the things that work at half speed, a very small number actually work at full speed, or are very hard to pull off in a pro active environment.

After some training with my friend martin a former bouncer who hits like a train.
I started training with one of his instructors Carl Lewis,he hits like a train with a jack hammer on the front! from Wrexham an excellent jkd/self defence instructor in his own right,
My very first lesson with him was on open handed strikes and I was surprised that I could do them quiet well, but not hard by any means.After that the lessons were back to punching etc many lessons and hours of punching, bruised knuckles and sore wrists,some injuries I still have problems with now. I found it was hard enough striking a moving maize bag with commitment, one mistake and I would be training with one hand for weeks, that’s why I switched to open hand and all the problems I was having getting with punching stopped, It also felt a lot more natural to me

I learnt loads from Carl, he went into detail on avoiding violence, target hardening etc, something I realised had been doing all my life but not understood the detail, I’ve never gone looking for trouble and since the age of nineteen haven’t had to use violence on anyone, I’ve always done my best to avoid it. That’s 19 years of avoidance, staying aware, target hardening etc,

It takes a bigger man to walk away!

From the moment I started learning jkd I realised a passion for learning/teaching I loved to share ideas And talk amongst students about different ideas and concepts,
I spent thousands on DVDs and books on what else is out there, searching for info and soaking it up like a big sponge, at first I was all for learning anything the more complicated the better,
mart was always in my ear

“keep it simple on the street mate”

One day Carl my jkd instructor mentioned a name of a DVD
“Jim Grover’s combatives series”

That was it! on the internet again, and it was ordered
Well it was certainly a revelation for me, as I’d been using open hand strikes for a while that’s one of the many good things about Carl he realised self defence was a very personal thing

“Keep what YOU need, throw away what YOU don’t” Bruce Lee

The big difference I saw was a strictly one sided attack

” I don’t care what you’re doing I’m doing this!”
“Martial arts are what you do WITH people
Combatives are what you do TO people” Jim Grover
The core of which was always simple gross motor skills, basic strikes and serious aggression
I was having regular sparing matches with my brother at the time; he used to take the p*ss out of me because every week I found something better, or a better way to strike, most of which made very little difference when I put the gloves on anyway.

One week I turned up and cycling was my new technique, I saw it first on Lees Urban combatives site where it was pictured, but didn’t understand it until Grovers DVD.

I didn’t tell him (he’d only take the p*ss) we started sparing give and take, give and take then I tried cycling head down moving forward with a barrage of strikes, it shut him down straight away, “what was that!” he said pulling himself of the wall

this way of striking is different to the "straight blast" or a barage of knuckles from both sides

“combatives” I said with a bloody big grin on my face!

After a few more tests it soon became clear that whoever went first was the one left standing at the end, so that was the end of the sparing sessions, well sparing give and take any way!

Every friend that turned up at my house got a lesson in cycling, my passion new no boundaries, and occasionally you could tell by the look on my mates face’s they were thinking “this f*ckers obsessed”

I felt that I need to branch out to truly discover my own way what I preferred.
I stopped training with Carl, to concentrate on my own training extensively at home, after training with martyn and Carl and through Jamie’s and Geoff’s books, I realised there was one very important thing I needed and that was the ability to hit seriously hard! which I’m still working on, regardless of whatever else I learned if I couldn’t hit hard I was wasting my time.

I empted my cup of all the previous techniques and concentrated on that.

Through many hours training getting sick to death of the repetition after repetition my favourite strike started to show through, and quickly became a very heavy slap, from lots of angles with or without a base.

I had been teaching a friend at home and he said you should give the way you strike a name, I had not seen anybody striking in the same way I was, and it was different to the gutterfighters strikes, Peter C’s power slap etc
So the bear paw was named
I never claimed that it was original just that it was different to what I had seen

I’ve spent thousands of hours training my own body to find out the best way I work and the best way I can stop someone from attacking me. I’ve studied many systems from martial arts to combatives

After a session at Dennis Martin’s international 05 and confident in my ability I started training with Dennis martin’s gutterfighters in late 2005 and quickly realised a lot of my training was very static, and that you had to be able to strike on the move with a more varied arsenal
And realised the importance of realistic training/pressure testing and learning to strike with a constant change in the location of the body.
I found I could help the guys in class with their power whichever way they preferred to strike, so I was always offering hints and tips and free lessons


peter (slackybladder, one of dens instructors) came for a visit and I also invited Manchester budo down for a session early in 2006 at a very interesting southnarc seminar
They were very impressed, that’s when I decided to put a post on Geoff’s old forum

“Ever heard of a bear paw?”

Why? Because I realised that I could help people increase the power of their strikes, and I loved to teach it

I found there was lots of interest in my strike and I got asked about it many times at various seminars and classes
Rob came over from Ireland to train and Simon even trained from Tokyo
And I had some excellent reviews
The problem was the bearpaw was overshadowing the fact that what I was doing was teaching people to hit harder.
It also showed that the “holy grail” thing from martial arts has also carried over to combatives.

I’d seen so many people busy filling up there brain with techniques when they didn’t have a clue how to really hit hard
If you can’t hit then you’re just going to make someone a lot more p*ssed and more a lot more aggressive

In my time with the gutterfighters I attended many of Dennis martins seminars, including some excellent instructors Lee Morrison, Si Squires, John Brawn, mika, Alan Beckett, Mick coup etc

I filmed many of the ones I attended, and spent hours studying them again and again, and also purchased many DVDS and did the same with them
With my obsession with hitting hard I was always fascinated by the way other people hit, and through study and training grew to fully understand not only how they were hitting hard but also that everybody’s different and everybody has their own way
But broken down into basic components there was always similarity’s

Staying relaxed
Violence and aggression
Footwork
Breathing
(See the power generation thread)

Components that I was already using with the “bearpaw” long before I trained with den
I also realised that a lot of the self protection that was what was being taught across the board were very similar with very similar themes e.g. avoidance, staying aware etc
And the only big difference was techniques being taught and the way they were applying power in there strikes all of which were very individual to the instructor.

But there were also instructors trying to get students to hit the same as them instead of just applying the basics to what they prefer based on their size shape and background,something I was guilty of with the bearpaw


The physical side of what I teach has come from many hours of training, the way I hit was based on the swamp principles on Grover’s DVD,but the confusion around the weapons first part ment i need a clearer way to teach it and the drop step is only part of the story,when it comes to striking on the move
And because a lot of my training was done at home it quickly became my own particular way
I know quite a few people that learnt to hit at home hitting bags, they all do it in their own particular way but still use the same basics regardless of the way they stand/step or hold their hands or arms

After a knee injury that stopped me doing any hardcore training caused by grappling training with my brother, hey just because sparing was out we had to find something!
the problem was we both knew very little about it, he was bending my leg one way and I’m bending his the other nobody wanted to give up, he did in the end but Monday at work I soon realised there was something definitely not right (let this be a lesson to you guys be careful when your training)

I carried on going to dens class and seminars studying what they were doing even though I was not physically training, Maybe I got a bit obsessed with getting my friends to hit harder in class, or it was because I would limp around taking notes, in his class in Jan 2007 I received this email from den
______________________________________________________________

Karl, I've thought about this long and hard, but I regret that you are no longer welcome to train with us.
The reason being, you constantly promote your own ideas to the guys who attend, both
the Wednesday class, and seminars.
I know you have ambitions to be an instructor,
but you should set up your own group, and not take advantage of what we are doing with our endeavours.
I like you as a person, but just don't think our aims are best served by your activities.
Best of luck with your future training.
Dennis Martin
______________________________________________________________

well I was a bit gutted and had made many good friends there, but I also realised that my training was different to what he was doing.

one big thing that I got from Si Squires, one of dens instructors was the importance of the padded assailant scenarios so I began testing helmets in various forms an started to put a suit together this was always a real tester to find out if your training was working, early on a had some good tests and some bad tests, luckily I had some on film so I could study it and improve on my performance.

I continued with my teaching/learning with friends and family.
And in the middle of last year I started looking round for somewhere to hold a class, and soon realised that I needed insurance,
I got public liability but because I had no belts or certificates, I couldn’t get full martial arts insurance and I couldn’t rent any of the bigger halls, I checked around for places that help people my problems

This was when I contacted Dave Turnton of the Self Defence Federation, I told him that I wanted to open a class on simple basic combatives but couldn’t get insurance,
After I showed him what I taught and gave him full details of my history, in November 2007 he granted me a licence/insurance so I could officially start my own class.
Thanks again Dave, I think you know how much it means to me

What I teach today is based on one thing only and that’s my thoughts and studies on the best and simplest ways I can avoid/escape someone in a violent attack.
To date I’ve also been in around 100 padded assailant scenarios,
I’ve been attacked /been the attacker at full force full power many times, filmed and studied every one of them many times, and the truth is if you do it well on a guy in a padded helmet, It gives you real confidence in what you do and an understanding that you can make it work in real life,
regardless of what experience the instructor has, it’s always up to the student when there on the street confronted with violence, this comes down to one thing, their commitment to training, how many hours they put in, and how realistic the training is
From a love of martial arts as a kid to around the last four and a half years of training/teaching (about 12 months jkd the rest in combatives)
I don’t consider myself an expert or hard in any way and I do my best to avoid trouble, I’ve been helping/teaching friends and family since I started training and found a real love for it and realised my passion in life.july 08





ive always trained myself at home and since the end of 06 thats what ive been doing, after a big push from tony k(thanks mate) my main influences in the past few years have been Dennis Jones and Steve Morris i think there physical ability stands above and beyond anything ive seen,


heres a link to my profile but my sites playing up,i will be updating it in the next few weeks

http://instinctive-combatives.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=41.0

the film editing etc is purely a by product from my passion and life long commitment to teaching Combatives,

cheers
karl

Well done mate, I love your enthusiasm and passion for what you do and your writing skills are not bad either.

thanks for your kind comments peter